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LITERARY  CRITICISM 


ENGLISH  AND  AMERICAN  AUTHORS 

VOLUME  IV 
1785  -  1824 

EDITED  BY  CHARLES  WELLS  MOULTON 

ASSISTED  BY  A  CORPS  OF  ABLE  CONTRIBUTORS 

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THE  MOULTON  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
BUFFALO  NEW  YORK 
1902 


Copyrighted  1903 

BY 

THE  MOULTON  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


E-SUMNER  Company 
ND  Bookmakers 
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Iprofessor  MilUam  Zonc^  Ibarris,  "liL.  ®. 


INTRODUCTION. 


POETS  Al 
He  could  songes  make,  and  wel  endite. 
—Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  1387-93?  Can- 
terbury Tales. 

Having  bene  in  all  ages,  and  even 
amongst  the  most  barbarous,  always  of 
singular  accounpt  and  honour,  and  being 
indede  so  worthy  and  commendable  an  arte ; 
or  rather  no  arte,  but  a  divine  gift  and 
heavenly  instinct  not  to  bee  gotten  by 
laboure  and  learning,  but  adorned  with 
both ;  and  poured  into  the  witte  by  a  cer- 
tain 'Evdov(riacrfx6<s  and  cellestial  inspira- 
tion—Spenser,  Edmund,  1579,  The  Shep- 
herd's Calendar,  Argument,  Oct 

Nature  never  let  forth  the  earth  in  so 
rich  tapistry,  as  divers  Poets  have  done, 
neither  with  pleasant  rivers,  fruitful  trees, 
sweet  smelling  flowers:  nor  whatsoever 
els  may  make  the  too  much  loved  earth 
more  lovely.  Her  world  is  brasen,  the 
Poets  only  deliver  a  golden. — Sidney,  Sir 
Philip,  1595,  An  Apologie  for  Poetrie. 
I  had  rather  be  a  kitten,  and  cry — mew, 
Than  one  of  these  same  metre  ballad- 
mongers  ; 

I  had  rather  hear  a  brazen  canstick  turn'd, 
Or  a  dry  wheel  grate  on  an  axle-tree ; 
And  that  would  set  my  teeth  nothing  on 
edge. 

Nothing  so  much  as  mincing  poetry ; 
'Tis  like  the  forc'd  gait  of  a  shuffling  nag. 

—Shakespeare,  William,  1596-97,  King 

Henry  IV.,  Part  I,  Act  iii.  Sc.  i. 

When  Heav'n  would  strive  to  do  the  best  it 
can, 

And  puts  an  Angel's  Spirit  into  a  Man, 
The  utmost  power  in  that  great  work  doth 
spend 

When  to  the  World  a  Poet  it  doth  intend. 
—Drayton,  Michael,  1597,  England's 
Heroical  Epistles. 

It  was  ever  thought  to  have  some  par- 
ticipation of  divineness,  because  it  doth 
raise  and  erect  the  mind,  by  submitting 
the  shews  of  things  to  the  desires  of  the 
mind.— Bacon,  Francis  Lord,  1605,  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning,  hk.  ii. 


►  POETRY 

A  verse  may  finde  him  who  a  sermon  flies, 
And  turn  delight  into  a  sacrifice. 

—Herbert,  George,  1633,  The  Temple, 
Church  Porch. 

Lift  not  thy  spear  against  the  Muses'  bower : 

The  great  Emathian  conqueror  bid  spare 
The  house  of  Pindarus,  when  temple  and 
tower 

Went  to  the  ground ;  and  the  repeated  air 
Of  sad  Electra's  poet  had  the  power 

To  save  the  Athenian  walls  from  ruin  bare. 
—Milton,  John,  1642,  When  the  Assault 
was  intended  to  the  City. 
For  rhyme  the  rudder  is  of  verses, 
With  which,  like  ships,   they  steer  their 
courses. 

—Butler,  Samuel,  1663,  Hudibras. 
.    .    .   the  fate  of  verses,  always  prized 
With  admiration,  or  as  much  despised; 
Men  will  be  less  indulgent  to  their  faults, 
And  patience  have  to  cultivate  their  thoughts, 
Poets  lose  half  the  praise  they  should  have  got, 
Could  it  be  Imown  what  they  discreetly  blot ; 
Finding  new  words,  that  to  the  ravished  ear 
May  like  the  language  of  the  gods  appear, 
Such  as,  of  old,  wise  bards  employed,  to  make 
Unpolished  men  their  wild  retreats  forsake ; 
Law-giving  heroes,  famed  for  taming  brutes, 
And  raising  cities,  with  their  charming  lutes ; 
For  rudest  minds  with  harmony  were  caught. 
And  civil  life  was  by  the  Muses  taught. 
—Waller,  Edmund,  1670,  Upon  the  Earl 
of  Roscommon's  Translation  of  Horace  "de 
Arte  Poetica." 

Fame  from  science,  not  from  fortune,  draws. 
So  poetry,  which  is  in  Oxford  made 
An  art,  in  London  only  is  a  trade. 
There  haughty  dunces,  whose  unlearned  pen 
Could  ne'er  spell  grammar,  would  be  read- 
ing men. 

Such  build  their  poems  the  Lucretian  way ; 
So  many  huddled  atoms  make  a  play ; 
And  if  they  hit  in  order  by  some  chance. 
They  call  that  nature  which  is  ignorance. 
— Dryden,  John,  1673,  Prologue  to  the 
University  of  Oxford. 
True  Poets  are  the  Guardians  of  a  State, 
And,  when  they  fail,  portend  approaching 
Fate. 

For  that  which  Rome  to  conquest  did  inspire, 
Was  not  the  Vestal,  but  the  Mases'  fire. 
—Roscommon,  Earl  of,  1684.  An  Essay 
on  Translated  Verse. 


If  he  have  a  poetic  vein,  'tis  to  me  the 
strangest  thing  in  the  world  that  the  father 
should  desire  or  suffer  it  to  be  cherished 
or  improved.  Methinks  the  parents  should 
labour  to  have  it  stifled  and  suppressed  as 
much  as  may  be;  and  I  know  not  what 

■  reason  a  father  can  have  to  wish  his  son  a 
poet,  who  does  not  desire  to  have  him  bid 
defiance  to  all  other  callings  and  business ; 
which  is  not  yet  the  worst  of  the  case ; 
for  if  he  proves  a  successful  rhymer,  and 
gets  once  the  reputation  of  a  wit,  I  desire 
it  may  be  considered  what  company  and 

I  places  he  is  like  to  spend  his  time  in, — 
nay,  and  estate  too.  .  .  .  Poetry  and 
gaming,  which  usually  go  together,  are 
alike  in  this  too,  that  they  seldom  bring 
any  advantage  but  to  those  who  have  noth- 
ing else  to  live  on.  .  .  .  If  therefore  you 
would  not  have  your  son  the  fiddle  to  every 
jovial  company,  without  whom  the  sparks 
could  not  relish  their  wine  nor  know  how 
to  pass  an  afternoon  idly ;  if  you  would  not 
have  him  to  waste  his  time  and  estates  to 
divert  others,  and  contemn  the  dirty  acres 
left  him  by  his  ancestors, — I  do  not  think 
you  will  much  care  he  should  be  a  poet,  or 
that  his  schoolmaster  should  enter  him  in 
versifying. — Locke,  John,  1693,  Some 
Thoughts  concerning  Education. 
True  ease  in  writing  comes  from  art,  not 
chance, 

As  those  move  easiest  who  have  learned  to 
dance. 

'Tis  not  enough  no  harshness  gives  offence, 
The  sound  must  seem  an  echo  to  the  sense, 
Soft  is  the  strain  when  zephyr  gently  blows, 
\nd  the  smooth  stream  in  smoother  numbers 
flows; 

'.ut  when  loud  surges  lash  the  sounding 
shore, 

le  hoarse  rough  verse  should  like  the  tor- 
rent roar : 

When  Ajax  strives  some  rock's  vast  weight 
to  throw, 

The  line  too  labors,  and  the  words  move  slow : 
:  lot  so,  when  swift  Camilla  scours  the  plain. 
Flies  o'er  th'  unbending  corn,  and  skims 
along  the  main. 

—Pope,  Alexander,  1711,   Essay  on 

Criticism,  pKii,  v.  162-173. 
True  poets  can  depress  and  raise, 
Are  lords  of  infamy  and  praise ; 
Tliey  are  not  scurrilous  in  satire, 


Nor  will  in  panegyric  flatter, 

Unjustly  poets  we  asperse ; 

Truth  shines  the  brighter  clad  in  verse, 

And  all  the  fictions  they  pursue 

Do  but  insinuate  what  is  true. 

— Swift,  Jonathan,  1720,  To  Stella. 

Rhymes  are  difficult  things — they  are 
stubborn  things,  sir. — Fielding,  Henry, 
1751,  Amelia. 

The  bard,  nor  think  too  lightly  that  I  mean 
Those  little,  piddling  witlings,  who  o'erween 
Of  their  small  parts,  the  Murphys  of  the 
stage. 

The  Masons  and  the  Whiteheads  of  the  age. 
Who  all  in  raptures  their  own  works  re- 
hearse, 

And  drawl  out  measured  prose,  which  they 
call  verse. 

—Churchill,  Charles,  1764,  Independ- 
ence. 

The  essence  of  poetry  is  invention ;  such 
invention  as,  by  producing  something  un- 
expected, surprises  and  delights. — John- 
son, Samuel,  1779,  Waller ^  Lives  of  the 
Poets. 

There  is  a  pleasure  in  poetic  pains. 

Which  only  poets  know. 
— Cowper,  William,  1785,  The  Task,  bk. 
ii,  V.  285-286. 

Not  mine  the  soul  that  pants  not  after  fame- 
Ambitious  of  a  poet's  envied  name, 
I  haunt  the  sacred  fount,  athirst  to  prove 
The  grateful  influence  of  the  stream  I  love. 
— GiFFORD,  William,  1791,  The  Baviad. 

The  poet  must  be  alike  polished  by  an 
intercourse  with  the  world  as  with  the 
studies  of  taste ;  one  to  whom  labour  is 
negligence,  refinement  a  science,  and  art 
a  nature.— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1796-1818, 
Vers  de  Societe,  Literary  Character  of  Men 
of  Genius. 

Call  it  not  vain : — they  do  not  err, 

Who  say  that  when  the  poet  dies 

Mute  Nature  mourns  her  worshipper 

And  celebrates  his  obsequies ; 

Who  say  tall  clilf  and  cavern  lone 

For  the  departed  bard  makes  moan ; 

That  mountains  weep  in  crystal  rill ; 

That  flowers  in  tears  of  balm  distil ; 

Through  liis  loved  groves  that  breezes  sigh, 

And  oaks  in  deeper  groan  reply, 

And  rivers  teach  their  rushing  wave  ' 

To  murmur  dirges  round  his  grave. 

—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1805,  Lay  of  the 

Last  Minstrel,  Canto  v,  St.  i. 


Sweet  are  the  pleasures  that  to  verse  belojig, 
And  doubly  sweet  a  brotherhood  in  song. 
— Keats,  John,  1815,  Epistle  to  George 
Felton  Mathews. 

Poetry  is  the  blossom  and  the  fragrance 
of  all  human  knowledge,  human  thoughts, 
human  passions,  emotions,  language. — 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1817,  Bio- 
graphia  Liter  aria,  ch.  xv. 

What  must  a  Muse  of  strength,  of  force,  of 
fire, 

In  the  true  Poet's  ample  mmd  inspire? 
What  must  he  feel,  who  can  the  soul  express. 
Of  saint  or  hero? — he  must  be  no  less. 
Nor  less  of  evil  minds  he  knows  the  pain, 
But  quickly  lost  the  anguish  and  the  stain ; 
While  with  the  wisest,  happiest,  purest,  best, 
His  soul  assimilates  and  loves  to  rest. 
— Crabbe,  George,  1819,  Tales  of  the 
Hall,  bk.  vi,  note. 

Poetry  is  found  to  have  a  few  stronger 
conceptions,  by  which  it  would  affect  or 
overwhelm  the  mind,'  than  those  in  which 
it  presents  the  moving  and  speaking  image 
of  the  departed  dead  to  the  senses  of  the 
living. — Webster,  Daniel,  1820,  Dis- 
course Delivered  at  Plymouth  on  the  22nd 
of  December. 

Poetry  is  not  like  reasoning,  a  power 
to  be  exerted  according  to  the  determina- 
tion of  the  will.  A  man  cannot  say, 
will  compose  poetry."  The  greatest  poet 
even  cannot  say  it ;  for  the  mind  in  crea- 
tion is  as  a  fading  coal,  which  some  invisible 
influence,  like  an  inconstant  wind,  awakens 
to  transitory  brightness;  this  power 
arises  from  within,  like  the  colour  of 
a  flower  which  fades  and  changes  as  it  is 
developed,  and  the  conscious  portions  of 
our  nature  are  unprophetic  either  of  its 
approach  or  its  departure.  .  .  .  Poetry 
is  the  record  of  the  best  and  happiest 
moments  of  the  happiest  and  best  minds. 
We  are  aware  of  evanescent  visitations  of 
thought  and  feeling,  sometimes  associated 
with  place  or  person,  sometimes  regard- 
ing our  own  mind  alone,  and  always  arising 
unf orseen  and  departing  unbidden,  but  ele- 
vating and  delightful  beyond  all  expression : 
so  that  even  in  the  desire  and  the  regret 


they  leave,  there  cannot  but  be  pleasure, 
participating  as  it  does  in  the  nature  of 
its  object.  It  is,  as  it  were,  the  inter- 
penetration  of  a  diviner  nature  through 
our  own ;  but  its  footsteps  are-  like  those 
of  a  wind  over  the  sea,  which  the  morning 
calm  erases,  and  whose  traces  remain  only, 
as  on  the  wrinkled  sand  which  paves  it. — 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1821,  A  Defence 
of  Poetry. 

Poetry  produces  an  illusion  on  the  eye 
of  the  mind,  as  a  magic  lantern  produces 
an  illusion  on  the  eye  of  the  body.  And, 
as  a  magic  lantern  acts  best  in  a  dark 
room,  poetry  effects  its  purpose  most  com- 
pletely in  a  dark  age.  As  the  light  of 
knowledge  breaks  in  upon  its  exhibitions, 
as  the  outlines  of  certainty  become  more 
and  more  definite,  and  the  shades  of  prob- 
ability more  and  more  distinct,  the  hues 
and  lineaments  of  the  phantoms  which  it 
calls  up  grow  fainter  and  fainter.  We 
cannot  unite  the  incompatible  advantages 
of  reality  and  deception,  the  clear  dis- 
cernment of  truth  and  the  exquisite  enjoy- 
ment of  fiction.— Mac  AULA  Y,  Thomas 
Babington,  1825,  Milton,  Edinburgh  Re- 
view ;  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

The  poet,  we  cannot  but  think,  can  never 
have  far  to  seek  for  a  subject :  the  ele- 
ments of  his  art  are  in  him  and  around 
him  on  every  hand ;  for  him  the  ideal  world 
is  not  remote  from  the  actual,  but  under 
it  and  within  it ;  nay,  he  is  a  poet,  precisely 
because  he  can  discern  it  there.  Wher- 
ever there  is  a  sky  above  him,  and  a  world 
around  him,  the  poet  is  in  his  place,  for 
here  too  is  man^s  existence,  with  its  defi- 
nite longings  and  small  acquirings;  its 
ever-thwarted,  ever -renewed  endeavors; 
its  unspeakable  aspirations,  its  fears  and 
hopes  that  wander  through  eternity  ;  and 
all  the  mystery  of  brightness  and  of  gloom 
that  it  was  ever  made  of,  in  any  age  or 
climate,  since  man  first  began  to  live.  Is 
there  not  the  fifth  act  of  a  tragedy  in 
every  death-bed,  though  it  were  a  peasant's 
and  a  bed  of  heath?    And  are  wooings 


8 


INTRODUCTION 


and  weddings  obsolete,  that  there  can  be 
comedy  no  longer?  Or  are  men  suddenly 
grown  wise,  that  Laughter  must  no  longer 
shake  his  sides,  but  be  cheated  of  his 
farce?  Man's  life  and  nature  is  as  it  was, 
and  as  it  will  ever  be.  But  the  poet  must 
have  an  eye  to  read  these  things,  and  a 
heart  to  understand  them,  or  they  come 
and  pass  away  before  him  in  vain.  He  is 
a  vateSy  a  seer ;  a  gift  of  vision  that  has 
been  given  him.  Has  life  no  meanings 
for  him  which  another  cannot  equally 
decipher  ?  Then  he  is  no  poet,  and  Delphi 
itself  will  not  make  him  one. — Carlyle, 
Thomas,  1828,  The  Life  of  Robert  Burns, 
The  poet  in  a  golden  clime  was  born, 

With  golden  stars  above ; 
Dower' d  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of 
scorn, 

The  love  of  love. 


And  bravely  furnish 'd  all  abroad  to  fling 

The  winged  shafts  of  truth, 
To  throng  with  stately  blooms  the  breathing 
spring, 

Of  hope  and  youth. 

—  TennysoNj  Alfred  Lord,  1830,  The 
Poet 

The  words 
He  utters  in  his  solitude  shall  move 
Men  like  a  swift  wind — that  tho'  dead  and 
gone, 

New  eyes  shall  glisten  when  his  beauteous 
dream 

Of  love  come  true  in  happier  frames  than  his. 

—Browning,  Robert,  1833,  Pauline. 

Poetry  is  itself  a  thing  of  God ; 

He  made  his  prophets  poets ;  and  the  more 

We  feel  of  poesie  do  we  become 

Like  God  in  love  and  power, — under-makers. 

-  Bailey,  Philip  James,  1839,  Festus, 
Proem. 

.    .    .    these  were  poets  true, 

Who  did  for  Beauty  as  martyrs  do 

For  Truth — the  ends  being  scarcely  two. 

God's  prophets  of  the  Beautiful 

These  poets  were;  of  iron  rule, 

Tlie  rugged  cilix,  serge  of  wool. 

—Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1844, 
A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Poetry  is  the  breath  of  beauty,  flowing 
around  the  spiritual  world,  as  the  winds 
that  wake  up  the  flowers  do  about  the 
material.— Hunt,  Leigh,  1844,  Of  States- 
men Who  have  Written  Verses;  Men, 
Women  and  Books. 


Blessings  be  with  them — ^and  eternal  praise, 
Who  gave  us  nobler  loves,  and  nobler  cares — 
The  Poets,  who  on  earth  have  made  us  heirs 
Of  truth  and  pure  delight  by  heavenly  lays ! 

—Wordsworth,  William,  1846,  Per- 
sonal Talk. 

All  that  is  best  in  the  great  poets  of  all 
countries  is  not  what  is  national  in  them, 
but  what  is  universal. —  Longfellow, 
Henry  Wads  worth,  1849,  Kavanagh, 
ch.  XX. 

One  more  royal  trait  properly  belongs 
to  the  poet.  I  mean  his  cheerfulness, 
without  which  no  man  can  be  a  poet, — for 
beauty  is  his  aim.  He  loves  virtue,  not 
for  its  obligation,  but  for. its  grace;  he 
delights  in  the  world,  in  man,  in  woman, 
for  the  lovely  light  that  sparkles  from 
them.  Beauty,  the  spirit  of  joy  and  hilar- 
ity, he  sheds  over  the  universe. — Emer- 
son, Ralph  Waldo,  1850,  Shakespeare ; 
or  the  Poet. 

Poetry  is 

The  grandest  chariot  wherein  king-thoughts 
ride; — 

One  who  shall  fervent  grasp  the  sword  of 
song 

As  a  stern  swordsman  grasps  his  keenest 
blade, 

To  find  the  quickest  passage  to  the  heart. 

—  Smith,   Alexander,   1852,   A  Life 

Drama. 

— Doth  not  song 
To  the  whole  world  belong ! 
Is  it  not  given  wherever  tears  can  fall, 
Wherever  hearts  can  melt,  or  blushes  glow, 
Or  mirth  and  sadness  mingle  as  they  flow, 
A  heritage  to  all? 

—Craig-Knox,  Isa,  1859,  Ode  on  a  Cen- 
tenary of  Burns. 

We  call  those  poets  who  are  first  to  mark 
Through  earth's  dull  mist  the  coming  of 

the  dawn, — 
Who  see  in  twilight's  gloom  the  first  pale 

spark, 

While  others  only  note  that  day  is  gone. 

—  Holmes,  Oliver  W^endell,  1864, 
Shakespeare  Tercentennial  Celebration, 
April  23. 

.    .    .    there  da-svneth  a  time  to  the  Poet, 
When  the  bitterness  passes  away, 

With  none  but  his  God  to  know  it, 
He  kneels  in  the  dark  to  pray ; 

And  the  prayer  is  turn'd  into  singing, 


INTRODUCTION 


9 


And  the  singing  findeth  a  tongue, 
And  Art,  with  her  cold  liands  chuging. 

Comforts  the  soul  she  has  stung. 
Then  the  Poet,  holding  her  to  him, 

Findeth  his  loss  is  his  gain  : 
The  sweet  singing  sadness  thrills  through 
him, 

Though  nought  of  the  glory  remain ; 
And  the  awful  sound  of  the  city. 

And  the  terrible  faces  around, 
Take  a  truer,  tenderer  pity. 

And  pass  into  sweetness  and  sound ; 
The  mystery  deepens  to  thunder. 

Strange  vanish ings  gleam  from  the  cloud. 
And  the  Poet,  with  pale  lips  asunder, 

Stricken,  and  smitten,  and  bow'd, 
Starteth  at  times  from  his  wonder, 

And  sendeth  his  Soul  up  aloud ! 

—Buchanan,  Robert,  1864,  London. 

The  earth  is  given 
To  us :  we  reign  by  virtue  of  a  sense 
Which  lets  us  hear  the  rhythm  of  that  old 
verse, 

The  ring  of  that  old  tune  whereto  she  spins. 
Humanity  is  given  to  us :  we  reign 
By  virtue  of  a  sense  which  lets  us  in 
To  know  its  troubles  ere  they  have  been  told, 
And  take  them  home  and  lull  them  into  rest 
With  mournful! est  music.  Time  is  given 
to  us, — 

Time  past,  time  future.    Who,  good  sooth, 
beside 

Have  seen  it  well,  have  walked  this  empty 
world 

When  she  went  steaming,  and  from  pulpy 
hills 

Have  marked  the  spurting  of  their  flamy 
crowns? 

— INGELOW,  Jean,  1867,  Gladys  and  Her 
Island. 

Verse-makers'  talk!  fit  for  a  world  of  rhymes 
Where  facts  are  feigned  to  tickle  idle  ears, 
Where  good  and  evil  play  at  tournament. 
And  end  in  amity, — a  world  of  lies, — 
A  carnival  of  words  where  every  year 
Stale  falsehoods  serve  fresh  men. 
—Eliot,   George,   1868,  The  Spanish 
Gypsyy  bk.  i. 

The  busy  shuttle  comes  and  goes 
Across  the  rhymes,  and  deftly  weaves 
A  tissue  out  of  autumn  leaves, 
With  here  a  thistle,  there  a  rose. 

— Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  1874,  The 
Cloth  of  Gold. 

We  are  the  music  makers, 

And  we  are  the  dreamers  of  dreams. 
Wandering  by  lone  sea-breakers, 

And  sitting  by  desolate  streams; — 
World-losers  and  world-forsakers, 

On  whom  the  pale  mo  n  gleams : 
Yet  we  are  the  movers  awi  shakers 


Of  the  world  for  ever,  it  seems. 
With  wonderful  deathless  ditties 
We  build  up  the  world's  great  cities, 

And  out  of  a  fabulous  story 

We  fashion  an  empire's  glory : 
One  man  with  a  dream,  at  pleasure, 

Shall  go  forth  and  conquer  a  crown ; 
And  three  with  a  new  song's  measure 

Can  trample  a  kingdom  down, 

—  O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  1874,  Ode, 
Music  and  Moonlight. 

There  are  few  delights  in  any  life  so 
high  and  rare  as  the  subtle  and  strong  de- 
light of  sovereign  art  and  poetry ;  there 
are  none  more  pure  and  more  sublime.  To 
have  read  the  greatest  works  of  any  great 
poet,  to  have  beheld  or  heard  the  greatest 
works  of  any  great  painter  or  musician,  is 
a  possession  added  to  the  best  things  of 
■life. — Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles, 
1875,  Victor  Hugo,  Essays  and  Studies. 

All  days  are  birthdays  in  the  life, 

The  blessed  life  that  poets  live, 
Songs  keep  their  own  sweet  festivals. 

And  are  the  gifts  they  come  to  give. 
The  only  triumph  over  Time, 

That  Time  permits,  is  his  who  sings ; 
The  poet  Time  himself  defies 

By  secret  help  of  Time's  own  wings. 

— Jackson,  Helen  Hunt,  1879,  To  0, 
W.  Holmes  on  his  10th  Birthday. 

A  Poem  consists  of  all  the  purest  and 
most  beautiful  elements  in  the  "  oet's 
nature,  crystallised  into  the  aptest  and 
most  exquisite  language,  and  adorned  with 
all  the  outer  embellishment  of  musical 
cadence  or  dainty  rhyme.  Hence  it  pre- 
sents us  with  the  highest  and  noblest  prod- 
uct of  the  aesthetic  faculty,  embracing 
as  it  does  in  their  ideal  forms  the  separate 
beauties  of  all  its  sister  arts.  Whatever 
loveliness  in  face  or  feature,  in  hill  or 
stream  or  ocean,  the  painter  can  place 
before  us  on  his  breathing  canvas,  that 
loveliness  the  poet  can  body  forth  in  his 
verse,  with  the  superadded  touches  of  his 
vivid  imagination.  Whatever  glorious 
floods  of  sound  the  singer  can  pour  out 
from  his  ever-welling  fountain  of  liquid 
treble  and  thundering  bass,  that  glory  the 
poet  can  reproduce  for  us  in  his  graphic 
delineation  of  all  things  seen  or  heard. 


Even  more  than  this  the  poet  can  do.  For 
while  painting  can  only  portray  for  us  the 
forms  and  colours  of  the  human  face  or  of 
external  nature,  with  at  best  some  preg- 
nant suggestion  of  the  passions  and  emo- 
tions at  work  within  it — while  music  can 
I  only  play  upon  our  inner  cords  by  dim  hints 
I  and  half-comprehended  touches,  *' telling 
I  us  of  things  we  have  not  seen,  of  things  we 
shall  not  see" — the  supreme  art  of  all  can 
utter  in  clear  and  definite  language  every 
feeling,  external  or  internal,  which  makes 
up  the  sum  of  human  life. — Allen,  Grant, 
1879,  A  Fragment  from  Keats,  The  Gentle- 
man^s  Magazine,  vol  244,  p,  676. 
He  is  a  poet  strong  and  true 
Who  loves  wild  thyme  and  honey-dew ; 
And  like  a  brown  bee  works  and  sings. 
With  morning  freshness  on  his  wings, 
And  a  gold  burden  on  his  thighs, — 
The  pollen -dust  of  centuries! 
—Thompson,  Maurice,  1883,  Wild  Honey. 

I  sometimes  doubt 
f  they  have  not  indeed  the  better  part — 
?hese  poets,  who  get  drunk  with  sun,  and 

,  weep 

secause  the  night  or  a  woman's  face  is  fair. 
-Levy,  Amy,  1884,  A  Minor  Poet. 

Ihe  comes  like  the  husht  beauty  of  the  night, 
But  sees  too  deep  for  laughter ; 
!er  touch  is  a  vibration  and  a  light 
F^pm  worlds  before  and  after. 
-  /  xRKHAM,   Charles   Edwin,  1889, 
rize  Quatrain,  Magazine  of  Poetry,  vol. 
p.  488. 

1,  we  who  know  thee  know  we  know  thee 
not, 

Thou  Soul  of  Beauty,  thou  Essential  Grace ! 
it  undeterr'd  by  baffled  speech  and  thought, 
The  heart  stakes  all  upon  thy  hidden  face. 
Bates,  Katharine  Lee,  1889,  Prize 
latrain,  Magazine  of  Poetry,  vol.  1,  p.  488. 

.    .   the  great  gods  of  Song,  in  clear 

white  light, 
le  radiance  of  their  godhead,  calmly  dwell 
id  with  immutable  cold  starlike  gaze 
m  both  the  upper  and  the  under  world, 
it  revolves,  themselves  serenely  fixed, 
eir  bias  is  the  bias  of  the  sphere, 
at  turns  all  ways,  but  turns  away  from 

none, 

ve  to  return  to  it.    They  have  no  feud 
ith  gods  or  men,  the  living  or  the  dead, 
e  past  or  present,  and  their  words  complete 
'e's  incompleteness  with  a  healing  note, 
r  they  are  not  more  sensitive  than  strong, 


More  wise  than  tender ;  understanding  all. 
At  peace  with  all,  at  peace  with  life  and 
death, 

And  love  that  gives  a  meaning  unto  life 
And  takes  from  death  the  meaning  and  the 
sting : 

At  peace  with  hate,  and  every  opposite. 
—Austin,  Alfred,  1889,  A  Dialogue  at 
Fiesole. 

We  name  thee  not  the  Angel  of  the  Tomb : 

O'er  that,  vain -glory  fleets,  waning  wrath : 
God's  light  alone  dispels  the  churchyard's 
gloom : 

Yet  whisperings  hast  thou  with  God's 
Daughter,  Faith. 

-De  Vere,  Aubrey  Thomas,  1889,  Prize 

Quatrain,   Magazine  of  Poetry,  vol.  1, 

p.  490. 

God  placed  a  solid  rock  man's  path  across, 
And  bade  him  climb ;  but  that  it  might 
not  be 

Too  rough,  He  wrapped  it  o'er  with  tender 
moss: 

The  rock  was  Truth,  the  moss  was  Poetry. 
— Ingliss,  Bert,  1889,  Prize  Quatrain, 
Magazine  of  Poetry,  vol.  1,  p.  488. 

The  poet  dies  as  dies  the  barren  mind, 
It  is  in  death  his  deathless  days  begin. 

To  him  of  what  avail?  But  he  has  willed 
His  wealth  to  every  dweller  on  the  soil. 

That  so  shall  ages  drifting  by  be  filled 
With  lustrous  reminiscence  of  his  toil. 

Through  him  man's  spirit  quits  its  baser 
pleasures, 

Beholding  Nature's  world  as  now  his  own, 
Astonished  at  his  newly-gotten  treasures, — 

Into  his  lap  the  wealth  of  ages  thrown ! 
— Hake,  Thomas  Gordon,  1890,  The  New 
Day,  Sonnet  xxxi. 

He  walks  w^ith  God  upon  the  hills ! 

And  sees,  each  morn,  the  world  arise 

New-bathed  in  light  of  Paradise. 
He  hears  the  laughter  of  her  rills, 

Her  melodies  of  many  voices, 

And  greets  her  while  her  heart  rejoices. 
She,  to  his  spirit  undefiled, 
Makes  answer  as  a  little  child ; 

Unveiled  before  his  eyes  she  stands. 

And  gives  her  secrets  to  his  hands. 
— COOLBRITH,  Ina  D.,  1891,  The  Poet. 
Poets  must  ever  be  their  own  best  listeners. 

No  word  from  man  to  men 

Shall  sound  the  same  again ; 
Something  is  lost  through  all  interpreters. 

Never  for  finest  thought 

Can  crystal  words  be  wrought 
That  to  the  crowd  afar 
Shall  show  it — mo"  a  than  a  telescope  a  star. 
—Spencer,  Ca- l,  1891,  Half  Heard. 


CONTENTS. 


Adams,  Samuel,     .......  1722—1803 

Ames,  Fisher,   1758—1808 

Amory,  Thomas,   16917-1788 

Anstey,  Christopher,   1724—1805 

Austen,  Jane,   1775—1817 


Page.. 

440 
527 
47 
479 
612 


Personal,   612 

Pride  and  Prejudice,  .  614 
Sense  and  Sensibility,  6lfe 


Northanger  Abbey,     .   .    .  616 

Mansfield  Park,  616 

Emma,  617 


Persuasion,  618 

General,  618 


Bage,  Robert,   1728- 


■1801   418 

Barlow,  Joel   1754—1812    573 

Beattie,  James,   1735—1803    428 

Personal,    428         The  Minstrel,  431         General,  433 

Essay  on  Truth,  ...  430 

Black,  Joseph,   1728—1799    344 

Blacklock,  Thomas,   1721—1791    129 

Blair,  Hugh,   1718—1800    403 

Blamire,  Susanna,   1747—1794    204 

Bloomfield,  Robert,   1766—1823    723 

BoswELL,  James,   1740—1795    209 

i-BROWN,  Charles  Brockden,  .    .    .    .  1771—1810    552 

Brown,  Thomas,   1778—1820    657 

Bruce,  James,    ........  1730—1794    205 

Burke,  Edmund,    ,   1729—1797  ........  287 


Personal,   288 

Speeches  and  Oratory,  294 


Vindication  of  Natural 

Society,  297 

The  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  298 

1799 


Reflections  on  the  Rev- 
olution in  France,  298 


General, 


301 


Burnett,  James,  1714 

BuRNEY,  Charles,  1726—1814 
Burns,  Robert   1759—1796 


Personal   221 

Jean,   236 

Highland  Mary,  ...  238 

Cl^rinda   240 


Mrs.  Dunlop,   241 

The  Holy  Fair,   242 

Cotter' s  Saturday  Night,   .  243 

Tam  O'Shanter,   244 


The  Jolly  Beggars,  . 
Holy  Willie's  Prayer, 
Letters,  


346 
587" 
221' 


246 
246 
247 

General,  247 


Byron   '^.orge  Gordon  Lord, 

P  ,   732 

Lac        :  n,   .    .   .    .  743 

Hour.  ness,  .   .  747 

English        "  and 

Scotch .  Ts,   .  747 

Carter,  Eliz^.  .  . 

Chapone,  Hestl        ,  o 
Colman,  George  t)f^ 


1788—1824    731 


Childe  Harold, 


Prisoner  of  Chillon, 
Manfred,  .... 


748 

Don  Juan,   .    .  . 

.   .  751 

749 

Marino  Faliero,  . 

.   .  753 

749 

750 

Letters?,  .... 

.    .  755 

750 

.    .  755 

1";:'— 1806    ........  491 

!72T  -1801  417 

1732—1794   ~200 


12 

CowPER,  William, 

Personal,     .   .  . 

Lady  Austen,  .  . 
Olney  Hymns, 

John  Gilpin,    .  . 


371 

376 
377 
377 


CONTENTS 
.    .    .    .  1731—1800 

The  Task  378 

Homer  381 

On  the  Receipt  of  My  Mother'9 
Picture,  .382 


Page. 

370 


Sonnets, 
Letters, 
General, 


383 
384 


Cumberland,  Richard,   1732—1811 

Dalrymple,  Sir  David,   1726—1792 

Darwin,  Erasmus,   1731—1802 

Personal,    420        Zoonomia,  423 

The  Botanic  Garden,  .  421 

Day,  Thomas,   1748—1789 

DiBDiN,  Charles,   1745—1814 

Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  .....  1795—1820 

DwiGHT,  Timothy,   .  1752—1817 

Erskine,  Thomas,   1750—1823 

Farmer,  Richard,   1735—1797 

Ferguson,  Adam,   1723—1816 

Fox,  Charles  James,   1749—1806 

Francis,  Sir  Philip,   1740—1818 

Franklin,  Benjamin,   1706—1790 


General  424 


Personal  80^ 

The  Hutchinson  Letters  94 


Poor  Richard's  Almanac, 
Autobiography,   .   .  . 


General, 


558 
145 
420 

49 
585 
659 
625 
728 
340 
609 
498 
637 

79 

172 


Letters  and  Miscella- 
neous Works,   .   .  198 
General  195 


General, 


-167 


Gibbon,  Edward,   1737--1794 

"^rsoiJ^l,   173        Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 

Mademoiselle  Curchod,  178  Empire  179 

Autobiography  191 

Glover,  Richard,   1712—1785 

Godwin,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  .    .  1759 — 1797 

Grahame,  James,   1765—1811 

Hailes,  Lord,   1726—1792 

Hamilton,  Alexander,   1757—1804 

Personal,     .   .    ,   .    .   456        The  Federalist  466 

Statesman,  462 

.Hawkins,  Sir  John,  f   1719—1789 

Hayley,  William,   1745—1820 

Henry,  Patrick,   1736—1799 

Henry,  Robert,   1718—1790 

HoLCROFT,  Thomas,     ......  1745—1809 

Home,  John,   1722—1808 

Hopkins,  Samuel,   .......  1721—1803 

Hopkinson,  Francis.   1737—1791 

Horne,  George,   1730-1792   .    .    ,   143 

Horne,  John,   1736—1812    569 

/Iorner,  Francis,   1778—1817    628 

Hoksley,  Samuel,  1733—1806   .    ,    ,   494 

Hunter,  John,   1728—1793   .  .....  164 

HuKl),' Richard,   1720—1808   .   516 


17 
326 
566 
145 
456 

50 
651 
349 
106 
544 
512 
437 
131 


CONTENTS  13 

1726—1797    .   337 

1753—1821    686 

1704—1787  30 

17197-1800?  .  '  .    .    .    .    .    .    .  413 


1746—1794 


1795—1821 

Lamia,  671 

Eve  of  St.  Agnes  671, 

Hyperion,  672 


197 

638 
662 


Odes,  673 

Sonnets,  674 

General  674 


1720—1804    .    .  •  469 


HuTTON,  James;  .  . 
Lnchbald,  Mrs.  Elizabeth 
Jenyns,  Soame,  .  . 
Johnstone,  Charles, 
Jones,  Sir  William, 
Junius,  .... 
Keats,  John,     .  . 

Personal,  .... 
Fanny  Brawne,  .  . 
Love  Letters^  ,  .  . 
Endymion,  . ,  .   .  . 

Lennox,  Charlotte, 

Lewis,  Matthew  Gregory,  ....  1775—1818    631 

Livingston,  William,   1723—1790    108 

Logan.  John,   1748—1788    43 

LOWTH,  Robert,   1710—1787    28 

Macaulay,  Catherine  (nee  Graham),  1731—1791    133 

Macklin,  Charles,   1699?-1797    342 

Macknight,  James,   1721—1800   ........  407 

Macpherson,  James,   1736—1796    270 

Personal,   270        Poems  of  Ossian,     ....   272        General  281 

Malone,  Edmond,   1741—1812    577 

Mansfield,  Lord   1705—1793    169 


Mason,  William,   1724—1797 

Maturin,  Charles  Robert,  .    .    .    .  1782—1824 

MiCKLE,  William  Julius,   1735—1788 

Monboddo,  Lord,   1714—1799 

Montagu,  Elizabeth,  ......  1720—1800 

.Moore,  John,   1729—1802 

Murphy,  Arthur,                         .  1730—1805 

Murray,  William,   1705—1793 

Orford,  Earl  of,   1717—1797 

Orme,  Robert,   1728—1801 

Paine,  Thomas,   1737—1809 


Personal,  .  . 
Common  Sense, 


530 
535 


The  American  Crisis. 
The  Rights  of  Man, . 


536 


Age  of  Reason,  ...  637 
General  S39 


Paley,  William,   1743—1805 

Personal  471         Horse  Paulinse,  473 

Principles  of  Moral  and  Evidences  of  Christianity,  .  473 

Political  Philosophy,  472 

Park,  Mungo,  

Percy,  Thomas,  

Pindar,  Peter,  ...... 

Piozzi,  Hester  Lynch^  .  . 
Pitt,  William,  .    -    .    o  . 


323 
766 
40 
346 
398 
426 
481 
169 
309 
414 
529 

470 


Natural  Theology,  .  .  474 
General,  475 


1771—1806?   483 

1729—1811    562 

1738—1819   647 

1740—1821    .    68db 

1759—1806    507 


CONTENTS 
....  1759—1808 

General  524 

Price,  Richard,   1723—1791 

Priestley,  Joseph,   1733—1804 

445        Scientific  Work  449 


PoRsoN,  Richard,  .  . 

Personal  520 


Page. 

520 

135 
444 


Personal, 


General, 


461 


Pye,  Henry  James, 


1745- 


Radcliffe,  Ann  Ward,   1764— 

Reeve,  Clara,   1729 

Reid,  Tijomas,   1710 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,    .    .    .    .    .  1723 

Ricardo,  David,   1772 

RiTSON,  Joseph   .  1752— 

Robertson,  William,   1721 


1813 
1823 
1807 
1796 
-1792 
1823 
1803 
1793 


580 
717 
511 
282 
137 
725 
435 
154 


Personal,   154 

The  Situation  of  the 
World  at  the  time  of 
Christ's  Appearance,  156 


History  of  Scotland, 
Charles  v.,  .  .  .  . 
History  of  America, 


156        History  of  India,     .    .  161 

158        General,  161 

160 


Robinson,  Mary,   1758—1800 

RoMiLLY,  Sir  Samuel,   1757—1818 

Rumford,  Count,   1753—1814 

Seward,  Anna,   1747—1809 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,   1792—1822 

Personal,  681 

Necessity  of  Atheism,  69J 
Queen  Mab,  .  .  .  .  69< 
Alastor,  699 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley 

Personal   594        The  Duenna  6C 

Speeches   599        School  for  Scandal,  .    .   .    .  6C 

The  Rivals  601 

Sheridan,  Thomas,   1719—1788 

Smith,  Adam,   1723—1790 

Personal                     .   53        The  Theory  of  Moral 


.  411 

.  634 
.  589 
541 
.  689 


The  Revolt  of  Islam, 
Julian  and  Maddalo, 
Prometheus  Unbound, 

.    .  1751- 


700  The  Cenci, 

701  Adonais,  . 
701         General,  . 


703 
704 
704 


1816  593 

.    .   602         The  Critic  605 

.    .   603        General,  606 


46 
53 


Sentiments,     .    .  . 

Smith,  Charlotte,   1749—1806 

Steevens,  George,   1736—1800 

Stevenson,  John  Hall,   1718—1785 

Stuart,  Gilbert,   1742—1786 

Tannahill,  Robert,   1774—1810 

Thompson,  Sir  Benjamin,   1753—1814 

Thrale,  Mrs.  Hester  Lynch,    .    .    .  1740—1821 

TiGHE,  Mary,   1772- -1810 

Tooke,  John  Horne,   ......  1736—1812 

Tucker,  Josiah,  1712—1799 

Tyrwh^tt,  Thomas,     ......  1730—1786 

Wakefield,  Gilbert,  .    o    .    .    .    .  1756—1801 


The  Wealth  of  Nations,  61 
58        General  70 


496 
408 
24 
27 
547 
589 
(384 
550 
569 
ci69 
24 
415 


Walpole,  Horace, 


Personal,  .  . 
Strawberry  Hill, 


CONTENTS 


1717—1797 

310 .      Royal  and  Noble  Authors,  316 
814        Castle  of  Otranto,    ....  316 
The  Mysterious  Mother,  .   .  318 


Letters,  318 

General,  321 


15 

Pagh. 

309 


71 


76 


595 


Warton,  Thomas,  .......  1728—1790   

Personal,  ....   72        History  of  English  Poetry.   .  72        General,  .... 

Warton,  Joseph,   1722—1800   

Washington,  George,   1732—1799    353 

Personal,    353        Farewell  Address  366        General  367 

Wesley,  Charles,    1707—1788    34 


Personal,  84        Hymns,  35 

Wesley,  John,   1703—1791 

Personal,   110        As  a  Preacher,  120 

Marriage  118         Wesleyism,  122 

White,  Gilbert,   1720—1793 

White,  Henry  Kirke,   1785—1806 

Whitehead,  AVilliam,   1715—1785 

Wilkes,  John,   1727—1797 

Wilson,  Alexander,   1766—1813 

WoLCOT,  John,      .    .    ...    ...  1738—1819 

Wolfe,  Charles,   1791—1823 

WOLLSTONECRAFT,  Mary,   1759—1797 

Young,*  Arthur,   .  1741—1820 


General, 


General, 


126 


110 

147 
487 
21 
332 
581 
647 
722 
326 
654 


blNUKAVUNUi. 


Page. 

Austen,  Jane,   ,    .    .    .    .  613 

After  an  Original  Family  Portrait.  ^ 

Barlow,  Joel,  »    .    .    .    .  553 

Engraving  by  A.  B,  Durand,  Fainting  by  Robert  Fulton. 

Beattie,  James,  421 

Drawing  by  T.  Uwins,  Engraving  by  W.  Bromley,  Original  Picture  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  553 

Engraving  by  I.  B.  Forrest,  from  a  Miniature  by  William  Dunlap  in  1806. 

Burke,  Edmund,  137 

From  a  Painting  by  Alonzo  Chappel,  Original  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Burns,  Robert,  .221 

From  a  Painting  by  Alonzo  Chappel,  Original  by  Nasmyth. 

Byron,  Lord,  "  .  731 

From  a  Painting  by  Alojizo  Chappel,  after  a  Painting  by  Thomas  Phillips. 

CowPER,  William,   221 

Engraving  by  S.  Freeman 

Cumberland,  Richard,  .  323 

Engraving  by  Scriven,  from  a  Painting  by  Clover. 

Darwin,  Erasmus,  421 

Engraving  by  H,  Meyer,  from  a  Bronze  Bust  in  possession  of  the  Darwiih  Family. 

Fox,  Charles  James,  499 

From  an  Engraving  published  by  A.  FuUarton  Cu. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  79 

From  Original  Painting  by  Alonzo  Chappel. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  173 

Painting  by  Alonzo  Chappel,  after  Original  Painting  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Godwin,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,     .    .    ,   613 

From  a  Woodburytype  after  a  Painting  by  Opie. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  457 

From  Original  Painting  by  Wiemar. 

Keats,  John,   663 

Engraving  by  G.  J.  Anderton,  Original  Painting  by  J.  Severn. 

Lewis,  Matthew  Gregory,   663 

From  an  Engraving  published  by  Henry  Colburn  in  18S9. 

Malone,  Edmond,  457 

Engraving  by  J.  C.  Armytage,  from  a  Painting  by  Bartolozzi,  after  a  Picture  by  Reynolds. 

Mason,  William,  323 

|,        Engraving  by  R.  Cooper,  from  Original  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  at  Pembroke  Hall,  Cambridge. 

5PALEY,  William,  .    .    .    .    ,  471 

1        From  Original  Engraving  in  stipple. 

Pitt,  William,  v  .    .  499 

!        Engraving  by  H.  Meyer,  Original  Picture  by  J.  Hoppner,  Ji.  A. 

Porson,  Richard,  647 

Engraving  by  H.  Adlard,  Painting  by  J.  Hoppner,  R.  A, 

Priestley,  Joseph,  471 

Engraving  by  C.  Cook. 

'Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  731 

j        Portrait  by  Miss  Cur  ran. 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,      .    ....    .   309 

Engraving  by  R.  Hicks,  Original  Painting  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  ,    .  137 

I        From  a  Painting  by  Himself. 

Robertson,  William,  „    .  173 

Engraving  by  T.  A.  Dean,  Painting  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Walpole,  Horace  309 

Engraving  by  J.  Sartain,  Painting  by  Eckardt. 

Washington,  George,    .    ,  79 

From  the  Original  Painting  by  Stuart  in  the  Boston  Athenaeum. 

-^LEY,  Charles,  35 

''ngraving  by  Dick,  from  an  Original  Painting  in  the  possession  of  the  Family. 

John,   .  35 

'ing  by  J.  Cochran,  from  a  scarce  print  published  in  nitS. 

''N,   l647 

v  C.  Heath,  Painting  by  J.  R.  Synifh 


The 


Library  of  Literary  Criticism 


of 


English  and  American  Authors 


VOLUME  IV. 


Richard  G-lover 

1712-1785 

Born  at  London,  1712:   Died  there,  Nov.  25,  1785.    An  English -Poet.    He  was 

the  son  of  a  Hamburg  merchant,  and  entered  into  business  with  his  father.  His  chief 
work,  an  epic  poem,  ''Leonidas,"  appeared  in  1737.  He  enlarged  it  and  republished 
it  in  1770,  and  it  has  been  translated  into  French  and  German.  Its  success  was 
partly  due  to  its  usefulness  to  the  opponents  of  Walpole.  He  also  published  London, 
etc."  (1739),  ^'Boadicea"  (atragedy,  1753),  ''Medea"  (1761),  and ''The  Athenaid," 
an  epic  in  30  books,  published  in  1787  by  his  daughter.— Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed., 
1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  443. 


PERSONAL 

The  greatest  coxcomb  and  the  greatest 
oaf  that  ever  met  in  blank  verse  or  prose. 
—Walpole,  Horace,  1742,  To  Sir  Hor- 
ace Mann,  March  3 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  I,  p.  136. 

We  spent  the  evening  with  Miss  Hamil- 
ton ;  who,  I  fancy,  will  have  another  name 
by  the  time  you  get  this  letter.  I  was 
much  amused  with  hearing  old  Leonidas 
Glover  sing  his  own  fine  ballad  of 
"Hosier's  Ghost,"  which  was  very  affect- 
ing. He  is  past  eighty.  Mr.  Walpole 
coming  in  just  afterward,  I  told  him  how 
highly  I  had  been  pleased.  He  begged 
me  to  entreat  for  a  repetition  of  it.  I 
suppose  you  recollect  that  it  was  the  satire 
conveyed  in  this  little  ballad  upon  the  con- 
duct of  Sir  Robert  Walpole's  ministry, 
which  is  thought  to  have  been  a  remote 
cause  of  his  resignation.  It  was  a  very 
curious  circumstance  to  see  his  son  listen- 
ing to  the  recital  of  it  with  so  much  com- 
placency. Such  is  the  effect  of  the  lapse 
of  time.  I  have  rarely  heard  a  more  curi- 
ous instance  of  the  absence  of  mind  pro- 
duced by  poetic  enthusiasm,  than  that 
which  occurred  when  the  author  of 
"Leonidas"  made  one  of  a  party  of  literati 

2C 


assembled  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Gilbert 
W^est,  at  Wickham.  Lord  Lyttleton,  on 
opening  his  window  one  morning,  per- 
ceived Glover  pacing  to  and  fro  with  a 
whip  in  his  hand,  by  the  side  of  a  fine  bed 
of  tulips  just  ready  to  blow,  and  which 
were  the  peculiar  care  of  the  lady  of  the 
mansion,  who  worshiped  Flora  with  as 
much  ardour  as  Glover  did  the  Muses. 
His  mind  was  at  that  instant  teeming  with 
the  birth  of  some  little  ballad,  when  Lord 
Lyttleton,  to  his  astonishment  and  dismay, 
perceived  him  applying  his  whip  with  great 
vehemence  to  the  stalks  of  the  unfortu- 
nate tulips;  all  of  which,  before  there 
was  time  to  awaken  him  from  his  revery, 
he  had  completely  levelled  with  the 
ground:  And  when  the  devastation  he 
had  committed  was  afterward  pointed  out 
to  him,  he  was  so  perfectly  unconscious 
of  the  proceeding  that  he  could  with  diffi- 
culty be  made  to  believe  it. — More,  Han- 
nah, 1785,  Letter  to  her  Sister,  June  16 ; 
Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts,  vol.  I,  p.  229. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-five  he  published 
nine  books  of  his  "Leonidas."  The  poem 
was  immediately  taken  up  with  ardour  by 
Lord  Cobham,  to  whom  it  was  inscribed, 
and  by  all  the  readers  of  verse,  and  leaders 


18 


RICHARD  GLOVER, 


of  politics,  who  professed  the  strongest 
attachment  to  liberty.  It  ran  rapidly 
through  three  editions,  and  was  publicly 
extolled  by  the  pen  of  Fielding,  and  by 
the  lips  of  Chatham.  Even  Swift  in  one 
of  his  letters  from  Ireland,  drily  inquires 
of  Pope,  ''who  is  this  Mr.  Glover,  who  writ 
^Leonidas/  which  is  reprinting  here,  and 
hath  great  vogue?"  Overrated  as '*Leon- 
idas"  might  be.  Glover  stands  acquitted 
of  all  attempts  or  artifice  to  promote  its 
popularity  by  false  means.  He  betrayed 
no  irritation  in  the  disputes  which  were 
raised  about  its  merit ;  and  his  personal 
character  appears  as  respectable  in  the 
ebb  as  in  the  flow  of  his  poetical  reputa- 
tion.—Campbell,  Thomas,  1819,  Speci- 
mens of  the  British  Poets, 

LEONIDAS 

.  1737 

Some  contemporary  writers,  calling 
themselves  critics,  preferred '''Leonidas" 
in  its  day  to  Paradise  Lost;"  because  it 
had  smoother  versification,  and  fewer  hard 
words  of  learning.  The  re-action  of  pop- 
ular opinion,  against  a  work  that  has  been 
once  over-rated,  is  apt  to  depress  it  beneath 
its  just  estimation.  It  is  due  to  ""Leon- 
idas"  to  say,  that  its  narrative,  descrip- 
tions, and  imagery,  have  a  general  and 
chaste  congruity  with  the  Grecism  of  its 
subject.  It  is  far,  indeed,  from  being  a 
vivid  or  arresting  picture  of  antiquity; 
but  it  has  an  air  of  classical  taste  and 
propriety  in  its  design ;  and  it  sometimes 
places  the  religion  and  manners  of  Greece 
in  a  pleasing  and  impressive  light.  .  .  . 
The  undeniable  fault  of  the  entire  poem  is, 
that  it  wants  impetuosity  of  progress,  and 
that  its  characters  are  without  warm  and 
interesting  individuality.  What  a  great 
genius  might  have  made  of  the  subject,  it 
may  be  difficult  to  pronounce  by  supposi- 
tion ;  for  it  is  the  very  character  of  gen- 
ius to  produce  effects  which  cannot  be 
calculated.  But  imposing  as  the  names 
of  Leonidas  and  Thermopylae  may  appear, 
the  subject  which  they  formed  for  an  epic 
poem  was  such,  that  we  cannot  wonder  at 
its  baffling  the  powers  of  Glover. — Camp- 
bell, Thomas,  1819,  Specimens  of  the 
British  Poets. 

We  are  not  without  our  literary  talk 
either.  It  did  not  extend  far,  but  as  far 
as  it  went,  it  was  good.  It  was  bottomed 
well ;  had  good  grounds  to  go  upon.  In 
the  cottage  was  a  room,  which  tradition 


authenticated  to  have  been  the  same  in 
which  Glover,  in  his  occasional  retire- 
ments, had  penned  the  greater  part  of  his 
"Leonidas."  This  circumstance  was 
nightly  quoted,  though  none  of  the  pres- 
ent inmates,  that  I  could  discover,  ap- 
peared ever  to  have  met  with  the  poem  in 
question.  But  that  was  ijo  matter. 
Glover  had  written  there,  and  the  anec- 
dote was  pressed  into  the  account  of  the 
family  importance.  It  diffused  a  learned 
air  through  the  apartment.  — ■  Lamb, 
Charles,  1824,  Captain  Jackson,  Essays 
of  Elia. 

Glover's  "Leonidas," though  only  party 
spirit  could  have  extolled  it  as  a  work  of 
genius,  obtained  no  inconsiderable  sale, 
and  a  reputation  which  flourished  for  half 
a  century.  It  has  a  place  now  in  the  two 
great  general  collections,  and  deserves  to 
hold  it.  The  author  has  the  merit  of  hav- 
ing departed  from  bad  models,  rejected 
all  false  ornaments  and  tricks  of  style, 
and  trusted  to  the  dignity  of  his  subject. 
And  though  the  poem  is  cold  and  bald, 
stately  rather  than  strong  in  its  best 
parts,  and  in  general  rather  stiff  than 
stately,  there  is  in  its  very  nakedness  a 
sort  of  Spartan  severity  that  commands 
respect. — Southey,  Robert,  1835,  Life 
of  Cowper,  vol.  ii,  ch.  xn. 

Nor  probably  was  Glover's  blank  verse 
epic  of  ''Leonidas"  which  appeared  so  early 
as  1737,  much  read  when  he  himself  passed 
away  from  among  men,  in  the  year  1785, 
at  the  age  of  seventy-four,  although  it 
had  had  a  short  day  of  extraordinary  pop- 
ularity, and  is  a  performance  of  consider- 
able rhetorical  merit. — Craik,  George 
L.,  1861,  A  Compendious  History  of  Eng- 
lish Literature  and  of  the  English  Lan- 
guage, vol.  n,  p.  287. 

It  is  not  altogether  deficient  in  poetical 
merit,  but  as  an  epic  it  is  a  decided 
failure.— Baldwin,  James,  1882,  English 
Literature  and  Literary  Criticism,  Poetry, 
p.  287. 

Power  is  visible  in  this  epic,  which  dis- 
plays also  a  large  amount  of  knowledge, 
but  the  salt  of  genius  is  wanting,  and  the 
poem,  despite  many  estimable  qualities,  is 
now  forgotten. — Dennis,  John,  1894, 
The  Age  of  Pope,  p.  244. 

GENERAL 

The  ''Athenaid,"  which  could  not  be 
included   in   Anderson's   collection,  is 


RICHARD  GLOVER 


19 


contained  in  this.  It  ought  always  to  ac- 
company the ''Leonidas."  Mr.  Chalmers 
censures  it  because,  he  says,  the  events  of 
history  are  so  closely  followed  as  to  give 
the  whole  the  air  of  a  poetical  chronicle. 
To  this  opinion  we  may  oppose  the  fact  of 
having  ourselves  repeatedly  perused  it  in 
early  youth,  for  the  interest  which  the 
story  continually  excited.  Glover  endeav- 
oured to  imitate  the  ancients,  but  wanted 
strength  to  support  the  severe  style  which 
he  had  chosen.  He  has,  however,  many 
and  great  merits,  this  especially  among 
others,  that  instead  of  treading  in  the 
sheep-track  wherein  the  writers  of  mod- 
ern epics,  till  his  time,  servum  pecus,  had 
gone  one  after  the  other,  he  framed  the 
stories  of  both  his  poems  according  to 
their  subject,  without  reference  to  any 
model,  or  any  rule  but  that  of  propriety 
and  good  sense. — Southey,  Robert,  1814, 
Chalmers's  English  Poets,  Quarterly  Re- 
view, vol.  11,  p.  498. 

Believe  me,  I  walked  with  an  impres- 
sion of  awe  on  my  spirits,  as  W  and 

myself  accompanied  Mr.  Klopstock  to  the 
house  of  his  brother,  the  poet,  which 
stands  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the 
city  gate.  ...  He  then  talked  of 
Milton  and  Glover,  and  thought  Glover's 

blank  verse  superior  to  Milton's.  W  

and  myself  expressed  our  surprise ;  and 
my  friend  gave  his  definition  and  notion 
of  harmonious  verse,  that  it  consisted 
(the  English  iambic  blank  verse  above  all) 
in  the  apt  arrangement  of  pauses  and 
cadences,  and  the  sweep  of  whole  para- 
graphs, 

 **with  many  a  winding  bout 

Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out," 
and  not  even  in  the  flow,  much  less  in  the 
prominence  or  antithetic  vigor,  or  single 
lines,  which  were  indeed  injurious  to  the 
total  effect,  except  where  they  were  in- 
troduced for  some  specific  purpose. 
Klopstock  assented,  and  said  that  he  meant 
to  confine  Glover's  superiority  to  single 
lines.— Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1817, 
Satyrane's  Letters,  Biographia  Literaria. 

His  Epic  Poem  rather  disappointed  the 
world.  The  critic  showed  it  to  be  replete 
with  poetic  excellence,  and  the  patriot 
bosom  glowed  at  the  very  name  of  Leon- 
idas ;  yet  it  faded  away  as  deficient  in  its 
interest,  and  too  narrow  in  its  plan. 
What  has  been  said  tauntingly  of  the 
French,  may  be  more  liberally  and  not 


less  justly  put: — Les  modernes  rCont  pas 
la  tete  epique.  Mr.  Glover  wrote  three 
tragedies,  two  of  which  were  upon  the 
subject  of  Medea  and  Jason;  the  other 
had  for  its  heroine,  Boadicea.  Mrs.  Yates 
was  fond  of  Glover's  cold  declamation,  and 
frequently  displayed  herself  in  the  char- 
acter of  Medea.  Glover,  like  Mason, 
loved  and  preferred  the  classic  model,  and 
would  not  see  the  incompatibility  of  the 
Greek  chorus  with  the  modern  stage. — 
Bo  ADEN,  James,  1825,  Memoirs  ojthe  Lije 
of  John  Philip  Kemble,  vol.  i,  p.  303. 

The  Greek  plays  differ  so  much  from 
those  we  are  accustomed  to,  that  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  adapt  them  to  the 
taste  of  a  modern  audience — Glover  has 
succeeded  much  better  than  anybody  else 
— the  character  of  Medea  is,  on  the  whole, 
drawn  in  a  masterly  manner — but  Glover 
has  softened  the  violence  of  her  temper 
rather  too  much — the  thought  of  making 
her  kill  her  children  in  a  temporary  fit  of 
phrenzy  is  a  very  happy  one — the  scenes 
in  which  Medea  is  not  concerned  have 
little  to  recommend  them. —  Genest,  P., 
1832,  Some  Account  of  the  English  Stage 
from  the  Restoration  in  1660  to  1830, 
vol.  V,  p.  123. 

The  elegant  but  cold  Epics  of  Glover. 
— Spalding,  William,  1852-82,  A  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  p.  356. 

He  published  two  elaborate  poems  in 
blank  verse,  ''Leonidas"  and  the  *'Athe- 
naid" — the  former  bearing  reference  to 
the  memorable  defence  of  Thermopylse, 
and  the  latter  continuing  the  war  between 
the  Greeks  and  Persians.  The  length  of 
these  poems,  their  want  of  sustained  in- 
terest, and  lesser  peculiarities  not  suited 
to  the  existing  poetical  taste,  render  them 
next  to  unknown  in  the  present  day.  But 
there  is  smoothness  and  even  vigour,  a 
calm  moral  dignity  and  patriotic  elevation 
in  ''Leonidas,"  which  might  even  yet  find 
admirers.  Thomson  is  said  to  have  ex- 
claimed, when  he  heard  of  the  work  of 
Glover:  ''He  write  an  epic  poem,  who 
never  saw  a  mountain!"  .  .  .  His 
chief  honour  is  that  of  having  been  an 
eloquent  and  patriotic  city  merchant,  at 
the  same  time  that  he  was  eminent  as  a 
scholar  and  man  of  letters. —  Cham- 
bers, Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

Glover  was  a  man  of  considerable  pow- 
ers, but  he  was  stronger  on  the  side  of 


20 


RICHARD  GLOVER 


politics  and  practical  life  than  in  the  field 
of  literature.  In  his  poems  the  rhetoric 
of  party  warfare  is  more  conspicuous  than 
the  inspiration  of  genius.  His  best- 
known  poem,  "Leonidas,"  was  based  it  is 
true  on  his  reading  of  Herodotus  and 
Plutarch;  but  in  reality  it  is  the  utter- 
ance of  one  who  wished  to  stir  his  fellow- 
citizens  to  an  anti-Walpole  ''patriotic" 
policy.  So  far  as  the  form  is  concerned 
it  may  be  called  a  blank-verse  echo  of 
Pope's  version  of  Homer,  the  influence  of 
which  may  continually  be  traced;  and 
under  the  inspiration  of  this  model  Glover 
expands  a  few  simple  chapters  of  his  au- 
thority Herodotus  into  the  dimensions  of 
an  epic  by  inventing  various  characters, 
love-affairs,  and  thrilling  episodes.  Camp- 
bell remarks  that  the  want  of  "impetuos- 
ity of  progress"  is  the  chief  fault  in  the 
poem.  It  does  not  seem  clear  that  this 
censure  is  just.  The  action  moves  on 
swiftly  enough,  and  is  sufficiently  varied 
by  epoch-making  or  decorative  incidents. 
The  personages  introduced  are  not  in- 
active, or  long-winded;  they  have  only 
the  damning  fault  of  being  dull.  The 
reader  does  not  much  care  what  they  do, 
nor  what  becomes  of  them.  A  sort  of 
glossy  rhetoric  is  the  general  characteris- 
tic of  the  poem,  which  accordingly  is  not 
without  striking  passages,  but  the  lack  of 
human  interest  mars  the  total  effect. 
.  .  .  Of  the  "Athenaid,"  a  sequel  to 
"Leonidas,"  with  its  thirty  books,  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  it  is  simply  unreada- 
ble. It  appears  to  be  a  florid  reproduc- 
tion, with  new  incidents  and  scenery,  of 
the  story  of  Grseco-Persian  war,  from 
Thermopylae  to  Plat^a.  The  opposition 
to  Sir  Robert  Walpole  found  in  Glover  an 
enthusiastic  ally.  One  of  his  chief  objects 
in  writing  "London"  is  said  to  have  been 
to  exasperate  the  public  mind  against 
Spain,  a  power  to  which  Walpole  was  held 
to  have  truckled.  In  the  same  year,  after 
the  news  came  of  Vernon's  success  at 
Porto  Bello,  Glover  wrote  the  spirited  bal- 
lad of  "Hosier's  Ghost,"  rather  perhaps 
with  the  design  of  damaging  Walpole  than 
exalting  Vernon.  The  political  aim  inter- 
ests us  no  more ;  but  the  music  and  swing 
of  the  verse, — perhaps  also  the  naval  cast 
of  the  imagery  and  the  diction, — will  keep 
this  ballad  popular  with  Englishmen  for 
many  a  year  to  come. — Arnold,  Thomas, 
1880,  English  PoetSy  ed.  Ward,  vol.  ill. 


Narrative  poetry  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury was  of  the  slenderest  dimensions  and 
the  most  modest  temper.  Poems  of  de- 
scription and  sentiment  seemed  to  leave 
no  place  for  poems  of  action  and  passion. 
.  .  .  That  estimable  London  merchant, 
Glover,  had  indeed  written  an  heroic  poem 
containing  the  correct  number  of  Books ; 
its  subject  was  a  lofty  one ;  the  sentiments 
were  generous,  the  language  dignified; 
and  inasmuch  as  Leonidas  was  a  patriot 
and  a  Whig,  true  Whigs  and  patriots 
bought  and  praised  the  poem.  But  Glov- 
er's poetry  lacks  the  informing  breath  of 
life.  His  second  poem,"  The  Athenaid," 
appeared  after  his  death,  and  its  thirty 
books  fell  plumb  into  the  water  of  obliv- 
ion. It  looked  as  if  the  narrative  poem  d 
longue  haleine  was  dead  in  English  litera- 
ture.— DowDEN,  Edward,  1880,  Southey 
(English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  51. 

Another  and  more  ambitious  Thomson- 
ian.  ...  A  politician  whom  indignation 
against  Walpole  hurried  into  copious  blank 
verse.  There  must  be  few  men  now  alive 
who  can  boast  a  more  than  fragmentary 
acquaintance  with  the  epics  of  Glover. 
"Leonidas"  (in  nine  books,  afterwards  en- 
larged), 1737,  begins  his  poetical  career, 
and  "The  Athenaid"  (positively  in  thirty 
books),  1788,  closed  it.  Glover  is  only 
remembered  by  his  extremely  spirited  bal- 
lad of  "Admiral  Hosier's  Ghost,"  which, 
however,  he  might  have  improved  by 
shortening  to  five  syllables  the  last  line 
of  each  octet.  —  GossE,  Edmund,  1888, 
A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  228. 

His  ponderous  "Athenaid,"  an  epic 
poem  in  thirty  books,  was  published  in 
1787  by  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Halsey.  It  is 
much  longer  and  so  far  worse  than  "Leon- 
idas," but  no  one  has  been  able  to  read 
either  ■  for  a  century.  .  .  .  The 
"Memoirs"  are  of  little  value,  though 
they  contribute  something  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  political  intrigues  of  the 
time.  —  Stephen,  Leslie,  1890,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  xxil,  p.  7. 

There  is  one  poem  of  Glover's, — "Lon- 
don, or  the  Progress  of  Commerce," — 
that  illustrates  the  fashionable  poetical 
style  of  the  Queen  Anne  time— the  preva- 
lent idea  as  to  how  Nature  was  to  be 
dressed  to  advantage.  As  a  London  mer- 
chant. Glover  no  doubt  felt  his  heart  swell 
within  him  as  he  looked  at  the  bustle  of 


GLO  VER—  WHITEHEAD 


21 


many  nations  on  the  London  wharves,  and 
saw  ships  from  many  distant  regions 
crowding  up  the  Thames.  How  did  he 
give  expression  to  this  exaltation  of  mind  ?  , 
He  could  not  present  the  coarse  and  vul- 
gar details  of  trade  to  a  fine  Queen  Anne 
gentleman ;  he  asks  his  reader  to  look  at 
them  through  a  fine  allegorical  veil,  trans- 
ports us  to  the  regions  of  mythology,  and 
gives  a  long  narrative  of  a  love  affair  be- 
tween the  sea-god  Neptune  and  the  nymph 
named  Phoenice,  the  guardian  spirit  of 


the  Phoenicians.  The  beautiful  nymph 
Commerce  was  the  offspring  of  this  Union. 
This  is  the  poet's  way  of  relating  the  pro- 
saic fact  that  the  Phoenicians  were  the 
first  great  traders  by  sea ;  and  the  events 
in  the  subsequent  history  of  Commerce  are 
given  as  incidents  in  the  life  of  the  nymph 
Commerce,  from  her  cradle  and  nursery 
till  the  time  when  she  fixed  her  abode  in 
Great  Britain.— Minto,  William,  1894, 
The  Literature  of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed. 
Knight,  p.  89. 


William  Whitehead 

1715-1785 

William  Whitehead,  1715-1785.  Born,  at  Cambridge,  Feb.,  1715.  Early  edu- 
cation at  Winchester  School,  July,  1728  to  Sept.,  1735.  Matric.  Clare  Hall,  Cam- 
bridge, as  Sizar,  1735;  B.  A.,  1739;  Fellow,  1742-46;  M.  A.,  1743.  Appointed 
tutor  to  son  of  Lord  Jersey,  1745 ;  travelled  on  Continent  with  him,  June,  1754,  to 
Sept.,  1756.  Was  an  inmate  of  Lord  Jersey's  household  till  1769.  Play,  ''The 
Roman  Father,"  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  24  Feb.,  1750;  "Creusa,"  Drurv  Lane, 
20  April,  1754;  ''The  School  for  Lovers,"  Drury  Lane,  1762;  "A  Trip  to  Scotland," 
Drury  Lane,  1770.  Contrib.  to  "The  World,"  1753.  Registrar  of  Order  of  Bath, 
1755.  Poet-Laureate,  1757.  Died,  in  London,  14  April,  1785.  Buried  in  South 
Audley  Street  Chapel.  Works:  "On  the  Danger  of  Writing  in  Verse, "1741; 
Epistle  of  Anne  Boleyn  to  Henry  VHL,  1743;  "Essay  on  Ridicule,"  1743;  "On 
Nobility,"  1744 ;" Atys  and  Adrastus, "  1744;  "The  Roman  Father,"  1750;  "A  Hymn 
to  the  Nymph  of  Bristol  Spring,"  1751 ;  "Creusa,"  1754;  "Poems  on  Several  Occa- 
sions," 1754;  "Elegies,"  1757;  "Verses  to  the  People  of  England,"  1758;  "A 
Charge  to  the  Poets,"  1762;  "The  School  for  Lovers,"  1762  (adapted  from  the 
French  of  Le  Bovier  de  Fontenelle) ;  "A  Trip  to  Scotland"  (anon.),  1770;  "Plays 
and  Poems"  (2  vols.),  1774;  " Variety"  (anon.),  1776;  "The  Goat's  Beard"  (anon.), 
1777.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  299. 

PERSONAL 

The  following  fact  is  true 
From  nobler  names,  and  great  in  each  degree, 
The  pension'd  laurel  had  devolv'd  to  me, 
To  me,  ye  bards;  and  what  you'll  scarce 

conceive, 
Or,  at  the  best,  unwillingly  believe, 
Howe'er  unworthily  I  wear  the  crown, 
Unask'd  it  came,  and  from  a  hand  unknown. 

—Whitehead,  William,  1762,  A  Charge 
to  the  Poets. 

In  the  same  year  [1762]  the  rabid 
satire  of  Churchill  sorely  smote  his  repu- 
tation. Poor  Whitehead  made  no  reply. 
Those  who,  with  Mason,  consider  his 
silence  as  the  effect  of  a  pacific  disposi- 
tion, and  not  of  imbecility,  will  esteem 
him  the  more  for  his  forebearance,  and 
will  apply  it  to  the  maxim,  Rarum  est 
eloquenter  loqui  varias  eloquenter  tacere. 
Among  his  unpublished  MSS.  there  were 
even  found  verses  expressing  a  compliment 
to  Churchill's  talents.  There  is  some- 
thing, no  doubt,  very  amiable  in  a  good 


and  candid  man  taking  the  trouble  to 
cement  rhymes  upon  the  genius  of  a 
blackguard,  who  had  abused  him ;  but  the 
effect  of  all  this  candor  upon  his  own  gen- 
eration reminds  us  hovv'  much  more  im- 
portant it  is,  for  a  man's  own  advantage, 
that  he  should  be  formidable  than  harm- 
less. His  candour  could  not  prevent  his 
poetical  character  from  being  completely 
killed  by  Churchill.  Justly,  some  will 
say ;  he  was  too  stupid  to  resist  his  adver- 
sary. I  have  a  different  opinion,  both  as 
to  the  justice  of  his  fate,  and  the  cause 
of  his  abstaining  from  retaliation.  He 
certainly  wrote  too  many  insipid  things ; 
but  a  tolerable  selection  might  be  made 
from  his  works,  that  would  discover  his 
talents  to  be  no  legitimate  object  of  con- 
tempt ;  and  there  is  not  a  trait  of  arro- 
gance or  vanity  in  any  one  of  his  compo- 
sitions, that  deserved  to  be  publicly  humil- 
iated. He  was  not  a  satirist;  but  he 
wanted  rather  the  gall  than  the  ingenuity 


22 


WILLIAM  WHITEHEAD 


that  is  requisite  for  the  character.  If  his 
heart  had  been  full  of  spleen,  he  was  not 
so  wholly  destitute  of  humour  as  not  to 
have  been  able  to  deal  some  hard  blows  at 
Churchill,  whose  private  character  was  a 
broad  mark,  and  even  whose  writings  had 
many  vapid  parts  that  were  easily  assail- 
able. Had  Whitehead  done  so,  the  world 
would  probably  have  liked  him  the  better 
for  his  pugnacity.  As  it  was,  his  name 
sunk  into  such  a  by-word  of  contempt, 
that  Garrick  would  not  admit  his  ''Trip 
to  Scotland"  on  the  stage,  unless  its  au- 
thor was  concealed.  He  also  found  it 
convenient  to  publish  his  pleasing  tale, 
entitled  ''Variety,"  anonymously.  The 
public  applauded  both  his  farce  and  his 
poem,  because  it  was  not  known  that  they 
were  Whitehead's. — Campbell,  Thomas, 
1819,  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets. 

He  died  April  14,  1785,  at  the  age  of 
seventy,  and  was  buried  in  South  Audley 
Street  chapel. 

An  Epitaph  on  W.  Whitehead,  Esq. 
Intended  for  His  Monument  in  Westmin- 
ster Abbey. 
"Beneath  this  stone  a  Poet  Laureat  lies, 
Nor  great,  nor  good,  nor  foolish,  nor  yet 
wise; 

Not  meanly  humble,  nor  yet  swell 'd  with 
pride. 

He  simply  liv'd — and  just  as  simply  died: 
Each  year  his  Muse  produced  a  Birth  Day 
Ode, 

Compos'd  with  flattery  in  the  usual  mode : 
For  this,  and  but  for  this,  to  George's  praise, 
The  Bard  was  pension'd,  and  receiv'd  the 
Bays." 

— Hamilton,  Walter,  1879,  The  Poets 
Laureate  of  England,  p.  189. 

The  boy  showed  his  good  sense  by  not 
being  ashamed  to  win  an  education  at  the 
expense  of  his  pride.  Entering  Cam- 
bridge as  a  sizar,  he  graduated  with  hon- 
ours and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  his  col- 
lege. He  then  became  tutor  to  the  son  of 
the  Earl  of  Jersey.  He  travelled  with 
him,  and  then  settled  down  with  him  in 
his  quiet,  beautiful  home,  where  many 
happy  years  were  passed.  Whitehead  had 
leisure  for  literary  studies,  and  he  enjoyed 
not  only  the  friendship  and  confidence  of 
his  employers,  but  formed  many  close  con- 
nections with  the  nobility  who  treated  him 
with  respect  and  deference.  Whitehead 
became  very  popular  among  his  friends, 
winning  their  regard,  and  keeping  it,  too. 
His  manners  were  not  only  polished,  but 


were  the  outward  expression  of  a  sincere 
and  kind  heart.  Though  fond  of  society, 
he  indulged  in  no  dissipation.  He  visited 
the  theatres  frequently,  and  this  finally 
led  him  to  try  his  hand  at  dramatic  writ- 
ing, and  his  success  was  greater  than 
he  had  himself  anticipated. — Howland, 
Frances  Louise  (Kenyon  West),  1895, 
The  Laureates  of  England,  p.  108. 

GENERAL 
Come,  Method,  come  in  all  thy  pride, 
Dullness  and  Whitehead  by  thy  side ; 
Dullness  and  Method  still  are  one, 
And  Whitehead  is  their  darling  son. 

But  he,  who  in  the  Laureate  chair, 
By  grace,  not  merit,  planted  there, 
In  awkward  pomp  is  seen  to  sit, 
And  by  his  patent  proves  his  wit. 

•  » 

But  he — who  measures,  as  he  goes, 
A  mongrel  kind  of  tinkling  prose , 
And  is  too  frugal  to  dispense , 
At  once,  both  poetry  and  sense ; 
Who,  from  amidst  his  slumbering  guards, 
Deals  out  a  cliarge  to  subject  bards, 
Where  couplets  after  couplets  creep 
Propitious  to  the  reign  of  sleep ; 
Yet  every  word  imprints  an  awe. 
And  all  his  dictates  pass  for  law 
With  beaus,  who  simper  all  around. 
And  belles,  who  die  in  every  sound. 

—Churchill,  Charles,  1762,  The  Ghost, 
bk.  iii. 

Mr.  Whitehead  has  just  published  a 
pretty  poem  called  Variety,"  in  which 
there  is  humour  and  ingenuity,  but  not 
more  poetry  than  is  necessary  for  a  Lau- 
reate; however,  the  plan  is  one,  and  is 
well  wound  up. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1776,  To  Rev.  William  Mason,  Feb.  18; 
Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vi,  p.  310. 

Will.  Whitehead  bad  the  reign  commence 

Of  Birth -Day  Odes  and  Common-Sense : 
And  there  his  eiforts  rested : 

True  Poetry,  by  Genius  fir'd, 

Billy's  cold  bosom  ne'er  inspir'd; 
For  Bill  was  chicken-breasted. 
— Colman,  George,  1786,  The  Laureat, 
An  Ode,  April  11. 

He  will  be  most  advantageously  known 
to  posterity  as  a  dramatic  writer;  his 

Roman  Father"  and  ''Creusa,"  trage- 
dies, and  his  "School  for  Lovers"  a  com- 
edy, possessing  considerable  merit. — 
Drake,  Nathan,  1810,  Essays,  Illustra- 
tive of  the  Rambler,  Adventurer,  and  Idler, 
vol.  II,  p.  294. 

A  play  [*'Creusa"]  which,  though  sel- 
dom read,  and  never  acted,  is  by  no  means 


WILLIAM  WHITEHEAD 


23 


destitute  of  dramatic  feeling  and  concep- 
tion. .  .  .  The  piece  contains  some 
strong  situations;  its  language  is  unaf- 
fected ;  and  it  fixes  the  attention  (if  I  may 
judge  from  my  own  experience)  from  the 
first  to  the  last  scene.  The  pure  and  holy 
character  of  the  young  Ilyssus  is  brought 
out,  I  have  no  hesitation  to  say,  more  in- 
terestingly than  in  Euripides,  by  the  dis- 
play of  his  reverential  gratitude  to  the 
queen,  upon  the  first  tenderness  which  she 
shows  him,  and  by  the  agony  of  his  ingen- 
uous spirit,  on  beholding  it  withdrawn. 
And,  though  Creusa's  character  is  not  un- 
spotted, she  draws  our  sympathy  to  some 
of  the  deepest  conceivable  agonies  of 
human  nature.  I  by  no  means  wish  to 
deny  that  the  tragedy  has  many  defects, 
or  to  speak  of  it  as  a  great  production, 
but  it  does  not  deserve  to  be  consigned  to 
oblivion.  —  Campbell,  Thomas,  1819, 
Specimens  of  the  British  Poets. 

The  most  accomplished  tuft-hunter  of 
his  time.  .  .  .  The  writings  of 
Whitehead,  Cambridge,  Coventry,  and 
Lord  Bath  are  forgotten. — Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1833,  Walpole's  Let- 
ters to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  Critical  and 
Miscellaneous  Essays. 

He  was  the  author  of  several  successful 
plays— ''The  Roman  Father,"  "Creusa," 
and  "The  School  for  Lovers;"  and  of 
miscellaneous  poems,  that  have  scarce  any 
individualizing  characteristics,  but  are  in 
the  manner  of  writers  of  the  time  of 
Queen  Anne.  On  his  return  from  travel- 
ling with  noble  pupils  he  published  an 
*'Ode  to  the  Tiber"  and  six  "Elegiac 
Epistles,''  which  were  applauded  at  first, 
and  in  course  of  time  neglected  ;  the  usual 
fate  of  poems  produced  by  Talent  apart 
from  Genius ;  the  Junonian  offspring  of  a 
female  parent  alone.  This  "Ode  to  the 
Tiber"  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  such 
poetry  as  may  be  written  by  a  clever  man, 
on  command,  having  everything  that  is  to 
be  desired,  except  a  soul  of  its  own;  it 
reads  like  a  first-rate  school  exercise,  or 
such  an  exercise  as  might  be  produced  in 
an  adult  School  of  Poetry. — Coleridge, 
Sara,  1847,  ed.  Coleridge^ s  Biographia 
Literaria,  Appendix. 

An  elegant  poet  and  a  nervous  writer. 
—Mills,  Abraham,  1851,  The  Literature 
and  the  Literary  Men  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,  vol.  ii,  p.  333. 

He  wrote  the  usual  official  poems,  which 


had  the  negative  merit  of  being  consid- 
ered superior  to  those  of  his  predecessor ; 
and  he  was  engaged  in  the  composition  of 
a  birthday  ode  when  he  died.  .  .  . 
Whitehead  was  more  successful  as  a  dram- 
atist than  as  a  poet.  ...  As  Lau- 
reate, Whitehead  did  not  escape  the  usual 
fate  of  being  lampooned  by  the  envious 
wits,  and  small  poets  of  his  day. — Hamil- 
ton, Walter,  1879,  The  Poets  Laureate 
of  England,  pp.  ISA,  185,  186. 

His  poetry  is  for  the  most  part  tame 
and  conventional  enough;  yet  here  and 
there  he  emerges  from  the  ruck  of  Geor- 
gian poetasters  and  becomes  noticeable. 
"Variety,  a  Tale  for  Married  People," 
which  is  too  long  for  quotation,  is  an  ex- 
cellent story  in  verse — with  a  moral,  of 
course,  as  a  conte  should  have — told  in  a 
light  and  flowing  style  not  unworthy  of 
Gay.— Ward,  Thomas  Humphry,  1880, 
English  Poets,  vol.  iii,  p.  337. 

He  was  always  fond  of  the  theatre,  and 
his  first  effort  was  a  little  farce  which  was 
never  published,  but  which  tempted  him 
to  compose  heavy  tragedies  which  were. 
Of  these  tragedies  it  would  be  absurd  to 
speak ;  they  never  enjoyed  any  popularity, 
either  on  the  stage  or  in  the  closet.  He 
owed  his  appointment — which  he  did  not 
obtain  till  Gray  had  refused  it — entirely 
to  his  noble  friends. — Birrell,  Augus- 
tine, 1894,  Essays  about  Men,  Women 
and  Books,  p.  164. 

Sprung  from  the  ranks,  he  had  the  good 
fortune  to  secure  the  favour  of  the  great, 
until  he  became  tutor  to  Lord  Jersey. 
Whitehead's  knowledge  of  books  was  con- 
siderable, and  he  became  a  man  of  cul- 
tured taste.  Though  he  possessed  little 
originality  of  thought,  he  had  a  musical 
ear,  and  found  it  comparatively  easy  to 
produce  poetry  of  a  certain  order.  He 
even  indulged  in  wTiting  dramas;  but 
Macaulay,  in  his  time,  said  his  works  were 
forgotten.  He  himself  confessed  that  his 
verses  would  not  bear  criticism,  and  apol- 
ogized for  them  by  remarking  that  his 
muse  would  not  be  "obliged  by  sack  and 
pension."  The  fact  is  he  was  a  metre- 
making  machine. — Wright,  J.  C,  1896, 
The  Poets  Laureate,  p.  28. 

Whitehead  was  no  poet.  He  simply 
reflected  in  a  turbid  fashion  what  more 
original  men  were  saying.  His  tolerably 
full  statement  of  the  romantic  attitude 


24 


WHITEHEAD—STEVENSON—  TYR  WHITT 


towards  nature,  with  his  subsequent  asser- 
tion of  the  triumphant  good  sense  of  Clas- 
sicism is,  therefore,  valuable  testimony  to 
the  two-fold  spirit  of  the  age. — Rey- 
nolds, Myra,  1896,  The  Treatment  of 
Nature  in  English  Poetry,  p.  130. 

At  Cambridge,  Whitehead  had  published 
his  first  more  important  poetic  efforts, 
which  showed  him  to  have  deliberately 
formed  his  style  as  a  writer  of  verse  upon 
Pope,  at  a  time  when  English  poetical 


literature  was  at  last  on  the  very  point  of 
widening  its  range  as  to  both  form  and 
subjects.  His  epistle  ''On  the  Danger  of 
writing  in  Verse''  (1741)  is  elegant  in 
versification  and  diction,  and  modest  in 
tone — two  merits  which  are  rarely  absent 
in  Whitehead.  ...  In  form  White- 
head's versatility  was  remarkable. — 
Ward,  Adolphus  William,  1900,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography^  vol.  LXi, 
p.  107. 


John  Hall  Stevenson 

1718-1785 

Originally  John  Hall,  was  born  in  Durham,  England,  in  1718.  Was  admitted  as  a 
fellow-commoner  of  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  in  1735,  but  left  the  university  without 
a  degree  about  1738.  He  owes  his  chief  fame  to  his  connection  with  Sterne.  He 
published  a  number  of  literary  and  political  pamphlets  of  a  rather  coarse  nature  dur- 
ing his  lifetime,  and  his  collected  works  were  issued  in  three  volumes  in  1795.  His 
most  important  single  work  is  ''Crazy  Tales,"  which  was  reprinted  privately  in  1854. 
— MouLTON,  Charles  Wells,  1902. 


PERSONAL 

Hall-Stevenson's  sole  aim  in  life  was, 
he  repeatedly  declared,  to  amuse  himself. 
He  had  no  liking  for  field  sports,  and 
divided  his  energies  at  Skelton  between 
literature  and  hospitality.  He  collected 
a  library,  largely  consisting  of  facetiae, 
and  wrote  with  fatal  fluency  verse  in  imi- 
tation chiefly  of  La  Fontaine,  whose 
"Contes"  attracted  him  by  their  obscen- 
ity. At  the  same  time  he  gathered  round 
him  a  crew  of  kindred  spirits,  drawn 
chiefly  from  the  squirearchy  and  clergy  of 
Yorkshire,  whom  he  formed  into  "a  club  of 
demoniacks. ' '  The  members  met  under  his 
roof  at  Skelton  several  times  a  year,  and 
indulged  by  night  in  heavy  drinking  and 
obscene  jesting.  .  .  .  Their  orgies 
seem  to  have  been  pale  reflections  of  those 
practised  by  Wilkes  and  his  friends  at 
Medmenham.  .  .  .  Hall-Stevenson's 
relations  with  Sterne  give  his  career  its 
only  genuine  interest.  Sterne  introduces 
him  into  both  "Tristram  Shandy"  and  the 
"Sentimental  Journey"  under  the  name  of 
Eugenius.  He  represented  him  as  a 
prudent  counsellor,  and  gratefully  ac- 
knowledged the  readiness  with  which 


Hall-Stevenson  often  put  his  purse  at  a 
friend's  service.  Hall-Stevenson  returned 
the  compliment  by  flattering  references  to 
Sterne  as  "Cousin  Shandy,"  and  often 
signed  himself  "  Anthony  Shandy. " — Lee, 
Sidney,  1898,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  Liv,  p.  239. 

GENERAL 

I  have  met  with  no  account  of  this 
writer's  life,  nor  have  I  been  very  anxious 
to  seek  for  it,  as  a  volume  of  poems, 
which  bears  his  name,  is  disgraced  by  ob- 
scenity.—Campbell,  Thomas,  1819,  Spec- 
imens of  the  British  Poets. 

Author  of  the  witty  and  indecent  collec- 
tion entitled  ' '  Crazy  Tales, ' '  where  there 
is  a  very  humorous  description  of  his 
ancient  residence,  under  the  name  of 
Crazy  Castle. —Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1821, 
Laurence  Sterne. 

The  clever  but  licentious  productions  of 
John  Hall  Stevenson.— Moore,  Thomas, 
1825,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Sheridan. 

We  see  nothing  clever  even  in  John  Hall 
Stevenson  himself.— Croker,  John  Wil- 
son, 1826,  Memoirs  of  Sheridan,  Quarterly 
Review,  vol.  33,  p.  565. 


Thomas  Tyrwhitt 

1730-1786 

Born,  in  London,  1730.    Educated  at  Eton.    Matriculated  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  ^ 
9  May  1747;  B.  A.,  1750.    Fellow  of  Merton  College,  1755;  M.  A.,  1756.  Called 
to  Bar  at  Middle  Temple,  1755.    Under-Secretary,  War  Dept.,  1756.    Clerk  of  House 


THOMAS  TYRWHITT 


25 


of  Commons,  1762-68.  Curator  of  British  Museum,  1784.  F.  R.  S.,  F.  S.  A.  Died, 
15  Aug.,  1786.  Works:  ''Epistle  of  Florio  at  Oxford"  (anon.),  1749;  **Trans- 
lations  in  Verse,"  1752;  "Observations  and  Conjectures  on  some  Passaj^es  of  Shakes- 
peare" (anon.),  1766;  "Dissertatio  de  Babrio"  (anon.),  1776.  Posthumous:  "Con- 
jectursB  in  Strabonem"  [1783] ;  "Conjecturse  in  Ji]schylum,  Euripidem  et  Aristophanem," 
1822.  He  edited:  "Proceedings  and  Debates  in  the  House  of  Commons,  1620-21" 
(2  vols.),  1766;  H.  Elsynge's  "The  Manner  of  holding  Parliaments  in  England,"  1768 ; 
"Fragmenta  duo  Plutarchi,"  1773;  Chaucer's  "Canterbury  Tales,"  1775-78;  "Row- 
ley'sPoems,"  1777;  "Aristotelis  De  Poetica liber, "  1794.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson, 
1897,  .4  Dictionary  of  English  Authors. 


PERSONAL 

He  was  an  honour  to  his  age  and  coun- 
try, not  more  for  his  extensive  erudition, 
his  fine  genius,  and  deep  and  solid  judg- 
ment, than  for  the  candour,  elegance,  and 
probity  of  his  manners,  his  unassuming 
modesty  and  simplicity  of  character,  and 
distinguished  virtues. — Percy,  Thomas, 
1786,  Nichols's  Illustrations  of  Liter ature^ 
voL  vni,  p.  222. 

The  life  of  the  greater  editor  of  Chau- 
cer is  hardly  better  known  than  that  of 
Chaucer  himself.  He  was  born  at  London 
in  1730 ;  he  was  educated  at  Eton  and  at 
Merton  College,  Oxford ;  he  became  mas- 
ter of  arts  in  1756 ;  he  filled  one  or  two 
political  positions ;  he  wrote  a  few  trea- 
tises, and  edited  two  or  three  works;  he 
was  made  curator  of  the  British  Museum, 
and  while  holding  that  ofiice  died  in  Wel- 
beck  Street,  Cavendish  Square,  on  the 
fifteenth  of  August,  1786.  This  barren 
record  contains  nearly  all  the  facts  that 
can  be  easily  gathered  in  reference  to  one 
of  the  m.ost  accomplished  and  successful 
students  of  our  literature.  .  .  .  One  of 
the  greatest  scholars  England  has  ever 
produced.— LouNSBURY,  Thomas  R.,1892, 
Studies  in  Chaucer,  vol.  I,  p.  301. 

Charles  Burney,  D.  D.,  ranked  Tyrwhitt 
among  the  greatest  critics  of  the  last 
century.  Glowing  tributes  were  paid  to 
him  by  Wyttenbach  in  his  life  of  Ruhnken 
(p.  71),  by  Kraft  in  the  "Epistolse 
Selectee"  (p.  313),  by  Schweighauser  in 
his  edition  of  Polybius  (i.  p.  xxvi  of  pref- 
ace), by  Kidd  in  the  "Opuscula  Ruhnken- 
iana"  (p.  viii,  and  in  pp.  Ixiii-lxx  is 
a  list  of  his  works),  and  by  Bishop  Cople- 
ston  in  the  "Reply  to  the  Calumnies  of 
the  'Edinburgh  Review ' "  (2nd  edit.  1810). 
Mathias  thought  that  his  learning  and 
sagacity  were  often  misapplied  ("Pursuits 
of  Literature,"  7th  edit,  pp.,  88  and  96). 
—Courtney,  W.  P.,  1899,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  Lvn,  p.  446. 


EDITION  OF  CHAUCER 
1775-78 

I  am  obliged  to  you  for  your  intelligence 
concerning  the  late  edition  of  Chaucer.  I 
find  it  true  in  all  particulars.  Your 
alarm  however  for  my  property,  as  you 
call  it,  is  groundless.  As  I  have  not  en- 
tered my  book  at  Stationers-Hall,  I  have, 
it  seems,  no  legal  property  in  it.  But  if  I 
had,  would  you  advise  me  to  go  to  law  for 
a  property  unattended  by  any  profit  ?  A 
certain  philosopher,  when  his  gouty  shoes 
were  stolen,  only  wished  that  they  might 
fit  the  thief  as  well  as  they  fitted  himself ; 
and  for  my  own  part  I  shall  be  contented, 
if  my  book  shall  prove  just  as  lucrative  to 
Mr.  Bell,  as  it  has  been  to  me. — Tyr- 
whitt, Thomas,  1783,  Letter,  June  12; 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  vol.  53,  p.  461. 

Tyrwhitt,  a  scholar  as  well  as  an  anti- 
quary, was  an  expert  philologer :  His 
extensive  reading  in  the  lore  of  our  ver- 
nacular literature  and  our  national  antiq- 
uities promptly  supplied  what  could  not 
have  entered  into  his  more  classical  studies ; 
and  his  sagacity  seems  to  have  decided  on 
the  various  readings  of  all  the  manuscripts 
by  piercing  into  the  core  of  the  poet's 
thoughts. — Disraeli,  Isaac,  1841,  Chau- 
cer, Amenities  of  Literature. 

It  is  truly  to  be  lamented  that  a  text  of 
Chaucer  so  utterly  corrupt  as  that  of  Tyr- 
whitt should  continue  to  be  reprinted. 
Tyrwhitt  fell  into  the  error  of  attempting 
to  make  up  the  text  of  an  author,  when  he 
was  totally  ignorant  of  the  grammatical 
construction  of  his  language,  and  equally 
incompetent  to  appreciate  the  compara- 
tive value  of  the  manuscripts.  The  con- 
sequence is  that  there  is  not  perhaps  a 
single  line  in  Tyrwhitt' s  edition  of  the 
"Canterbury  Tales"  which  Chaucer  could 
possibly  have  written.  The  very  v;orst 
manuscript  in  existence  contains  a  better 
text,  because  it  was  at  least  grammatic- 
ally correct  for  the  time  in  which  it  was 


26 


THOMAS  TYRWHITT 


written,  whereas  in  Tyrwhitt  all  grammar 
is  set  at  defiance. — Wright,  Thomas, 
1844,  Anecdote  Literaria, 

It  has  been  said  with  much  force  that 
Tyrwhitt,  whose  services  to  the  study  of 
Chaucer  remain  uneclipsed  by  those  of  any 
other  scholar,  would  have  composed  a 
quite  different  biography  of  the  poet,  had 
he  not  been  confounded  by  the  formerly 
(and  here  and  there  still)  accepted  date 
of  Chaucer's  birth,  the  year  1328.— Ward, 
Adolphus  William,  1880,  Chaucer  (Eng- 
lish Men  of  Letters),  p.  2. 

Tyrwhitt's  edition  of  the  ''Canterbury 
Tales" — the  only  work  of  Chaucer  he  ever 
edited — appeared  in  four  volumes  in 
March,  1775.  A  fifth  volume,  containing 
a  glossary  to  all  of  the  poet's  writings, 
followed  in  1778.  In  the  preparation  of 
this  work  Tyrwhitt  collated  twenty-six 
manuscripts,  to  five  of  which  he  attached  a 
special  value.  His  duty  was  not  done  per- 
functorily. No  more  thorough  and  con- 
scientious editing  had  ever  before  been 
applied  to  the  elucidation  of  a  great  Eng- 
lish classic.  He  neglected  nothing  that 
lay  in  his  power  to  perfect  it.  Wherever 
he  failed  it  was  not  from  lack  of  insight 
or  industry,  but  from  the  general  diffu- 
sion of  ignorance  about  the  English  lan- 
guage that  then  prevailed,  and  from  the 
influence  of  which  he  could  by  no  possibil- 
ity be  wholly  free.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  was  in  many  respects  extraordinarily 
well  fitted  for  the  task  he  assumed,  both 
by  mental  equipment  and  special  acquire- 
ment. His  acquaintance  with  the  authors 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  who  constituted  no 
small  share  of  Chaucer's  reading,  was  far 
greater  than  that  of  any  one  who  has 
since  endeavored  to  illustrate  the  poet's 
writings;  at  least  what  he  did  alone  in 
this  one  matter  has  much  surpassed  the 
combined  labors  of  all  who  have  since  fol- 
lowed in  his  footsteps,  valuable  as  have 
been  the  services  of  some.  Many  of  the 
most  loudly  vaunted  modern  discoveries 
were  anticipated  a  century  ago  by  this  quiet 
scholar.  They  have  usually  escaped  atten- 
tion because  they  were  packed  away  in 
few  sentences,  and  relegated  to  a  position 
in  some  obscure  note.  A  modern  investi- 
gator would  have  made  out  of  some  of 
them  a  pamphlet  or  a  volume.  In  so 
doing  he  would  often  have  been  fully  jus- 
tified by  the  value  of  what  he  had  brought 
to  light.    ...    He  had  by  nature  that 


judicial  cast  of  mind  which  rendered  it 
impossible  for  him  to  frame  assumptions 
of  his  own  or  adopt  those  of  others  under 
the  impression  either  that  they  were 
fact  or  were  evidence  of  fact,  The 
sanest  of  English  poets  had  the  good  for- 
tune to  meet  with  the  sanest  of  editors. 
Tyrwhitt  was  animated  by  but  one  desire, 
that  of  ascertaining  the  truth  ;  not  what  he 
would  like  to  have  the  truth,  nor  what  he 
had  argued  himself  into  believing  be- 
fore hand  was  the  truth.  He  was  never 
led  astray  by  captivating  conjectures. 
.  .  .  In  all  doubtful  matters,  indeed, 
he  was  wholly  free  from  that  confidence 
of  conviction  and  positiveness  of  assertion 
to  which  easy  omniscience  is  so  generously 
addicted.— LouNSBURY,  Thomas  R.,  1892, 
Studies  in  Chaucer ,  vol.  I,  pp.  301,  304. 

GENERAL 

I  have  often  wondered,  how  so  deeply 
learned  a  scholar  as  Mr.  Tyrwhitt  ever 
suffered  himself  to  be  enrolled  with  these 
note-makers  on  Shakspeare. — Mathias, 
Thomas  James,  1794-98,  The  Pursuits  of 
Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  89,  note. 

Certain  it  is,  that  no  such  attempt  has 
been  made  since,  except  in  the  single  and 
minute,  but  very  successful  instance  of 
Aristotle's  Poetics,  which  was  produced  by 
an  auxiliary  volunteer,  residing  in  the 
metropolis,  engaged  in  business,  and  never 
secluded  from  the  avocations  of  society. 
By  not  enjoying  the  leisure,  perhaps,  he 
never  contracted  the  indolence  or  apathy 
of  a  monk,  but  preserved  his  activity  even 
by  the  distraction  of  his  faculties.  His 
name  stands  in  the  title-page  plain  Thomas 
Tyrwhitt— without  any  decorative  adjunct 
or  title  of  degree — though  it  would  have 
done  honour  to  the  proudest,  which  the 
most  exalted  seat  of  learning  could 
bestow. — CoPLESTON,  Edward,  1810,  A 
Reply  to  the  Calumnies  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review  Against  Oxford,  p.  34. 

One  of  the  most  eminent  of  modern 
critics.— Allibone,  S.  Austin,  1871,  A 
Critical  Dictionary  of  English  Literature, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  2493. 

Tyrwhitt  is  the  only  writer  among 
those  that  handled  the  subject  [ed.  Chat- 
terton]  who  had  a  real  critical  knowledge 
of  the  language  of  the  fourteenth  and  fif- 
teenth centuries,  and  who,  in  fact,  had  on 
that  account  a  real  claim  to  be  heard. — 
Skeat,  W.  W.,  1871,  Chatterton's  Poems, 
vol.  II,  p.  ix. 


27 


Gilbert  Stuart 

1742-1786 

Historian  and  reviewer,  born  at  Edinburgh  in  1742.  He  was  educated  at  the  gram- 
mar school  and  University  of  Edinburgh.  His  principal  works  are  ''A  View  of  Society 
in  Europe"  (1778),  ''Observations  on  the  Public  Law  and  Constitutional  History  of 
Scotland"  (1779),  ''History  of  the  Establishment  of  the  Reformation  in  Scotland"  (1780), 
*'The  History  of  Scotland  from  the  Establishment  of  the  Reformation  till  the  Death 
of  Queen  Mary"  (1782).   He  died,  Aug.  13,  1786.— Moulton,  Charles  Wells,  1902. 


PERSONAL 

It  is  my  constant  fate  tobedissappointed 
in  every  thing  I  attempt :  1  do  not  think 
I  ever  had  a  wish  that  was  gratified,  and 
never  dreaded  an  event  that  did  not  come. 
.  .  .  I  mortally  detest  and  abhor  this 
place  [Edinburgh]  and  everybody  in  it. 
...  A  curse  on  the  country,  and  all  the 
men,  women,  and  children  of  it.  .  .  .  The 
publication  is  too  good  for  the  country. — 
Stuart,  Gilbert,  1774,  Letter,  June  17. 

Henry  and  his  history  long  survived 
Stuart  and  his  critiques ;  and  Robertson, 
Blair,  and  Kaimes,  with  others  he  assailed, 
have  all  taken  their  due  ranks  in  public 
esteem.  What  niche  does  Stuart  occupy  ? 
His  historical  works  possess  the  show, 
without  the  solidity,  of  research;  hardy 
paradoxes,  and  an  artificial  style  of  mo- 
mentary brilliancy,  are  none  of  the  last- 
ing materials  of  history.  This  shadow  of 
*' Montesquieu, "  for  he  conceived  him  only 
to  be  his  fit  rival,  derived  the  last  consola- 
tions of  life  from  an  obscure  corner  of  a 
Burton  ale-house — there,  in  rival  pota- 
tions, with  two  or  three  other  disappointed 
authors,  they  regaled  themselves  on  ale 
they  could  not  always  pay  for,  and  recorded 
their  own  literary  celebrity,  which  had 
never  taken  place.  Some  time  before  his 
death,  his  asperity  was  almost  softened 
by  melancholy;  with  a  broken  spirit,  he 
reviewed  himself ;  a  victim  to  that  un- 
righteous ambition  which  sought  to  build 
up  its  greatness  with  the  ruins  of  his  fel- 
low-countrymen ;  prematurely  wasting  tal- 
ents which  might  have  been  directed  to 
literary  eminence.  And  Gilbert  Stuart 
died  as  he  had  lived,  a  victim  to  intem- 
perance, physical  and  moral ! — Disraeli, 
Isaac,  1812-13,  Literary  Hatred,  Calam- 
ities of  Authors. 

Stuart  was  known,  while  engaged  on  his 
historical  treatises,  to  have  confined  him- 
self to  his  library  for  several  weeks, 
scarcely  ever  leaving  his  house  for  air  and 
exercise.  But  these  periods  of  intense 
labour  were  always  followed  by  bouts  of 


dissipation  lasting  for  equal  periods  of 
time.  When  in  England  he  often  spent 
whole  nights  in  company  with  his  boon 
companions  at  the  Peacock  in  Gray's  Inn 
Lane.  These  habits  destroyed  a  strong 
constitution.  ...  A  writer  of  great 
talent  and  learning  his  excesses  and  want 
of  principle  ruined  his  career. — Court- 
ney, W.  P.,  1898,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  LV,  p.  84. 

GENERAL 

Here  the  author  has  made  a  great,  and 
indeed  a  splendid,  effort  to  eclipse  the 
reputation  of  Robertson,  whom  he  both 
envied  and  hated.  As  the  one  historian 
considered  Mary  guilty  of  some  of  the 
foulest  crimes  laid  to  her  charge,  it  was 
almost  an  obvious  consequence  that  the 
other  should  represent  her  as  innocent. — 
Irving,  David,  1827-42,  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  Seventh  ed.,  vol.  XX. 

A  very  able  ["Antiquity  of  British 
Constitution,"]  though  somewhat  impetu- 
ous inquirer  into  the  earlier  parts  of  our 
history. — Smyth,  William,  1840,  Lec- 
tures on  Modern  History,  Lecture  v. 

He  also  published  in  1779,  1780,  and 
1782,  three  works:  one  on  the  ''Consti- 
tutional History  of  Scotland,"  being  an 
attack  on  Dr.  Robertson's  first  book ;  an- 
other on  the  "  History  of  the  Reformation 
in  Scotland,"  and  the  third  on  the  ''His- 
tory of  Queen  Mary,"  being  also  an  elab- 
orate attack  upon  the  Principal.  The 
ability  and  the  learning  of  these  works,  and 
their  lively  and  even  engaging  style,  has 
not  saved  them  from  the  oblivion  to  which 
they  were  justly  consigned  by  the  manifest 
indications  prevailing  throughout  them 
all,  of  splenetic  temper,  of  personal  malig- 
nity, and  of  a  constant  disturbance  of  the 
judgment  by  these  vile,  unworthy  passions. 
— Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1845-6,  Lives 
of  Men  of  Letters  of  the  Time  of  George  HI. 

All  displaying  both  research  and  acute- 
ness,  but  the  two  last-mentioned  [' '  History 
of  the  Establishment  of  the  Reformation 


28 


STUART— LOWTH 


in  Scotland'*  and  his  "History  of  Scot- 
land from  the  establishment  of  the  Ref- 
ormation till  the  death  of  Queen  Mary"], 
deformed  by  the  author's  violent  personal 
animosity   against  Robertson,  for  the 


purpose  of  confuting  certain  of  whose 
statements  or  views,  they  were  mainly 
written. — Craik,  George L.,  1861,  A  Com- 
pendious History  of  English  Literature  and 
of  the  English  Language,  vol.  il,  p.  359. 


Robert  Lowth 

1710-1787 

Robert  Lowth  (1710-87),  born  at  Winchester,  was  educated  there  and  at  New  Col- 
lege, Oxford.  In  1741  he  became  professor  of  Poetry,  in  1750  Archdeacon  of  Win- 
chester, in  1753  rector  of  East  Woodhay,  in  1755  a  prebendary  of  Durham  and  rector 
of  Sedgefield,  in  1765  F.  R.  S.,  in  1766  Bishop  of  St.  Davids  and  of  Oxford,  and  in 
1777  of  London.  He  published  De  Sacra  Poesi  Hebrceorum  (1753),  a  Life  of  William 
of  Wykeham,  and  a  new  translation  of  Isaiah.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to  treat  the 
Bible  poetry  as  literature. — Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical 
Dictionary,  p.  605. 


PERSONAL 
For  myself,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  well 
if  I  can  acquit  myself  of  the  burden  of 
being  responsible  for  the  great  advantages 
which  I  enjoyed.  For,  my  lord,  I  was 
educated  in  the  University  of  Oxford ;  I 
enjoyed  all  the  advantages,  both  public 
and  private,  which  that  famous  seat  of 
learning  so  largely  affords.  I  spent  many 
happy  years  in  that  illustrious  society,  in 
a  well-regulated  course  of  useful  disci- 
pline and  studies,  and  in  the  agreeable 
and  improving  commerce  of  gentlemen 
and  scholars ;  in  a  society  where  emula- 
tion without  envy,  ambition  without  jeal- 
ousy, contention  without  animosity,  in- 
cited industry  and  awakened  genius; 
where  a  liberal  pursuit  of  knowledge,  and 
a  generous  freedom  of  thought,  was  raised, 
encouraged,  and  put  forward  by  example, 
by  commendation,  and  by  authority.  I 
breathed  the  same  atmosphere  that  the 
Hookers,  the  Chillingworths,  and  the 
Lockes  had  breathed  before.  .  .  . 
And  do  you  reproach  me  with  my  educa- 
tion in  this  place,  and  this  most  respecta- 
ble body,  which  I  shall  always  esteem  my 
greatest  advantage  and  my  highest  honour  ? 
— Lowth,  Robert,  1765,  Letter  to  War- 
burton. 

Lowth  is  said  to  have  been  well  and 
stoutly  built,  with  a  florid  countenance 
and  animated  expression.  His  conversa- 
tion was  easy  and  refined,  and  his  manners 
were  courtly.  Of  a  sympathetic  disposi- 
tion, he  was  more  inclined  to  melancholy 
than  mirth.  His  temper  was  hasty  but 
kept  under  control.  His  taste  was  fine, 
and  he  was  an  industrious  student.  He 
was  an  accomplished  and  elegant  scholar, 


well  versed  in  Hebrew,  and  with  a  keen 
appreciation  of  the  poetic  beauty  of  the 
Old  Testament  scriptures.  Hebrew  was, 
he  believed,  the  language  spoken  in  Para- 
dise; he  studied  it  critically,  and  his 
knowledge  of  it  gained  him  a  European 
reputation.  He  wrote  both  Latin  and 
English  verse  with  some  success.  In  con- 
troversy he  was  a  dangerous  antagonist, 
with  great  power  of  polished  sarcasm 
which  he  employed  against  his  opponents 
personally,  as  well  as  against  their  argu- 
ments.—Hunt,  William,  1893,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  xxxiv, 
p.  215. 

DE  SACRA  POESI  HEBR^ORUM 

1753 

Bishop  Lowth  prepared  the  way  for  a 
more  accurate  knowledge  of  this  impor- 
tant part  of  divine  revelation  [the  Pro- 
phetical Books]  by  his  admirable  ''Prelec- 
tions," and  by  his  amended  translations 
of  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah. — Williams, 
Edward,  1800,  The  Christian  Preacher. 

It  is  an  elegant  and  interesting  book, 
though  somewhat  calculated  to  lead  the 
mind  to  admire  the  poetical  beauties  of 
Scripture  rather  than  their  spiritual  tend- 
ency and  design.  It  is  not  distinguished 
so  much  for  its  philological  criticisms  as 
for  the  felicity  of  its  illustrations.  .  .  . 
Lowth  was  himself  a  poet,  and  deeply 
versant  in  the  poetry  of  the  Hebrews,  as 
well  as  in  the  poetical  writers  of  Greece 
and  Rome. — Orme,  William,  1824,  Bibli- 
otheca  Biblica. 

Before  the  appearance  of  his  volume, 
scarcely  any  thing  had  been  accomplished 
in  the  whole  wide  range  of  sacred  litera- 
ture which  it  occupies.    .    .    .  Lowth 


ROBERT  LOWTH 


29 


was  fortunate  indeed  in  being  the  first 
adventurer  to  investigate  a  region  so  de- 
lightful. ...  He  has  displayed  in  the  ex- 
ecution of  his  task  much  sound  judgment 
and  research.  All  the  notes  he  has  selected 
are  of  sterling  value  ;  and  those  which  are 
the  results  of  his  own  investigations  ex- 
hibit originality  and  learning. — Cheever, 
George  Barrell,  1830,  LowthJs  Hebrew 
Poetry y  North  American  Review,  vol,  31, 
pp.  366,  367,  375. 

If  you  have  not  read  Bishop  Lowth's 
^'Prselections  on  Hebrew  Poetry,"  let  me 
commend  its  perusal  to  you.  It  opened 
to  me,  some  years  ago,  quite  a  new  view 
of  the  beauties  of  the  prophetical  and 
poetical  part  of  the  Old  Testament. — 
Webster,  Daniel,  1844,  Letter  to  Mrs. 
Paige,  March  27 ;  Private  Correspondence, 
vol.  II,  p.  186. 

In  the  year  1753  the  Clarendon  Press 
at  Oxford  brought  out,  in  a  splendid 
quarto  with  all  the  honours  of  typography, 
the  series  of  Lectures  which  Lowth  had 
delivered  during  his  ten  years'  occupancy 
of  the  chair  of  poetry  in  that  University. 
It  was  not  the  externals  only  of  the  vol- 
ume of  which  the  University  was  proud. 
It  w^as  no  less  remarkable  for  its  matter. 
It  was  the  first  sign  of  the  awakening  of 
Oxford  from  that  torpor  under  which  two 
generations  had  now  lain,  under  the  be- 
sotting influence  of  Jacobite  and  high- 
church  politics.  The  Lectures  ''De  Sacra 
Poesi  HebraBorum'"  seemed  to  combine 
the  polish  of  a  past  generation,  long  gone, 
with  the  learning  of  a  new  period  to  come. 
The  lore  of  Michaelis  was  here  dressed 
not  in  Latin  as  classical  as,  and  more  vig- 
orous than,  that  of  Addison.  Kocher  has 
indeed  shown  that  Lowth's  Hebrew  skill 
was  not  equal  to  his  pretensions ;  and  Parr 
has  pointed  out  that  the  professor  was 
capable  of  writing  poterit  after  ut.  Still 
the  effect  of  the  Lectures  was  great. 
The  Jacobite  University  had  at  last  pro- 
duced a  work  which  might  vie  in  solidity 
with  anything  that  proceeded  from  Han- 
overian Gottingen,  and  with  the  finished 
style  of  which  Gottingen  had  nothing 
to  compare.  The  "classic  elegance  of 
Lowth"  became  a  standard  phrase,  and 
continued  to  be  so  till  into  the  present 
century ;  and  German  Hebraists  occupied 
themselves  in  refuting  the  temerity  of  his 
numerous  emendations  of  the  Hebrew  text. 
— Pattison,   Mark,   1863-89,   Life  of 


Bishop  Warhurton,  Essays,  ed.  Nettleship, 
vol.  II,  p.  135. 

Lowth's  lectures  on  the  Sacred  Poetry 
of  the  Hebrews  (1753)  encouraged  the 
study  of  the  Old  Testament  from  the 
purely  literary  point  of  view,  and  opened 
up  anew  all  the  grandeur  and  imagery  of 
Hebrew  poetry.  The  critical  side  of  his 
work  helped  also  in  forming  true  ideas  on 
the  nature  of  poetry.  His  chapter  on 
"Poetic  Imagery  from  the  Objects  of 
Nature"  must  have  been  especially  sug- 
gestive in  those  days. — Phelps,  William 
Lyon,  1893,  The  Beginnings  of  the  Eng- 
lish Romantic  Movement,  p.  172. 

GENERAL 

A  sublime  and  admirably-executed  ver- 
sion ["Isaiah"]. — Horne,  Thomas  Hart- 
well,  1818-39,  A  Manual  of  Biblical 
Bibliography. 

No  former  translator  ["Isaiah"]  has  ex- 
pressed the  meaning  and  spirit  of  the 
evangelical  prophet  so  felicitously  as 
Lowth.  .  .  .  Lowth  is,  perhaps,  too 
partial  to  conjectural  criticism,  and  the 
version  is  too  highly  wrought  for  common 
use;  but  it  is  a  valuable  specimen  of 
sacred  criticism,  and  indispensable  to  the 
interpretation  of  Isaiah. — Orme,  Wil- 
liam, 1824,  Bibliotheca  Biblica. 

The  reflections  are  sparing  ["Life  of 
William  of  Wykeham"]  and  the  style  is 
languid.  Even  in  antiquarian  lore  there 
is  a  dearth  of  intelligence ;  but  the  sub- 
ject was  not  suited  to  the  taste,  habits, 
and  learning,  of  Lowth. — Dibdin,  Thomas 
Frognall,  1824,  The  Library  Companion, 
p.  523. 

He  gave  to  England  the  first  regular 
grammar  of  his  native  tongue  [  ?].  We 
are  somewhat  surprised  that  Murray's 
grammar,  which  is  but  an  enlarged  copy 
of  Lowth's,  should  so  generally  have  oc- 
cupied its  place ;  and  that,  too,  with  little 
acknowledgment  to  the  individual,  from 
whom  were  derived  its  plan  and  most  of 
its  materials.  Although  Lowth's  treatise 
was  written  so  early  as  the  year  1758, 
yet  we  doubt  whether  there  is  at  the  pres- 
ent day  a  single  work  of  equal  excellence 
in  the  same  compass.— Cheever,  George 
Barrell,  1830,  Lowth's  Hebrew  Poetry, 
North  American  Review,  vol.  31,  p.  377. 

The  writings  by  which  Bishop  Lowth  is 
most  known  are,  "A  Short  Introduction 
to  English  Grammar,"  for  many  years  a 


30 


LOWTH—JENYNS 


text-book  in  the  schools  and  colleges  in 
England  and  in  this  country;  his  Trans- 
lation of  the  Prophet  Isaiah, "  with  a  large 
body  of  valuable  notes ;  and  his  ''Lectures 
on  the  Poetry  of  the  Hebrews."  The  lat- 
ter is  a  work  which  unites  a  depth  of 
learning  to  a  discriminating  criticism  and 
a  refined  taste,  in  a  very  unusual  degree ; 
and  while  it  is  of  inestimable  value  to  the 
professed  Biblical  student,  it  affords 
equal  pleasure  and  instruction  to  the  gen- 
eral reader. — Cleveland,  Charles  D., 
1848,  A  Compendium  of  English  Litera- 
ture, p.  673. 

In  polished  dexterity  of  argument, 
tinged,  and  not  more  than  tinged,  with  the 
raillery  of  one  who  knows  exactly  what  is 
due  both  to  himself  and  his  antagonists, 
this  short  piece  has  perhaps  never  been 


surpassed  in  literary  warfare.  At  that 
period  of  paper  ruffianism,  when  the  cour- 
tesies of  legitimate  warfare  were  unprac- 
tised and  unknown,  such  moderate  lan- 
guage, combined  with  such  superiority  of 
demeanour,  was  wholly  new.  Even  the 
mere  English  composition  of  the  "Letter" 
was  an  event  which  opened  a  new 
era  in  writing,  and  made  the  public 
wonder  that  it  could  ever  have  admired 
the  lame  sentences  and  clumsy  English 
of  War  bur  ton  and  his  followers. — Pat- 
TisoN,  Mark,  1863-89,  Life  of  Bishop 
Warburton,  Essays,  ed.  Nettleship,  vol.  ii, 
p.  139. 

Although  an  excellent  critic  of  poetry, 
had  no  creative  gift. — Phelps,  William 
Lyon,  1893,  The  Beginnings  of  the  Eng- 
lish Romantic  Movement,  p.  72. 


Soame  Jenyns 

1704-1787 

Born  at  London,  Jan.  1,  1704:  Died  there,  Dec.  18,  1787.  An  English  miscel- 
laneous writer.  In  1722  he  entered  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  leaving  without  a 
degree  in  1725.  He  published  anonymously  ''The  Art  of  Dancing:  a  poem"  (1727) 
and  a  collection  of  poems  (1752).  He  was  returned  to  Parliament  in  1742.  In  1757 
he  published  a  ''Free  Enquiry  into  the  Nature  and  Origin  of  Evil,"  and  in  1765  "The 
Objections  to  the  Taxation  of  our  American  Colonies  by  the  Legislature  of  Great 
Britain  briefly  considered."  His  "View  of  the  Internal  Evidence^  of  the  Christian 
Religion"  was  published  in  1776. — Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The  Century 
Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  544. 


PERSONAL 
Here  lies  a  little  ugly  nauseous  elf, 
Who  judging  only  from  its  wretched  self, 
Feebly  attempted,  petulant  and  vain, 
The  "Origin  of  Evil"  to  explain. 
A  mighty  Genius  at  this  elf  displeas'd, 
With   a  strong  critick  grasp  the  urchin 
squeez'd. 

For  thirty  years  its  coward  spleen  it  kept. 
Till  in  the  dust  the  mighty  Genius  slept ; 
Then  stunk  and  fretted  in  expiring  snuff, 
And  blink 'd  at  Johnson  with  its  last  poor 
puff. 

— Bos  WELL,  James,  1778  ?  Epitaph  Pre- 
pared for  a  Creature  not  quite  Dead  Yet. 

Mr.  Soame  Jenyns,  who  died  a  few  days 
ago,  had  (as  Mr.  Wm.  Gerard  Hamilton, 
who  sat  for  six  years  at  the  Board  of 
Trade  with  him,  informed  me)  no  notion 
of  ratiocination,  no  rectitude  of  mind; 
nor  could  he  be  made  without  much  labour 
to  comprehend  an  argument.  If  how- 
ever there  was  anything  weak,  or  defect- 
ive, or  ridiculous  in  what  another  said,  he 
always  laid  hold  of  it  and  played  upon  it 


with  success.  He  looked  at  everything 
with  a  view  to  pleasantry  alone.  This 
being  his  grand  object,  and  he  being  no 
reasoner,  his  best  friends  were  at  a  loss 
to  know  whether  his  book  upon  Christian- 
ity was  serious  or  ironical.  He  twice  en- 
deavoured to  speak  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  every  one  was  prepared  with  a 
half-grin  before  he  uttered  a  word ;  but  he 
failed  miserably.  He  had  a  most  inhar- 
monious voice,  and  a  laugh  scarcely 
human.  He  laughed  all  his  life  at  patri- 
otism and  public  spirit ;  and  supposed  all 
oppression  of  the  people  by  those  in  power 
was  merely  imaginary. — Malone,  Ed- 
mond,  1787,  Maloniana,  ed.  Prior,  p.  375. 

He  was  a  man  of  great  mildness,  gen- 
tleness, and  sweetness  of  temper,  which 
he  manifested  to  all  with  whom  he  had 
concerns,  either  in  the  business  of  life  or 
its  social  intercourse.  His  earnest  de- 
sire, so  far  as  possible,  was  never  to  offend 
any  person ;  and  he  made  such  allowances 
for  those  whose  disposition  differed  from 


SOAME  JENYNS 


31 


his  own,  that  he  was  rarely  offended  with 
others.  He  was  strict  in  the  performance 
of  religious  duties  in  public,  and  a  con- 
stant practiser  of  them  in  private.  His 
conversation  among  his  equals  was  most 
amiable  and  engaging;  for  he  possessed 
a  well  informed  mind,  accompanied  by  an 
uncommon  vein  of  the  most  lively,  spirited, 
and  genuine  wit,  which  always  flowed 
copiously,  but  was  ever  tempered  by  the 
most  perfect  kindness.  To  his  inferiors 
he  was  most  kind  and  courteous,  not  only 
in  his  expressions  and  behaviour,  but  in 
assisting  them  in  all  their  wants  and  dis- 
tresses, ever  considering  his  poor  neigh- 
bours in  the  country  as  part  of  his  own 
family ;  and  that  he  might  give  them  his 
care  and  protection,  he  spent  his  summers 
on  his  estate,  saying,  can  do  more 
good  in  my  own  parish  at  that  time  than 
in  any  other  situation. It  is  also  no 
ordinary  or  misplaced  eulogium  which  we 
read  in  the  obituary  of  that  parish: — ■ 
*'Decr.  18,  1787,  Soame  Jenyns,  Esq.,  in 
the  eighty-third  year  of  his  age,  one  of 
the  most  amiable  of  men  and  one  of  the 
truest  Christians,  in  whom  was  united  one 
of  the  finest  understandings  to  one  of  the 
best  hearts." — Cole,  Charles  Nelson, 
1790,  ed.,  The  Works  of  Soame  JenynSy 
Life. 

He  was  the  man  who  bore  his  part  in 
all  societies  with  the  most  even  temper 
and  undisturbed  hilarity  of  all  the  good 
companions,  whom  I  ever  knew.  He  came 
into  your  house  at  the  very  moment  you 
had  put  upon  your  card ;  he  dressed  him- 
self to  do  your  party  honour  in  all  the 
colours  of  the  jay;  his  lace  indeed  had 
long  since  lost  its  lustre,  but  his  coat  had 
faithfully  retained  its  cut  since  the  days 
when  gentlemen  wore  embroidered  vel- 
vets with  short  sleeves,  boot  cuffs,  and 
buckram  shirts.  As  nature  had  cast  him 
in  the  exact  mould  of  an  ill-made  pair 
of  stiff  stays,  he  followed  her  so  close  in 
the  fashion  of  his  coat,  that  it  was 
doubted  if  he  did  not  wear  them.  Be- 
cause he  had  a  protuberant  wen  just 
under  his  poll,  he  wore  a  wig  that  did  not 
cover  above  half  his  head.  His  eyes  were 
protruded  like  the  eyes  of  the  lobster, 
who  wears  them  at  the  end  of  his  feelers, 
and  yet  there  was  room  between  one  of 
these  and  his  nose  for  another  wen,  that 
added  nothing  to  his  beauty ;  yet  I  heard 
this  good  man  very  innocently  remark. 


when  Gibbon  published  his  history,  that 
he  wondered  any  body  so  ugly  could  write 
a  book.  Such  was  the  exterior  of  a  man, 
who  was  the  charm  of  the  circle,  and  gave 
a  zest  to  every  company  he  came  into ; 
his  pleasantry  was  of  a  sort  peculiar  to 
himself;  it  harmonised  with  everything; 
it  was  like  the  bread  to  our  dinner ;  you 
did  not  perhaps  make  it  the  whole,  or 
principal  part,  of  your  meal,  but  it  was  an 
admirable  and  wholesome  auxiliary  to 
your  other  viands.  Soame  Jenyns  told 
you  no  long  stories,  engrossed  not  much  of 
your  attention,  and  was  not  angry  with 
those  that  did ;  his  thoughts  were  origi- 
nal, and  were  apt  to  have  a  very  whimsical 
affinity  to  the  paradox  in  them :  he  wrote 
verses  upon  dancing,  and  prose  upon  the 
origin  of  evil,  yet  he  was  a  very  indiffer- 
ent metaphysician,  and  a  worse  dancer; 
ill-nature  and  personality,  with  the  single 
exception  of  his  lines  upon  Johnson,  I 
never  heard  fall  from  his  lips;  those 
lines  I  have  forgotten,  though  I  believe  I 
was  the  first  person  to  whom  he  recited 
them;  they  were  very  bad,  but  he  had 
been  told  that  Johnson  ridiculed  his  meta- 
physics, and  some  of  us  had  just  then  been 
making  extemporary  epitaphs  upon  each 
other. —  Cumberland,  Richard,  1806, 
Memoirs  Written  by  Himself  vol.  I,  p.  336. 

His  appearance,  dress,  manner,  and 
conversation,  were  very  eccentric,  and 
those  of  his  wife,  who  generally  accom- 
panied him  on  his  visits,  were  no  less  so. 
The  lady  here  alluded  to  was  his  second 
wife,  who  entertained  so  exalted  an  idea 
of  her  husband's  accuracy  and  propriety 
of  conversation,  that  she  acquired  the 
habit  of  always  repeating  the  last  sentence 
of  any  thing  he  said.  Thus  when  the 
gentleman  observed,  we  had  a  disagreea- 
ble journey  to  town,  the  roads  were  bad, 
we  were  sadly  jolted,  the  lady  would  im- 
mediately repeat  the  observation  *'Yes, 
as  Mr.  Jenyns  says,  we  were  sadly  jolted. " 
— Beloe,  William,  1817,  The  Sexagena- 
rian, vol.  II,  p.  214. 

Soame  Jenyns  appears  to  have  been  an 
amiable  country  gentleman,  rather  bigoted 
in  his  political  tendencies,  but  not  without 
acuteness  and  elegance  of  style.  He 
could  write  pretty  verses  after  the  model 
of  Prior;  that  he  ''gave  his  days  and 
nights  to  the  study  of  Addison"  was  in- 
ferred from  two  or  three  papers  contrib- 
uted to  the  ''World" ;  and  he  is  said  to 


32 


SOAME  JENYNS 


have  been  the  charm  of  every  social  circle 
which  he  entered. —Stephen,  Leslie, 
1876,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  i,  p.  385. 

Soame  Jenyns  once  expressed  a  wonder 
that  anybody  so  ugly  as  Gibbon  could 
write  a  book ;  the  real  marvel  would  have 
been  if  that  monumental  work,  the  ''De- 
cline and  Fall,"  had  been  produced  by  a 
handsome  man.  The  remark  was  still 
stranger,  coming,  as  it  did,  from  one  who 
was  himself  a  writer  of  books,  and  of  good 
books  too,  although  he  was  disfigured  by 
an  immense  wen  under  his  head,  and  had 
eyes  protruding  like  a  lobster's,  yet  allow- 
ing room  for  another  wen  between  them 
and  his  nose.— Mathews,  William,  1887, 
Men,  Places  and  Things,  p.  242. 

Here  lies  poor  Jenyns,  whose  good  taste  and 
wit 

In  Johnson  emphasized  the  "cough  and  spit," 
Held  cheap  the  sweetness  of  that  monarch 
mind, 

And  found  delight  in  mocking  at  the  rind ; 
Rude  was  the  Doctor,  yet  in  kindly  wise  ; 
In  Jenyns,  sooth,  the  case  is  otherwise, 
For  he,  whom  Jenyns  rudely  called  a '  'brute" 
Is  all  that  makes  important  this  dispute ; 
Well  had  it  been  for  Jenyns,  if  his  art 
Supplied  such  lack  of  manners  with  such 
heart ! 

— Mahany,  Rowland  B.,  1891,  On  Soame 
Jenyns,  Life,  Apr.  30. 

INTERNAL  EVIDENCE  OF  THE 
CHRISTIAN  RELIGION 

1776 

Soame  Jenyns  has  published  a  con- 
firmation of  the  Christian  Religion  from 
internal  evidence.  Pray  was  not  his 
Origin  of  Evil  a  little  heterodox  ?  I  have 
dipped  a  little  into  this  new  piece,  and 
thought  I  saw  something  like  irony,  but 
to  be  sure  I  am  wrong,  for  the  Ecclesias- 
tical Court  are  quite  satisfied. — Walpole, 
Horace,  1776,  To  Rev.  William  Mason, 
May  4 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vi, 
p.  335. 

Dr.  Mayo  having  asked  Johnson's  opin- 
ion of  Soame  Jenyns's"  View  of  the  Inter- 
nal Evidence  of  the  Christian  Religion," 
— Johnson:  ''I  think  it  a  pretty  book; 
not  very  theological,  indeed;  and  there 
seems  to  be  an  affectation  of  ease  and 
carelessness,  as  if  it  were  not  suitable  to 
his  character  to  be  very  serious  about  the 
matter." — Johnson,  Samuel,  1778,  Life 
by  Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  ill.,  p.  327. 


A  work  of  very  considerable  shrewdness 
and  ingenuity,  in  which  many  striking 
views  of  Christianity  are  adduced  in  sup- 
port of  its  heavenly  origin. — Orme,  Wil- 
liam, 1824,  Bibliotheca  Biblica. 

The  last  and  best  work  of  Mr.  Jenyns, 
was  the  dissertation  on  "the  Internal 
Evidence  of  the  Christian  Religion. ' '  The 
literary  history  of  this  work  is  not  with- 
out interest.  Originally  impressed  with 
deep  convictions  of  the  truth  of  Christian- 
ity, its  author  allowed  himself  to  be  se- 
duced into  doubts,  and  finally  settled  in 
Deism.  Renewed  inquiry  re-established 
his  mind  in  a  rational  faith.  He  subse- 
quently endeavored  to  arrange  in  this 
treatise  the  arguments  and  considerations 
which  had  most  weight  in  his  case.  Im- 
mediately on  its  first  appearance,  it  be- 
came popular  with  all  parties,  and  yet 
every  party  in  religion  and  literature  ex- 
pressed the  most  decided  dissatisfaction 
with  some  particular  portion  of  the  argu- 
ment, or  some  special  view  of  the  author. 
Such  has  continued  to  be  its  reception  up 
to  the  present  hour.  As  a  whole,  it  is 
admitted  to  be  the  best  treatise,  in  its 
particular  range,  yet  given  to  the  world, 
but  in  some  respect — differing  according 
to  the  source  whence  the  censure  comes — 
the  disapproval  of  its  individual  doctrines 
and  reasonings  is  almost  universal.  We 
have  hinted  that  the  circumstances  of  the 
author  may  be  pleaded  as  offering  at 
once  an  apology  and  a  distinction  in  favour 
of  his  work.  They  go  far  also  to  ac- 
count for  this  mixed  estimate  of  its 
merits.  With  a  more  experienced  theol- 
ogy, he  would  have  conducted  his  argu- 
ment more  technically,  and  without  the 
reckless  admissions  which  offend  divines; 
but,  at  the  same  time,  he  might  thus  have 
rendered  his  treatise  less  popular  with 
ordinary  readers.  Let  the  man  of  the 
world,  again,  who  turns  away  from  the 
evangelical  seriousness,  and  scriptural 
earnestness  of  other  parts,  remember, 
that  these  are  the  sentiments  of  one  who, 
amid  the  gay  literature  and  selfish  business 
of  the  world,  thus  felt,  and  thus  recom- 
mends the  power  of  Christianity. — Memes, 
John  S.,  1849,  ed.,  Christian  Literature: 
Evidences,  Prefatory  Memoirs,  p.  18. 

GENERAL 

I  have  read  the  little  wicked  book  about 
Evil,  that  settled  Mr.  Dodsley's  conscience 
in  that  point,  and  find  nothing  in  it  but 


SOAME  JENYNS 


33 


absurdity.— Gray,  Thomas,  1757,  Letter 
to  Rev,  William  Mason,  April  23 ;  Works^ 
ed.  Gosse,  vol.  ii,  p.  310. 
When  specious  sophists  with  presumption 
scan 

The  source  of  evil  hidden  still  from  man ; 
Revive  Arabian  tales,  ami  vainly  hope 
To  rival  St.  John,  and  his  scholar  Pope: 
Though  metaphysicks  spread  the  gloom  of 
night, 

By  reason's  star  he  guides  our  aching  sight; 
The  bounds  of  knowledge  marks,  and  points 
the  way 

To  pathless  wastes,  were  wilder'd  sages 
stray ; 

Where,  like  a  farthing  link-boy,  Jenyns 
stands. 

And  the  dim  torch  drops  from  his  feeble 
hands. 

— CouRTENAY,  JoHN,  1786,  A  Poetical 
Review  of  the  Literary  and  Moral  Charac- 
ter of  the  Late  S.  Johnson. 

His  poetry  does  not  rise  above  medioc- 
rity :  indeed,  it  scarcely  deserves  the  name ; 
but  the  style  of  his  prose  is  smooth  and 
lucid,  his  turns  of  thought  are  neat  and 
unexpected  ;  and  when  he  sports  in  irony, 
in  which  he  apparently  delights  to  indulge, 
he  is  uncommonly  playful  and  airy.  .  .  . 
Jenyns  has  evidently  a  predilection  for 
paradoxical  opinions ;  and  why,  he  might 
reasonably  urge  in  his  defence,  should  a 
man  address  the  Public,  who  has  nothing 
new  to  offer  to  it?— Green,  Thomas, 
1779-1810,  Diary  of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 

In  a  literary  point  of  view  he  obtained 
a  considerable  degree  of  temporary  celeb- 
rity, occasioned  principally  by  the  bold 
and  paradoxical  nature  of  his  disquisi- 
tions. ...  To  any  distinguished 
rank  as  a  poet  he  has  no  claim ;  it  may 
be  said,  however,  that  his  versification  is 
smooth,  and  sometimes  elegant,  though 
deficient  in  vigour ;  and  that  several  of 
his  smaller  productions  effervesce  with 
humour  and  well  chosen  satire.  As  a 
writer  in  prose,  he  is  entitled  to  more  es- 
timation, whether  his  matter  or  manner 
be  considered.— Drake,  Nathan,  1810, 
Essays,  Illustrative  of  the  Rambler ^  Adven- 
turery  and  Idler,  vol.  n,  p.  286. 

His  poems  were  published  collectively  in 
the  volumes  of  Dodsley,  and  whoever 
pleases,  may  judge  of  their  value.  But 
they  excited  no  great  interest  when  orig- 
inally written ;  they  excite  less  at  the 
present  period,  and  will  probably  glide 
down  the  stream  of  time,  till,  with  the 

3  c 


n\ob  of  gentlemen  who  write  with  ease, 
they  sink  into  the  waters  of  oblivion. — 
Beloe,  William,  1817,  The  Sexagenarian, 
vol.  II,  p.  215. 

We  venture  to  assert,  that  there  are 
few  books  in  the  language,  of  the  same 
size  as  the  little  volume  before  us,  con- 
taining more  acute  and  ingenious  reason- 
ing, abounding  in  more  lively  illustration 
or  more  elegant  and  polished  composition. 
.  .  .  To  those  who  do  not  possess  this 
little  volume  we  fearlessly  recommend 
them  to  procure  it,  and  unhesitatingly 
promise  them  a  rich,  though  small,  store 
of  instruction  and  entertainment.  .  .  . 
The  first  Essay,  on  the  chain  of  universal 
being,  is  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  com- 
plete and  elegant  manner  in  which  this 
mysterious  connection  is  shewn  to  exist. 
The  reasoning  in  it  is  of  that  sort  which 
carries  conviction,  by  the  method  of  stat- 
ing and  setting  forth  the  bearings  of  the 
question.  It  may,  perhaps,  be  not  unfitly 
called  the  reasoning  of  development, 
which  requires  nothing  more  than  an  un- 
veiling or  disclosing  of  the  hidden  link  of 
circumstances,  and  not  an  invention  of 
arguments,  but  a  mere  opening  of  the 
eyes  to  the  nature  of  things. — Southern, 
H.,  1820,  Soame  Jenyns' s  Disquisitions, 
Retrospective  Review,  vol.  2,  pp.  291,  292. 

Read  the  works  of  Soame  Jenyns  and  of 
Locke.  Would  not  both  of  these  men,  for 
instance,  while  they  retained  their  integ- 
rity, have  been  seen  always  on  the  oppo- 
site sides  of  any  question  that  could  affect 
the  constitution  and  government  of  a  free 
country.— Smyth,  William,  1840,  Lec- 
tures on  Modern  History,  Lecture  xxiv. 

Some  divines'  rejoiced  that  Jenyns  had 
discarded  his  early  scepticism  and  em- 
braced orthodoxy ;  others  questioned  his 
sincerity  and  disliked  his  ingenious  para- 
doxes. .  .  .  Jenyns's  prose  style  was  re- 
garded by  his  contemporaries  as  a  model  of 
ease  and  elegance.  It  was  highly  com- 
mended by  Burke,  and  Boswell  allowed  that 
"Jenyns  was  possessed  of  lively  talents 
.  .  .  and  could  very  happily  play  with  a 
light  subject."  His  metaphysical  specu- 
lations were  not  profound,  and  his  political 
views  were  short-sighted;  but  he  wrote 
some  agreeable  essays  (though  Charles 
Lamb  entered  his  works  on  the  list  of 
''books  which  are  no  books"). — Bullen, 
A.  H.,  1892,  Dictionary  of  Nationol  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XXIX,  p.  333. 


34 


Charles  Wesley 

1707-1788 

Born  at  Epworth,  Lines.,  29  Dec,  1707.  At  Westminster  School,  1716-26. 
Matric.  Ch.  Ch.,  Oxford,  13  June,  1726;  B.  A.,  1730;  M.  A.,  1733.  One  of  found- 
ers of  Methodist"  Society  at  Oxford,  1730.  Ordained  Deacon  and  Priest,  1735. 
To  Georgia,  as  Sec.  to  Gen.  Oglethorpe,  1735.  Returned  to  England,  1736.  Active 
life  as  religious  missionary  in  England,  1736-56.  Married  Sarah  Gwynne,  8  April, 
1749.  Lived  in  Bristol,  1749-71 ;  in  London,  1771-88.  Died,  in  London,  29  March, 
1788.  Buried  in  Marylebone  Parish  Churchyard.  Works :  His  publications  consist 
almost  entirely  of  hymns ;  for  the  most  part  written  with  his  brother  John,  and  pub- 
lished anonymously,  between  1744  and  1782.  His  ''Hymns  and  Sacred  Poems" 
(2  vols.)  were  pubd.  in  1729;  his  ''Sermons"  (posthumously)  in  1816;  his  "Journal" 
(2  vols.)  in  1849.  Life:  by  J.  Telford,  1886.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A 
Dictionary  of  English  A  uthors^  p.  296. 


PERSONAL 

We  find  and  present  Charles  Wesley 
to  be  a  person  of  ill-fame,  a  vagabond, 
and  a  common  disturber  of  his  Majesty's 
peace,  and  we  pray  that  he  may  be  trans- 
ported ! — Report  of  Grand  Jury  of  Cork, 
Ireland,  1749. 

Persuaded  two  or  three  young  scholars 
to  accompany  me,  and  to  observe  the 
method  of  study  prescribed  by  the  statutes 
of  the  university.  This  gained  me  the 
harmless  nickname  of  Methodist. — Wes- 
ley, Charles,  1785,  Letter  to  Thomas 
Bradbury  Chandler,  Apr.  28. 

Mr.  Wesley  was  of  a  warm  and  lively 
disposition;  of  great  frankness  and  integ- 
rity, and  generous  and  steady  in  his  friend- 
ships. His  love  of  simplicity,  and  utter 
abhorrence  of  hypocrisy,  and  even  of 
affectation  in  the  professors  of  religion, 
made  him  sometimes  appear  severe  on 
those  who  assumed  a  consequence,  on  ac- 
count of  their  experience,  or,  were  pert 
and  forward  in  talking  of  themselves  and 
others.  These  persons  were  sure  of  meet- 
ing with  a  reproof  from  him,  which  some, 
perhaps,  might  call  precipitate  and  im- 
prudent, though  it  was  evidently  founded 
on  a  knowledge  of  the  human  heart.  In 
conversation  he  was  pleasing,  instructive, 
and  cheerful;  and  his  observations  were 
often  seasoned  with  wit  and  humor.  His 
religion  was  genuine  and  unaffected.  As 
a  minister,  he  was  familiarly  acquainted 
with  every  part  of  divinity ;  and  his  mind 
was  furnished  with  an  uncommon  knowl- 
edge of  the  Scriptures.  His  discourses 
from  the  pulpit  were  not  dry  and  system- 
atic, but  flowed  from  the  present  views 
and  feelings  of  his  own  mind.  He  had  a 
remarkable  talent  of  expressing  the  most 
important  truths  with   simplicity  and 


energy ;  and  his  discourses  were  sometimes 
truly  apostolic,  forcing  conviction  on  the 
hearers  in  spite  of  the  most  determined 
opposition.  As  a  husband,  a  father,  and 
a  friend,  his  character  was  amiable.  Mrs. 
Wesley  brought  him  five  children,  of 
whom  two  sons  and  a  daughter  are  still 
living.  The  sons  discovered  a  taste  for 
music,  and  a  fine  musical  ear,  at  an  early 
period  of  infancy,  which  excited  general 
amazement;  and  are  now  justly  admired 
by  the  best  judges  for  their  talents  in 
that  pleasing  art.— Whitehead,  John, 
1793,  Life  of  the  Rev.  Charles  Wesley,  vol. 
L,  p.  227. 

The  character  of  Mr.  Charles  Wesley 
has  been  beautifully  drawn  by  one  of  his 
daughters,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend.  In 
speaking  of  some  remarks  made  by  a  cer- 
tain author  in  reference  to  her  deceased 
father,  she  says:  "Mr.  Moore  seems  to 
think  that  my  father  preferred  rest  to 
going  about  doing  good.  He  had  a  rising 
family,  and  considered  it  his  duty  to  con- 
fine his  labors  to  Bristol  and  London, 
where  he  labored  most  sedulously  in  min- 
isterial affairs,  and  judged  that  it  was  in- 
cumbent upon  him  to  watch  over  the  youth 
of  his  sons,  especially  in  a  profession  which 
nature  so  strongly  pointed  out,  but  which 
was  peculiarly  dangerous.  He  always 
said  his  brother  was  formed  to  lead,  and 
he  to  follow.  No  one  ever  rejoiced  more 
in  another's  superiority,  or  was  more  will- 
ing to  confess  it.  Mr.  Moore's  statement 
of  his  absence  of  mind  in  his  younger 
days  is  probably  correct,  as  he  was  born 
impetuous,  and  ardent,  and  sincere.  But 
what  a  change  must  have  taken  place 
when  we  were  born !  For  his  exactness 
in  his  accounts,  in  his  manuscripts,  in  his 
bureau,  &c.,  equalled  my  uncle's.  Not 


LIBRARY 

OF  THt 

UNIVERSITY  afllU^^CHS, 


CHARLES  WESLEY 


hugruvinj^  by  Dick,  from  an  ()iijj:iihU 

Painting  in  the  Possession  of  the  Family. 


CHARLES  WESLEY 


35 


in  his  dress  indeed ;  for  my  mother  said, 
if  she  did  not  watch  over  him,  he  might 
have  put  on  an  old  for  a  new  coat,  and 
marched  out.  Such  was  his  power  of  ab- 
straction, that  he  could  read  and  compose 
with  his  children  in  the  room,  and  visitors 
talking  around  him.  He  was  nearly  forty 
when  he  married,  and  had  eight  children, 
of  whom  we  were  the  youngest.  So  kind 
and  amiable  a  character  in  domestic  life 
can  scarcely  be  imagined.  The  tender- 
ness he  showed  in  every  weakness,  and 
the  sympathy  in  every  pain,  would  fill 
sheets  to  describe.  But  I  am  not  writing 
his  eulogy ;  only  I  must  add,  with  so  warm 
a  temper,  he  never  was  heard  to  speak  an 
angry  word  to  a  servant,  or  known  to 
strike  a  child  in  anger, — and  he  knew  no 
guile!"— GoRRiE,  P.  Douglass,  1853,  The 
Lives  of  Eminent  Methodist  Ministers,  p.  47. 

In  studying  their  biographies,  one  can- 
not well  avoid  the  conclusion  that  though 
Charles  was  less  aggressive  than  his 
brother,  and  though  his  fame,  in  part  on 
this  account,  has  been  wholly  overshad- 
owed by  that  of  the  latter,  his  was  the 
steadier  and  better  rounded  character  of 
the  two ;  and  that  to  him  their  common  suc- 
cess as  religious  leaders  is  largely  due. 
Charles  was  the  forerunner  in  the  move- 
ment at  Oxford,  and  again,  though  only  by  a 
few  days,  in  his  conversion  "  ;  and  above 
all,  Charles  was  the  hymn-writer  of  Method- 
ism, and  the  influence  of  the  service  of 
song  upon  the  Methodist  movement  it  is 
almost  im possible  to  exaggerate.  Charles 
Wesley,  it  is  said,  wrote  more  than  six 
thousand  hymns ;  and  though  in  this  vast 
flux  of  words  he  sometimes— nay,  often — 
"ran  to  emptins,"  there  are  among  his 
sacred  songs  some  which  appeal  to  people 
of  every  faith,  and  promise  to  live  as  long 
as  Divine  service  is  continued.  The 
strong  musical  bias  in  his  blood  is  shown 
in  the  fact  that  his  son  Samuel  played  on 
the  organ  at  three,  and  composed  an  ora- 
torio at  eight.— Potts,  William,  1897, 
Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature,  ed. 
Warner,  vol.  xxvii,  p.  15791. 

Tender  and  sensitive,  his  family  affec- 
tions were  strong ;  his  warmth  of  temper 
never  led  him  into  angry  heats;  to  his 
brother  he  looked  up  with  a  loving  rever- 
ence, undisturbed  by  their  differences.  In 
defensive  repartee  he  was  as  ready, 
though  not  so  pungent,  as  his  brother. 
He    had  no   faculty  for  government. 


Though  he  had  plenty  of  courage,  he  was 
swayed  by  conflicting  feelings,  with  the 
result  that  his  half-measures  conveyed  an 
impression  of  timidity. — Gordon,  Alex- 
ander, 1899,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol,  LX,  p.  300. 

HYMNS 

I  do  not  at  all  desire  to  discourage  your 
publication.  But  when  you  tell  me  you 
write,  not  for  the  critic,  but  for  the  Chris- 
tian, it  occurs  to  my  mind  that  you  might 
as  well  write  for  both ;  or  in  such  a  manner 
that  the  critic  may,  by  your  writing,  be 
moved  to  turn  Christian,  rather  than  the 
Christian  turn  critic.  I  should  be  wanting, 
I  fear,  in  speaking  freely  and  friendly 
upon  this  matter,  if  I  did  not  give  it  as 
my  humble  opinion  that,  before  you  pub- 
lish, you  might  lay  before  some  experi- 
enced Christian  critics  the  design  which 
you  are  upon.  But  I  speak  this  with  all 
submission.  It  is  very  likely  that,  in 
these  matters,  I  may  want  a  spur  more 
than  you  want  a  bridle. — Byrom,  John, 
1738,  Letter  to  Charles  Wesley,  March  3. 

In  these  Hymns  there  is  no  doggerel, 
no  botches,  nothing  put  in  to  patch  up 
the  rhyme,  no  feeble  expletives.  Here  is 
nothing  turgid  or  bombast  on  the  one 
hand,  or  low  and  creeping  on  the  other. 
Here  are  no  cant  expressions,  no  words 
without  meaning.  Here  are  (allow  me  to 
say)  but  the  purity,  the  strength,  and  the 
elegance  of  the  English  language,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  utmost  simplicity  and 
plainness,  suited  to  every  capacity. — 
Wesley,  John,  1779,  ed..  Collection  of 
Hymns,  Preface,  Oct.  20. 

I  write  this,  my  dear  Mary,  in  a  situa- 
tion that  would  make  your  soul  freeze 
with  horror ;  it  is  on  the  last  projecting 
point  of  rock  of  the  ''Land's  End,"  up- 
wards of  two  hundred  feet  perpendicular 
above  the  sea,  which  is  raging  and  roaring 
most  tremendously,  threatening  destruc- 
tion to  myself  and  the  narrow  point  of  rock 
on  which  I  am  now  sitting.  On  my  right 
hand  is  the  Bristol  Channel,  and  before 
me  the  vast  Atlantic  Ocean.  There  is 
not  one  inch  of  land,  from  the  place  on 
which  my  feet  rest,  to  the  vast  American 
continent!  This  is  the  place,  though 
probably  not  so  far  advanced  on  the  tre- 
mendous cliff,  where  Charles  Wesley  com- 
posed those  fine  lines, — 

'"Lo!  on  a  narrow  neck  of  land, 
Twixt  two  unbounded  seas  I  stand,"  et-c. 


36 


CHARLES  WESLEY 


The  point  of  rock  itself  is  about  three 
feet  broad  at  its  termination,  and  the 
fearless  adventurer  will  here  place  his 
foot,  in  order  to  be  able  to  say  that  he 
has  been  on  the  uttermost  inch  of  land  in 
the  British  empire  westward ;  and  on  this 
spot  the  foot  of  your  husband  now  rests, 
while  he  writes  the  following  words  in  the 
same  hymn : 

''O  God!  my  inmost  soul  convert, 
And  deeply  on  my  thoughtful  heart 

Eternal  things  impress ; 
Give  me  to  feel  their  solemn  weight, 
And  tremble  on  the  brink  of  fate, 
And  wake  to  righteousness." 

—Clarke,  Adam,  1819,  Letter  to  his 
Wife,  Oct.  nth. 

Next  to  Dr.  Watts,  as  a  hymn-writer,  un- 
doubtedly stands  the  Rev.  Charles  Wes- 
ley. He  was  probably  the  author  of  a 
greater  number  of  compositions  of  this 
kind,  with  less  variety  of  matter  or  man- 
ner, than  any  other  man  of  genius  that 
can  be  named. — Montgomery,  James, 
1825,  The  Christian  Psalmist,  Introduc- 
tion. 

It  is  as  a  writer  of  devotional  poetry, 
that  Mr.  Charles  Wesley  will  be  perma- 
nently remembered,  and  that  hiss  name 
will  live  in  the  annals  of  the  Church.  In 
the  composition  of  hymns  adapted  to 
Christian  worship,  he  certainly  has  no 
equal  in  the  English  language,  and  is  per- 
haps superior  to  every  other  uninspired 
man  that  ever  lived.  It  does  not  appear, 
that  any  person  beside  himself,  in  any 
section  of  the  universal  Church,  has  either 
v^ritten  so  many  hymns,  or  hymns  of  such 
surpassing  excellence.  .  .  .  During 
the  last  fifty  years  few  Collections  of 
Hymns,  designed  for  the  use  of  evangelical 
congregations,  whether  belonging  to  the 
Established  Church,  or  to  the  Dissenting 
bodies,  have  been  made,  without  a  consider- 
able number  of  his  compositions,  which  are 
admired  in  proportion  as  the  people  are 
spiritually-minded.  His  hymns  are,  there- 
fore, extensively  used  in  secret  devotion, 
in  family-worship,  and  in  public  religious 
assemblies.  Every  Sabbath  day,  myriads 
of  voices  are  lifted  up,  and  utter,  in  the 
hallowed  strains  which  he  has  supplied, 
the  feelings  of  penitence,  of  faith,  of 
grateful  love,  and  joyous  hope,  with 
which  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Lord  and  Giver 
of  life,  has  inspired  them ;  and  are  thus 
in  a  course  of  training  for  the  more  per- 
fect worship  of  heaven.  ...  As  long  as 


the  language  in  which  they  are  written  is 
understood,  and  enlightened  piety  is  cher- 
ished, the  hymns  of  this  venerable  man 
will  be  used  as  a  handmaid  to  devotion. 
—Jackson,  Thomas,  1841,  Life  of  Charles 
Wesley. 

Charles  and  John  Wesley  seemed  to  ful- 
fill toward  their  great  family  of  disciples 
the  offices  commonly  assigned  to  Woman 
and  Man.  Charles  had  a  narrower,  tamer, 
less  reasoning  mind,  but  great  sweet- 
ness, tenderness,  facility  and  lyric  flow. 
"When  successful  in  effecting  the  spirit- 
ual good  of  the  most  abject,  his  feelings 
rose  to  rapture."  Soft  pity  fired  his 
heart,  and  none  seemed  so  near  to  him  as 
the  felon  and  the  malefactor,  because  for 
none  else  was  so  much  to  be  done.  His 
habitual  flow  of  sacred  verse  was  like 
the  course  of  a  full  fed  stream. — Ossoli, 
Margaret  Fuller,  1850  ?-59,  Papers  on 
Literature  and  Art,  ed.  Fuller,  p.  350. 

No  hymn-writer  is  more  intellectual: 
none  puts  more  doctrine,  thought,  solid 
mental  pabulum,  into  his  poems.  And 
certainly  none  is  more  awakening  and  edi- 
fying ;  few  others,  in  fact,  approach  him 
in  native  moral  earnestness,  force,  fire; 
and  none  possesses  a  higher,  purer,  more 
consistent,  uniform,  and  positive  spirit- 
uality. How  and  why  then  does  it  hap- 
pen, all  this  .being  so,  that  his  writings 
are  not  more  largely  known,  honored,  and 
used  ?  ...  It  has  been  considered  a 
difficult  point  to  decide  which  is  entitled 
to  stand  first  among  hymn-writers,  Charles 
Wesley  or  Dr.  Watts.  The  difficulty  lies 
simply  here,  that  Dr.  Watts  was  merely  a 
hymn-writer,  and  could  and  did,  most  nat- 
urally, put  all  his  powers  within  the 
proper  limits  of  a  song  suited  to  public 
worship.  The  only  question  to  ask  rela- 
tive to  anything  of  his  is,  is  it  good 
enough?  Whereas  twenty  reasons  may 
unfit  Wesley's  poems  for  that  use.  If  a 
piece  of  the  Doctor's  is  unfit  to  sing,  it  is 
probably  unfit  to  read:  not  so  with  the 
other ;  for  Wesley  was  a  poet  in  a  larger 
sense.  Their  relative  claims  as  poets  will 
soon  be  settled,  by  the  good  taste  of  com- 
petent judges,  whenever  Wesley's  poetry 
becomes  sufficiently  known.  Dr.  Watts's 
confession  that  his  rival's  ''Wrestling 
Jacob"  was  worth  all  his  own  effusions, 
proves  nothing  but  the  modesty  and  gen- 
erosity of  the  speaker;  but  there  are 
other  grounds  for  believing  that  Wesley 


CHARLES  WESLEY 


37 


excelled  him  in  originality,  variety,  in- 
tensity, and  elevation.  Dr.  Watts  has 
been  appreciated  within  the  church  at 
large ;  Charles  Wesley  has  not.  Let  him 
not  be  judged  further  than  as  he  is  known. 
It  is  an  easy  task  to  compare  our  poet 
with  the  other  more  eminent  hymnists. 
Doddridge  and  Steele  are  diluted  repro- 
ductions of  Dr.  Watts.  Montgomery,  a 
professed  and  lifelong  poet,  is  inferior  to 
Wesley  in  all  the  qualities  mentioned 
above,  and  in  no  respect  above  him  in 
propriety,  harmony,  and  grace  of  style. 
Heber,  the  most  elegant  and  mellifluous 
of  sacred  poets,  is  not  more  polished  and 
fluent  than  his  Methodist  predecessor; 
nor  has  he  anything  of  his  solidity, 
strength,  and  fire.  Cowper  is  the  greatest 
name  in  the  hymn  books;  but  Cowper's 
best  poems,  which  are  very  few,  are  but 
equal,  not  superior,  to  Wesley's  best, 
which  are  very  many.  Toplady  approaches 
most  nearly  to  the  Methodist  poet;  but 
Toplady  borrowed  his  inspiration  from 
Wesley,  and  reproduced  his  style ;  and  it 
is  the  Calvinist's  highest  praise  that  his 
finest  pieces  are  undistinguishable  from 
those  of  his  Arminian  neighbor.  No 
other  names  in  British  sacred  lyric  poetry 
can  be  mentioned  with  that  of  Charles 
Wesley;  and  when  it  is  remembered  that 
all  these  counted  their  poems  by  dozens  or 
hundreds,  while  he  by  thousands ;  and  that 
his  thousands  were  in  power,  in  elegance, 
in  devotional  and  literary  value  above 
their  few,  we  call  him,  yet  more  confi- 
dently, great  among  poets,  and  prince  of 
English  hymnists. — Bird,  Frederic  M., 
1864,  Charles  Wesley  and  Methodist 
Hymns,  The  Bihliotheca  Sacra,  vol.  21, 
pp.  311,  317. 

In  Charles  Wesley's  verses  we  trace  the 
influence  of  his  careful  classical  training, 
though  this  is  less  manifest  than  we  might 
have  expected.  .  .  .  Neither  Wesley 
nor  Watts  has  left  any  one  great  poem. 
Wesley  will,  perhaps,  be  judged  to  have 
best  maintained  his  claim  to  the  name  of 
poet,  but  the  question  of  which  is  the  bet- 
ter hymn-writer  must  still,  we  think,  be 
leftundecided.  Even  the  greatest  admirers 
of  Charles  Wesley  admit  that  Watts  excels 
him  in  the  sweeter  flow  of  his  numbers, 
and  in  those  of  his  hymns  which  are  de- 
signed to  administer  comfort  to  the 
afiiicted. — Miller,  Josiah,  1866-69,  Sing- 
ers and  Songs  of  the  Church,  pp.  187, 188. 


I  do  not  say  that  many  of  these  songs 
possess  much  literary  merit,  but  many  of 
them  are  real  lyrics ;  they  have  that  essen- 
tial element,  song,  in  them.  The  follow- 
ing, Wrestling  Jacob",]  however,  is  a 
very  fine  poem.  That  certain  expressions 
in  it  may  not  seem  oft*ensive,it  is  necessary 
to  keep  the  allegory  of  Jacob  and  the  Angel 
in  full  view — even  better  in  view,  per- 
haps, than  the  writer  does  himself. — 
Macdonald,  George,  1868,  England's 
Antiphon,  p.  297. 

We  love  and  honor  Charles  Wesley,  not 
only  as  a  hymn  writer,  but  as  a  man  and 
a  preacher.  He  has  made  the  church  and 
the  world  forever  his  debtor.  It  is  doubt- 
ful indeed  whether  the  Methodist  church 
could  have  been  established,  it  certainly 
could  not  have  grown  and  flourished  as  it 
has  without  his  hymns.  The  author  of 
Jesus,  lover  of  my  soul,"  ''0,  for  a 
thousand  tongues  to  sing,"  ''A  charge  to 
keep  I  have, "  and  others  of  this  character, 
need  have  no  fear  of  being  eclipsed ;  nor 
should  his  friends  and  admirers  betray  any 
want  of  confidence  in  the  justness  of  the 
claims  they  make  in  his  behalf,  by  being 
over-sensitive  at  honors  paid  at  another 
shrine.— Robinson,  R.  T.,  1868,  Dr. 
Watts's  Hymns,  Hours  at  Home,  vol.  7, 
p.  519. 

Charles  Wesley,  with  higher  poetical 
gifts  than  his  brother,  produced  several 
of  the  finest  hymns  known  to  the  language. 
His  ''Jesus,  lover  of  my  soul,"  has  no 
equal  in  modern,  perhaps  in  ancient,  sa- 
cred song ;  and  the  poet  has  expressed  in 
tuneful  numbers  the  last  aspiration  of  all 
undoubting  faith. — Lawrence,  Eugene, 
1872,  John  Wesley  and  his  Times,  Har- 
per's Magazine,  vol.  45,  p.  119. 

Charles  Wesley,  a  Christ-Church  stu- 
dent, came  to  add  sweetness  to  this  sud- 
den and  startling  light.  He  was  the 
"sweet  singer"  of  the  movement.  His 
hymns  expressed  the  fiery  conviction  of  its 
converts  in  lines  so  chaste  and  beautiful 
that  its  more  extravagant  features  disap- 
peared. The  wild  throes  of  hysteric  en- 
thusiasm passed  into  a  passion  for  hymn- 
singing,  and  a  new  musical  impulse  was 
aroused  in  the  people  which  gradu- 
ally changed  the  face  of  public  devotion 
throughout  England. — Green,  John  Rich- 
ard, 1874,  A  Short  History  of  the  English 
People,  p.  708. 

What  John  Wesley  said  of  Charles 


38 


CHARLES  WESLEY 


Wesley's  Hymns  on  the  Nativity  might 
well  have  been  extended  to  many  dozens. 
''Omit  one  or  two  of  them  and  I  will 
thank  you.  They  are  namby-pambical." 
But  Charles  nevertheless  had  within  him 
a  poetic  fervour,  perhaps  a  scholar-like 
polish,  which  his  brother  wanted.  These 
gifts  showed  themselves  in  the  closer 
tenacity  with  which  he  clung  to  the  Church 
of  his  fathers,  and  also  gave  to  his  hymns  a 
literary  character  which  redeems  many  of 
them  from  the  pedestrian  and  argumenta- 
tive style  which  disfigures  so  large  a  part 
of  his  own  and  his  brother's  poems.  Sec- 
ondly, there  is  a  redeeming  quality  in  the 
subjects  themselves  round  which  hymns 
have  clustered:  although  it  is  true  that 
polemics  and  over-strained  metaphors  and 
sounding  words  are  dangerous  pitfalls,  yet 
when  a  genuine  religious  soul  strikes  on 
one  of  the  greater  themes  of  religion, 
either  touching  the  simpler  emotions  of 
the  human  heart  or  the  more  unquestion- 
able doctrines  of  Christianity,  is  struck  a 
spark  which  not  unfrequently  rises  into 
true  and  lasting  poetry. — Stanley,  Ar- 
thur Penrhyn,  1880,  English  Poets,  ed. 
Ward,  vol.  iii,  p.  258. 

It  is  as  a  hymn  writer  that  the  name  of 
Charles  Wesley  will  live,  and  live  for  long. 
It  is  said  that  he  composed  altogether 
above  six.  thousand  hymns.  He  was 
writing  and  publishing  them  almost  to  the 
day  of  his  death.  They  are  of  all  kinds, 
and  for  all  occasions.  He  contributed 
the  great  majority  of  the  hymns  in  the 
Wesleyan  Collection.  From  the  year  1741 
onwards,  he  published  very  many  volumes 
of  hymns.  Some  are  of  remarkable  ex- 
cellence, and  are  justly  popular  with  nearly 
all  bodies  of  Christians.  It  is  said  that 
some  were  written  on  cards,  as  he  rode 
on  horseback.  At  times,  he  would  hasten 
home,  and  rush  for  pen  and  ink,  that  he 
might  put  down  the  words  which  were 
burning  within  him. — Prescott,  J.  E., 
1883,  Christian  Hymns  and  Hymn  Writers, 
p.  122. 

Among  our  English  hymnists,  the  Wes- 
leys — Charles  and  John — shine  as  twin 
stars,  and  stars  also  of  the  first  magni- 
tude. .  .  .  Charles  composed  the 
multitude  of  beautiful  hymns  that  bear 
the  name  of  Wesley.  He  at  least  equalled 
Watts,  in  the  average  excellence  of  his 
hymns ;  in  these  respects,  he  stands  fore- 
most among  the  priesthood  of  Christian 


minstrelsy.— Saunders,  Frederick,  1885, 
Eveni7igs  with  the  Sacred  Poets,  pp.  309, 
310. 

It  was  Charles  who  sang  the  doctrines 
of  the  Methodists  into  the  hearts  of  believ- 
ers— and  his  evangelical  fervor  is  such 
that  he  has  made  all  Christendom  his  par- 
ish in  a  grander  sense  even  than  his  ad- 
ministrative brother,  John. — Duffield, 
Samuel  Willoughby,  1886,  English 
Hymns,  p.  350. 

'*Jesu,  Lover  of  my  Soul."  This  is 
Charles  Wesley's* masterpiece.  *'I  would 
rather  have  written  this  hymn,"  says 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  "than  to  have  the 
fame  of  all  the  kings  that  ever  sat  on  the 
earth.  .  .  .  That  hymn  will  go  on 
singing  until  the  last  trump  brings  forth 
the  angel-band ;  and  then,  I  think,  it  will 
mount  up  on  some  lip  to  the  very  presence 
of  God."  .  .  .  Round  this  hymn  are 
gathering  the  delightful  traditions  which 
convert  the  driest  facts  into  fascinating 
fairy  tales.  There  is  no  end  to  the  stories 
which  good  Methodists  will  tell  you  as 
to  how  this  hymn  has  helped  poor  mortals 
in  the  hour  and  article  of  death.  Ship- 
wrecked captains  read  it  before  they  perish 
in  the  deep.  A  mother  and  child  lashed 
upon  a  spar  float  down  the  Channel,  the 
poor  woman  lifts  her  feeble  voice  singing 
this  hymn,  and  she  is  rescued.  Passen- 
gers on  board  a  steamer  in  the  heart  of 
a  thunderstorm  allay  panic  and  prepare 
for  death  amid  blinding  sheets  of  flame 
and  bursts  of  thunder  by  raising  the 
familiar  tune.  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher  dies 
listening  to  the  first  two  lines  as  they 
were  read  to  him  by  his  wife.  It  is,  they 
say,  the  finest  heart  hymn  in  the  English 
language.  As  befits  a  poem  so  freely  in- 
crusted  with  traditions,  it  has  a  suitable 
legendary  origin.  It  is  said  that ' ' Charles 
Wesley  was  sitting  at  his  desk  when  a 
bird  pursued  by  a  hawk  flew  into  the  open 
window.  The  baffled  hawk  did  not  dare 
to  follow,  and  the  poet  took  his  pen  and 
wrote  this  immortal  song."— Stead, Wil- 
liam T.,  1897,  Hymns  That  Have  Helped, 
pp.  151,  153. 

Whatever  subject  disturbed  the  public 
mind,  his  prolific  muse  took  up,  and  a 
hymn  or  a  poem  was  the  result.  ,  In  1749 
a  collection  of  hymns  and  sacred  poems  in 
two  volumes  was  published,  with  the 
name  of  Charles  Wesley  alone  as  the  au- 
thor.   Many  thousand  singing  marvelously 


CHARLES  WESLEY 


39 


fervent  descriptions  of  religious  experi- 
ence in  every  stage  from  conviction  to  the 
highest  attainments  of  Christian  life — the 
whole  sustained  by  a  framework  of  doc- 
trine rigorously  clear  and  logical  in  defini- 
tion, expressed  in  vigorous  English— pro- 
duced an  effect  hardly  second  to  that  of 
the  preaching.  It  was  alike  instructive 
and  inspiring,  afforded  the  materials  for 
maintaining  services  in  the  absence  of 
preachers,  and  attracted  many  to  the 
meetings  who  would  never  have  been 
drawn  to  hear  any  minister,  however  re- 
nowned.— Buckley,  James  M.,  1898, 
A  History  of  Methodism  in  the  United 
States,  vol.  I,  p.  105. 

Among  the  many  services  rendered  by 
Charles  Wesley  to  the  cause  of  religion, 
his  work  as  a  hymn-writer  stands  pre- 
eminent. Exercising  an  hereditary  gift, 
he  had  early  written  verses  both  in  Latin 
and  English,  but  the  opening  of  the  vein 
of  his  spiritual  genius  was  a  consequence 
of  the  inward  crisis  of  Whit-Sunday, 
1738.  Two  days  later  his  hymn  upon  his 
conversion  was  written.  He  doubted  at 
first  whether  he  had  done  right  in  even 
showing  it  to  a  friend.  The  first  collec- 
tion of  hymns  issued  by  John  Wesley 
(1737)  contains  nothing  by  Charles. 
From  1739  to  1746,  the  brothers  issued 
eight  collections  in  their  joint  names. 
Some  difficulty  has  been  felt  in  assigning 
to  each  his  respective  compositions.  To 
John  are  usually  given  all  translations 
from  German  originals,  as  it  is  doubtful 
whether  Charles  could  read  that  language ; 
and  if  this  is  not  conclusive  (as  the  origi- 
nals might  have  been  interpreted  for  him), 
a  strong  argument  may  be  found  in  his 
constant  inability  to  write  on  subjects 
proposed  to  him,  and  not  spontaneously 
suggested  by  his  own  mind.  All  original 
hymns,  not  expressly  claimed  by  John  in 
his  journals  and  other  writings,  are  usu- 
ally given  to  Charles.  But  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  these  were  edited  by  John, 
who  adapted  his  brother's  pieces  for  pub- 
lic use,  both  by  omission  and  by  combi- 
nation. Charles  Wesley's  untouched  work 
is  to  be  seen  in  publications  issued  in  his 
sole  name,  and  in  posthumous  prints  from 
his  manuscript. — Gordon,  Alexander, 
1899,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography , 
vol.  LX,  p.  301. 

The  poet  of  the  movement,  the  sweet 
singer''  of  Methodism,  was,  there  is  no 


gainsaying,  Charles  Wesley.  John  might 
be— he  was — a  competent  translator,  a 
correct  and  elegant  verse-writer.  But 
Charles  was  more ;  he  had  flaming  in  him 
something  of  the  true  poetic  fire.  Him- 
self familiar  with  the  varied  phases  of 
Methodist  experience  he  could  describe 
with  equal  truth  and  equal  sympathy  the 
feelings  of  a  weeping  sinner  and  a  rejoic- 
ing saint ;  and  all  the  intermediate  emo- 
tions were  to  him  as  A,  B,  C.  Methodism, 
John  Wesley  defined  as  religion  of  the 
heart.  Charles  gave  to  the  Methodist 
people  a  transfused  and  transfigured  the- 
ology, theology  rememberable  as  verse. 
Not  didactic  verse,  though  didaxis  was  in 
it,  but  verse  that  was  passionate — per- 
haps too  passionate.  .  .  .  If  another 
criticism  may  be  permitted,  it  is  that 
many  of  Charles  Wesley's  hymns  are  bet- 
ter adapted  for  private  devotional  study 
than  for  public  worship.  They  are  con- 
cerned with  the  fears  and  the  failings, 
the  hopes  and  the  aspirations  of  the  indi- 
vidual. No  doubt,  congregations  are 
made  up  of  individuals,  but  the  individuals 
that  make  up  congregations  are  not  Wes- 
leys,  and  it  is  undesirable  that  they  should 
be  asked  to  express,  as  /  or  me,  what  they 
probably  do  not  feel  and  may  not  sympa- 
thise with.— Snell,  F.  J.,  1900,  Wesley 
and  Methodism,  pp.  224,  228. 

GENERAL 
As  a  hymnist,  this  author  is  widely 
famous,  though  either  beyond  or  beneath 
his  merit,  according  to  sectarian  accidents 
of  creed  and  name;  but  as  a  poet,  he  is 
scarce  heard  of  or  suspected;  for  the 
critical  world  is  yet  but  half-persuaded 
that  a  hymn  can  be  poetry.  To  rem- 
edy this  injustice,  which  lies  alike  on  the 
fame  of  him  departed,  and  on  the  living 
that  are  robbed  of  many  a  gem  of  sacred 
song,  is  in  some  degree  attempted  in  this 
book :  for  it  is  believed  that,  whatever 
eccentricities  of  temper,  habit,  or  opinion 
may  have  marred  the  Methodist  preacher's 
verses,  there  is  in  them  the  genuine  fire, 
and  that  in  such  portion  as  has  been  be- 
stowed on  few  that  used  the  English 
tongue.  .  .  .  We  should  take  the 
Methodist  poet,  as  it  is  attempted  to 
present  him  here :  fairly,  yet  at  his  best ; 
with  appreciation,  but  discriminating; 
not  allowing  sympathy  and  admiration  to 
run  into  blind  worship,  nor  difference  of 
creed  to  hide  from  us  his  merits  and  his 


40 


WESLEY— MICKLE 


uses.    There  does  not  exist  in  America  or  can  acknowledge  tfeose  obligations  best 

England  that  Christian  Church,  sect,  or  by  increasing  them — Bird,  Frederic  M., 

man,   that  can  afford   to  forget    his  1866,  Charles  Wesley  seen  in  his  Finer 

obligations  to  Charles  Wesley ;  and  we  and  Less  Familiar  Poems,  pp.  ill,  vi. 

William  Julius  Mickle 

1735-1788 

Born  in  Langholm  manse,  and  educated  at  Edinburgh  High  School,  failed  as  a 
brewer,  and  turned  author  in  London.  In  1765  he  published  a  poem,  ''The  Concu- 
bine" (or  ''Syr  Martyn"),  and  in  1771-75  his  version  rather  than  translation  of  the 
"Lusiad"  of  Camoens.  In  1779  he  went  to  Lisbon  as  secretary  to  Commodore  John- 
stone, but  his  last  years  were  spent  in  London.  His  ballad  of  "Cumnor  Hall"  (which 
suggested  "Kenilworth"  to  Scott)  is  poor  stuff,  but  "There's  nae  luck  about  the 
house"  is  assured  of  immortality.  See  Life  by  Sim  prefixed  to  Mickle's  Poems  (1806). 
— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary^  p,  655. 


PERSONAL 
Mickle  was  a  man  of  genius,  who  had 
ventured  upon  the  chance  of  living  by  his 
literary  labours, — an  experiment  always 
perilous,  generally  injurious,  and  often 
fatal,  in  the  worst  acceptation  of  the 
word.  Mickle,  however,  did  not  overrate 
the  powers  which  he  was  conscious  of  pos- 
sessing, and  knew  that  he  could  rely  upon 
himself  for  their  due  exertion;  and  he 
had  sufficient  worldly  prudence  to  look 
out  for  a  subject  which  was  likely  to  ob- 
tain notice  and  patronage.  That  he  was 
actuated  by  this  motive  in  fixing  upon  the 
Lusiad,  appears  evidently  by  the  manner 
in  which  his  translation  is  executed,  and 
the  matter  with  which  it  is  accompanied. 
In  saying  this,  no  reproach  is  intended  to 
a  man  whom  we  admire  and  respect; 
whose  memory  is  without  a  spot,  and 
whose  name  will  live  among  the  English 
poets. — SouTHEY,  Robert,  1822,  Life  and 
Writings  @f  Camoens,  Quarterly  Review, 
vol.  27,  p.  29. 

THE  MARINER'S  WIFE 

Mickle  assisted  in  Evans's  "Collection 
of  Old  Ballads"— in  which  "Cumnor  Hall" 
and  other  pieces  of  his  first  appeared ;  and 
though  in  this  style  of  composition  he  did 
not  copy  the  direct  simplicity  and  un- 
sophisticated ardour  of  the  real  old  bal- 
lads, he  had  much  of  their  tenderness  and 
pathos.  A  still  stronger  proof  of  this  is 
afforded  by  a  Scottish  song,  "The  Mari- 
ner's Wife, "  but  better  known  as  "There's 
nae  Luck  about  the  House,"  which  was 
claimed  by  a  poor  school-mistress,  named 
Jean  Adams,  who  died  in  the  town's  Hos- 
pital, Glasgow,  in  1765.  It  is  probable 
that  Jean  Adams  had  written  some  song 


with  the  same  burthen  ("There's  nae 
luck  about  the  house"),  but  the  popular 
lyric  referred  to  seems  to  have  been  the 
composition  of  Mickle.  An  imperfect, 
altered,  and  corrected  copy  was  found 
among  his  manuscripts  after  his  death ;  and 
his  widow  being  applied  to,  confirmed  the 
external  evidence  in  his  favour,  by  an  ex- 
press declaration  that  her  husband  had 
said  the  song  was  his  own,  and  that  he 
had  explained  to  her  the  Scottish  words. 
It  is  the  fairest  flower  in  his  poetical 
chaplet.  The  delineation  of  humble  matri- 
monial happiness  and  affection  which  the 
song  presents,  is  almost  unequalled. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of 
English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

Mickle's  ballad  of  "Cumnor  Hall," 
which  suggested  to  Scott  the  groundwork 
of  his  romance  of  "Kenilworth,"  is  a 
tame  production  compared  with  the  charm- 
ing little  poem  of  "The  Mariner's  Wife, " 
in  regard  to  which  doubt  has  been  ex- 
pressed whether  Mickle  was  really  its  au- 
thor. It  first  appeared  as  a  broad-sheet, 
sold  in  the  streets  of  Edinburgh.  Mickle 
did  not  include  it  in  an  edition  of  his 
poems,  published  by  himself;  but  Allan 
Cunningham  claims  it  for  him  on  the 
ground  that  a  copy  of  the  poem,  with 
alterations  marking  the  text  as  in  process 
of  formation,  was  found  among  Mickle's 
papers,  and  in  his  handwriting;  also,  that 
his  widow  declared  that  he  said  the  song 
was  his.  Beattie  added  a  stanza,  which 
mars  its  flow,  and  is  omitted  in  our  ver- 
sion. The  poem  was  claimed  by  Jean 
Adams,  a  poor  school-mistress,  who  died 
in  1765.  Chambers  thinks  that  it  must, 
on  the  whole,  be  credited  to  Mickle. 


WILLIAM  JULIUS  MICKLE 


41 


Dean  Trench  does  not  feel  at  liberty  to 
disturb  the  ascription  of  this  exquisite 
domestic  lyric"  to  Mickle.  Burns,  not 
too  strongly,  characterized  it  as  ''one  of 
the  most  beautiful  songs  in  the  Scotch  or 
any  other  language."— Sargent,  Epes, 
1880-81,  Harper's  Cyclopcedia  of  British 
and  American  Poetry,  p.  217. 

To  Mickle  has  been  attributed  the  Scot- 
tish song  "There's  na'e  luck  about  the 
hoose,"  which  of  itself  is  sufficient  to  es- 
tablish a  poetical  reputation.  Internal 
evidence  is  rather  against  the  likelihood  of 
his  authorship  and  in  favour  of  that  of 
Jean  Adams  (1710-1765),  but  there  is  no 
definite  external  evidence,  and  the  doubt 
on  the  subject  cannot  be  resolved. — 
Bayne,  Thomas,  1894,  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  vol.  xxxvii,  p.  337. 

One  cannot  be  quite  sure  that  Mickle 
wrote  this  delightful  poem,  but  I  like  to 
believe  he  did,  rather  than  to  keep  his 
name  out  of  the  collection  altogether,  for 
to  my  knowledge  he  has  achieved  nothing 
else  to  come  near  it. — Crawfurd,  Os- 
wald, 1896,  ed.,  Lyrical  Verse  from 
Elizabeth  to  Victoria,  p.  432,  note, 

LUSIAD 

1*775 

Nor  let  the  critic,  if  he  finds  the  mean- 
ing of  Camoens  in  some  instances  altered, 
imagine  that  he  has  found  a  blunder.  It 
was  not  to  gratify  the  dull  few,  whose 
greatest  pleasure  in  reading  a  translation 
is  to  see  what  the  author  exactly  says, — 
it  was  to  give  a  poem  that  might  live 
in  the  English  language, — which  was 
the  ambition  of  the  translator. — Mickle, 
William  Julius,  1775,  Note  to  the  Lusiad. 

A  man  of  genius,  and  of  great  poetical 
powers.  He  translated  the  "Lusiad"  of 
Camoens  in  a  free  paraphrastick  manner, 
but  with  the  spirit  of  an  original  poet. 
I  never  could  account  for  the  neglect 
of  so  very  poetical  a  work. — Mathias, 
Thomas  James,  1794-98,  The  Pursuits  of 
Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  55. 

No  poet  perhaps  has  ever  been  so 
greatly  indebted  to  a  Translator  as  Cam- 
oens, whose  "Lusiad,"  in  the  very  elegant 
and  spirited  version  of  Mr.  Mickle,  has 
perfectly  the  air  of  an  English  original ; 
its  defects  are  concealed  or  mitigated, 
while  its  beauties  catch  double  lustre  from 
the  British  dress. — Drake,  Nathan, 
1798-1820,  Literary  Hours,  vol.  ii,  No.  29, 
p.  122. 


Mickle's  version  of  the  Lusiad  offers 
an  affecting  instance  of  the  melancholy 
fears  which  often  accompany  the  progress 
of  works  of  magnitude,  undertaken  by 
men  of  genius.  Five  years  he  had  buried 
himself  in  a  farmhouse,  devoted  to  the 
solitary  labour ;  and  he  closes  his  preface 
with  the  fragment  of  a  poem,  whose  stan- 
zas have  perpetuated  all  the  tremblings 
and  the  emotions,  whose  unhappy  influ- 
ence the  author  had  experienced  through 
the  long  work.  Thus  pathetically  he  ad- 
dresses the  Muse : — 

— Well  thy  meed  repays  thy  worthless  toil ; 
Upon  thy  houseless  head  pale  want  descends 
In  bitter  shower;  and  taunting  scorn  still 
rends 

And  wakes  thee  trembling  from  thy  golden 
dream : 

In  vetchy  bed,  or  loathly  dungeon  ends 
Thy  idled  lif  e— 

And  when,  at  length,  the  great  and  anx- 
ious labour  was  completed,  the  author 
was  still  more  unhappy  than  under  the 
former  influence  of  his  foreboding  terrors. 
The  work  is  dedicated  to  the  Duke  of 
Buccleugh.  Whether  his  Grace  had  been 
prejudiced  against  the  poetical  labour  by 
Adam  Smith,  who  had  as  little  compre- 
hension of  the  nature  of  poetry  as  becomes 
a  political  economist,  or  from  whatever 
cause,  after  possessing  it  for  six  weeks 
the  Duke  had  never  condescended  to  open 
the  volume. — Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13, 
The  Miseries  of  Successful  Authors,  Calam- 
ities of  Authors. 

The  translation  of  the  ''Lusiad"  is  that 
by  which  he  is  best  known.  In  this,  as 
in  his  original  poems,  the  expression  is 
sometimes  very  faulty;  but  he  is  never 
flat  or  insipid.  In  the  numbers,  there  is 
much  sweetness  and  freedom  :  and  though 
they  have  somewhat  of  the  masculine 
melody  of  Dryden,  yet  they  have  some- 
thing also  that  is  peculiarly  his  own.  He 
has  in  a  few  instances  enriched  the  lan- 
guage of  poetry  by  combinations  unbor- 
rowed from  any  of  his  predecessors.  It 
is  doubtful  whether  as  much  can  be  said 
for  Pope's  translation  of  Homer. — Cary, 
Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45,  Lives  of  the 
English  Poets,  p.  285. 

In  the  execution  of  his  task,  treated 
Camoens  with  as  little  ceremony  as  the 
French  used  towards  the  Italian  pictures 
which  they  re-painted  in  the  Louvre ;  but 
with  this  difference,  that  the  original  was 
not  destroyed  by  the  process,  and  that  he 


42 


WILLIAM  JULIUS  MICKLE 


undertook  nothing  more  than  he  was  well 
qualified  to  perform.  Some  things  he  kept 
out  of  sight,  others  he  softened,  others 
he  elevated  and  enriched.  Wherever  he 
thought  any  thing  could  be  inserted  with 
advantage,  he  inserted  it. — Southey, 
Robert,  1822,  Life  and  Writings  of  Cam- 
oens;  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  27,  p.  31. 

The  ''Lusiad"  is  best  known  in  England 
by  the  translation  of  Mickle,  who  has  been 
thought  to  have  done  something  more 
than  justice  to  his  author,  both  by  the 
unmeasured  eulogies  he  bestows  upon  him, 
and  by  the  more  substantial  service  of  ex- 
celling the  original  in  his  unfaithful  delin- 
eation. The  style  of  Mickle  is  certainly 
more  poetical,  according  to  our  standard, 
than  that  of  Camoens ;  that  is,  more  fig- 
urative and  emphatic :  but  it  seems  to  me 
replenished  with  common-place  phrases, 
and  is  wanting  in  the  facility  and  sweet- 
ness of  the  original ;  in  which  it  is  well 
known  that  he  has  interpolated  a  great 
deal  without  a  pretence. — Hallam,Henry, 
1837-39,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of 
Europe,  pt.  ii,  ch.  v,  par.  42. 

That  poem,  in  Mickle's  translation,  is 
as  little  like  the  work  of  Camoens  as 
Pope's  *'Iliad"  is  like  the  ^'Iliad''  of 
Homer.  Mickle  has  made  it  declamatory 
where  Camoens  is  simple,  and  all  the  rapid- 
ity of  the  narrative  is  lost  in  the  diffuse 
verses  of  the  translator. — Bryant,  Wil- 
liam Cullen,  1869,  Orations  and  Ad- 
dresses, p.  185. 

GENERAL 

Mickle^s  story  of  Syr  Martyn  is  the  most 
pleasing  of  his  original  pieces.  The  ob- 
ject of  the  narrative  is  to  exhibit  the  de- 
grading effects  of  concubinage,  in  the  his- 
tory of  an  amiable  man,  who  is  reduced 
to  despondency  and  sottishness,  under  the 
domination  of  a  beldam  and  a  slattern. 
The  defect  of  the  moral  is,  that  the  same 
evils  might  have  happened  to  Syr  Martyn 
in  a  state  of  matrimony.  The  simplicity 
of  the  tale  is  also,  unhappily,  overlaid  by 
a  weight  of  allegory  and  of  obsolete 
phraseology,  which  it  has  not  importance 
to  sustain.  Such  a  style,  applied  to  the 
history  of  a  man  and  his  housekeeper,  is 
like  building  a  diminutive  dwelling  in  all 
the  pomp  of  Gothic  architecture. — Camp- 
bell, Thomas,  1819,  Specimens  of  the 
British  Poets. 

Mickle  was  a  man  of  strong  natural 


powers,  which  he  had  not  always  properly 
under  controul.  When  he  is  satisfied  to 
describe  with  little  apparent  effort  what 
he  has  himself  felt  or  conceived,  as  in  his 
ballads  and  songs,  he  is  at  times  eminently 
happy.  He  has  generally  erred  on  the 
side  of  the  too  much,  rather  than  of  the  too 
little.  His  defect  is  not  so  much  want  of 
genius  as  of  taste.  His  thoughts  were 
forcible  and  vivid ;  but  the  words  in  which 
he  has  clothed  them,  are  sometimes  ill- 
chosen,  and  sometimes  awkardly  disposed. 
He  degenerates  occasionally  into  mere 
turgidness  and  verbosity.  .  .  .  When 
his  stanza  forced  him  to  lop  off  his  vain 
superfluity  of  words,  that  the  sense  might 
be  brought  within  a  narrow  compass,  he 
succeeded  better. — Cary,  Henry  Fran- 
cis, 1821-24-45,  Lives  of  the  English 
Poets,  pp.  281,  282. 

A  schoolfellow,  who  was  now,  like  him- 
self, a  writer's  apprentice,  recollects  the 
eagerness  with  which  he  thus  made  him- 
self master  of  Evans's  Ballads,  shortly 
after  their  publication;  and  another  of 
them,  already  often  referred  to,  remem- 
bers, in  particular,  his  rapture  with 
Mickle's  ''Cumnor  Hall,"  which  first  ap- 
peared in  that  collection.  After  the 
labours  of  the  day  were  over,"  says  Mr. 
Irving,  "we  often  walked  in  the  Meadows" 
— (a  large  field  intersected  by  formal 
alleys  of  old  trees,  adjoining  George's 
Square) — ''especially  in  the  moonlight 
nights ;  and  he  seemed  never  weary  of  re- 
peating the  first  stanza."  ...  I 
have  thought  it  worth  while  to  preserve 
these  reminiscences  of  his  companions  at 
the  time,  though  he  has  himself  stated 
the  circumstance  in  his  Preface  to  ''Kenil- 
worth. "  There  is  a  period  in  youth, ' '  he 
there  says,  ''when  the  mere  power  of  num- 
bers has  a  more  strong  effect  on  ear  and 
imagination  than  in  after  life.  At  this 
season  of  immature  taste,  the  author  was 
greatly  delighted  with  the  poems  of  Mickle 
and  Langhorne.  The  first  stanza  of 
'Cumnor  Hall'  especially  had  a  peculiar 
enchantment  for  his  youthful  ear — the 
force  of  which  is  not  yet  (1829)  entirely 
spent."  Thus  that  favourite  elegy,  after 
having  dwelt  on  his  memory  and  imagina- 
tion for  forty  years,  suggested  the  sub- 
ject of  one  of  his  noblest  romances. — 
LocKHART,  John  Gibson,  1836,  Life  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  ch.  v. 

Mickle  would  have  excelled  in  the 


MICKLE—LOGAN 


43 


Scottish  dialect,  and  in  portraying  Scottish 
life,  had  he  known  his  own  strength,  and 
trusted  to  the  impulses  of  his  heart,  in- 
stead of  his  ambition.— Wilson,  James 
Grant,  1876,  The  Poets  and  Poetry  of 
Scotland,  vol.  I,  p.  250. 

Mickle  had  not  power  to  produce  any 
long  and  sustained  work,  though  he  could, 
on  the  rare  occasions  when  he  designed  to 
be  simple  and  natural,  write  a  few  grace- 
ful and  pleasing  verses.  His  odes  of  the 
Pindaric  type  have  gone  the  way  of  nearly 


all  such  odes.  Some  of  his  songs  have 
fared  and  have  deserved  to  fare  no  better. 
If  indeed  we  could  credit  him  with  that 
exquisite  one,  ''There's  nae  luck  about 
the  house,"  it  must  be  admitted  that  he 
for  once  rose  high;  but  if  there  is  any 
force  in  internal  evidence,  scepticism  on 
that  point  is  justified.  He  has  nothing 
else  approaching  it  in  merit,  nothing  at 
all  resembling  it  in  style. — Walker, 
Hugh,  1893,  Three  Centuries  of  Scottish 
Literature^  vol,  li,  p.  119. 


John  Logan 

1748-1788 

John  Logan,  1748-1788,  a  native  of  Fala,  county  of  Edinburgh,  minister  of  South 
Leith,  1773,  displeased  his  parishoners  by  writing  for  the  stage  and  by  his  intemper- 
ance, and  removed  to  London  in  1786,  where  he  became  a  writer  for  the  ''English 
Review."  It  is  asserted  that  he  reformed  his  habits  before  his  death.  1.  "Michael 
Bruce's  Poems,"  1770.  Several  pieces  in  this  collection  are  by  Logan  and  others, 
and  some  of  Bruce's  are  omitted.  ...  2.  "Elements  of  the  Philosophy  of  His- 
tory," Part  I,  1781.  3.  "Essay  on  the  Manners  of  Asia,"  1781.  4.  "Poems," 
1781-82.  5.  "Runnimede;  a  Tragedy,"  1783.  Founded  on  the  history  of  Magna 
Charta.  6.  "Review  of  the  Principal  Charges  against  Warren  Hastings, "  1788.  7. 
"A  View  of  Ancient  History,"  &c.,  1788.  8.  "Sermons,"  1790-91.  Logan  wasa 
contributor  to,  and  a  reviser  of,  the  Psalmody  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  of  which  the 
collection  of  translations  and  paraphrases  was  first  published  in  1781. — Allibone, 
S.  Austin,  1854-58,  A  Critical  Dictionary  of  English  Literature,  vol.  i,  p.  1122. 

PERSONAL  From  one  of  his  executors,  Mr.  Donald 

Mr.  Logan,  a  clergyman  of  uncommon  Grant,  who  wrote  the  life  prefixed  to  his 
learning,  taste,  and  ingenuity,  but  who    poems,  I  heard  of  the  state  of  his  numer- 


cannot  easily  submit  to  the  puritanical 
spirit  of  this  country,  quits  his  charge 
and  proposes  to  settle  in  London,  where 
he  will  probably  exercise  what  may  be 
called  the  trade  of  a  man  of  letters.  He 
has  published  a  few  poems,  of  which  sev- 
eral have  great  merit,  and  which  are  prob- 
ably not  unknown  to  you.  He  has  like- 
wise published  a  tragedy,  which  I  cannot 
say  I  admire  in  the  least.  He  has  another 
in  manuscript,  founded  and  almost  trans- 
lated from  a  French  drama,  which  is  much 
better.  But  the  best  of  all  his  works 
which  I  have  seen  are  some  lectures  upon 
universal  history,  which  were  read  here 
some  years  ago,  but  which,  notwithstand- 
ing they  were  approved  and  even  admired 
by  some  of  the  best  and  most  impartial 
judges,  were  run  down  by  the  prevalence 
of  a  hostile  literary  faction,  to  the  lead- 
ers of  which  he  had  imprudently  given 
some  personal  olfence.  Give  me  leave 
to  recommend  him  most  earnestly  to  your 
countenance  and  protection.  —  Smith, 
Adam,  1785,  Letter  to  Andrew  Strahan. 


ousMSS. ;  the  scattered,  yet  warm  embers 
of  the  unhappy  bard.  Several  tragedies, 
and  one  on  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  abound- 
ing with  all  that  domestic  tenderness  and 
poetic  sensibility  which  formed  the  soft 
and  natural  feature  of  his  muse ;  these, 
with  minor  poems,  thirty  lectures  on  the 
Roman  History,  and  portions  of  a  period- 
ical paper,  were  the  wrecks  of  genius !  He 
resided  here,  little  known  out  of  a  very 
private  circle,  and  perished  in  his  fortieth 
year,  not  of  penury,  but  of  a  broken  heart. 
Such  noble  and  well-founded  expectations 
of  fortune  and  fame,  all  the  plans  of  lit- 
erary ambition  overturned:  His  genius, 
with  all  its  delicacy,  its  spirit,  and  its  ele- 
gance, became  a  prey  to  that  melancholy 
which  constituted  so  large  a  portion  of 
it. — Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13,  Literary 
Scotchmen,  Calamities  of  Authors. 

His  connection  with  the  stage  was 
deemed  improper  in  a  clergyman.  His 
literary  pursuits  interfered  with  his  pas- 
toral diligence ;  and,  what  was  worse,  he 
was  constitutionally  subject  to  fits  of 


44 


JOHN  LOGAN 


depression,  from  which  he  took  refuge  in 
inebriety.  Whatever  his  irregularities 
were  (for  they  have  been  differently 
described),  he  was  obliged  to  compound 
for  them,  by  resigning  his  flock,  and 
retiring  upon  a  small  annuity.  He  came 
to  London,  where  his  principal  literary 
employments  were,  furnishing  articles  for 
the  English  Review,  and  writing  in  vin- 
dication of  Warren  Hastings.  He  died  at 
the  age  of  forty,  at  his  lodgings,  in  Marl- 
borough-street.  His  Sermons,  which  were 
published  two  years  after  his  death,  have 
obtained  considerable  popularity. — Camp- 
bell, Thomas,  1819,  Specimens  of  the 
British  Poets. 

In  the  course  of  my  literary  researches 
I  have  been  brought  pretty  near  to  Logan, 
by  his  own  letters,  by  letters  of  contem- 
poraries, by  anecdotes,  and  other  data, 
and  know  not  that  a  more  false  life  has 
ever  been  lived — the  worst  of  all  falsity, 
moreover,  seeing  it  is  a  serving  the  devil 
while  wearing  Christ's  livery.  It  may  be 
needful,  some  day,  to  reveal  all,  though 
personally  I  should  prefer  silence,  save 
only  where  Bruce 's  claims  come  in  for 
defence.  ^Grosart,  Alexander  B.  ,  1865, 
ed.,  Works  of  Michael  Bruce^  p.  108,  note. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  amount  of 
Logan's  weaknesses  or  errors,  they  were 
of  a  kind,  and  in  a  degree,  not  unusual  in 
the  history  of  the  sons  of  genius.  Admit- 
ting that  he  was  the  victim  of  intemper- 
ance, even  to  a  greater  extent  than  what 
traditional  stories  of  the  usual  cast  have 
portrayed  him,  and  admitting  the  lowering 
moral  tendency  of  such  a  condition,  yet  to 
make  it  the  ground  of  a  charge  of  dishon- 
ourable conduct  is  not  the  part  of  an  un- 
biased judge.  We  have  already,  in  the 
life  of  his  fellow-student  Michael  Bruce, 
referred  to  the  charges  brought  against 
Logan's  character;  and  the  kind  of  pro- 
ceeding which  we  have  condemned  is  un- 
sparingly used  to  give — what  we  must 
admit  to  have  been  a  most  unfortunate 
and  serious  error  of  judgment  on  his  part 
— a  dishonourable  character.  But  like 
most  intemperate  charges,  it  overreaches 
itself;  for  there  is  no  evidence  of  Logan's 
having  contracted  those  habits  for  years 
after  his  being  entrusted  with  Bruce's 
manuscripts.  ...  To  deprive  Logan 
of  the  credit  of  what  he  himself  claimed 
as  his  own,  on  such  evidence  as  has  been 
produced  on  behalf  of  Bruce,  would  be 


yielding  to  clamour  that  which  only  can 
be  given  up  on  the  most  convincing  proofs 
of  Logan's  fraud.— Ross,  J.,  1884,  The 
Book  of  Scottish  Poems,  pp.  586,  588. 

Logan  was  one  of  the  most  popular 
preachers  of  the  time ;  his  historical  pro- 
ductions evince  wide  knowledge,  compre- 
hensive views,  and  a  philosophic  mind; 
his  poetical  versions  of  scripture  are  sin- 
gularly felicitious,  and  the  ''Ode  to  the 
Cuckoo"  was  pronounced  by  Edmund 
Burke  "the  most  beautiful  lyric  in  our 
language. ' '  In  his  better  days  he  won  the 
friendship  and  esteem  of  some  of  the  most 
eminent  clergymen  of  the  time,  and  when 
he  disappointed  their  hopes  they  made 
allowance  for  the  temperament  he  had 
inherited.— Sprott,  G.  W.,  1893,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  xxxiv, 
p.  85. 

GENERAL 

This  elegant  philosopher  has  impressed 
on  all  his  works  the  seal  of  genius ;  and 
his  posthumous  compositions  became  even 
popular;  he  who  had  with  difficulty 
escaped  excommunication  by  Presbyters, 
left  the  world  after  his  death  two  volumes 
of  sermons,  which  breathe  all  that  piety, 
morality,  and  eloquence  admire.  His  un- 
revised  lectures,  published  under  the  name 
of  a  person,  one  Rutherford,  who  had  pur- 
chased the  MS.,  were  given  to  the  world 
in  ''A  View  of  Ancient  History."  But 
one  highly-finished  composition  he  had 
himself  published;  it  is  a  philosophical 
review  of  Despotism :  Had  the  name  of 
Gibbon  been  affixed  to  the  title-page,  its 
authenticity  had  not  been  suspected. — 
Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13,  Literary 
Scotchmen,  Calamities  of  Authors. 

Sweet  rang  the  harp  to  Logan's  hand. 

— Hogg,  James,  1813,  The  Queen's  Wake, 
Conclusion. 

A  tithe  of  Logan's  talents  would  make 
ten  Lord  Woodhouselees.— Southey,  Rob- 
ert, 1814,  Chalmers's  English  Poets, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  11,  p.  501. 

He  has  left  little  behind  him ;  but  that 
little  (excepting  the  hymn  taken  from  the 
Bible)  is  his  own.  It  is  purely  the  off- 
spring of  soft  affections,  tuning  his  verse 
to  a  correspondent  softness.  Neither  the 
thoughts  nor  the  expressions  are  borrowed 
from  others ;  or  prompted  by  study  and 
reflection.  But  in  saying  this,  all  is  said. 
He  has  none  of  the  higher  faculties  of  the 
poet.    His  only  gem  is  the  **Ode  to  the 


JOHN  LOGAN 


45 


Cuckoo,"  which  procured  him  the  honour 
of  a  visit  from  Burke.  .  .  .  His  ser- 
mons are  more  poetical  than  his  poems. — 
Gary,  Henry  Francis,  1823,  Notices  of 
Miscellaneous  English  Poets;  Memoir,  ed. 
Gary,  vol  ii,  pp.  293,  294. 

His  sermons  are  smooth  and  pleasing 
in  composition,  but  never  very  forcible  or 
striking.  The  same  merits  mark  his 
verse,  and  the  same  limitations.  It  is 
sweet,  but  cloying.  His  mind  was  ele- 
gant, not  powerful.  Effeminacy  of  taste 
is  perceptible  in  his  work  generally,  and 
especially  in  the  melodramatic  tragedy  of 
''Kunnamede."  But  even  if  the  ''Ode" 
is  not  his,  he  deserves  a  niche  in  memory 
as  the  author  of  the  fine  song,  "The  Braes 
of  Yarrow,"  which,  although  it  owes 
much  to  the  older  and  more  exquisite 
*' Willie  drowned  in  Yarrow,"  has  like- 
wise high  merits  of  its  own. — Walker, 
Hugh,  1893,  Three  Genturies  of  Scottish 
Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  121. 

One  of  the  visits  Burke  paid  in  Edin- 
burgh was  to  a  charming  poet,  to  whom 
fortune  has  been  singularly  unkind,  not 
only  treating  him  cruelly  when  alive,  but 
instead  of  granting  the  usual  posthumous 
reparation,  treating  him  more  cruelly 
after  his  death.  I  mean  John  Logan,  the 
author  of  the  "Ode  to  the  Cuckoo, "  which 
Burke  thought  the  most  beautiful  lyric  in 
the  language.  Logan  was  at  the  moment 
in  the  thick  of  his  troubles.  He  had 
written  a  tragedy  called  "Runnymede," 
which,  though  accepted  by  the  manage- 
ment of  Covent  Garden,  was  prohibited  by 
the  Lord  Chamberlain,  who  scented  cur- 
rent politics  in  the  bold  speeches  of  the 
Barons  of  King  John,  but  is  was  event- 
ually produced  in  the  Edinburgh  theatre  in 
1783.  Its  production  immediately  in- 
volved the  author,  as  one  of  the  ministers 
of  Leith,  in  difficulties  with  his  parishion- 
ers and  the  ecclesiastical  courts  similar 
to  those  which  John  Home  had  encountered 
twenty  years  before,  and  the  trouble  ended 
in  Logan  resigning  his  charge  in  Decem- 
ber, 1786,  on  a  pension  of  £40  a  year. 
.  .  .  The  lectures  which  Smith  praises 
so  highly  were  published  in  1779,  and  are 
interesting  as  one  of  the  first  adventures 
in  what  was  afterwards  known  as  the  phi- 
losophy of  history.  But  his  memory  rests 
now  on  his  poems,  which  Smith  thought 
less  of,  and  especially  on  his  "Ode  to  the 
Cuckoo,"  which  he  has  been  accused  so 


often  of  stealing  from  his  deceased  friend, 
Michael  Bruce,  but  to  which  his  title  has 
at  last  been  put  beyond  all  doubt  by  Mr. 
Small's  publication  of  a  letter,  written  to 
Principal  Baird  in  1791,  by  Dr.  Itobertson 
of  Dalmeny,  who  acted  as  joint  editor  with 
him  of  their  common  friend  Bruce's  poems. 
— Rae,  John,  1895,  Life  of  Adam  Smith, 
pp.  396,  397. 

Logan's  tragedy  of  "Runnimede,"  like 
most  of  his  authentic  poetry,  is  lacking  in 
force.  His  two  volumes  of  "Sermons," 
however,  were  recommended  by  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  and  are  still  read.  Certainly  by 
far  his  finest  poem  is  "The  Braes  of  Yar- 
row," though  one  verse,  "She  sought 
him  east,"  &c.,  is  borrowed  from  the 
ancient  ballad  of  "Willie  drowned  in 
Yarrow." — Eyre-Todd,  George,  1896, 
Scottish  Poetry  of  the  Eighteenth  Gentury, 
vol.  II,  p.  93. 

"The  Cuckoo,"  a  poem  well  worth  the 
sharp  controversy  waged  over  it  by  the 
respective  friends  of  the  two  authors. 
There  is  nothing  else  in  this  period  that 
rings  so  fresh  and  clear  as  this  little  ode. 
One  stanza  may  be  quoted  to  illustrate  its 
beauty,  its  sim.plicity,  and  naturalness. 
.  .  .  Logan's  other  poems,  though  he 
has  nothing  equal  to  the  cuckoo  song  in 
spontaneity  and  exquisite  simplicity,  are 
yet  of  real  value.  His  "Braes  of  Yar- 
row" is  an  efl^ective  presentation  of  the 
ancient,  sorrow-laden  Yarrow  motif.  As 
is  fitting  in  a  ballad,  the  touches  of 
description  are  of  the  briefest  sort,  but 
the  forest,  the  bonny  braes,  and  the  sound- 
ing stream,  are  felt  through  all  the  plaint- 
ive story.  "Ossian's  Hymn  to  the  Sun" 
is  a  poetical  paraphrase  of  the  famous 
apostrophe  in  "Balclutha."  It  has  some 
fine  lines,  but  is  inferior  in  strength  to 
the  original. — Reynolds,  Myra,  1896, 
The  Treatment  of  Nature  in  English  Poetry, 
pp.  144,  145. 

Another  bird,  the  Cuckoo,  acted  up  to 
its  reputation  by  inspiring  a  good,  though 
not  consummate,  copy  of  verses,  which  has 
been  challenged  by  the  champions  of  Bruce 
and  Logan  for  both  those  writers.  In  such 
a  quarrel,  especially  as  the  authorship  is 
of  infinitesimal  importance,  no  wise  man 
takes  a  side.  Bruce  died  young,  and  cer- 
tainly wrote  some  pleasing  verse  ;  Logan, 
his  friend,  literary  executor,  and  (as  one 
theory  holds)  supplanter,  died  in  early 
middle  age,  and  seems  to  have  had  rather 


46 


LOGAN— SHERIDAN 


more  talent  than  conduct.    But  all  the  on,  the  vague  poetic  inspiration  which 

poets  of  the  paragraph  must  rest  their  was  to  take  definite  form  in  Burns. — ■ 

main  claim  to  historic  interest  on  the  fact  Saintsbury,  George,  1898,  A  Short  His- 

that  they  exemplify,  and  that  they  handed  tory  of  English  Literature,  p.  594. 


Thomas  Sheridan 

1719-1788 

Born  in  1721,  at  Quilca,  in  Ireland,  and  was  educated  at  Westminster  School,  and 
at  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  In  1742  he  went  upon  the  stage,  and  gained  much  celeb- 
rity as  a  tragedian,  both  in  his  native  country  and  in  England.  He  became  manager 
of  the  Dublin  company ;  but  being  ruined  by  the  opposition  of  a  rival  theatre  and  by 
riots  in  his  own,  he  relinquished  the  profession,  commenced  as  a  lecturer  on  elocution, 
and  for  a  time  was  very  successful.  During  the  ministry  of  Lord  Bute,  he  obtained 
a  pension  of  £200.  He  subsequently  became  manager  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre ;  but 
some  disputes  taking  place,  he  retired,  and  resumed  his  attention  to  oratory.  His 
principal  works  are  his  ''Dictionary  of  the  English  Language, "  and  a  "Life  of  Swift." 
Died,  1788. — Gates,  William  L.  R.,  ed  ,  1867,  A  Dictionary  of  General  Biography, 
p.  1026. 

PERSONAL 
His  action's  always  strong,  but  sometimes 
such 

That  Candour  must  declare  he  acts  too  much. 
Why  must  impatience  fall  three  paces  back? 
Why  paces  three  return  to  the  attack? 
Why  is  the  right  leg,  too,  forbid  to  stir 
Unless  in  motion  semicircular? 
Why  must  the  hero  with  the  nailor  vie, 
And  hurl  the  close -clenched  fist  at  nose  or 
eye? 

In  royal  John,  with  Philip  angry  grown, 
I  thought  he  would  have  knocked  poor 

Davies  down. 
Inhuman  tyrant!  was  it  not  a  shame, 
To  fright  a  king  so  harmless  and  so  tame? 
But,  spite  of  all  defects,  his  glories  rise ; 
And  art,  by  judgment  form'd,  with  nature 

vies. 

Behold  him  sound  the  depths  ox  HuherVs  soul. 
Whilst  in  his  own  contending  passions  roll ; 
View  the  whole  scene,  with  critic  judgment 
scan. 

And  then  deny  him  merit  if  you  can,  • 
Where  he  falls  short,  'tis  Nature's  fault 
alone ; 

Where  he  succeeds,  the  merit's  all  his  own. 

—Churchill,  Charles,   1761-63,  The 
Rosciad. 

A  pension  of  two  hundred  pounds  a 
year  had  been  given  to  Sheridan.  Johnson, 
who,  as  has  been  already  mentioned, 
thought  slightingly  of  Sheridan's  art,  upon 
hearing  that  he  was  also  pensioned,  ex- 
claimed: "What!  have  they  given  him 
a  pension?  Then  it  is  time  for  me  to 
give  up  mine!"  .  .  .  Johnson  com- 
plained that  a  man  who  disliked  him  re- 
peated his  sarcasm  to  Mr.  Sheridan,  with- 
out telling  him  what  followed,  which  was 
that  after  a  pause  he  added :  ''However, 


I  am  glad  that  Mr.  Sheridan  has  a  pension, 
for  he  is  a  very  good  man."  Sheridan 
could  never  forgive  this  hasty,  contempt- 
uous expression.  It  rankled  in  his  mind ; 
and  though  I  informed  him  of  all  that 
Johnson  said,  and  that  he  would  be  very 
glad  to  meet  him  amicably,  he  positively 
declined  repeated  offers  which  1  made, 
and  once  went  off  abruptly  from  a  house 
where  he  and  I  were  engaged  to  dine, 
because  he  was  told  that  Dr.  Johnson  was 
to  be  there.  .  .  .  This  rupture  with 
Sheridan  deprived  Johnson  of  one  of  his 
most  agreeable  resources  for  amusement 
in  his  lonely  evenings,  for  Sheridan's  well 
informed,  animated  and  bustling  mind 
never  suffered  conversation  to  stagnate, 
and  Mrs.  Sheridan  was  a  most  agreeable 
companion  to  an  intellectual  man. — Bos- 
well,  James,  1791-93,  Life  of  Johnson,  ed. 
Hill,  vol.  L,  pp.  446,  448,  450. 

His  appearance  on  the  boards  of  Smock 
Alley  Theatre  on  the  29  January,  1743,  in 
the  character  of  Richard  ///., caused  consid- 
erable sensation  in  the  town.  He  was  in 
the  twenty-third  year  of  his  age;  his 
appearance  was  handsome,  his  voice  mel- 
low and  expressive,  and  his  debut  was  a 
decided  success.  He  next  played  Othello, 
Hamlet,  Cato  and  Brutus,  and  his  acting 
gained  so  rapidly  on  the  town  that  he  be- 
came the  rage;  his  name  was  on  all  men's 
lips.— MoLLOY,  J.  Fitzgerald,  1884,  The 
Life  and  Adventures  of  Peg  Woffington, 
vol.  I,  ch.  9. 

Mr.  Sheridan  kept  a  tight  hand  over  his 
children.  He  was  a  strict  disciplinarian, 
and  he  managed  his  household  as  sternly 


SHERIDAN— AMOR  Y 


47 


as  he  did  a  theatre.  He  exacted  unques- 
tioning obedience  from  those  dependent 
upon  him,  while  he  toolc  great  offence  if 
his  superiors  required  submission  from 
him.  He  ''poured  lava,"  as  he  said, 
upon  those  who  had  offended  him.  He  was 
very  methodical  and  precise  in  all  his  ways. 
He  had  morning  prayers  regularly,  and  on 
Sunday  evenings  he  either  commented  on 
the  sermon  of  the  day  or  expounded  a  pas- 
sage in  the  Bible.  He  was  fond  of  Dr.  John- 
son's ' '  Ramblers, ' '  and  his  daughters  were 
often  wearied  and  disheartened  with  the 
task  of  reading  them  aloud,  because  he  was 
exacting  with  regard  to  enunciation  and 
cadence,  and  careful  in  correcting  what  he 


deemed  their  faults  of  speech. — Rae,  W. 
Fraser,  1896,  Sheridan,  A  Biography,  vol, 

GENERAL 

''Unpretending  mediocrity  is  good,  and 
genius  is  glorious ;  but  the  weak  flavor  of 
genius  in  a  person  essentially  common  is 
detestable, ' '  so  the  Autocrat  of  the  Break- 
fast-Table tells  us ;  and  although  Thomas 
Sheridan  cannot  fairly  be  called  a  person 
essentially  common,  yet  it  is  not  to  be 
denied  that  he  had  but  a  weak  flavor  of 
genius. — Matthews,  Brander,  1886,  Ac- 
tors and  Actresses  of  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States,  eds.  Matthews  and  Hut- 
ton,  vol.  I,  p.  165. 


Thomas  Amory 

1691?-1788 

Thomas  Amory  (c.  1691-1788),  an  eccentric  author  of  Irish  descent,  who  was  liv- 
ing in  Westminster  about  1757,  seldom  stirred  out  till  dark,  and  was  doubtless  some- 
what insane.  His  chief  works  are:  "Lives  of  Several  Ladies  of  Great  Britain:  A 
History  of  Antiquities,  Productions  of  Nature,"  &c.  (1755);  and  the  "Life  of  John 
Buncle"  (1756-66)— an  odd  combination  of  autobiography,  fantastic  descriptions  of 
scenery,  deistical  theology,  and  sentimental  rhapsody. — Patrick  and  Groome,  eds., 
1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  27. 

PERSONAL  ^j^e  romance  of  biography  is.  Thomas 

If  the  writings  of  Thomas  Amory  were    Amory's  life  must  have  been  a  streak  of 


at  times  suggestive  of  a  disturbed  brain, 
the  singular  habits  of  his  life  supported 
that  impression.  For,  although  he  had 
the  appearance,  manners,  honourable  con- 
duct of  a  gentleman,  he  led  a  most  se- 
cluded and  bat-like  existence,  shunning  all 
company,  and  never  stirring  abroad  until 
the  fall  of  the  evening,  when  he  would 
wander  in  the  streets  in  abstract  medita- 
tion, possessed  of  nothing  in  common  with 
those  who  surged  around  him.  .  .  . 
A  notev/orthy  feature  in  Amory's  case  is 
that,  although  he  led  a  life  apart  from  the 
human  family  generally,  he  was  not  a 
morose  man,  nor  in  any  degree  a  misan- 
thrope; on  the  contrary,  as  far  as  his 
writings  reveal  his  true  character,  he  was 
keenly  alive  to  the  pleasures  of  society, 
love,  and  friendship.  He  intensely  en- 
joyed the  beauties  of  nature,  and  was  not 
in  the  least  indifferent  to  what  are  termed 
the  goo3  gifts  of  Providence ;  he  was  full 
of  sympathy  and  kindly  feeling  for  others, 
goodwill  to  man  being  an  essential  article 
of  his  creed.— Bailey,  John  Burn,  1888, 
Modern  Methuselahs,  pp.  196,  197. 

If  this  is  not  a  person  of  whom  we 
would  like  to  know  more,  1  know  not  what 


crimson  on  the  grey  surface  of  the  eight- 
eenth century.  It  is  really  a  misfortune 
that  the  red  is  almost  all  washed  off. — 
Gosse,  Edmund,  1891,  Gossip  in  a  Library, 
p.  218. 

LIFE  OF  JOHN  BUNCLE 

1756-66 

John  Buncle  is  the  English  Rabelais.  .  .  . 
The  soul  of  Francis  Rabelais  passed  into 
John  Amory,  the  author  of  the  "Life 
and  Adventures  of  John  Buncle."  Both 
were  physicians,  and  enemies  of  too  much 
gravity.  Their  great  business  was  to 
enjoy  life.  Rabelais  indulges  his  spirit 
of  sensuality  in  wine,  in  dried  meat- 
tongues,  in  Bologna  sausages,  in  botorgas. 
John  Buncle  shows  the  same  symptoms  of 
inordinate  satisfaction  in  tea  and  bread- 
and-butter.  While  Rabelais  roared  with 
Friar  John  and  the  monks,  John  Buncle 
gossiped  with  the  ladies. — Hazlitt,  Wil- 
liam, 1817,  Round  Table,  No.  xiv. 

The  "Life  of  John  Buncle,  Esq.  ;  con- 
taining various  Observations  and  Reflec- 
tions made  in  several  parts  of  the  World, 
and  many  Extraordinary  Relations,"  is  a 
book  unlike  any  other  in  the  language, 
perhaps  in  the  world ;  and  the  introduction 


48 


THOMAS  AMORY 


of  passages  from  it  into  the  present  vol- 
ume must  be  considered  as  being,  like 
itself,  an  exception  to  rules ;  for  it  will 
resemble  rather  a  notice  in  a  review,  than 
our  selections  in  general.  John's  Life  is 
not  a  classic;  it  contains  no  passage 
which  is  a  general  favourite ;  no  extract 
could  be  made  from  it  of  any  length,  to 
which  readers  of  good  taste  would  not  find 
objections.  Yet  there  is  so  curious  an 
interest  in  all  its  absurdities ;  its  jumble 
of  the  gayest  and  gravest  considerations 
is  so  founded  in  the  actual  state  of  things ; 
it  draws  now  and  then  such  excellent  por- 
traits of  life;  and  above  all,  its  animal 
spirits  are  at  once  so  excessive  and  so 
real,  that  we  defy  the  best  readers  not  to 
be  entertained  with  it,  and  having  had 
one  or  two  specimens,  not  to  desire  more. 
Buncle  would  say,  that  there  is  "cut  and 
come  again"  in  him,  like  one  of  his  lunch- 
eons of  cold  beef  and  a  foaming  tankard. 
— Hunt,  Leigh,  1849,  A  Book  for  a  Cor- 
ner, p.  137. 

In  the  ''Life  of  John  Buncle"  and  his 
seven  wives,  Amory  discusses  the  subject 
of  earthquakes,  phlogiston,  then  a  popu- 
lar theme,  fluxions,  the  Asthanasian 
Creed,,  and  muscular  motion.  The  whole 
is  such  a  farrago  as  Burton  or  Rabelais 
might  have  collected,  with  something 
of  the  odd  thoughts  and  quaint  humour 
that  distinguish  those  writers.  One  object 
of  both  books  is  to  illustrate  the  truth  and 
the  influence  of  Unitarian  principles  of 
religion.  The  ladies  he  visits  and  the 
ladies  he  won  are  all  represented  as 
models  of  beauty  and  intelligence,  who 
largely  owe  their  high  qualities  to  their 
religious  faith. — Angus,  Joseph,  1865, 
The  Handbook  of  English  Literature,  p.  472. 

A  great  part  of  the  work  is  devoted  to 
the  theological  disquisition,  showing  con- 
siderable reading, in  defence  of  ''Christian 
deism."  Much  of  his  love-making  and 
religious  discussion  takes  place  in  the 
north  of  England,  and  there  is  some  inter- 
est in  his  references  to  the  beauty  of  the 
lake  scenery.  His  impassable  crags,  fath- 
omless lakes,  and  secluded  valleys,  con- 
taining imaginary  convents  of  unitarian 
monks  and  nuns,  suggest  the  light-headed 
ramblings  of  delirium.  Amory  was  clearly 
disordered  in  his  intellect,  though  a  writer 
in  the  "Retrospective  Review"  is  scan- 
dalised at  the  imputation  and  admires  him 
without  qualification. — Stephen,  Leslie, 


1885,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  I,  p.  365. 

Hazlitt  has  said  that  "the  soul  of  Rab- 
elais passed  into  John  Amory."  His 
name  was  Thomas,  not  John,  and  there  is 
very  little  that  is  Rabelaisian  in  his  spirit. 
One  sees  what  Hazlitt  meant — the  volu- 
ble and  diffuse  learning,  the  desultory 
thread  of  narration,  the  mixture  of  reli- 
gion and  animalism.  But  the  resemblance 
is  very  superficial,  and  the  parallel  too 
complimentary  to  Amory.  It  is  difficult 
to  think  of  the  soul  of  Rabelais  in  connec- 
tion with  a  pedantic  and  uxorious  Unita- 
rian. To  lovers  of  odd  books,  "John 
Buncle"  will  always  have  a  genuine  attrac- 
tion. Its  learning  would  have  dazzled 
Dr.  Primrose,  and  is  put  on  in  glittering 
spars  and  shells,  like  the  ornaments  of 
the  many  grottoes  that  it  describes.  It 
is  diversified  by  descriptions  of  natural 
scenery,  which  are  often  exceedingly 
felicitous  and  original,  and  it  is  quickened 
by  the  human  warmth  and  flush  of  the 
love  passages,  which,  with  all  their 
quaintness,  are  extremely  human.  It  is 
essentially  a  "healthy"  book,  as  Charles 
Lamb,  with  such  a  startling  result,  assured 
the  Scotchman.  .  .  .  The  style  of 
the  book  is  very  careless  and  irregular, 
but  rises  in  its  best  pages  to  an  admirable 
picturesqueness.— GossE,  Edmund,  1891, 
Gossip  in  a  Library,  pp.  225,  226. 

The  book,  which  is  entirely  sui  generis, 
fascinated  Hazlitt,  and  has  been  reprinted, 
but  never  widely  read. — Saintsbury, 
George,  1898,  A  Short  History  of  English 
Literature,  p.  610. 

GENERAL 

His  works  may  be  said  to  be  unknown 
to  the  general  reader ;  they  are  familiar 
to  those  only  who  delight  to  wander  in  the 
bye-paths  of  literature,  and  to  seek  out 
the  peculiarities  and  follies  of  authors. 
Amory' s  claims  are  sufficient,  however, 
to  entitle  him  to  a  little  nook  in  this  gal- 
lery of  those  who  have  a  higher  right  to 
be  remembered  than  the  mere  fact  of  ex- 
traordinary tenure  of  life  confers.  As 
he  attained  to  his  ninety-seventh  year, 
and  gave  to  the  world  several  volumes 
marked  by  some  literary  ability,  original- 
ity of  thought,  extensive  knowledge  of 
theology,  and  close  observation  of  nature, 
he  has  the  double  qualification  demanded 
of  those  whose  lives  are  here  sketched. — 
Bailey,  J.  B.,  1888,  Modern  Methuselahs. 


49 


Thomas  Day 

1748-1789 

Born,  in  London,  22  June,  1748.  Succeeded  to  family  estate  of  Bear  Hill,  Berk- 
shire, July,  1749.  Mother  removed  with  him  to  Stoke  Newington ;  soon  afterwards 
married  again,  and  settled  at  Bear  Hill,  1755.  At  school  at  Stoke  Newington,  and  at 
Charterhouse,  1755-63-  Matriculated  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  1  June,  1764 ; 
left,  without  degree,  1766.  Admitted  to  Middle  Temple,  12  Feb.,  1765 ;  called  to  Bar, 
14  May,  1775 ;  never  practised.  After  disappointments  in  love,  endeavoured  to  train 
two  orphan  girls  on  his  own  principles,  in  order  that  he  might  marry  one  of  them. 
Scheme  failed.  Visit  to  France.  On  return,  after  other  love  disappointments,  set- 
tled in  London ;  engaged  in  literary  work,  with  occasional  travelling.  Married  Esther 
Milnes,  7  Aug.,  1778;  spent  the  winter  in  Hampstead.  Bought  house  at  Abridge, 
Essex,  1779.  Removed  to  Anningsley,  Surrey,  1781.  Life  of  great  seclusion  and 
asceticism.  Killed  by  accident  on  horseback,  28  Sept.,  1789.  Buried  at  War  grave. 
Works:  "The  Dying  Negro"  (anon.,  with  J.  Bicknell),  1773;  ''Ode  for  the  New 
Year"  (anon.),  1776;  The  Devoted  Legions,"  1776;  ''The  Desolation  of  America" 
(anon.);  1777;  *' Two  Speeches,"  1780;  "  Reflexions  on  the  Present  State  of  England," 
1782  (2nd  edn.  same  year) ;  "Letters  of  Marius,"  1784;  "Fragments  of  Original  Let- 
ters on  the  Slavery  of  Negroes,"  1784;  "Dialogue  between  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  and 
a  Farmer,"  1785;  "Four Tracts,"  1785;  "Letter  to  Arthur  Young,"  1788;  "History 
of  Little  Jack,"  1788;  "History  of  Sandford  and  Merton"(anon.),  voL  i.,  1783;  vol. 
ii.,  1787;  vol.  iii.,  1789.  Life:  by  J.  Keir,  1791;  by  Blackmau,  1862.— Sharp,  R. 
Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  75. 


PERSONAL 
In  memory  of  Thomas  Day,  Esq.,  who 
died  the  2Sth  September,  1789,  aged  41, 
after  having  promoted  by  the  energy  of  his 
writings  and  encouraged  by  the  uniformity 
of  his  example  the  unremitted  exercise  of 
every  public  and  private  virtue. 
Beyond  the  rage  of  time  or  fortune's  power, 
Remain,  cold  stone,  remain  and  mark  the 
hour 

When  all  the  noblest  gifts  which  Heaven  e'er 
gave 

Were  centred  in  a  dark  untimely  grave. 
Oh,  taught  on  Reason's  boldest  wings  to  rise 
And  catch  each  glimmering  of  the  opening 
skies, 

Oh,  gentle  bosom!  Oh,  unsullied  mind! 
Oh,  friend  to  truth,  to  virtue  and  mankind, 
Thy  dear  remains  we  trust  to  this  sad  shrine, 
Secure  to  feel  no  second  loss  like  thine. 

— Inscription  on  Tomb,  1789. 

Edgeworth  calls  Day  the  "most  virtu- 
ous human  being"  he  had  ever  known. 
His  friend  and  biographer  Keir  speaks 
with  equal  warmth.  His  amusing  eccen- 
tricities were  indeed  only  the  symptoms 
of  a  real  nobility  of  character,  too  deeply 
in  earnest  to  submit  to  the  ordinary  com- 
promises of  society.— Stephen,  Leslie, 
1888,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  XIV,  p.  241. 

Mr.  Keir  tells  us  that  Day  was  tall, 
strong,  erect,  and  of  a  manly  deportment, 
deeply  marked  with  small-pox ;  voice  clear, 
expressive,  and  fit  for  public  elocution. 


Mrs.  Ritchie  says:  "He  was  tall  and 
stooped  in  the  shoulders,  full  made  but 
not  corpulent,  and  in  his  meditations  and 
melancholy  airs  a  degree  of  awkardness 
and  dignity  were  blended."  He  talked 
like  a  book  and  always  thought  in  the 
same  full  dress  style,  which  must  have 
rendered  his  society  rather  oppressive, 
and  even  Mr.  Keir  confesses  that  in  con- 
versation he  entered  into  the  subject 
more  deeply  and  fully  than  was  agreeable 
to  the  fashionable  tone  of  the  day.  The 
picture  of  him  by  Wright,  of  Derby, 
shows  him  as  a  man  with  a  heavy  jaw, 
dark  and  abundant  hair — in  the  original, 
the  lightning  is  depicted  as  passing 
through  it— nor  does  it  seem  that  he  paid 
that  attention  to  his  personal  appearance 
that  would  be  expected  of  a  society  author 
in  these  days.  Mr.  Edgeworth  says  of 
him,  that  at  the  very  commencement  of 
their  acquaintance,  when  the  Days  were 
living  at  Bear  Hill,  in  Berkshire,  "His 
appearance  was  not  prepossessing!  He 
seldom  combed  his  raven  locks,  though 
he  was  remarkably  fond  of  washing  in  a 
stream.  "—LocKWOOD,  M.,  1897,  Thomas 
Day,  The  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  42, 
p.  76. 

SANDFORD  AND  MERTON 

1783-89 

Altogether  "Sandford  and  Merton" 
affected  me  the  wrong  way ;  and  for  the 


50 


DAY— HAWKINS 


first  time  my  soul  revolted  from  the  pre- 
tentious virtues  of  honest  poverty.  It  is 
to  the  malign  influence  of  that  tale  that  I 
owe  my  sneaking  preference  for  the  drones 
and  butterflies'  of  earth.  I  do  not  now 
believe  that  men  are  born  equal ;  I  do  not 
love  universal  suffrage ;  I  mistrust  all 
popular  agitators,  all  intrusive  legislation, 
all  philanthropic  fads,  all  friends  of  the 
people  and  benefactors  of  their  race.  I 
cannot  even  sympathize  with  the  noble 
theory  that  every  man  and  woman  should 
do  their  share  of  the  world's  work; 
I  would  gladly  shirk  my  own  if  I  could. 
And  this  lamentable,  unworthy  view  of 
life  and  its  responsibilities  is  due  to  the 
subtle  poison  instilled  into  my  youthful, 
mind  by  the  too  strenuous  counter-teach- 
ing of  ''Sandford  and  Merton." — Rep- 
PLiER,  Agnes,  1891,  Books  that  have  Hin- 
dered MCf  Points  of  View,  p.  69. 

GENERAL 
Utility  rather  than  display  of  talent 
was  the  motive  of  his  writing. — Keir,  J., 
1791,  Life  of  Thomas  Day. 

He  is  one  of  our  best  composers  in  that 
style  of  antithetic  and  declamatory  coup- 
lets which  we  learned  from  the  French. 
The  resolute  enemy  of  political  bondage, 
he  put  on  without  reluctance  the  closest 
shackles  of  the  poet.    Disdaining  to 


torture  his  looks  in  conformity  with  the 
reigning  fashion,  he  curled  up  his  verses  so 
as  to  adapt  them  to  most  arbitrary  modes. 
The  difference  between  the  stiff  couplet 
measure,  as  it  is  formed  on  the  French 
model,  and  that  looser  disposition  of  it, 
which  was  practised  by  our  elder  writers, 
and  which  we  have  lately  seen  restored, 
reminds  one  of  the  comparison  which  the 
historian  makes  between  the  Macedonian 
armies  and  the  Roman.  *'In  each  the  sol- 
dier was  stationary,  preserving  his  ranks ; 
the  phalanx  of  the  former  was  immovable, 
and  of  but  one  kind;  the  Roman  force 
more  distinct,  consisting  of  several  parts ; 
and  easily  disposable  for  the  purposes 
either  of  separation  or  of  junction."  Of 
his  three  poems  in  this  style,  ''The  Dying 
Negro,"  "The  Devoted  Legions,"  and  "The 
Desolation  of  America,"  the  second  C'The 
Devoted  Legions")  is  the  best.  It  is  a 
satire  against  our  national  degeneracy  and 
the  supposed  avarice  which  made  us  en- 
gage in  the  American  war,  conveyed 
under  a  description  of  the  Parthian  expe- 
dition setting  out  under  Crassus,  and  the 
prophecy  of  its  ruin.  There  was  some- 
thing novel  in  the  design,  and  it  is  exe- 
cuted with  extraordinary  vigour. — Gary, 
Henry  Francis,  1823,  Notices  of  Miscel- 
laneous English  Poets ;  Memoir,  ed.  Gary, 
vol.  II,  p.  294. 


Sir  John  Hawkins 

1719-1789. 

Born,  in  London,  30  March,  1719.  Articled  to  an  attorney.  Contrib.  to  "Gentle- 
man's Mag.,"  from  1739.  Mem.  of  Madrigal  Soc,  1741  (?).  Perhaps  contrib.  anony- 
mously to  "Universal  Spectator, "' 1747.  Mem.  of  Academy  of  Ancient  Music. 
Married  Sidney  Storer,  1753.  Gave  up  business  as  attorney,  1769.  J.  P.  for  Middle- 
sex, 1761;  Chairman  of  Quarter  Sessions,  19  Sept.,  1765.  Knighted,  23  Oct.,  1772. 
Died,  in  Westminster,  21  May,  1789;  buried  in  cloisters  of  Westminster  Abbey. 
Works :  ' '  Observations  on  the  State  of  the  Highways, ' '  1763 ;  ' '  The  Principles  and 
Power  of  Harmony  "  (anon.),  1771 ;  "The  General  History  of  the  Science  and  Practice 
of  Music  "  (5  vols.),  1776;  "Dissertation  on  the  Armorial  Ensigns  of  the  County  of 
Middlesex,"  1780;  "The  Life  of  SamuelJohnson,"  1787.  Posthumous:  Contribution 
to  ''Poetical  Miscellanies  "  (anon.),  1790.  Eeedited:  Walton's  " Compleat  Angler, " 
1760;  Johnson's  Works,  1787-89. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of 
English  Authors,  p.  127. 


PERSONAL 

"Why  really  I  believe  him  to  be  an 
honest  man  at  the  bottom ;  but  to  be  sure 
he  is  penurious,  and  he  is  mean ,  and  it  must 
be  owned  he  has  a  degree  of  brutality, 
and  a  tendency  to  savageness,  that  cannot 
easily  be  defended."— Johnson,  Samuel, 
1778,  Mm£.  D'Arblay's  Diary,  vol.  i. 


The  fiddling  Knight.  —  WoLCOT ,  John 
(Peter  Pindar),  1787,  a  Poetical  and  Con- 
gratulatory Epistle  to  James  Boswell,  Esq. 

I  met  Dr.  Percy,  Bishop  of  Dromore,  at 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'.  .  .  .  The  bishop 
concurred  with  every  other  person  I  have 
heard  speak  of  Hawkins,  in  saying  that  he 
was  a  most  detestable  fellow.  He  was  the 


SIR  JOHN  HAWKINS 


51 


son  of  a  carpenter,  and  set  out  in  life  in 
the  very  lowest  line  of  the  law.  Dyer 
knew  him  w^ell  at  one  time,  and  the  bishop 
heard  him  give  a  character  of  Hawkins 
once  that  painted  him  in  the  blackest 
colours ;  though  Dyer  was  by  no  means  apt 
to  deal  in  such  portraits.  Dyer  said  he 
was  a  man  of  the  most  mischievous,  un- 
charitable, and  malignant  disposition,  and 
that  he  knew  instances  of  his  setting  a 
husband  against  a  wife,  and  a  brother 
against  a  brother;  fomenting  their  ani- 
mosity by  anonymous  letters.  .  .  .  Sir 
Joshua  observed  that  Hawkins,  though  he 
assumed  great  outward  sanctity,  was  not 
only  mean  and  groveling  in  disposition  but 
absolutely  dishonest.  After  the  death  of 
Dr.  Johnson,  he  as  one  of  his  executors 
laid  hold  of  his  watch  and  several  trinkets, 
coins,  etc.,  which  he  said  he  should  take 
to  himself  for  his  trouble  —  a  pretty 
liberal  construction  of  the  rule  of  law, 
that  an  executor  may  satisfy  his  own  de- 
mands in  the  first  instance.  Sir  Joshua 
and  Sir  Wm.  Scott,  the  other  executors, 
remonstrated  against  this,  and  with  great 
difficulty  compelled  him  to  give  up  the 
watch,  which  Dr.  Johnson's  servant,  Fran- 
cis Barber,  now  has ;  but  the  coins  and  old 
pieces  of  money  they  could  never  get. — 
Maloxe,  Edmond,  1791,  Maloniana.  ed, 
PHor,  2)p.  424,  425,  426. 

Sir  John  Hawkins  was  originally  bred  a 
lawyer,  in  which  profession  he  did  not 
succeed.  Having  married  a  gentlewoman 
who  by  her  brother's  death  proved  a  con- 
siderable fortune  he  bought  a  house  at 
Twickenham,  intending  to  give  himself  up 
to  his  studies  and  music,  of  which  he  was 
very  fond.  He  now  commenced  a  justice 
of  peace ;  and  being  a  very  honest,  moral 
man,  but  of  no  brightness,  and  very  obsti- 
nate and  contentious,  he  grew  hated  by 
the  lower  class  and  very  troublesome  to 
the  gentry,  with  whom  he  went  to  law 
both  on  public  and  private  causes ;  at  the 
same  time  collecting  materials  indefati- 
gabiy  for  a  ''History  of  Music."— Wal- 
POLE,  Horace,  1797  (?),  Memoirs  of  the 
Reign  of  King  George  III.,  vol.  I,  p.  421. 

''And  Sir  John  Hawkins,"  exclaimed 
Uncle  Timothy,  with  unwonted  asperity, 

whose  ideas  of  virtue  never  rose  above 
a  decent  exterior  and  regular  hours !  call- 
ing the  author  of  the  '  Traveller  '  an  idiot ! 
It  shakes  the  sides  of  splenetic  disdain  to 
hear  this  Grub  Street  chronicler  of  fiddling 


and  fly-fishing  libelling  the  beautiful  intel- 
lect of  Oliver  Goldsmith!"  —  Daniel, 
George,  1842-81,  Merrie  England  in  the 
Olden  Time,  p.  233. 

He  had  been  an  attorney  for  many 
years,  affecting  literary  tastes,  and  dab- 
bling in  music  at  the  Madrigal  Club ;  but, 
four  years  before  the  present,  so  large  a 
fortune  had  fallen  to  him  in  right  of  his 
wife,  that  he  withdrew  from  the  law,  and 
lived  and  judged  with  severe  propriety  as 
a  Middlesex  magistrate.  Within  two 
years  he  will  be  elected  chairman  of  the  ses- 
sions ;  after  seven  years  more,  will  be  made 
a  knight ;  and,  in  four  years  after  that  will 
deliver  himself  of  five  quarto  volumes  of 
a  history  of  music,  in  the  slow  and  laborious 
conception  of  which  he  is  already  pain- 
fully engaged.  Altogether,  his  exist- 
ence was  a  kind  of  pompous,  parsimonious, 
insignificant  drawl,  cleverly  ridiculed  by 
one  of  the  wits  in  an  absurd  epitaph: 
"Here  lies  Sir  John  Hawkins,  Without 
his  shoes  and  stauckins."  To  him  be- 
longed the  original  merit,  in  that  age  of 
penal  barbarity  and  perpetual  executions, 
of  lamenting  that  in  no  less  that  fourteen 
cases  it  was  still  possible  to  cheat  the 
gallows.  Another  of  his  favorite  themes 
was  the  improvidence  of  v/hat  he  called 
sentimental  writers,  at  the  head  of  whom 
he  placed  the  author  of  ''Tom  Jones;"  a 
book  which  he  charged  with  having  ' '  cor- 
rupted the  rising  generation, ' '  and  sapped 
"the  foundation  of  that  morality  which 
it  is  the  duty  of  parents  and  all  public 
instructors  to  inculcate  in  the  minds  of 
young  people."  This  was  his  common 
style  of  talk.  He  would  speak  contempt- 
uously of  Hogarth  as  a  man  who  knew 
nothing  out  of  Covent-garden.  Richard- 
son, Fielding,  Smollett,  and  Sterne,  he 
looked  upon  as  "stuff;  "  and  for  the  last 
three,  as  men  "whose  necessities  and  abil- 
ities were  nearly  commensurate, ' '  he  had 
a  special  contempt. — Forster,  John,  1848, 
The  Life  and  Times  of  Oliver  Goldsmith, 
vol.  I,  p.  312. 

Hawkins  was  as  mean  and  parsimonious 
as  he  was  pompous  and  conceited.  He 
forebore  to  partake  of  the  suppers  at  the 
club,  and  begged  therefore  to  be  excused 
from  paying  his  share  of  the  reckoning. — 
Irving,  Washington,  1849,  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, p.  164. 

Hawkins  was  a  man  of  coarse  fibre,  ab- 
surdly proud  of  "my  coach,"  rough  to 


52 


SIR  JOHN  HA  WKINS 


inferiors,  and  humble  to  men  like  Walpole, 
but  not  without  solid  good  qualities. — 
Stephen,   Leslie,   1891,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  xxv,  p.  221. 

HISTORY  OF  MUSIC 

1776 

I  have  been  three  days  at  Strawberry, 
and  have  not  seen  a  creature  but  Sir  John 
Hawkins's  five  volumes,  the  two  last  of 
which,  thumping  as  they  are,  I  literally 
did  read  in  two  days.  They  are  old  books 
to  all  intents  and  purposes,  very  old  books ; 
and  what  is  new,  is  like  old  books,  too, 
that  is,  full  of  minute  facts  that  delight 
antiquaries.  ...  My  friend.  Sir 
John,  is  a  matter-of-fact  man,  and  does 
now  and  then  stoop  very  low  in  quest  of 
game.  Then  he  is  so  exceedingly  religious 
and  grave  as  to  abhor  mirth,  except  it  is 
printed  in  the  old  black  letter,  and  then 
he  calls  the  most  vulgar  ballad  pleasant 
and  full  of  humour.  He  thinks  nothing 
can  be  sublime  but  an  anthem,  and 
Handel's  choruses  heaven  upon  earth. 
However,  he  writes  with  great  modera- 
tion, temper  and  good  sense,  and  the  book 
is  a  very  valuable  one.  I  have  begged  his 
Austerity  to  relax  in  one  point,  for  he 
ranks  comedy  with  farce  and  pantomime. 
Now  I  hold  a  perfect  comedy  to  be  the 
perfection  of  human  composition,  and  be- 
lieve firmly  that  fifty  Iliads  and  .Eneids 
could  be  written  sooner  than  such  a  char- 
acter as  Falstalf's.— Walpole,  Horace, 
1776,  To  the  Countess  of  Ossory,  Dec.  3 ; 
Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vi,  p.  395. 

In  which,  however,  there  is  much  orig- 
inal and  valuable  information,  as  in  all  his 
other  works,  so  unjustly  censured  in  my 
opinion.  Sir  John's  principal  fault  was 
digression  from  his  subject;  but  if  you 
excuse  that,  you  are  well  repaid  by 
the  information  you  receive. — Mathias, 
Thomas  James,  1794-98,  The  Pursuits  of 
Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  98. 

Contemporary  judgment  awarded  the 
palm  of  superiority  to  Burney  and  neg- 
lected Hawkins.  Evidence  of  the  feeling 
is  found  in  a  catch  which  was  formerly 
better  known  than  it  is  now : — 

"  Have  you  Sir  John  Hawkins'  History? 

Some  folks  thing  it  quite  a  mystery. 

Musick  fill'd  his  wondrous  brain. 

How  d'ye  like  him?  Is  it  plain? 

Both  I've  read  and  must  agree, 

That  Burney 's  history  pleases  me." 


Which  in  performance  is  made  to  sound : — 

"  Sir  John  Hawkins! 

Burn  his  history ! 

How  d'ye  like  him? 

Burn  his  history ! 

Burney 's  history  pleases  me," 
Posterity,  however,  has  reversed  the 
decision  of  the  wits;  Hawkins'  ''His- 
tory" has  been  re-printed,  but  Burney' s 
never  reached  a  second  edition.  The 
truth  lies  between  the  extremes.  Burney, 
possessed  of  far  greater  musical  knowl- 
edge than  Hawkins,  better  judgment,  and 
a  better  style,  frequently  wrote  about 
things  which  he  had  not  suflftciently  exam- 
ined; Hawkins,  on  the  other  hand,  more 
industrious  and  painstaking  than  Burney, 
was  deficient  in  technical  skill,  and  often 
inaccurate. — Husk,  William  H.,  1879,  A 
Dictionary  of  Music  and  Musicians,  ed. 
Grove,  vol.  i,  p.  699. 

Hawkins,  though  a  worse  writer  than 
Burney,  was  a  more  painstaking  antiquary, 
and  his  book  has  therefore  a  more  perma- 
nent value  for  students  of  musical  history. 
— Stephen,  Leslie,  1891,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  xxv,  p.  221. 

LIFE  OF  SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

1787 

Mr.  Urban: — Have  you  read  that  di- 
vine book,  the  ' '  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson, 
LL.D.,  by  Sir  John  Hawkins,  Knt.?" 
Have  you  done  anything  but  read  it  since 
it  was  first  published?  For  my  own  part. 
I  scruple  not  to  declare  that  I  could  not 
rest  till  I  had  read  it  quite  through,  notes, 
digressions,  index  and  all ;  then  I  could 
not  rest  till  I  had  gone  over  it  a  second 
time.  I  begin  to  think  that  increase  of 
appetite  grows  by  what  it  is  fed  on ;  for 
I  have  been  reading  it  ever  since.  I  am 
now  in  the  midst  of  the  sixteenth  perusal ; 
and  still  I  discover  new  beauties.  I  can  think 
of  nothing  else ;  I  can  talk  of  nothing  else. 
In  short,  my  mind  is  become  tumid,  and  longs 
to  be  delivered  of  those  many  and  great  con- 
ceptions with  which  it  has  laboured  since  I 
have  been  through  a  course  of  this  most 
perfect  exemplar  of  biography.  The  com- 
pass of  learning,  the  extent  and  accuracy 
of  information,  the  judicious  criticism,  the 
moral  reflections,  the  various  opinions, 
legal  and  political,  to  say  nothing  of  that 
excess  of  candour  and  charity  that  breathe 
throughout  the  work,  make  together  such 
a  collection  of  sweets  that  the  sense  aches 
at  them.    To  crown  all,  the  language  is 


HAWKINS— SMITH 


53 


refined  to  a  degree  of  immaculate  purity, 
and  displays  the  whole  force  of  turgid  elo- 
quence.   .    .  . 

Read  Hawkins  once,  and  you  can  read  no 
more, 

For  all  books  else  appear  so  mean,  so  poor, 
Johnson's  a  dunce ;  but  still  persists  to  read, 
And  Hawkins  will  be  all  the  books  you  need. 
— PORSON,  Richard,  1787,  Letters  to  the 
Gentleman's  Magazine. 

He  has  thrown  a  heap  of  rubbish  of  his 
own  over  poor  Johnson,  which  would  have 
smothered  any  less  gigantic  genius — Edge- 
worth,  Maria,  1809,  Letters,  vol.  i,  p.lQl. 


Sir  John  Hawkins,  whose  **Life  of 
Samuel  Johnson,  LL.D.,"  1787,  comes 
next  in  importance  to  Mrs.  Piozzi's  ''An- 
ecdotes, ' '  has  suffered  considerably ;  and 
his  book,  which  immediately  after  John- 
son's death  was  advertised  as  forthcom- 
ing," is,  to  use  the  words  of  a  recent 
writer,  "spoken  of  with  contempt  by 
many  who  have  never  taken  the  trouble  to 
do  more  than  turn  over  its  leaves."  That 
the  author  seems  to  have  been  extremely 
unpopular  can  scarcely  be  denied.  —Dob- 
son,  Austin,  1898,  BosweWs  Predecessors 
and  Editors,  Miscellanies,  p.  116. 


Adam  Smith 

1723-1790 

He  was  the  son  of  Adam  Smith  (lawyer  and  Customs'  comptroller  at  Kirkcaldy),  and 
Margaret  Douglas  of  Strathendry ;  and  he  was  born  probably  at  the  beginning  of  June, 
1728.  He  was  a  student  at  Glasgow  University  from  1737  to  1740,  and  at  Ealliol  Col- 
lege, Oxford  (as  Snell  Exhibitioner)  from  1740  to  1747.  After  a  year  and  a  half  at 
Kirkcaldy  he  came  to  Edinburgh  and  lectured  on  belles  lettres  (1748-50).  In  1751  he 
was  made  Professor  of  Logic  at  Glasgow  University,  and  in  1752  Professor  of  Moral 
Philosophy.  In  1759  he  published  his  ''Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments."  In  1764  he 
was  persuaded  by  Charles  Townshend  to  go  abroad  with  the  young  Buccleuch  to  Tou- 
louse, Geneva,  and  Paris,  resigning  his  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy.  He  was  back  in 
London  in -1766  and  at  Kirkcaldy  in  1767,  devoting  himself  to  his  ''Inquiry  Into  the 
Nature  and  Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations,"  which  appeared  in  1776,  just  before  the 
death  of  Hume.  In  1778  he  became  a  Commissioner  of  Customs  in  Edinburgh.  In 
1787  he  w^as  chosen  Rector  of  his  old  University,  and  on  17th  July,  1790,  he  died  at 
his  residence,  Panmure  House,  Canongate.  He  is  buried  in  Canongate  Churchyard. 
His  last  years  were  saddened  by  the  loss  of  his  mother  and  his  cousin  (Miss  Jane 
Douglas),  the  former  of  whom  died  in  1784,  and  the  latter  in  1788. — BoNAR,  James, 
1894,  A  Catalogue  of  the  Library  of  Adam  Smith,  Introduction,  p.  ix. 


PERSONAL 
Adam  Smith,  though  perhaps  only  second 
to  David  in  learning  and  ingenuity,  was 
far  inferior  to  him  in  conversational  tal- 
ents. In  that  of  public  speaking  they 
were  equal— David  never  tried  it,  and  I 
never  heard  Adam  but  once,  which  was  at 
the  first  meeting  of  the  Select  Society, 
when  he  opened  up  the  design  of  the  meet- 
ing. His  voice  was  harsh  and  enunci- 
ation thick,  approaching  to  stammer- 
ing. His  conversation  was  not  collo- 
quial, but  like  lecturing,  in  which  I  have 
been  told  he  was  not  deficient,  espe- 
cially w^hen  he  grew  warm.  He  was  the 
most  absent  man  in  company  that  I  ever 
saw,  moving  his  lips,  and  talking  to  him- 
self, and  smiling,  in  the  midst  of  large 
companies.  If  you  awaked  him  from  his 
reverie,  and  made  him  attend  to  the  sub- 
ject of  conversation,  he  immediately 
began  a  harangue,  and  never  stopped  till 


he  told  you  all  he  knew  about  it,  with 
the  utmost  philosophical  ingenuity.  He 
knew  nothing  of  characters,  and  yet  was 
ready  to  draw  them  on  the  slightest  invi- 
tation. But  when  you  checked  him  or 
doubted,  he  retracted  with  the  utmost 
ease,  and  contradicted  all  he  had  been  say- 
ing. His  journey  abroad  with  the  Duke  of 
Buccleuch  cured  him  in  part  of  these 
foibles;  but  still  he  appeared  very  unfit 
for  the  intercourse  of  the  wwld  as  a  trav- 
elling tutor.  But  the  Duke  was  a  charac- 
ter, both  in  point  of  heart  and  understand- 
ing, to  surmount  all  disadvantages  —  he 
could  learn  nothing  ill  from  a  philosopher 
of  the  utmost  probity  and  benevolence.  If 
he  [Smith]  had  been  more  a  man  of  address 
and  of  the  world,  he  might  perhaps  have 
given  a  ply  to  the  Duke's  fime  mind,  which 
was  much  better  when  left  to  its  own 
energy.  Charles  Townshend  had  chosen 
Smith,  not  for  his  fitness  for  the  pm'pose, 


54 


ADAM  SMITH 


but  for  his  own  glory  in  having:  sent  an 
eminent  Scottish  philosopher  to  travel 
with  the  Duke. — Carlyle,  Alexander, 
1753-56-1860,  Autobiography,  p.  226. 

Sir,  I  was  once  in  company  with  Smith, 
and  we  did  not  take  to  each  other ;  but  had 
I  known  that  he  loved  rhyme  so  much  as 
you  tell  me  he  does  I  should  have  hugged 
him. — Johnson,  Samuel,  1763,  Life  by 
Baswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  i,  p.  495. 

Poor  Smith !  We  must  soon  lose  him, 
and  the  moment  in  which  he  departs  will 
give  a  heart-pang  to  thousands.  '  Mr. 
Smith's  spirits  are  flat,  and  I  am  afraid 
the  exertions  he  sometimes  makes  to 
please  his  friends  do  him  no  good.  His 
intellect  as  well  as  his  senses  are  clear 
and  distinct.  He  wishes  to  be  cheerful, 
but  nature  is  omnipotent.  His  body  is 
extremely  emaciated,  and  his  stomach 
cannot  admit  of  sufl[icient  nourishment; 
but,  like  a  man,  he  is  perfectly  patient 
and  resigned. — Smellie,  W.,  1790,  Letter 
to  Patrick  Clason,  Memoirs  of  Smellie,  ed. 
Kerr,  vol.  i,  p.  295. 

I  have  been  surprised,  and  I  own  a  little 
indignant,  to  observe  how  little  impression 
his  death  has  made  here.  Scarce  any 
notice  has  been  taken  of  it,  while  for 
above  a  year  together,  after  the  death  of 
Dr.  Johnson,  nothing  was  to  be  heard  of 
but  panegyrics  of  him.  Lives,  Letters, 
and  Anecdotes,  and  even  at  this  moment 
there  are  two  more  lives  of  him  about  to 
start  into  existence.  Indeed  one  ought  not, 
perhaps,  to  be  very  much  surprised  that 
the  public  does  not  do  justice  to  the  works 
of  A.  Smith,  since  he  did  not  do  justice  to 
them  himself,  but  always  considered  his 
"  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  "  as  a  much 
superior  work  to  his  ''Wealth  of  Na- 
tions."—  Romilly,  Sir  Samuel,  1790, 
Letter  to  M.  Dumont,  Aug.  20;  Memoirs, 
vol.  I,  p.  404. 

There  was  no  situation  in  which  the 
abilities  of  Mr.  Smith  appeared  to  greater 
advantage  than  as  a  professor.  In  deliv- 
ering his  lectures  he  trusted  almost 
entirely  to  extemporary  elocution.  His 
manner,  though  not  graceful,  was  plain 
and  unaffected,  and  as  he  seemed  to  be 
always  interested  in  his  subject,  he  never 
failed  to  interest  his  hearers.  Each  dis- 
course consisted  commonly  of  several 
distinct  propositions,  which  he  succes- 
sively endeavoured  to  prove  and  illustrate. 
These  propositions,  when  announced  in 


general  terms,  had,  from  their  extent,  not 
unfrequently  something  of  the  air  of  a 
paradox.  In  his  attempts  to  explain  them, 
he  often  appeared,  at  first,  not  to  be  suf- 
ficiently possessed  of  the  subject,  and 
spoke  with  some  hesitation.  As  he  ad- 
vanced, however,  the  matter  seemed  to 
crowd  upon  him,  his  manner  became 
warm  and  animated,  and  his  expression 
easy  and  fluent.  On  points  susceptible  of 
controversy  you  could  easily  discern,  that 
he  secretlv  conceived  an  opposition  to  his 
opinions,  and  that  he  was  led  upon  this 
account  to  support  them  with  greater 
energy  and  vehemence.  By  the  fulness 
and  variety  of  his  illustrations  the  subject 
gradually  swelled  in  his  hands  and  acquired 
a  dimension  which,  without  a  tedious 
repetition  of  the  same  views,  was  calcu- 
lated to  seize  the  attention  of  his  audience, 
and  to  afford  them  pleasure,  as  well  as  in- 
struction, in  following  the  same  object, 
through  all  the  diversity  of  shades  and 
aspects  in  which  it  was  presented,  and 
afterwards  in  tracing  it  backwards  to 
that  original  proposition  or  general  truth, 
from  which  this  beautiful  train  of  specula- 
lation  had  proceeded.  —  Millar,  John, 
c  1793,  Letter,  Stewart's  Works,  vol.  vii, 
p.  10. 

Of  the  intellectual  gifts  and  attainments 
by  which  he  was  so  eminently  distinguished ; 
— of  the  originality  and  comprehensive- 
ness of  his  views ;  the  extent,  the  variety, 
and  the  correctness  of  his  information ; 
the  inexhaustible  fertility  of  his  invention ; 
and  the  ornaments  which  his  rich  and 
beautiful  imagination  had  borrowed  from 
classical  culture ; — he  has  left  behind  him 
lasting  monuments.  To  his  private  worth 
the  most  certain  of  all  testimonies  may  be 
found  in  that  confidence,  respect,  and  at- 
tachment, which  followed  him  through  all 
the  various  relations  of  life.  The  serenity 
and  gaiety  he  enjoyed,  under  the  pressure 
of  his  growing  infirmities,  and  the  warm 
interest  he  felt  to  the  last,  in  everything 
connected  with  the  welfare  of  his  friends, 
will  be  long  remembered  by  a  small  circle, 
with  whom,  as  long  as  his  strength  per- 
mitted, he  regularly  spent  an  evening  in 
the  week;  and  to  whom  the  recollection 
of  his  worth  still  forms  a  pleasing,  though 
melancholy  bond  of  union.  The  more 
delicate  and  characteristical  features  of 
his  mind,  it  is  perhaps  impossible  to  trace. 
That  there  were  many  peculiarities,  both 


ADAM  SMITH 


55 


in  his  manners,  and  in  his  intellectual 
habits,  was  manifest  to  the  most  super- 
ficial observer ;  but  although,  to  those  who 
knew  him,  these  peculiarities  detracted 
nothing  from  the  respect  which  his  abili- 
ties commanded ;  and  although,  to  his  in- 
timate friends,  they  added  an  inexpressi- 
ble charm  to  his  conversation,  while  they 
displayed,  in  the  most  interesting  light, 
the  artless  simplicity  of  his  heart ;  yet  it 
would  require  a  very  skillful  pencil  to 
present  them  to  the  public  eye.  He  was  cer- 
tainly not  fitted  for  the  general  commerce 
of  the  world,  or  for  the  business  of  active 
life.  The  comprehensive  speculations 
with  which  he  had  been  occupied  from  his 
youth,  and  the  variety  of  materials  which 
his  own  invention  continually  supplied  to 
his  thoughts,  rendered  him  habitually  inat- 
tentive to  familiar  objects,  and  to  common 
occurrences ;  and  he  frequently  exhibited 
instances  of  absence,  which  have  scarcely 
been  surpassed  by  the  fancy  of  La  Bruyere. 
Even  in  company,  he  was  apt  to  be  in- 
grossed  with  his  studies ;  and  appeared,  at 
times,  by  the  motion  of  his  lips,  as  well  as 
by  his  looks  and  gestures,  to  be  in  the 
fervor  of  composition.  I  have  often,  how- 
ever, been  struck,  at  the  distance  of 
years,  with  his  accurate  memory  of  the 
most  trifling  particulars ;  and  am  incliiiied 
to  believe,  from  this  and  some  other  cir- 
cumstances, that  he  possessed  a  povver, 
not  perhaps  uncommon  among  absent  men, 
of  recollecting,  in  consequence  of  subse- 
quent efforts  of  reflection,  many  occur- 
rences which,  at  the  time  when  they  hap- 
pened, did  not  seem  to  have  sensibly 
attracted  his  notice.  ...  In  his  ex- 
ternal form  and  appearance,  there  was 
nothing  uncommon.  When  perfectly  at 
ease,  and  when  warmed  with  conversation, 
his  gestures  were  animated,  and  not  un- 
graceful ;  and,  in  the  society  of  those  he 
loved,  his  features  were  often  brightened 
with  a  smile  of  inexpressible  benignity. 
In  the  company  of  strangers,  his  tendency 
to  absence,  and  perhaps  still  more  his 
consciousness  of  this  tendency,  rendered 
his  manner  somewhat  embarrassed,  an 
effect  which  was  probably  not  a  little 
heightened  by  those  speculative  ideas  of 
propriety,  which  his  recluse  habits  tended 
at  once  to  perfect  in  his  conception,  and  to 
diminish  his  power  of  realizing.  He  never 
sat  for  his  picture ;  but  the  medallion  of 
Tassie  conveys  an  exact  idea  of  his  profile, 


and  of  the  general  expression  of  his  coun- 
tenance. —  Stewart,  Dugald,  1793,  Ac- 
count of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Adam 
Smith. 

Those  persons  who  have  ever  had  the 
pleasure  to  be  in  his  company  may  recol- 
lect that  even  in  his  common  conversation 
the  order  and  method  he  pursued,  without 
the  smallest  degree  of  formality  or  stiff- 
ness, were  beautiful  and  gave  a  sort  of 
pleasure  to  all  who  listened  to  him. — 
Playfair,  William,  1805,  Life  of  Adam 
Smith. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-nine,  he  filled  the 
chair  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Glasgow ;  a  place  for  which  he  was 
admirably  suited  by  his  power  of  commu- 
nication as  well  as  by  the  habits  of  his 
mind,  as  he  spoke  with  great  fluency 
when  once  engaged  in  his  subject,  and 
was  listened  to  with  the  enthusiasm  which 
his  ability,  accompanied  by  a  popular 
manner,  might  be  expected  to  inspire.  It 
is  much  to  be  regretted,  that  his  lectures 
were  destroyed  by  his  own  hand  before  he 
died.  The  course  of  Natural  Theology 
was  one  which  would  have  great  interest 
for  readers  of  the  present  day ;  and  such 
was  the  variety  of  suggestions  always 
flowing  from  his  active  and  fertile  mind, 
that  every  part  must  have  contained  much 
to  interest  and  instruct  mankind. — Pea- 
body,  William  B.  0.,  1846-50,  Men  of 
Letters  and  Science,  Art.  ii.  Literary  Re- 
mains, ed.  Peabody,  p.  262. 

When  a  young  man  [in  1789],  I  went  to 
Edinburgh,  carrying  letters  of  introduc- 
tion (from  Dr.  Kippis,  Dr.  Price,  &c.,) 
to  Adam  Smith,  Robertson,  and  others. 
When  I  first  saw  Smith,  he  was  at  break- 
fast, eating  strawberries ;  and  he  descanted 
on  the  superior  flavour  of  those  gro^^^l  in 
Scotland.  I  found  him  very  kind  and 
communicative.  He  ^vas  (what  Robertson 
was  not)  a  man  who  had  seen  a  great  deal 
of  the  world.  Once,  in  the  course  of  con- 
versation, I  happened  to  remark  of  some 
writer,  that  ^ '  he  was  rather  superficial,  — 
a  Voltaire."  ''Sir,"  cried  Smith,  strik- 
ing the  table  with  his  hand,  "there  has 
been  but  o?ie  Voltaire ! " — Rogers,  Sam- 
uel, 1855?  Table  Talk. 

In  person  he  was  a  grave,  preoccupied- 
looking  man,  of  a  stout  middle  size,  ^^ith 
large  features  and  large  grey  eyes,  absent- 
minded  in  company,  often  incontinently 
talking  to  himself,  and  keeping  up  his 


56 


ADAM  SMITH 


rather  poor  constitution  by  strict  regular- 
ity and  temperance.  He  was  warm  and 
affectionate  in  disposition,  exceedingly 
unreserved,  with  simple  frankness  express- 
ing the  thoughts  of  the  moment,  and  with 
ready  candour  retracting  his  opinion  if  he 
found  that  he  had  spoken  without  just 
grounds.  His  intellectual  proceedings 
were  calm,  patient  and  regular ;  he  mas- 
tered a  subject  slowly  and  circumspectly, 
and  carried  his  principles  with  steady 
tenacity  through  multitudes  of  details  that 
would  have  checked  many  men  of  greater 
mental  vigour  unendowed  with  the  same 
invincible  persistence. — Minto,  William, 
1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose  Litera- 
ture, p.  476. 

In  1778  he  was  appointed,  at  the  request 
of  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  one  of  the  com- 
missioners of  his  majesty's  customs  in 
Scotland,  and  removed  to  Edinburgh,  tak- 
ing his  mother  with  him;  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  mention  that  he  continued  all 
his  life  a  bachelor.  Here  he  spent  the 
last  twelve  years  of  his  life.  Henceforth 
he  became  an  object  of  curiosity  to  all 
people  of  literary  culture ;  and  his  person 
was  scrutinized,  as  he  walked  the  streets, 
by  the  curious,  and  his  peculiar  habits 
reported.  Many  a  youth,  studying  in 
Edinburgh,  was  proud  to  relate  in  after 
years  that  he  had  seen  him — a  fine  gentle- 
man of  the  old  school,  a  little  above  the 
ordinary  size,  with  a  manly  countenance 
lighted  by  large  gray  eyes,  wearing  a  cap, 
a  long,  wide  great-coat,  breeches,  and 
shoebuckles. — McCosH,  James,  1874,  The 
Scottish  Philosophy,  p.  166. 

Adam  Smith,  who  taught  the  nations 
economy,  could  not  manage  the  economy 
of  his  own  house.  Choked  with  books  and 
absorbed  in  abstractions,  he  was  feeble  and 
inefficient  in  active  life — incapable  of  act- 
ing on  his  own  conclusions. — Mathews, 
William,  1887,  Men,  Places  and  Things, 
p.  134. 

There  is  much,  besides  the  contents  of 
his  published  works,  to  draw  to  Adam 
Smith  the  attention  of  those  who  are 
attracted  by  individual  power.  Scotchmen 
have  long  been  reputed  strong  in  philo- 
sophic doctrine,  and  he  was  a  Scot  of 
Scots.  But,  though  Scotland  is  now  re- 
nowned for  her  philosophy,  that  renown  is 
not  of  immemorial  origin;  it  was  not 
till  the  last  century  was  well  advanced 
that  she  began  to  add  great  speculative 


thinkers  to  her  great  preachers.  Adam 
Smith,  consequently,  stands  nearly  at  the 
opening  of  the  greatest  of  the  intellectual 
eras  of  Scotland ;  and  yet  by  none  of  the 
great  Scotch  names,  which  men  have 
learned  since  his  day,  has  his  name  been 
eclipsed.  The  charm  about  the  man  con- 
sists, for  those  who  do  not  regard  him 
with  the  special  interest  of  the  political 
economist,  in  his  literary  method,  which 
exhibits  his  personality  and  makes  his 
works  thoroughly  his  own,  rather  than  in 
any  facts  about  his  eminency  among 
Scotchmen.  You  bring  away  from  your 
reading  of  Adam  Smith  a  distinct  and 
attractive  impression  of  the  man  himself, 
such  as  you  can  get  from  the  writings  of 
no  other  author  in  the  same  field,  and 
such  as  makes  you  wish  to  know  still 
more  of  him.  .  .  .  Unhappily,  we 
know  very  little  of  Adam  Smith  as  a  man, 
and  it  may  be  deplored,  without  injustice 
to  a  respected  name,  that  we  owe  that 
little  to  Dugald  Stewart. — Wilson,  Wood- 
row,  1888,  An  Old  Master,  The  New 
Princeton  Review,  vol.  vi,  pp.  211,  212. 

A  common  misconception  regarding 
Smith  is  that  he  was  as  helpless  as  a  child 
in  matters  of  business.  One  of  his  Edin- 
burgh neighbors  remarked  of  him  to  Rob- 
ert Chambers  that  it  was  strange  a  man 
who  wrote  so  well  on  exchange  and  barter 
was  obliged  to  get  a  friend  to  buy  his 
horse  corn  for  him.  This  idea  of  his  help- 
lessness in  the  petty  transactions  of  life 
arose  from  observing  his  occasional  fits  of 
absence  and  his  habitual  simplicity  of 
character,  but  his  simplicity,  nobody  de- 
nies, was  accompanied  by  exceptional 
acuteness  and  practical  sagacity,  and  his 
fits  of  absence  seem  to  have  been  neither 
so  frequent  or  prolonged  as  they  are  com- 
monly represented.  Samuel  Rogers  spent 
most  of  a  week  with  him  in  Edinburgh  the 
year  before  his  death,  and  did  not  remark 
his  absence  of  mind  all  the  time.  Anyhow, 
during  his  thirteen  years'  residence  at 
Glasgow  College,  Smith  seems  to  have 
had  more  to  do  with  the  business  of  the 
College,  petty  or  important,  than  any 
other  professor,  and  his  brethren  in  the 
Senate  of  that  University  cannot  have 
seen  in  him  any  marked  failing  or  inca- 
pacity for  ordinary  business.  They  threw 
on  his  shoulders  an  ample  share  of  the 
committee  and  general  routine  work  of  the 
place,  and  set  him  to  audit  accounts,  or 


ADAM  SMITH 


57 


inspect  the  drains  in  the  College  Court ,  or 
see  the  holly  hedge  in  the  College  garden 
uprooted,  or  to  examine  the  encroach- 
ments on  the  College  lands  on  the  Molen- 
dinar  Burn,  without  any  fear  of  his  for- 
getting his  business  on  the  way.  They 
entrusted  him  for  years  with  the  post  of 
College  Quaestor  or  Treasurer,  in  which 
inattention  or  the  want  of  sound  business 
habits  might  inflict  injury  even  on  their 
pecuniary  interests.  They  made  him  one 
of  the  two  curators  of  the  College  cham- 
bers, the  forty  lodgings  provided  for  stu- 
dents inside  the  College  gates.  And  when 
there  was  any  matter  of  business  that  was 
a  little  troublesome  or  delicate  to  negoti- 
ate, they  seem  generally  to  have  chosen 
Smith  for  their  chief  spokesman  or  repre- 
sentative.— Rae,  John,  1895,  Life  of  Adam 
Smith,  p.  66. 

In  Edinburgh,  where  better  things  might 
have  been  expected,  the  public  interest, 
or  rather  apathy,  was  reflected  in  two 
meagre  paragraphs  of  his  death  in  the 
newspapers.  Lord  Cockburn  has  left  it  on 
record  that  in  his  day  all  that  seemed  to  be 
known  of  the  founder  of  the  science  of 
Political  Economy  was  that  he  had  been 
Commissioner  of  Customs  and  had  written 
a  sensible  book.  .  .  .  When  Adam 
Smith's  personality  is  carefully  analysed 
the  reason  of  the  public  apathy  at  the  time 
of  his  death  becomes  obvious.  A  solitary 
thinker,  out  of  touch  with  the  theological 
sympathies  of  his  countrymen,  and  indiffer- 
ent to  the  prevailing  parochialism,  Smith 
w^as  an  intellectual  alien.  A  sensitive 
plant,  he  shrank  from  uncongenial  influ- 
ences by  which  he  was  surrounded.  In 
the  public  mind  his  friend  Hume  bulked 
considerably,  but  that  was  not  because  he 
was  more  in  touch  with  Scottish  sympa- 
thies than  Smith,  but  because  of  his 
greater  intellectual  aggressiveness.  On 
the  all-absorbing  theme  of  human  destiny 
Smith  was  silent ;  consequently  he  lived  in 
a  state  of  mental  isolation.  In  this  atti- 
tude he  was  confirmed  by  his  temperament, 
which  was  not  favourable  to  social  expan- 
sion. .  .  .  At  this  distance  we  can 
readily  detect  the  limitations  of  the 
Smithsonian  type  of  mind.  Within  its 
limitations,  however,  the  genius  of  Smith 
was  a  potent  influence,  and  had  far-reach- 
ing issues.  In  the  sphere  of  international 
economics  his  place  is  with  the  innnortals. 
If  his  personality  lacked  the  dramatic 


element,  it  was  eminently  harmonious.  In 
the  midst  of  his  intellectual  absorption  he 
kept  the  fountains  of  his  heart  ever  open. 
Adam  Smith  was  no  dry-as-dust  speculator 
on  mundane  aff'airs ;  his  emotional  interest 
in  humanity  was  intense.  To  outsiders 
he  might  seem  cold  and  reserved,  but 
those  who  knew  him  intimately  record  that 
he  was  not  only  a  great  thinker  but  a 
good  man. — MacphersOxN,  Hector  C, 
1899,  Adam  Smith  (Famous  Scots  Series), 
pp.  135,  139,  141. 

With  all  drawbacks,  Adam  Smith  must 
be  counted  not  only  one  of  the  greatest 
influences,  but  also  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic figures  of  the  age.  He  was  a 
man  of  simple  life,  wrapt  in  abstract 
thought,  a  stranger  to  all  the  baser  ambi- 
tions of  ordinary  life,  yet  devoting  himself, 
with  singular  tenacity  of  purpose,  and 
with  singular  boldness,  to  work  out  a 
theory  which  had  a  profound  effect  upon 
the  most  practical  side  of  human  life.  In 
another  age  than  his,  the  recluse  student, 
who  struck  his  contemporaries  as  one 
utterly  lacking  even  ordinary  discernment 
of  character,  would  have  hung  back  in 
timidity  from  propounding  views  which 
were  to  be  effectual  only  by  moulding  the 
action  of  men.  His  artlessness,  his 
modesty,  his  occasional  wayward  eccen- 
tricity of  view,  which  appeared  to  his 
intimates  as  almost  childish,  gave  addi- 
tional interest  to  the  concentrated  perse- 
verance with  which  he  w^orked  out  his 
system.  His  ordinary  conversation  con- 
sisted of  long  philosophical  harangues, 
varied  by  fits  of  silence  and  reverie,  and 
by  the  utterance  of  paradoxical  opinions 
which  he  was  ready  to  retract  upon  a  show 
of  opposition.— Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901, 
A  Century  of  Scottish  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  201. 

His  figure  was  one  of  the  most  familiar 
in  the  High  Street — dressed  in  a  light- 
coloured  coat,  in  cocked  hat  or  broad- 
brimmed  beaver,  white  silk  stockings,  and 
silver-buckled  shoes,  a  bamboo  cane  held 
over  his  shoulder,  as  a  soldier  carries  his 
musket,  with  one  hand,  while  the  other 
might  hold  a  bunch  of  flowers  from 
his  garden.  Thus  he  walked,  with  eyes 
gazing  vacantly,  and  lips  moving  as  if  in 
inaudible  converse,  a  placid  smile  occa- 
sionally wreathing  his  countenance,  his 
body  swaying,  as  an  acquaintance  describes 
it,  ''vermicularly,  as  if  at  every  step  he 
meant  to  alter  his  direction  or  to  turn 


58 


ADAM  SMITH 


back."  No  wonder  the  Musselburgh  fish- 
wife, as  she  watched  the  punctiliously- 
attired,  vacant-eyed,  amiable  man  pass 
along  the  street,  mistook  him  for  a 
demented  but  harmless  old  gentleman,  and 
sighed  to  her  sister  vender  of  haddocks, 
"Hech !  and  he  is  weel  put  on  tae !  "  His 
very  unpracticalness  in  little  affairs  of 
life  only  endeared  him  the  more  to 
friends,  who  were  comforted  at  feeling 
they  were  at  least  in  some  things  superior 
to  a  genius.  In  political  matters  he  was, 
like  most  of  his  Scots  brethren,  on  the 
side  of  liberalism ;  in  religion  he  did  not 
pronounce  his  opinions,  and  his  friends 
did  not  question  him,  though  they  knew 
his  convictions  were  deep.  —  Graham, 
Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish  Men  of  Letters 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  169. 

THE  THEORY  OF  MORAL 
SENTIMENTS 

1759 

I  give  you  thanks  for  the  agreeable 
present  of  your  Theory.  Wedderburn  and  I 
made  presents  of  our  copies  to  such  of  our 
acquaintances  as  we  thought  good  judges, 
and  proper  to  spread  the  reputation  of 
the  book.  I  sent  one  ^to  the  Duke  of 
Argyle,  to  Lord  Lyttleton,  Horace  Wal- 
pole,  Soame  Jenyns,  and  Burke,  an  Irish 
gentleman,  who  wrote  lately  a  very  pretty 
treatise  on  the  Sublime.  Millar  desired 
my  permission  to  send  one  in  your  name 
to  Dr.  Warburton.  I  have  delayed  writing 
to  you  till  I  could  tell  you  something  of 
the  success  of  the  book,  and  could  prog- 
nosticate with  some  probability,  whether 
it  should  be  finally  damned  to  oblivion,  or 
should  be  registered  in  the  temple  of  im- 
mortality. Though  it  has  been  published 
only  a  few  weeks,  I  think  there  appear 
already  such  strong  symptoms,  that  I  can 
almost  venture  to  foretell  its  fate.  .  .  . 
Three  Bishops  called  yesterday  at  Millar's 
shop  in  order  to  buy  copies,  and  to  ask 
questions  about  the  author.  The  Bishop 
of  Peterborough  said  he  had  passed  the 
evening  in  a  company  where  he  heard  it 
extolled  above  all  books  in  the  world. 
The  Duke  of  Argyle  is  more  decisive  than 
he  used  to  be  in  favor.  I  suppose  he 
either  considers  it  as  an  exotic,  or  thinks 
the  author  will  be  serviceable  to  him  in 
the  Glasgow  elections.  Lord  Lyttleton 
says,  that  Robertson  and  Smith  and  Bower 
are  the  glories  of  English  literature. 
Oswald  protests  he  does  not  know  whether 


he  has  reaped  more  instruction  or  enter- 
tainment from  it.  But  you  may  easily 
judge  what  reliance  can  be  put  on  his 
judgment,  who  has  been  engaged  all  his 
life  in  public  business,  and  who  never  sees 
any  faults  in  his  friends.  Millar  exults 
and  brags  that  two-thirds  of  the  edition 
are  already  sold,  and  that  he  is  now  sure 
of  success.  You  see  what  a  son  of  the 
earth  that  is,  to  value  books  only  by  the 
profit  they  bring  him.  In  that  view,  I 
believe  it  may  prove  a  very  good  book. 
Charles  Townshend,  who  passes  for  the 
cleverest  fellow  in  England,  is  so  taken 
with  the  performance,  that  he  said  to 
Oswald  he  would  put  the  Duke  of  Buc- 
cleugh  under  the  author's  care,  and 
would  make  it  worth  his  while  to  accept 
of  that  charge. — Hume,  David,  1759, 
Letter  to  Adam  Smith,  April  12. 

The  author  seeks  for  the  foundation  of 
the  just,  the  fit,  the  proper,  the  decent, 
in  our  most  common  and  most  allowed 
passions,  and  making  approbation  and  dis- 
approbation the  tests  of  virtue  and  vice, 
and  showing  that  these  are  founded  on 
sympathy,  he  raises  from  this  simple  truth 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  fabrics  of 
moral  theory  that  has  perhaps  ever  ap- 
peared. The  illustrations  are  numerous 
and  happy,  and  show  the  author  to  be  a 
man  of  uncommon  observation.  His 
language  is  easy  and  spirited,  and  puts 
things  before  you  in  the  fullest  light ;  it 
is  rather  painting  than  writing. — BuRKE, 
Edmund,  1776,  Annual  Register. 

The  system  to  which  I  allude,  is  that 
which  is  delivered  by  Dr.  Smith,  in  his 
"Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments," — a  work, 
unquestionably  of  the  first  rank,  in  a 
science  which  I  cannot  but  regard  as  to 
man  the  most  interesting  of  sciences. 
Profound  in  thought,  it  exhibits,  even 
when  it  is  most  profound,  an  example  of 
the  graces  with  which  a  sage  imagination 
knows  how  to  adorn  the  simple  and 
majestic  form  of  science ;  that  it  is  severe 
and  cold,  only  to  those  who  are  themselves 
cold  and  severe, — as  in  those  very  graces, 
it  exhibits  in  like  manner,  an  example  of 
the  reciprocal  embellishment  which  im- 
agination receives  from  the  sober  dignity 
of  truth.  In  its  minor  details  and  illus- 
trations, indeed,  it  may  be  considered  as 
presenting  a  model  of  philosophic  beauty, 
of  which  all  must  acknowledge  the  power, 
who  are  not  disqualified  by  their  very 


ADAM  SMITH 


59 


nature  for  the  admiration  and  enjoyment  of 
intellectual  excellence, — so  dull  of  under- 
standing, as  to  shrink  with  a  painful  con- 
sciousness of  incapacity  at  the  very 
appearance  of  refined  analysis — or  so  dull 
and  cold  of  heart,  as  to  feel  no  charm  in 
the  delightful  varieties  of  an  eloquence, 
that  in  the  illustration  and  embellish- 
ment of  the  noblest  truths  seems  itself  to 
live  and  harmonize  with  those  noble  sen- 
timents which  it  adorns.  It  is  chiefly  in 
its  minor  analyses,  however,  that  I  con- 
ceive the  excellence  of  this  admirable 
work  to  consist.  Its  leading  doctrine  I 
am  far  from  admitting.  Indeed  it  seems 
to  me  as  manifestly  false,  as  the  greater 
number  of  its  secondary  and  minute  delin- 
eations appear  to  me  faithful,  to  the  fine 
lights  and  faint  and  flying  shades,  of  that 
moral  nature  which  they  represent. — 
Brown,  Thomas,  1820,  Lectures  on  the 
Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind,  Lecture 
Ixxx. 

The  ''Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments," 
although  it  be  not  the  work  by  which 
Dr.  Smith  is  best  known,  and  for  which 
he  is  most  renowned,  is  yet  a  perform- 
ance of  the  highest  merit.  The  system 
has  not,  indeed,  been  approved  by  the 
philosophical  world,  and  it  seems  liable  to 
insuperable  objections  when  considered 
even  with  an  ordinary  degree  of  attention, 
objections  which  never  could  have  escaped 
the  acuteness  of  its  author  but  for  the 
veil  po  easily  drawn  over  an  inquirer's 
eyes  when  directed  to  the  weak  points  of 
his  own  supposed  discovery. 
There  are  whole  compartments  of  the  work 
which  are  of  inestimable  value,  without 
any  regard  to  the  theory,  and  independent 
of  those  portions  more  connected  with  it, 
of  which  we  have  admitted  the  value. 
Thus  the  copious  and  accurate  and  lumi- 
nous account  of  the  other  systems  of 
morals,  forming  the  seventh  part,  which 
occupies  a  fourth  of  the  book,  would  have 
been  a  valuable  work  detached  from  the 
rest.  .  .  .  The  admirable  felicity, 
and  the  inexhaustible  variety  of  the  illus- 
trations in  which  the  book  everywhere 
abounds,  sheds  a  new  and  strong  light 
upon  all  the  most  important  principles  of 
human  nature ;  and  affords  an  explanation 
of  many  things  which  are  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  any  theory  whatever,  and 
which  deserves  to  be  known  and  under- 
stood, whatever  theory  may  obtain  our 


assent.  The  beauty  of  the  illustrations, 
and  the  eloquence  of  the  diction,  are 
indeed  a  great  merit  of  this  work. — 
Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1846-55,  Lives 
of  Philosophers  of  the  Time  of  George  HL, 
pp.  197,  200,  201. 

In  a  history  of  Scotch  philosophy  it 
would  become  us  to  notice  the  ''Theory  of 
Moral  Sentiments"  of  Hume's  illustrious 
friend,  Adam  Smith.  Even  in  such  a 
history,  a  notice  of  them  would  be  rather 
due  to  the  fame  which  their  author  has 
earned  in  another  direction,  than  to  any 
influence  which  has  proceeded  from  his 
"Ethics." — Maurice,  Frederick  Deni- 
SON,  1862,  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philos- 
ophy, vol.  II,  p.  578. 

In  Smith's  "Essay,"  the  purely  scien- 
tific enquiry  is  overlaid  by  practical  and 
hortatory  dissertations,  and  by  eloquent 
delineations  of  character  and  of  beau-ideals 
of  virtuous  conduct.  His  style  being  thus 
pitched  to  the  popular  key,  he  never 
pushes  home  a  metaphysical  analysis,  so 
that  even  his  favourite  theme.  Sympathy, 
is  not  philosophically  sifted  to  the  bot- 
tom.—Bain,  Alexander,  1868,  Moral 
Science,  p.  219. 

His  "Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  "  has 
commonly  been  a  favorite  with  students, 
because  of  the  eloquence  of  its  language, 
modelled  after  the  best  philosophic  writers 
of  ancient  Rome  and  modern  France,  and 
of  the  fertility  of  his  resources  in  con- 
firming his  positions  from  his  varied  ob- 
servation and  reading.  But  his  theory 
has  gained  the  assent  of  few,  and  has 
often  been  prescribed  by  professors  as  a 
subject  on  which  to  exercise  the  critical 
acumen  of  their  pupils.  Adam  Smith  is 
always  a  discursive  writer,  and  in  the 
work  now  before  us  he  wanders  like  a 
river  amidst  luxuriant  banks,  and  it  is 
not  easy  to  define  his  course. — McCosH, 
James,  1874,  The  Scottish  Philosophy,  p. 
168. 

Was  his  most  important  contribution  to 
Ethical  Philosophy,  and  is  characterized 
by  consummate  ingenuity  in  its  analyses 
of  ethical  phenomena,  and  by  the  affluence 
of  its  interesting  illustrations,  and  the 
elegance  of  its  somewhat  elaborate  diction. 
The  theory  of  Smith  is  an  offshoot  of  the 
theory  of  Hume. — Porter,  Noah,  1874, 
Philosophy  in  Great  Britain  and  American, 
Ueherweg  History  of  Philosophy,  vol.  ii,  p, 
393. 


60 


ADAM  SMITH 


Smith's  ingenious  and  discursive  intel- 
lect pours  itself  out  in  streams  of  diffuse 
eloquence,  often  brilliant  with  felicitous 
illustrations,  and  quick  flashes  of  histor- 
ical insight,  and  yet  wide  rather  than 
deep,  rather  dextrous  in  new  combinations 
than  penetrating  the  essence  of  the  sub- 
ject, and,  therefore,  apt  to  disappoint 
us  by  a  certain  superficiality  and  flimsi- 
ness.  Smith's  ingenuity  in  tracing  the 
working  of  the  mechanism  of  human 
nature  is  so  marked  and  so  delightful  to 
himself  that  he  almost  forgets  to  enquire 
into  the  primary  forces  which  set  it  in 
action.  He  describes  the  mutual  action 
and  reaction  of  the  passions  with  more 
fidelity  than  the  passions  themselves. 
Smith,  in  fact,  is  a  thorough  representa- 
tive of  that  optimistic  Deism  which  we 
have  seen  illustrated  by  Shaftesbury  and 
Hutcheson.  .  .  .  The  name  of  Adam 
Smith  should  be  mentioned  with  high 
respect ;  but  I  think  that  the  respect  is 
due  chiefly  to  his  economical  labours.  It 
may  be  fully  admitted  that  he  shows 
great  ingenuity,  and  great  fertility  of 
illustration,  and  that  he  calls  mention  to 
a  fact  which  must  be  taken  into  account 
by  the  moralist.  But  it  is  impossible  to 
resist  the  impression,  whilst  we  read  his 
fluent  rhetoric,  and  observe  his  easy  ac- 
ceptance of  theological  principles  already 
exposed  by  his  master  Hume,  that  we 
are  not  listening  to  a  thinker  really 
grappling  with  a  difficult  problem,  so 
much  as  to  an  ambitious  professor  who 
has  found  an  excellent  opportunity  for 
displaying  his  command  of  language,  and 
making  brilliant  lectures.  The  whole 
tone  savours  of  that  complacent  optimism 
of  the  time  which  retained  theological 
phrases  to  round  a  paragraph,  and  to  save 
the  trouble  of  genuine  thought.  Smith's 
main  proposition  was  hardly  original, 
though  he  has  worked  it  out  in  detail,  and 
it  is  rather  calculated  to  lead  us  dex- 
terously round  difficult  questions  than 
to  supply  us  with  a  genuine  answer. — 
Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History  of  English 
Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  70,  77. 

Soon  became  popular,  as  one  of  the 
most  interesting  and  attractive  books  in 
the  circle  of  ethical  literature.  .  .  . 
Analytically,  his  treatise  is  not  re- 
markable; its  merits  rather  lie  in  the 
practical  and  hortatory  discourse,  in  the 


eloquent  criticisms  of  character,  and  the 
fine  illustrations,  of  virtuous  conduct  with 
which  it  abounds,  and  are  presented  in  a 
naturally  copious,  easy,  flowing,  and  fas- 
cinating style.  The  chief  blemish  of  his 
style  is  an  excess  of  language — a  running 
into  redundance.  —  Mackintosh,  John, 
1878-96,  The  History  of  Civilisation  in 
Scotland,  vol.  iv,  pp.  45,  46. 

Critics  who  have  rejected  the  ''Theory" 
as  a  whole,  have  been  uniformly  loud  in 
their  praises  of  its  minor  details  and 
illustrations.  Brown,  for  instance,  who 
has  been  the  most  successful  perhaps  of 
all  the  adverse  critics  of  the  ''Theory," 
speaks  of  it  as  presenting  in  these 
respects  "a model  of  philosophic  beauty." 
Jouffroy,  too,  allows  that  the  book  is  one 
of  the  most  useful  in  moral  science,  be- 
cause Adam  Smith,  "deceived  as  he  un- 
doubtedly was  as  to  the  principle  of 
morality,"  brought  to  light  and  analyzed 
so  many  of  the  facts  of  human  nature. 
Dugald  Stewart  and  Mackintosh  both  say 
much  the  same  thing;  so  that  it  is  evi- 
dent no  account  of  Adam  Smith's  work 
can  be  complete  which  omits  from  consid- 
eration all  the  collateral  inquiries  he 
pursues  or  all  the  illustrations  he  draws, 
either  from  history  or  from  his  imagina- 
tion.— Farrer,  J.  A.,  1881,  Adam  Smith 
{English  Philosophers),  p.  17. 

If  precariously  based,  is  a  model  of  in- 
genious system-making.  —  Saintsbury, 
George,  1886,  Specimens  of  English  Prose 
Style,  p.  216.  * 

The  essays  are  finely  written,  full  of 
subtle  analysis  and  truthful  illustration. 
The  book  is  least  significant,  however,  as 
philosophy ;  because  it  lacks  any  profound 
examination  of  the  foundation  upon  which 
the  author's  views  rest. — Ely,  Richard 
T.,  1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Lit- 
erature, ed.  Warner,  vol.  xxiii,  p,  13521. 

Adam  Smith  was  one  of  the  least  meta- 
physical persons  that  ever  wrote,  but  in 
some  respects  he  anticipated  a  theory 
which  some  people  would  regard  as  meta- 
physical in  the  highest  degree,  that  of  the 
"social  self,"  and  it  is  a  social  self  which 
enables  us  to  effect  not  only  an  imaginary 
change  of  situation  with  the  persons  chiefly 
concerned,  but  a  complete  identification 
of  our  own  person  and  character  with 
that  of  another  person.  Yet  he  does  not 
ignore  the  influence  of  common  interest, 
and,  if  sympathy  with  the  motives  of  the 


ADAM  SMITH 


61 


agent  is  the  source  of  our  idea  of  pro- 
priety, sympathy  with  the  gratitude  of  the 
person  acted  on  is  the  source  of  our  idea 
of  merit;  but  the  latter  sympathy  does 
not  arise  unless  there  be,  first,  propriety 
in  the  motives  of  the  agent.  He  is  thus 
enabled  to  recognize  the  undeniable  ele- 
ment of  utility  in  moral  institutions,  to 
which  the  selfish  school  had  confined  its 
view,  and  also  to  preserve  those  other 
elements  which  distinguish  moral  approval 
from  the  approval  which  we  bestow  on  a 
well-contrived  machine.  His  deliverance 
of  moral  approbation  from  the  dead  level 
imposed  on  it  by  the  selfish  and  benevolent 
schools  alike,  and  his  restoration  of  variety 
and  elasticity  to  that  function,  would 
alone  be  a  considerable  achievement.  His 
theory  of  sympathy  is  rather  a  preserva- 
tive than  a  solvent.  His  system,  how- 
ever, is  a  ''closed  system, "  and  he  refused 
to  recognize  the  existence  of  any  question 
which  necessarily  leads  beyond  it,  and, 
however  useful  for  practical  purposes,  as 
a  theory  of  the  moral  criterion  it  is  insuf- 
ficient.—Selby-Bigge,  L.  A.,  1897,  ed., 
British  Moralists, Introduction,vol.  i.  p.  Ixi. 

As  a  literary  production  it  holds  a  high 
place,  but  its  philosophic  value  is  slight. 
— Macpherson,  Hector  C,  1899,  Adam 
Smith  (Famous  Scots  Series),  p.  38. 

THE  WEALTH  OF  NATIONS 

1776 

The  life  which  I  led  at  Glasgow  was  a 
pleasurable,  dissipated  life  in  comparison 
to  that  which  I  lead  here  at  present.  I 
have  begun  to  write  a  book,  in  order  to 
pass  away  the  time.— Smith,  Adam,  1764, 
Letter  to  David  Hume,  Geneva,  July  5. 

Huge!  Belle!  Dear  Mr.  Smith:  I  am 
much  pleased  with  your  performance,  and 
the  perusal  of  it  has  taken  me  from  a  state 
of  great  anxiety.  It  was  a  work  of  so 
much  expectation,  by  yourself,  by  your 
friends,  and  by  the  public,  that  I  trembled 
for  its  appearance ;  but  am  now  much  re- 
lieved. Not  but  that  the  reading  of  it 
necessarily  requires  so  much  attention, 
and  the  public  is  disposed  to  give  so  little, 
that  1  shall  still  doubt  for  some  time  of 
its  being  at  first  very  popular.  But  it  has 
depth  and  solidity  and  acuteness,  and  is  so 
much  illustrated  by  curious  facts,  that  it 
must  at  last  take  the  public  attention.  It 
is  probably  much  improved  by  your  last 
abode  in  London.    If  you  were  here  at  my 


fire-side,  I  should  dispute  some  of  your 
principles.  .  .  .  But  these,  and  a 
hundred  other  points,  are  fit  only  to  be 
discussed  in  conversation.  I  hope  it  will 
be  soon ;  for  I  am  in  a  very  bad  state  of 
health,  and  cannot  afford  a  long  delay. — 
—Hume,  David,  1776,  Letter  to  Adam 
Smith,  April  1. 

But  there  is  still  another  cause,  even 
more  satisfactory  than  these,  because  it  is 
of  a  still  more  extensive  and  permanent 
nature;  that  constant  accumulation  of 
capital,  that  continual  tendency  to  in- 
crease, the  operation  of  which  is  univer- 
sally seen  in  jsl  greater  or  less  proportion, 
whenever  it  is  not  obstructed  by  some 
public  calamity,  or  by  some  mistaken  or 
mischievous  policy,  but  which  must  be 
conspicuous  and  rapid  indeed  in  any  coun- 
try which  has  once  arrived  at  an  advanced 
state  of  commercial  prosperity.  Simple 
and  obvious  as  this  principle  is,  and  felt 
and  observed  as  it  must  have  been  in  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  even  from  the 
earliest  periods,  I  doubt  whether  it  has 
ever  been  fully  developed  and  sufficiently 
explained,  but  in  the  writings  of  an  author 
of  our  times,  now,  unfortunately,  no  more 
(I  mean  the  author  of  a  celebrated  treatise 
on  the  wealth  of  nations),  whose  extensive 
knowledge  of  detail  and  philosophical  re- 
search will,  I  believe,  furnish  the  best 
solution  to  every  question  connected  with 
the  history  of  commerce  or  with  the  sys- 
tems of  political  economy. — Pitt,  Wil- 
liam, 1792,  Debate  in  House  of  Commons, 
Feb.  17. 

Did  not  Adam  Smith  judge  amiss,  in  his 
premature  attempt  to  form  a  sort  of  sys- 
tem upon  the  wealth  of  nations,  instead 
of  presenting  his  valuable  speculations  to 
the  world  under  the  form  of  separate  dis- 
sertations ?  As  a  system,  his  work  is  evi- 
dently imperfect ;  and  yet  it  has  so  much 
the  air  of  a  system,  and  a  reader  becomes 
so  fond  of  every  analogy  and  arrangement, 
by  which  a  specious  appearance  of  system 
is  made  out,  that  we  are  apt  to  adopt 
erroneous  opinions,  because  they  figure  in 
the  same  fabric  with  approved  and  impor- 
tant truths.  That  illustrious  philosopher 
might  therefore  have  contributed  more 
powerfully  to  the  progress  of  political 
science,  had  he  developed  his  opinions  in 
detached  essays ;  nor  would  he  have  less 
consulted  the  real  interests  of  his  reputa- 
tion, which  indeed  may  have  been  more 


I 


62 


ADAM  SMITH 


brilliant  at  first,  by  his  appearance  as  the 
author  of  a  comprehensive  theory,  but 
will  ultimately  be  measured  by  what  he 
shall  be  found  to  have  actually  contrib- 
uted to  the  treasures  of  valuable  knowl- 
edge.— Horner,  Francis,  1800,  Journal 
Dec.  1 ;  Memoirs,  ed.  Horner,  p.  126. 

It  is  only  a  promiscuous  assemblage  of 
the  soundest  principles  of  political  econ- 
omy, supported  by  the  clearest  illustra- 
tions and  ingenious  statistical  speculations, 
blended  with  instructive  reflections ;  it  is 
not  a  complete  treatise  on  either  science, 
but  an  ill-digested  mass  of  enlightened 
views  and  accurate  information. — Say, 
Jean-Baptiste,  1803-21,  A  Treatise  on 
Political  Economy,  Introduction. 

The  writer  in  combating  received  opin- 
ions, has  found  it  necessary  to  advert 
more  particularly  to  those  passages  in  the 
writings  of  Adam  Smith  from  which  he 
sees  reason  to  differ ;  but  he  hopes  it  will 
not,  on  that  account,  be  suspected  that  he 
does  not,  in  common  with  all  those  who 
acknowledge  the  importance  of  the  science 
of  Political  Economy,  participate  in  the 
admiration  which  the  profound  work  of 
this  celebrated  author  so  justly  excites. 
— RiCARDO,  David,  1817,  Principles  of 
Political  Economy  and  Taxation,  Preface. 

The  fact  that  the  distinct  statement  of 
several  of  the  most  important  of  these 
principles,  and  that  traces  of  them  all, 
may  be  found  in  the  works  of  previous 
writers,  does  not  detract  in  any,  or  but 
in  a  very  inconsiderable  degree,  from  the 
real  merits  of  Dr.  Smith.  In  adopting  the 
discoveries  of  others,  he  has  made  them 
his  own;  he  has  demonstrated  the  truth 
of  principles  on  which  his  predecessors 
had,  in  most  cases,  stumbled  by  chance ; 
has  separated  them  from  the  errors  by 
which  they  were  encumbered,  traced  their 
remote  consequences,  and  pointed  out  their 
limitations ;  has  shewn  their  practical  im- 
portance and  real  value,  their  mutual 
dependence  and  relation ;  and  has  reduced 
them  into  a  consistent,  harmonious,  and 
beautiful  system.  — McCulloch,  John 
Ramsay,  1825-30,  Principles  of  Political 
Economy,  p.  58. 

The  great  defect  of  Adam  Smith,  and 
of  our  economists  in  general,  is  the  want 
of  definitions. — Whately,  Richard,  1826, 
Elements  of  Logic. 

Dr.  Franklin  once  told  Dr.  Logan  that 


the  celebrated  Adam  Smith  when  writing 
his  "Wealth  of  Nations"  was  in  the  habit 
of  bringing  chapter  after  chapter  as  he 
composed  it  to  himself.  Dr.  Price,  and 
others  of  the  literati ;  then  patiently  hear 
their  observations  and  profit  by  their  dis- 
cussions and  criticisms,  sometimes  sub- 
mitting to  write  whole  chapters  anew, 
and  even  to  reverse  some  of  his  proposi- 
tions.— Watson,  John  Fanning,  1830- 
68,  Annals  of  Philadelphia,  vol.  i. 

The  great  name  of  Adam  Smith  rests 
upon  the  ''Inquiry  into  the  Nature  and 
Causes  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations;"  per- 
haps the  only  book  which  produced  an  im- 
mediate, general,  and  irrevocable  change 
in  some  of  the  most  important  parts  of 
the  legislation  of  all  civilized  states. 
The  works  of  Grotius,  of  Locke,  and  of 
Montesquieu,  which  bear  a  resemblance 
to  it  in  character  and  had  no  inconsidera- 
ble analogy  to  it  in  the  extent  of  their 
popular  influence,  were  productive  only  of 
a  general  amendment, — not  so  conspic- 
uous in  particular  instances  as  discover- 
able, after  a  time,  in  the  improved  condi- 
tion of  human  affairs.  The  work  of  Smith, 
as  it  touched  those  matters  which  may 
be  numbered,  and  measured  and  weighed, 
bore  more  visible  and  palpable  fruit.  In  a 
few  years  it  began  to  alter  laws  and  trea- 
ties ;  and  has  made  its  way  through  the  con- 
vulsions of  revolution  and  conquest  to  a  due 
ascendant  over  the  minds  of  men,  with  far 
less  than  the  average  of  those  obstruc- 
tions of  prejudice  and  clamour,  which  ordi- 
narily choke  the  channel  through  which 
truth  flows  into  practice.  The  most  emi- 
nent of  those  who  have  since  cultivated 
and  improved  the  science  will  be  the  fore- 
most to  address  their  immortal  master, 
Tenebris  tautis  tam  clarum  extollere  lumen 
Qui  primus  potuisti,  inlustrans  commoda 

vitae 
Te  sequor! 

—Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  1830,  Dis- 
sertation on  the  Progress  of  Ethical  Phi- 
losophy. 

It  is  not  less  agreeable  in  form  than  it 
is  valuable  in  substance ;  and,  instead  of 
being — as  is  supposed  by  some  who  have 
not  read  it— dry  and  repulsive,  is  undoubt- 
edly, to  every  reader  of  mature  taste  and 
liberal  accomplishments,  one  of  the  most 
interesting  as  well  as  instructive  books 
which  he  can  take  up. — Everett,  Alex- 
ander H.,  1831,  Phillips's  Manual  oj 


ADAM  SMITH 


63 


Political  Economy  f  North  American  Review, 
vol.  32,  p.  216. 

Far  superior  to  Arthur  Young — superior 
as  the  researches  of  a  Newton  are  above, 
though  supporting  and  supported  by,  the 
observations  of  an  Astronomical  Table — 
stands  the  name  of  Adam  Smith.  .  .  . 
To  say  of  the  ''Wealth  of  Nations"  that 
it  has  faults  and  errors  is  only  to  say,  in 
other  words,  that  it  is  the  work  of  man. 
But  not  merely  did  Adam  Smith  found 
the  science  of  Political  Economy;  we 
might  almost  say  of  him  that  he  completed 
it,  leaving,  at  least  as  some  have  thought, 
to  his  successors,  not  so  much  any  new 
discoveries  to  make,  or  any  further  prin- 
ciples to  prove,  but  far  rather  conjectures 
to  hazard  and  consequences  to  pursue. — 
Stanhope,  Philip  Henry  (Lord  Mahon), 
1836-54,  History  of  England  from  the 
Peace  of  Utrecht  to  the  Peace  of  Versailles, 
pp.  335,  336. 

The  great  work  of  A.  Smith  is  not  an 
elementary  book, — very  far  from  it;  and 
your  best  chance  of  understanding  it  is 
to  read  of  each  chapter  as  much  as  you 
can,  then  go  to  the  next  chapter,  and  so 
on ;  and  when  you  have  got  to  the  end  of 
the  book,  begin  the  book  again ;  and  you 
will  at  length  comprehend  the  whole  suffi- 
ciently for  any  general  purpose.  I  have 
lately  seen  a  treatise  by  Mr.  Boileau, 
which  1  hoped  I  might  recommend  to  you 
on  this  occasion ;  but  I  do  not  think  that 
it  will  be  found  either  more  simple  or  more 
intelligible,  than  A.  Smith's  original  work, 
from  which  it  is  avowedly  borrowed. — 
Smyth,  William,  1840,  Lectures  on  Modern 
History,  Lecture  xxx. 

In  the  sense  of  a  comprehensive  aggre- 
gate, gathering  into  the  unity  of  one  edi- 
fice the  total  architecture  of  Political 
Economy,  there  are  even  at  this  day  but 
few  systems  besides  the  ''Wealth  of 
Nations," — none  which  approaches  it  in 
philosophic  beauty. — DeQuincey,Thomas, 
1842-90,  Ricardo  and  Adam  Smith,  Works, 
ed.  Masson,  vol.  ix,  p.  116. 

The  "Wealth  of  Nations"  combines 
both  the  sound  and  enlightened  views 
which  had  distinguished  the  detached 
pieces  of  the  French  and  Italian  Econo- 
mists, and  above  all,  of  Mr.  Hume,  with 
the  great  merit  of  embracing  the  whole 
subject,  thus  bringing  the  general  scope 
of  the  principles  into  view,  illustrating  all 


the  parts  of  the  inquiry  by  their  combined 
relations,  and  confirming  their  soundness 
in  each  instance  by  their  application  to 
the  others.  The  copiousness  of  the  illus- 
trations keeps  pace  with  the  closeness  of 
the  reasoning ;  and  wherever  the  received 
prejudices  of  lawgivers  are  to  be  over- 
come, or  popular  errors  to  be  encoun- 
tered, the  arguments,  and  the  facts,  and 
the  explanations  are  judiciously  given 
with  extraordinary  fullness,  the  author 
wisely  disregarding  all  imputations  of 
prolixity  or  repetition,  in  pursuit  of  the 
great  end  of  making  himself  understood 
and  gaining  the  victory  over  error.  The 
chapter  on  the  Mercantile  System  is  an 
example  of  this ;  but  the  errors  of  that 
widely-prevailing  theory  and  its  deeply 
rooted  prejudices  are  also  encountered 
occasionally  in  almost  every  other  part  of 
the  work.  It  is  a  lesser,  but  a  very  im- 
portant merit  that  the  style  of  the  writing 
is  truly  admirable.  There  is  not  a  book 
of  better  English  to  be  anywhere  found. 
The  language  is  simple,  clear,  often 
homely  like  the  illustrations,  not  seldom 
idiomatic,  always  perfectly  adapted  to  the 
subject  handled.  Besides  its  other  per- 
fections, it  is  one  of  the  most  entertain- 
ing of  books.  There  is  no  laying  it  down 
after  you  begin  to  read.  You  are  drawn 
on  from  page  to  page  by  the  strong  cur- 
rent of  the  arguments,  the  manly  sense  of 
the  remarks,  the  fullness  and  force  of  the 
illustrations,  the  thickly-strewed  and  hap- 
pily-selected facts.  Nor  can  it  ever 
escape  observation,  that  the  facts,  far 
from  being  a  mere  bede-roll  of  details 
unconnected  with  principle  and  with  each 
other,  derive  all  their  interest  from  form- 
ing parts  of  a  whole,  and  reflecting  the 
general  views  which  they  are  intended  to 
exemplify  or  to  support. — Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1846-55,  Lives  of  Philoso- 
phers of  the  Time  of  George  HL  p.  263. 

Twenty  years  have  elapsed  since  Mack- 
intosh pronounced  this  opinion ;  and  dur- 
ing these  twenty  years,  the  influence  of 
Adam  Smith's  science  of  political  economy 
has  been  even  more  conspicuous  and  direct 
than  it  was  during  the  period  of  which  he 
spoke.  It  has  shaped  the  polity  of  nations ; 
its  principles  are  embodied  on  almost  every 
page  of  commercial  law;  it  has  guided 
the  most  important  applications  of  na- 
tional industry ;  it  has  done  more  than  all 
other  causes  united  to  put  a  stop  to  the 


64 


ADAM  SMITH 


practice  of  international  war.  Though  its 
doctrines  have  been  somewhat  modified,  and 
large  additions  have  been  made  to  it,  it  is 
still,  in  the  main,  what  we  have  called  it, 
Adam  Smith's  science.  His  successors 
have  built  mainly  upon  the  foundations 
which  he  laid,  and  the  structure  has  risen 
in  general  conformity  with  the  plan  which 
he  sketched  out.  Among  all  the  moral 
sciences,  there  is  no  other  which  bears 
the  name  of  its  founder  so  distinctly  en- 
graven upon  its  front,  or  which  retains  so 
large  a  proportion  of  the  doctrines  that 
he  first  promulgated. — Bo  WEN,  Francis, 
1851,  Phillips  on  Protection  and  Free 
Tradey  North  American  Review,  vol.  72, 
p.  398. 

Adam  Smith  is  the  distinguished  man, 
by  common  consent,  referred  to  as  the 
Father  of  that  School  which  has  long 
claimed  pre-eminence  in  Political  Econ- 
omy. Whatever  ground  there  may  be  for 
ascribing  to  him  this  paternity,  it  is  very 
safe  to  say,  that  were  he  to  revisit  the 
world,  he  would  find  it  difficult  to  recog- 
nise his  ofi^spring.  We  prefer  giving  all 
the  honor  of  this  fatherhood  to  J.  B.  Say, 
who,  though  he  may  have  taken  his  inspira- 
tion from  Adam  Smith,  was  certainly  the 
first  to  give  the  doctrines  of  Political 
Economy  a  shape  and  degree  of  consist- 
ency sufficient  to  form  the  rallying  points 
of  a  School.  Regarded  as  a  treatise  upon 
industry,  wealth,  and  trade,  and  the  other 
subjects  to  which  it  refers,  and  consider- 
ing the  time  at  which  it  appeared,  the 
''Wealth  of  Nations"  must  be  admitted 
to  be  one  of  the  most  successful  works  of 
modern  times.  It  has,  beyond  question, 
been  the  chief  stimulus  to  the  extraordi- 
nary discussions  which  have  since  ensued 
upon  the  subjects  of  which  it  treats.  Its 
leading  ideas  made  a  great  impression,  and 
have  since  been  the  subjects  of  intermi- 
nable discussion;  but  the  "Wealth  of 
Nations, "  though  often  referred  to,  is  sel- 
dom studied.— CoLWELL,  Stephen,  1856, 
ed.,  Lisfs  National  System  of  Political 
Economy,  p.  xxvii. 

Looking  at  its  ultimate  results,  is  prob- 
ably the  most  important  book  that  has  ever 
been  written,  and  is  certainly  the  most 
valuable  contribution  ever  made  by  a  single 
man  towards  establishing  the  principles 
on  which  government  should  be  based. 
.  .  .  Well  may  it  be  said  of  Adam  Smith, 
and  said  too  without  fear  of  contradiction, 


that  this  solitary  Scotchman  has,  by  the 
publication  of  one  single  work,  contrib- 
uted more  toward  the  happiness  of  men, 
than  has  been  effected  by  the  united  abil- 
ities of  all  the  statesmen  and  legislators 
of  whom  history  has  preserved  an  authen- 
tic account. — Buckle,  Henry  Thomas, 
1857,  History  of  Civilisation  in  England, 
vol.  I.  ch.  IV. 

The  great  text-book  in  political  econ- 
omy, "The  Wealth  of  Nations."  In 
every  page  of  that  work  its  readers  found 
themselves  presented  with  the  evidence  of 
the  superior  advantages  of  commerce 
over  trade ;  and  of  the  absolute  necessity 
of  commerce  at  home  if  they  would  have 
it  abroad.  ...  In  every  page  of  that 
great  work  they  found  evidence  that  if 
they  would  prosper  they  could  do  so  on 
one  condition  only, — that  condition  which 
requires  that  the  consumer  and  the  pro- 
ducer take  their  places  "by  each  other's 
side,  and  thus  approximate  as  nearly  as 
possible  the  prices  of  raw  materials  and 
manufactured  commodities.  ...  Dr. 
Smith  was  not  always  right,  but  he  was 
very  generally  so.  Modern  political  econ- 
omy, as  has  before  been  said,  has  very 
generally  rejected  him  when  he  was  right, 
or  has  so  used  him  as  to  cause  him  to 
stand  responsible  for  the  correctness  of 
views,  that,  had  he  been  alive,  he  would 
indignantly  have  denounced  as  utterly 
erroneous. — Carey,  Henry  C,  1858, 
Principles  of  Social  Science,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
108,  109,  127,  note. 

When  Adam  Smith  first  stated  the  truth 
that  one  nation  does  not  gain  by  the  pov- 
erty of  another,  but  that  all  are  gainers 
by  the  prosperity  of  all,  no  one  suspected 
that  a  sagacious  despot  of  great  power 
[Napoleon  III.]  would  on  this  very  year 
pronounce  the  great  truth  on  his  imperial 
throne  to  the  assembled  deputies  of  his 
nation. — Lieber,  Francis,  1860,  Speech 
on  the  Hayes  Arctic  Expedition,  New  York, 
March  22. 

It  is  even  at  the  present  day  important 
to  direct  careful  attention  to  an  erroneous 
conception  of  wealth,  which  was  univer- 
sal until  the  appearance  of  Adam  Smith's 
great  work,  in  1775.— Fawcett,  Henry, 
1863-88,  Manual  of  Political  Economy, p.  8. 

A  glance  at  the  index  of  the  "Wealth 
of  Nations"  will  suffice  to  show  that  its 
author  possessed  just  that  kind  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  American  Colonies  which 


ADAM  SMITH 


65 


fVanklin  was  of  all  men  the  best  fitted  to 
impart.  The  allusion  to  the  Colonies  may 
be  counted  by  hundreds ;  illustrations  from 
their  condition  and  growth  occur  in  nearly 
every  chapter.  We  may  go  further  and 
say  that  the  American  Colonies  constitute 
the  experimental  evidence  of  the  essential 
truth  of  the  book,  without  which  many  of 
its  leading  positions  had  been  little  more 
than  theory. — Parton,  James,  1864,  Life 
and  Times  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  vol.  i, 
p.  537. 

That  which  Adam  Smith  got  from  the 
French  economists  was  the  habit  of  ana- 
lytical research,  exercised  upon  econom- 
ical phenomena.  I  do  not  say  that  polit- 
ical economy  began  with  him,  but  I  can 
assert  that  its  method  does.  His  teach- 
ers argued  from  a  priori,  or  what  they 
believed  to  be  a  priori,  principles,  and 
examined  the  facts  by  these  principles. 
Smith  applied  an  inductive  method  to  his 
facts,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  verified  his 
hypotheses  by  observation.  Hence  his 
work  is  full  of  illustrations,  is  copious  in 
examples,  whenever  illustration  or  exam- 
ple could  be  obtained.  And  just  as  suc- 
ceeding economists  have  used  his  method, 
and  in  so  far  as  they  have  gone  to  history 
and  statistics,  so  they  have  been  able  to 
correct  Smith ;  for  in  his  day,  history  was 
uncritical,  statistics  were  imperfect  and 
inexact.  But  in  so  far  as  they  have  de- 
parted from  his  method,  and  suffered 
themselves  to  evolve  the  science  from 
their  own  theories,  they  have,  even  the 
ablest  among  them,  fallen  into  notorious 
fallacies.— Rogers,  James  E.  Thorold, 
1869,  Historical  Gleanings,  p.  119. 

If  books  are  to  be  measured  by  the  effect 
which  they  have  produced  on  the  fortunes 
of  mankind,  the  ''Wealth  of  Nations'* 
must  rank  among  the  greatest  of  books. — 
Green,  John  Richard,  1874,  A  Short 
History  of  the  English  People,  p.  755. 

We  may,  however,  admit  that  no  more 
important  book  than  the  ''Wealth  of 
Nations"  was  published  in  Great  Britain 
during  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Few  writers  have  ever  done  for 
any  study  what  Smith  did  for  Political 
Economy.  If  he  did  not  found  a  science, 
he  brought  a  great  body  of  theory  into 
close  relation  with  facts,  and  may  be  said 
to  have  first  brought  about  a  union  between 
abstract  reasoners  and  practical  states- 
men.   To  marry  science  to  practice  is  the 

5C 


great  problem  of  politics;  and  from  the 
appearance  of  the  "Wealth  of  Nations'"' 
the  main  outlines  and  the  chief  methods 
of  one  important  branch  of  political 
science  were  distinctly  marked  out.  Much 
had  been  done,  and  much  still  remained  to 
do;  but  Smith  took  the  significant  step 
and  is  rightly  regarded  as  the  intellectual 
ancestor  of  a  race  of  theorists,  whose 
influence,  though  not  uniformly  beneficial, 
has  at  least  been  of  great  importance 
towards  constituting  the  still  rudimentary 
science  of  sociology. — Stephen,  Leslie, 
1876,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p-  316. 

It  is  just  a  hundred  years  since  "An  In- 
quiry into  the  Nature  and  Causes  of  the 
Wealth  of  Nations,"  appeared  from  the 
pen,  not  of  a  statesman,  a  banker,  or  a 
merchant,  but  of  a  Scottish  professor  of 
Ethics,  of  the  somewhat  ubiquitous  name 
of  Smith.  It  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
been  an  attractive  subject;  in  all  polite 
societies,  its  topics — labor,  capital,  wages, 
profits,  rent  and  taxation — would  have 
been  voted  dry,  if  mentioned  at  all ;  and 
even  able  editors  of  the  day,  who,  of 
course,  knew  everything,  save  their  own 
ignorance,  must  have  despised  its  long 
disquisitions  on  real  and  nominal  prices 
and  the  mercantile  system.  The  prevalent 
conceptions  of  the  wealth  of  nations  at 
that  day  were  of  the  resources  of  a  prince, 
to  raise  armies,  equip  fleets,  subsidize 
allies,  pension  poets,  and  build  ostenta- 
tious monuments.  As  to  useful  labor  as 
wealth,  as  to  free  labor  as  the  chief  glory 
of  nations  and  the  source  of  their  power, 
it  was  a  thing  still  undreamed.  Yet  the 
book  which  argued  in  this  strain,  soon 
made  its  way  into  men's  minds :  it  pene- 
trated the  cabinets  as  well  as  the  count- 
ing houses ;  it  created  a  school ;  it  grev/ 
in  fame  with  the  revolving  seasons,  until 
now,  in  this  great  land,  which  had  then 
just  sprung  into  distinct  national  exist- 
ence, it  is  held  in  honor  among  our  best 
centennial  memories. — Godwin,  Parke, 
1876,  The  Adam  Smith  Centennial,  Ad- 
dress. 

It  is  interesting  and  pertinent  to  this 
year  and  to  this  occasion  to  call  attention 
to  the  circumstance,  not  generally  known, 
that  months  before  the  Declaration  of 
i\merican  Independence,  Adam  Smith  was 
led  by  his  reasoning  and  investigations  to 
advocate  the  peaceful  abandonment,  on 


66 


ADAM  SMITH 


grounds  of  purely  economic  advantage  to 
the  mother  country,  of  the  American  col- 
onies ;  and  while  pointing  out,  during  the 
very  first  year  of  the  war,  the  great  im- 
probability of  conquering  the  Americans  by 
force,  predicted  that  the  new  trans- 
Atlantic  States  would  ultimately  form  one 
of  the  greatest  and  most  powerful  em- 
pires that  ever  existed.  And  if  to-day  we 
fail  to  make  good  this  prediction,  it  will 
be  more  than  from  any  other  one  cause,  be- 
cause as  a  nation,  we  neglect  and  despise 
the  economic  laws  developed  in  the 
Wealth  of  Nations;'^  under  and  through 
the  influence  and  intelligent  application  of 
which,  the  maximum  of  abundance  and  the 
highest  intellectual,  moral  and  religious 
development  are  capable  of  attainment 
by  our  countrymen. — Wells,  David  A., 
1876,  The  Adam  Smith  Centennial,  Ad- 
dress. 

By  nature,  Smith  was  wholly  unfitted  to 
conduct  a  scientific  discussion  of  any  kind. 
He  was  a  dreamer,  not  a  reasoner.  He 
evolved,  to  use  a  cant  phrase,  his  systems 
from  his  own  consciousness.  He  knew 
nothing  of  affairs,  and  could  learn  nothing 
from  others.  In  his  antipathy  to  mer- 
chants, or  in  a  freak  of  passion,  he  lost 
sight  of  his  principles  altogether.  .  . 
.  It  is  not  strange  that  a  person  so 
wholly  wanting  in  practical  sense  should 
be  equally  wanting  in  the  perception 
of  principles,  in  method,  and  in  origi- 
nality. He  borrowed  his  ideas  of  money 
very  largely  from  Law;  following  him, 
like  Hume,  where  he  was  wrong,  and 
rejecting  him  where  he  was  right.  In 
urging  the  advantages  of  freedom  of  trade, 
he  was  fully  anticipated  by  Hume,  whose 
political  discourses,"  says  Stewart,  ''were 
of  greater  use  to  him  than  any  other  works 
which  had  appeared  prior  to  his  lectures. 
Had  neither  of  them  lived,  the  whole 
question  of  Free-Trade  and  Protection 
would  have  been  precisely  where  it  is  to- 
day. .  .  .  When  the  ignorance  of 
Smith  upon  the  subject  upon  which  he 
wrote,  his  want  of  scientific  method,  the 
groundlessness  of  his  assumptions  and 
conclusions,  especially  in  reference  to 
money,  are  considered,  the  influence  he 
has  exerted  over  succeeding  generations 
is  well  fitted  to  excite  astonishment. — 
Poor,  Henry  V.,  1877,  Money  and  Its 
LawSy  pp.  168,  169. 

Adam  Smith  may  be  said  to  have 


changed  the  whole  theory  of  government,' 
and  in  this  way  to  have  contributed  more 
than  any  other  person  to  the  great  revo- 
lutions of  the  nineteenth  century. — Wal- 
POLE,  Spencer,  1878,  A  History  of  Eng- 
land from  the  Conclusion  of  the  Great  War 
in  1815,  vol.  I,  p.  327. 

Had  the  great  Scotchman  taken  this  as 
the  initial  point  of  his  reasoning,  and  con- 
tinued to  regard  the  produce  of  labor  as 
the  natural  wages  of  labor,  and  the  land- 
lord and  master  but  as  sharers,  his  con- 
clusions would  have  been  very  different, 
and  political  economy  to-day  would  not 
embrace  such  a  mass  of  contradictions 
and  absurdities ;  but  instead  of  following 
the  truth  obvious  in  the  simple  modes  of 
production  as  a  clue  through  the  perplex- 
ities of  the  more  complicated  forms,  he 
momentarily  recognizes  it,  only  to  imme- 
diately abandon  it,  and  stating  that  **in 
every  part  of  Europe  twenty  workmen 
serve  under  a  master  for  one  that  is  inde- 
pendent,"  he  re-commences  the  inquiry 
from  a  point  of  view  in  which  the  master 
is  considered  as  providing  from  his  capi- 
tal the  wages  of  his  workmen.  .  .  . 
Now,  such  men  have  not  been  led  into 
such  confusion  of  thought  without  a  cause. 
If  they,  one  after  another,  have  followed 
Dr.  Adam  Smith,  as  boys  play  ''follow  my 
leader,"  jumping  where  he  jumped,  and 
falling  where  he  fell,  it  has  been  that 
there  was  a  fence  where  he  jumped  and 
a  hole  where  he  fell. — George,  Henry, 
1879,  Progress  and  Poverty,  pp.  45,  142. 

Although  it  at  first  attracted  no  great 
attention  and  had  little  political  influence 
for  at  least  a  generation  after  its  appear- 
ance, it  has  ultimately  proved  one  of  the 
most  important  events  in  the  economical, 
and  indeed  in  the  intellectual,  history  of 
modern  Europe.  .  .  .  Adam  Smith 
showed  by  an  exhaustive  examination  that 
the  liberty  of  commerce  which  England 
allowed  to  her  colonies,  though  greatly 
and  variously  restricted,  was  at  least 
more  extensive  than  that  which  any  other 
nation  conceded  to  its  dependencies,  and 
that  it  was  suflScient  to  give  them  a  large 
and  increasing  measure  of  prosperity. — 
Lecky,  William  Edward  Hartpole, 
1882,  A  History  of  England  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  vol.  iii,  ch.  xii,  p.  423. 

The  epoch-making ' '  Wealth  of  Nations. ' ' 
— SiDGWiCK,  Henry,  1883,  The  Princi- 
ples of  Political  Economy,  p.  15. 


ADAM  SMITH 


67 


Is  undoubtedly  the  Bible  of  political 
economy.— Saintsbury,  George,  1886, 
Specimens  of  English  Prose  Style,  p.  216. 

The  "Wealth  of  Nations"  is,  without 
doubt,  the  greatest  existing  book  on  that 
department  of  knowledge,  the  only  attempt 
to  replace  and  so  antiquate  it— that  of 
John  Stuart  Mill— having,  notwithstand- 
ing its  partial  usefulness,  on  the  whole 
decidedly  failed.  Buckle,  however,  goes 
too  far  when  he  pronounces  it  ''the  most 
important  book  ever  written, just  as  he 
similarly  exceeds  due  measure  when  he 
makes  its  author  superior  as  a  philosopher 
to  Hume.  Mackintosh  more  justly  said  of 
it  that  it  stands  on  a  level  with  the  treatise 
''De  Jure  Belli  et  Pacis,"  the  ''Essay  on 
the  Human  Understanding,"  and  the 
"Spirit  of  Laws,"  in  the  respect  that 
these  four  works  are  severally  the  most 
conspicuous  landmarks  in  the  progress 
of  the  sciences  with  which  they  deal. 
And,  when  he  added  that  the  "Wealth  of 
Nations"  was  "perhaps  the  only  book 
which  produced  an  immediate,  general, 
and  irrevocable  change  in  some  of  the  most 
important  parts  of  the  legislation  of  all 
civilized  states,"  he  scarcely  spoke  too 
strongly  if  we  understand  him  as  refer- 
ring to  its  influence  as  an  agent  of  demoli- 
tion. It  certainly  operated  powerfully 
through  the  harmony  of  its  critical  side 
with  the  tendencies  of  the  half -century 
which  followed  its  publication  to  the  as- 
sertion of  personal  freedom  and  "natural 
rights."— Ingram,  J.  K.,  1887,  Encyclo- 
pcedia  Britannica,  vol.  xxii. 

Not  only  have  we  here  a  full  disquisition 
on  the  comparative  claims  of  Free-trade 
and  Reciprocity ;  State  regulation  and 
unlimited  competition ;  the  importance  of 
liberating  industry,  and  the  marvellous 
results  of  a  division  of  labour ;  the  sources 
of  wealth  in  nature  and  the  secret  springs 
of  human  action,  stimulating  its  produc- 
tion and  determining  distribution ;  but  we 
have  here,  also,  sage  remarks  on  the  decay 
of  foreign  trade  and  the  causes  of  com- 
mercial depression,  on  the  advantages  of 
colonial  enterprize,  and  an  extension  of 
Imperial  possessions  from  an  economic 
point  of  view;  we  have  allusions  to  the 
co-existence  of  progress  and  poverty  when 
the  "age  of  industry"  had  scarcely  com- 
menced, and  remarks  on  depopulation  of 
the  country  districts  and  over- crowding 
of  the  towns ;  on  landlordism  and  peasant 


proprietorship ;  on  education  and  Church 
Establishment;  on  the  just  principles  of 
taxation  and  local  government— all  sub- 
jects which  at  this  present  moment  are 
occupying  the  public  mind,  and  on  which 
Adam  Smith's  views  throw  interesting 
and  instructive  side  lights,  whilst  on  such 
topics  as  the  functions  of  capital,  and  the 
relationship  of  rent,  profit,  and  wages, 
his  authority,  though  questioned  by  some, 
cannot  be  ignored  by  any  in  the  settle- 
ment of  the  long-standing  controversy 
between  capital  and  labour. — Kaufmann, 
M.,  1887,  Adam  Smith  and  his  Foreign 
Critics f  The  Scottish  Review,  vol.  10,  p. 
388. 

Adam  Smith's  book,  as  will  be  readily 
seen,  was  based  upon  the  manufacture- 
industry  which  had  as  yet  not  been  sup- 
planted by  the  great  machine-industry  of 
modern  times.  It  is  important  to  bear 
this  in  mind  in  considering  many  of  the 
views  advanced  in  the  work.  Those  who 
followed  in  his  footsteps  had  necessarily 
to  take  into  account  the  great  industrial 
revolution  which  supervened  but  a  few 
years  after  his  death.  The  more  imme- 
diate result  of  his  teaching  and  the  one 
which  has  maintained  itself  until  the 
present  day  was  the  complete  overthrow, 
in  this  country  at  least,  of  the  doctrine  of 
protection,  and  the  establishment  of  free- 
trade  as  the  basis  of  orthodox  middle-class 
economics  on  their  practical  side. — Bax, 
Ernest  Belport,  1887,  ed.,  The  Wealth 
of  Nations,  Introduction,  vol.  I,  p.  xxxiii. 

To  the  practical  politician  and  social 
reformer,  Adam  Smith  ought  to  be  a  hero, 
no  less  than  he  is  to  the  economist.  To 
both  he  appears  in  the  light  of  one  of  the 
greatest  vanquishers  of  error  on  record, 
the  literary  Napoleon  of  his  generation. 
No  man  in  modern  times  has  said  more 
with  so  much  effect  within  the  compass  of 
one  book.  Yet  it  is  not  probable  that 
any  competent  person  could  now  be  found  to 
repeat  without  hesitation  the  assertion, 
made  more  than  once  by  Buckle  in  his 
"History  of  Civilization,"  that  "The 
Wealth  of  Nations"  is  the  most  important 
book  ever  written.  As  we  become  re- 
moved by  an  ever-increasing  distance 
from  the  prejudices  and  opinions  which 
Adam  Smith  once  for  all  shattered,  their 
magnitude  and  importance  appear  to  grow 
smaller. — Haldane,  R.  B.,  1887,  Lfe  of 
Adam  Smith  (Great  Writers),  p.  12. 


68 


ADAM  SMITH 


Adam  Smith  left  the  love  of  wealth  in 
human  minds,  not  rebuked  but  enlight- 
ened. Little  more  than  a  century  has 
elapsed,  yet  mankind  have  made  greater 
progress  toward  humane  and  mutually  ad- 
vantageous international  relations  in  that 
time  than  during  all  the  other  centuries 
of  human  history.— Walker,  Francis  A., 
1888,  Political  Economy,  p.  2. 

The  chief  merit  of  the  Wealth  of 
Nations,"  and  that  which  enables  it 
still  to  hold  its  place  at  the  head  of  the 
politico-economic  literature  of  the  world, 
is  not  any  very  great  originality  in  detail, 
but  an  extraordinary  grasp  of  all  parts  of 
the  subject,  and  a  marvellous  ability  in 
illustrating  theoretical  propositions  by 
apt  instances  from  practical  life.  Adam 
Smith  is  usually  spoken  of  as  the  first 
prophet  of  Free  Trade. — GossE,  Edmund, 
1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  306. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  books 
which  bear  a  Scotchman's  name — and  that 
is  saying  much  for  it,  -  and  for  him. — 
HuTTON,  Lawrence,  1891,  Literary  Land- 
marks  of  Edinburgh,  p.  26. 

"Adam  Smith  on  Wealth  of  Nations," 

Love  is  lost  in  calculations. 

Bees  whose  bags  are  full  of  money 

Do  not  gather  love  for  honey ; 
Business,  enter  if  you  dare ! 
What  is  gold  to  golden  hair ! 

— Sladen,  Douglas,  cl893,  Confessio 
Amantis,  Amator:  Amata:  Mater. 

In  reality  I  owe  far  more  to  Adam 
Smith  than  to  Mill.  The  great  defect  of 
Mill's  work  is  the  want  of  historical 
knowledge,  whilst  a  large  part  of  the 
"Wealth  of  Nations"  is  history  of  the 
highest  order.  I  have  availed  myself  of 
the  authority  of  the  older  master  to  in- 
clude a  much  greater  amount  of  history 
than  is  usual  in  a  statement  of  principles. 
— Nicholson,  J.  Shield,  1893,  Principles 
of  Political  Economy,  Preface,  p.  vi. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Franklin's 
influence  on  economic  education  is  illus- 
trative of  his  whole  educational  doctrine. 
He  gave  to  Adam  Smith  apt  illustrations 
of  the  utility  of  the  ideas  of  the  ''Wealth 
of  Nations."  So  great  had  been  the 
changes  in  America  due  to  its  develop- 
ment that  the  illustrations  in  the  "Wealth 
of  Nations"  which  bear  particularly  upon 
the  American  colonies  are  now  hardly 
estimated  at  their  original  value ;  it  should 


be  remembered  that  this  book,  which 
Buckle  calls  "the  most  important  book 
ever  written,"  and  "the  most  valuable 
contribution  ever  made  by  a  single  man 
toward  establishing  the  principles  on 
which  governments  should  be  based,"  was 
the  first  work  by  an  European  scholar 
which  made  use  of  the  American  colonies 
as  apt  illustrations  of  its  doctrines  and 
pointed  to  those  colonies  as  the  country 
where  the  new  political  economy  should 
develop  in  all  its  strength.  Had  Franklin 
done  nothing  else  in  the  world  but  con- 
tribute these  illustrations  to  Adam  Smith's 
book,  he  would  have  had  a  high  place 
among  the  great  educators  of  mankind. 
As  the  first  book  on  the  economy  basis  of 
modern  government  in  America,  the 
"Wealth  of  Nations"  should  be  classed 
with  the  "Federalist,"  De  Tocqueville's 
"Democracy  in  America,"  and  Bryce's 
' '  American  Commonwealth. ' '  —  Thorpe, 
Francis  Newton,  1893,  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin and  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
p.  100. 

The  nature  of  his  subject  demanded 
clearness  more  than  elegance;  and  the 
"Wealth  of  Nations"  is  always  clear, 
often  homely,  even  at  times  ungrammat- 
ical.  ...  He  will  not  keep  up  his 
dignity  at  the  cost  of  the  smallest  obscu- 
rity ;  and,  like  Socrates,  he  takes  his  illus- 
trations rather  from  the  courtyard  than 
the  court.  .  .  .  His  examples  are 
almost  always  from  actual  life  and  history ; 
he  is  fanciful  only  in  his  similes.  .  .  . 
He  is  a  hard  hitter,  and  a  good  hater, 
though  his  heaviest  strokes  are  levelled 
at  bad  laws  and  false  doctrines,  and  his 
hatred  is  usually  kept  for  classes,  not  in- 
dividuals.— BoNAR,  James,  1895,  English 
Prose,  ed.  Craik,  vol.  iv,  p.  318. 

The  value  of  the  book  can  hardly  be 
exaggerated.  It  consists  largely  in  its 
practicality.  He  was  writing,  not  for 
students  only,  but  for  statesmen  and  finan- 
ciers and  business  men.  .  .  .  His  book 
is  full  of  acute  practical  suggestions. 
No  wonder  Pulteney  said,  in  1797,  it  is 
converting  this  generation  and  will  con- 
quer the  next.  What  also  aided  it  was 
the  arrangement  and  plan  of  the  book,  so 
informal  and  unpedantic ;  its  combination 
of  deductive  and  inductive  method,  so  well 
fitted  to  be  the  source  of  an  historical  as 
well  as  of  an  abstract  school  of  economics ; 
the  broad  view  it  takes  of  human  life,  so 


ADAM  SMITH 


69 


contrasted  with  **the  economic  man"  of 
some  later  writers.  It  is  remarkable  that 
while  his  great  aim  was  the  demolition  of 
abuses,  he  should  have  succeeded  also  in 
constructing  so  much  that  has  proved  per- 
manent ;  and  that,  practical  writer  as  he 
v;as,  the  one  thing  of  supreme  importance 
in  him  should  be  his  contribution  to  the 
theory  of  his  subject;  for  it  has  been 
noted  that  it  was  he  who  first  showed  how 

value"  measures  human  motive — that 
is,  how  much  of  human  activity  is  meas- 
urable, and,  therefore,  open  to  science. 
Much  of  his  influence  was  due  to  the  exact 
date  at  which  his  book  appeared — early 
enough  to  administer  the  coup  de  grace  to 
the  old  system  of  obstruction  and  to 
champion  the  cause  of  land  and  of  labour, 
but  not  too  soon  to  ride  on  the  advancing 
wave  of  a  new  industrial  epoch. — Smith, 
A.  L.,  1895,  Social  England,  ed.  Traill, 
vol.  5,  p.  335. 

A  good  book  to  read  in  these  times,  or 
in  any  times.  He  may  indeed  say  rash 
things  about  'Hhat  crafty  animal  called  a 
Politician,"  and  the  mean  rapacity  of 
capitalists ;  but  he  is  full  of  sympathy  for 
the  poor;  and  for  those  who  labor ;  and  is 
everywhere  large  in  his  thought  and 
healthy  and  generous.  I  am  glad  to  pay 
this  tribute,  though  only  in  a  note. — 
Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1895,  English 
Lands  Letters  and  Kings,  Queen  Anne  and 
the  Georges,  p.  148,  note. 

By  a  course  of  masterly  reasoning,  far 
superior  to  that  of  Condillac,  he  demon- 
strated that  in  commerce  both  sides  gain ; 
and,  therefore,  that  nations  in  multiplying 
their  commercial  relations,  multiply  their 
profits,  and  multiply  their  wealth;  and 
that,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  the 
labour  of  artisans,  manufactures  and  com- 
merce, all  enrich  a  nation,  and,  therefore, 
that  those  who  engage  in  them  are  pro- 
ductive labourers.  Perhaps  it  may  seem 
that  the  doctrine  is  so  plain  that  it  needs 
no  proof ;  but  that  is  far  from  being  the 
case.  At  the  time  Smith  proved  it,  it 
was  a  perfect  paradox,  contrary  to  the 
universal  opinion  of  centuries.  Even  if 
Adam  Smith  had  never  done  anything  else 
for  Economics  than  this,  he  would  have 
been  entitled  to  immortal  glory.  Smith's 
doctrine  is  now  the  very  corner-stone  of 
Economics,  and  made  a  complete  change 
in  public  opinion,  and  in  international 
policy,  which  has  forever  removed  a 


perennial  source  of  war  from  the  world. 
—MACLEOD,  Henry  Dunning,  1896,  The 
History  of  Economics,  p.  75. 

It  was  not  by  mere  chance  that  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  and  the 
''Wealth  of  Nations"  were  published  at 
so  nearly  the  same  time.  Each  involved 
the  recognition  of  the  same  principle  in 
different  fields  of  human  activity.  In 
modern  politics  we  have  seen  that  society 
is  better  governed  by  allowing  individuals, 
as  far  as  possible  to  govern  themselves. 
In  modern  economics  we  have  seen  that 
society  is  made  richer  by  allowing  individ- 
uals, as  far  as  possible,  freedom  to  get 
rich  in  their  own  ways.  Each  of  these 
principles  has  its  limits ;  but  each  marks 
an  immeasurable  advance  in  politics  and 
in  economics,  over  the  system  of  police 
government  which  had  preceded  it. — Had- 
LEY,  Arthur  Twining,  1896,  Economics, 
p.  13. 

To  speak  of  Adam  Smith  as  the  author 
of ''The  Wealth  of  Nations"  brings  before 
us  at  once  his  chief  claim  to  a  place 
among  the  immortals  in  literature.  The 
significance  of  this  work  is  so  overwhelm.- 
ing  that  it  casts  into  a  dark  shadow  all 
that  he  wrote  in  addition  to  this  master- 
piece. His  other  writings  are  chiefly  val- 
ued in  so  far  as  they  may  throw  additional 
light  upon  the  doctrines  of  this  one  book. 
Few  books  in  the  world's  history  have  ex- 
erted a  greater  influence  on  the  course  of 
human  affairs ;  and  on  account  of  this  one 
work,  Adam  Smith's  name  is  familiar  to  all 
well-educated  persons  in  every  civilized 
land.  .  .  .  All  the  economists  before  the 
time  of  Adam  Smith  must  be  regarded  as 
his  predecessors ;  all  the  economists  who 
have  lived  since  Adam  Smith  have  carried 
on  his  work :  and  his  position  in  econom- 
ics is  therefore  somewhat  like  that  of 
Darwin  in  natural  science.  There  are 
many  schools  among  modern  economists, 
but  their  work  all  stands  in  some  relation 
to  that  large  work  of  this  "old  master." 
—Ely,  Richard  T.,  1897,  Library  of  the 
World's  Best  Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol. 
xxiii,  pp.  13519,  13523. 

Too  often  the  blood  of  the  martyred 
thinker  has  been  the  seed  of  civilisation. 
To  this  general  experience  Adam  Smith 
was  a  notable  exception.  As  the  founder 
of  Political  Economy,  the  systematiser 
and  expounder  of  those  economic  ideas 
which  lie  at  the  root  of  civilisation,  Adam 


70 


ADAM  SMITH 


Smith  escaped  alike  the  violent  opposition 
and  the  contemptuous  indifference  of  his 
contemporaries ;  he  had  the  good  fortune 
to  reap  in  his  lifetime  the  reward  of  his 
greatness.  Upon  his  brow  ere  he  died 
was  placed  the  wreath  of  immortality. 
When  Adam  Smith  began  to  meditate  upon 
economic  problems  the  world  was  wedded 
to  the  great  delusion  of  Protection. 
What  could  a  solitary  thinker  do  single- 
handed  to  overthrow  a  system  which  for 
centuries  held  the  foremost  intellects  of 
the  world  in  thraldom  ?  Only  an  intellec- 
tual Don  Quixote  could  hope  by  philosophic 
tilting  to  destroy  a  world-wide  delusion. 
And  yet  the  modest,  retiring  philosopher 
of  Kirkcaldy,  from  his  obscure  study,  sent 
forth  ideas  which,  by  moulding  afresh  the 
minds  of  statesmen,  have  changed  the 
economic  history  of  the  world.  In  view  of 
the  grandeur  of  his  work  and  the  far-reach- 
ing nature  of  his  influence,  it  is  surely 
meet  that  in  Scotland's  temple  of  fame 
a  niche  should  be  found  for  her  illustrious 
son,  Adam  Smith.  .  .  .  The  remark- 
able features  of  Adam  Smith's  work  was, 
that  long  before  political  emancipation 
was  conceded,  the  Governments  of  the  day, 
under  the  influence  of  the  ''Wealth  of 
Nations,"  made  concessions  which  paved 
the  way  for  Free  Trade.  Pitt,  whose 
economic  ideas  were  somewhat  advanced, 
made  a  sympathetic  reference  to  the 
"Wealth  of  Nations"  in  the  House  of 
Commons  in  1792,  and  his  successors  did 
much  to  purify  the  tariff  on  Smithian 
principles.  By  Cobden  and  Gladstone  the 
ideas  of  the  "Wealth  of  Nations"  were 
still  further  translated  into  practical  life 
in  the  direction  of  complete  Free  Trade. 
Under  the  guidance  of  the  idea  of  Free- 
dom which  dominates  that  book,  Liberal- 
ism set  itself  to  the  work  of  emancipation 
in  all  departments  of  the  national  life.  A 
reformed  commercial  policy  in  the  direc- 
tion of  Free  Trade,  a  reformed  foreign 
policy  in  the  direction  of  national  inde- 
pendence, a  reformed  legal  code  in  the 
direction  of  equality  before  the  law  and 
freedom  from  feudal  restraints,  a  reformed 
ecclesiastical  policy  in  the  direction  of 
freedom  from  religious  tests — these,  and 
numerous  emancipatory  movements,  were 
inspired  by  the  idea  of  natural  liberty, 
which,  on  the  economic  side,  came  from 
Adam  Smith,  and  on  the  political  side  from 
the  principles  of  the  Revolution  of  1688 


as  formulated  by  John  Locke. — Mac- 
PHERSON,  Hector  C.,  1899,  Adam  Smith 
{Famous  Scots  Series),  pp.  9,  66. 

GENERAL 

Smith,  who  called  into  existence  a  new 
science,  fraught  with  the  dearest  inter- 
ests of  humanity,  and  unfolded  many  of 
its  principles  in  a  single  lifetime. — Ali- 
son, Sir  Archibald,  1833-42,  History 
of  Europe  During  the  French  Revolution, 
vol.  XIV,  p.  3. 

The  greatest  man  his  county  has  ever 
produced.  —  Buckle,  Henry  Thomas, 
1862-66,  History  of  Civilization  in  Eng- 
land, vol.  Ill,  p.  338,  note. 

One  consideration  to  be  carried  in  mind 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  "Wealth  of 
Nations,"  is  that  its  author's  system  of 
philosophy  ought  to  be  studied  as  a  whole ; 
his  economic  system  was  part  of  a  com- 
plete system  of  social,  or,  as  he  called 
it,  moral  philosophy.  Mr.  Buckle,  who  on 
other  points  has  much  misconceived 
the  "Wealth  of  Nations,"  properly  says 
of  it,  and  the  "Theory  of  Moral  Senti- 
ments," that  the  two  must  be  taken  to- 
gether and  considered  as  one,  both  form- 
ing parts  of  the  scheme  embraced  in  his 
course  of  moral  philosophy  at  Glasgow— a 
course  which,  it  is  important  to  observe, 
began  with  Natural  Theology,  and  in- 
cluded, along  with  Ethics  and  Political 
Economy,  the  Philosophy  of  Law.  Again, 
as  his  social  philosophy  should  be  consid- 
ered as  a  whole,  so  the  whole  should  be 
considered  in  connection  with  the  philo- 
sophical systems,  or  methods,  of  investi- 
gation of  his  time. — Leslie,  T.  E.  Cliffe, 
1870,  The  Political  Economy  of  Adam 
Smith,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  14,  p.  550. 

He  created  the  Science  of  Political 
Economy,  and  started  the  theory  and 
practice  of  Free  Trade. — Brooke,  Stop- 
ford,  1876,  English  Literature  (Primer), 
p.  136. 

Adam  Smith,  the  first  (alas!  perhaps 
the  last)  real  economist,  did  not  devote 
his  life  to  polishing  up  a  theory  of  rent. 
Astronomy,  society,  education,  govern- 
ment, morals,  psychology,  language,  art, 
were  in  turns  the  subject  of  his  study,  and 
in  all  he  was  master;  they  all  moved  him 
alike,  as  part  of  man's  work  on  earth. 
He  never  would  have  founded  Political 
Economy  if  he  had  been  merely  an  econo- 
mist.— Harrison,  Frederic,  1883,  The 


SMITH— WARTON 


71 


Choice  of  Books  and  Other  Literary  Pieces^ 
p.  373. 

The  breadth  and  comprehensiveness  of 
treatment  characteristic  of  the  utterances 
of  such  a  teacher  are  inseparable  attri- 
butes of  his  manner  of  thought.  He  has 
the  artist's  eye.  For  him  things  stand 
in  picturesque  relations ;  their  great  out- 
lines fit  into  each  other ;  the  touch  of  his 
treatment  is  necessarily  broad  and  strong. 
The  same  informing  influence  of  artistic 
conception  and  combination  gives  to  his 
style  its  luminous  and  yet  transparent 
qualities.  His  sentences  cannot  retain  the 
stiff  joints  of  logic ;  it  would  be  death  to 
them  to  wear  the  chains  of  formal  state- 
ment ;  they  must  take  leave  to  deck  them- 
selves with  eloquence. — Wilson,  Wood- 
row,  1888,  An  Old  Master,  The  New 
Princeton  Review,  vol.  6,  p.  220. 

It  is  needless,  for  these  general  and 
other  reasons,  to  speak  in  detail  of  Smith's 
exposition  of  justice.  Enough  has  been 
said  about  it  and  about  the  "Lectures"  in 
general  to  show  how  far  Adam  Smith  was 
from  being  a  dogmatist,  an  exponent  of 
some  one  uncritical  and  uncriticised  view 
of  human  economic  or  social  activity. 
The  man  had  a  complete  ''social  philoso- 
phy," if  we  are  obliged  to  put  matters  in 
this  way,  and  these  "Lectures"  establish 
the  fact  that  the  "Wealth  of  Nations" 
was  written  as  illustrative  of  merely  one 
phase  of  human  activity — not  the  ultimate 
and  only  phase.  And  the  originality  of 
Adam  Smith's  genius  is  more  apparent 
after  their  perusal  and  after  consideration 


of  the  facts  and  considerations  they  make 
apparent.  What  he  learned  in  France 
was  not  enough  to  make  him  wholly  recast 
what  he  had  evolved  as  the  natural  result 
of  the  workings  of  his  own  independent, 
and  great,  original  mind  along  the  lines 
laid  down  for  him  largely  by  his  British 
predecessors.— Caldwell,  William,  1897, 
Smithes  Lectures  on  Justice,  etc.,  Journal 
of  Political  Economy,  vol.  5,  p.  257. 

There  can  in  any  case  be  no  doubt  that 
Smith  was  a  sincere  theist,  and  that  he 
especially  lays  great  stress  upon  the  doc- 
trine of  final  causes.  It  is  probably  as 
clear  that  he  was  not  an  orthodox  believer. 
His  characteristic  shrinking  from  "clam- 
our" explains  his  reticence  as  to  deviations 
from  accepted  opinions.  But  his  warm 
admiration  for  Hume,  Voltaire,  and  Rous- 
seau, was  scarcely  compatible  with  com- 
plete disapproval  of  their  religious  doc- 
trines ;  and  not  to  express  such  disapproval, 
had  he  felt  it,  would  have  been  cowardly 
rather  than  reticent.  He  no  doubt  shared 
the  rationalism  of  most  contemporary  phi- 
losophers, though  in  the  sense  of  optimis- 
tic deism.  Smith  argues,  in  the  "Wealth 
of  Nations,"  that  society  is  so  constituted 
that  each  man  promotes  the  interests  of  all 
by  attending  to  his  own  interests,  and  in 
the  "Moral  Sentiments,"  that  sympathy 
induces  us  to  approve  such  conduct  as 
tends  to  this  result.  In  both  cases  a  be- 
lief in  the  argument  from  design  is  clearly 
implied. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1898,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  Liii, 
p.  8. 


Thomas  Warton 

1728-1790 

Born,  at  Basingstoke,  1728.  Matric.  Trin.  Coll.,  Oxford,  16  March,  1744;  B.  A., 
1747;  M.  A.,  1750;  Fellow,  1751 ;  Professor  of  Poetry,  1756-66;  B.  D.,  7  Dec,  1767. 
Rector  of  Kiddington,  1771.  F.  S.  A.,  1771.  Camden  Prof,  of  Ancient  Hist.,  Oxford, 
1785-90.  Poet  Laureate,  1785-90.  Died,  at  Oxford,  21  May  1790.  Buried  in  Trin. 
Coll.  Chapel.  Works:  "The  Pleasures  of  Melancholy"  (anon.),  1747;  "Poems  on 
several  Occasions,"  1747;  "The  Triumph  of  Isis,"  (anon.),  1749;  "A  Description 
of  .  .  .  Winchester"  (anon.),  1750;  "Newmarket,"  1751;  "Ode  for  Music," 
1751;  "Observations  on  the  Faerie  Queene,"  1754;  "A  Companion  to  the  Guide, 
and  a  Guide  to  the  Companion"  (anon.),  1760;  "Life  ...  of  Ralph  Bathurst" 
(2  vols.),  1761;  "Life  of  Sir  Thomas  Pope, "  1772 ;  "The  History  of  English  Poetry" 
(4  vols.),  1774-81;  "Poems,"  1777;  "Enquiry  into  the  authenticity  of  the  poems 
attributed  to  Thomas  Rowley,"  1782;  "Specimen  of  a  History  of  Oxfordshire"  (priv. 
ptd.),  1782;  "Verses  on  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'' Painted  Window  at  New  College" 
(anon.),  1782.  He  edited:  "The  Union,"  1753;  "Inscriptionum  Romanorum  Metric- 
arum  Delectus,"  1758;  "The  Oxford  Sausage,"  1764;  C.  Cephalas'  "Anthologiae 


72 


THOMAS  WARTON 


Gr^ecas,"  1766;  Theocritus'  Works,  1770;  Milton's 'Toems upon  Several  Occasions," 
1785.  Collected  Works:  "Poetical  Works,"  ed.  by  R.  Mant,  with  memoir  (2  vols.), 
1802. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  294. 


PERSONAL 

The  grestest  clod  I  ever  saw,  and  so  vul- 
gar a  figure  with  his  clunch  wig  that  I 
took  him  for  a  shoemaker  at  first. — BuR- 
NEY,  Charlotte  Ann,  1783,  Journal,  ed. 
Ellis,  Jan.  14,  p.  301. 

His  disposition,  with  some  appearance 
of  indolence,  was  retired  and  studious, 
and  he  fortunately  acquired  such  prefer- 
ments as  enabled  him  to  pursue  his  natural 
bent,  and  rove  unmolested  among  the 
treasures  of  learning  which  his  alma  mater 
contains  in  such  profusion.  ...  He 
had  less  polish  in  his  manner  than  his 
brother,  Dr.  Joseph,  but  the  conversation 
of  the  tw©  together  was  a  rich  banquet. — 
Chalmers,  Alexander,  1808-23,  The 
British  Essayists,  Preface  to  the  Idler. 

His  person  was  short  and  thick,  though 
in  the  earlier  part  of  his  life  he  had  been 
thought  handsome.  His  face,  latterly, 
became  somewhat  rubicund,  and  his  utter- 
ance so  confused,  that  Johnson  compared 
it  to  the  gobbling  of  a  turkey.  The  por- 
trait of  him  by  Reynolds,  besides  the  re- 
semblance of  the  features,  is  particularly 
characterized  by  the  manner  in  which  the 
hand  is  drawn,  so  as  to  give  it  a  great  air 
of  truth.  He  was  negligent  in  his  dress ; 
and  so  little  studious  of  appearances,  that 
having  despatched  his  labours,  while  others 
were  yet  in  bed,  he  might  have  been 
found,  at  the  usual  hours  of  study,  loitering 
on  the  banks  of  his  beloved  Cherwell,  or 
in  the  streets,  following  the  drum  and 
fife,  a  sound  which  was  known  to  have 
irresistible  attraction  for  his  ears,  —  a 
spectator  at  the  military  parade,  or  even 
one  amongst  a  crowd  at  a  public  execution. 
— Cary,  '  Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45, 
Lives  of  the  English  Poets,  p.  158. 

There  are  few  characters  on  which  I 
look  with  so  much  complacent  interest  as 
Warton's.  His  temper  was  so  sunshiny 
and  benevolent ;  his  manners  were  so  sim- 
ple ;  his  erudition  was  so  classical  and 
various;  his  learning  was  so  illuminated 
by  fancy ;  his  love  of  the  country  was  so 
unaffected;  his  images  were  so  pictur- 
esque; his  knowledge  of  feudal  and  chival- 
rous manners  was  so  minute,  curious  and 
lively  ;  his  absence  of  all  worldly  ambition 
and  show  was  so  attractive ;  his  humour 


was  so  good-natured  and  innocent;  his 
unaffected  love  of  literature  was  so  en- 
couraging and  exemplary — that  1  gaze 
upon  his  memory  with  untired  satisfaction. 
What  life  can  be  more  innocent,  or  more 
full  of  enjoyment,  than  a  life  spent  among 
books,  under  the  control  of  taste  and  judg- 
ment !  I  do  not  think  that  Warton  was  of 
the  highest  order  of  genius;  he  had  not 
enough  of  warmth  and  invention ;  nor 
dare  I  say  that  he  was  the  more  happy  for 
this  want.  But  still  what  pure  pleasure 
must  have  been  continually  experienced  by 
him  who  could  write  the  "Ode  on  Leaving 
Wynslade !"— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Eger- 
TON,  1834,  Autobiography,  vol.  ii,  p.  194. 

HISTORY  OF  ENGLISH  POETRY 

1774-81 

I  am  extremely  pleased  with  T.  War- 
ton's  new  edition  of  his  Observations,  and 
have  let  him  know  as  much  by  Balguy.  I 
am  glad  he  is  in  earnest  with  his  project 
of  the  History  of  English  Poetry ;  he  will 
do  it  well.— Warburton,  William,  1762, 
Letters  from  a  Late  Eminent  Prelate,  Nov. 
30,  p.  338. 

To  develope  the  dawnings  of  genius,  and 
to  pursue  the  progress  of  our  national 
poetry,  from  a  rude  origin  and  obscure 
beginnings  to  its  perfection  in  a  polished 
age  must  prove  interesting,  instructive, 
and  be  productive  of  entertainment  and 
utility.  .  .  .  The  object  being  to 
faithfully  record  the  features  of  the  time, 
and  preserve  the  picturesque  representa- 
tions of  manners.  ...  I  have  chose 
to  note  but  the  history  of  our  poetry  in  a 
chronological  series,  and  often  to  deviate 
into  incidental  digressions  to  notice  the 
contemporaneous  poetry  of  other  nations. 
.  .  .  My  performance  exhibits  without 
transportation  the  gradual  improvement  of 
our  poetry  to  the  time  that  it  uniformly 
represents  the  progression  of  our  lan- 
guage. In  the  earlier  sections  of  the 
work  are  numerous  citations  extracted 
from  ancient  MSS.  never  before  printed, 
and  which  may  illustrate  the  darker 
periods  of  the  history  of  our  poetry. — 
Warton,  Thomas,  1774-81,  The  History 
of  English  Poetry,  Preface,  p.  v. 

Well,  I  have  read  Mr.  Warton's  book; 
and  shall  I  tell  you  what  I  think  of  it? 


THOMAS  WARTON 


73 


I  never  saw  so  many  entertaining?  particu- 
lars crowded  together  with  so  little  enter- 
tainment and  vivacity.  The  facts  are 
overwhelmed  by  one  another,  as  Johnson's 
sense  is  by  words:  they  are  all  equally 
strong.  Mr.  Warton  has  amassed  all  the 
parts  and  learning  of  four  centuries,  and 
all  the  impression  that  remains  is,  that 
those  four  ages  had  no  parts  or  learning 
at  all.  There  is  not  a  gleam  of  poetry  in 
their  compositions  between  the  Scalds  and 
Chaucer.  ...  I  have  dipped  into  Mr. 
Warton's  second  volume,  which  seems 
more  unentertaining  than  the  former. 
.  .  .  Ihave  very  near  finished  Warton,  but, 
antiquary  as  I  am,  it  was  a  tough  achieve- 
ment. He  has  dipped  into  an  in«redible 
ocean  of  dry  and  obsolete  authors  of  the 
dark  ages,  and  has  brought  up  more  rub- 
bish than  riches;  but  the  latter  chapters, 
especially  on  the  progress  and  revival  of 
the  theatre,  are  more  entertaining ;  how- 
ever, it  is  very  fatiguing  to  wade  through 
the  muddy  poetry  of  three  or  four  centu- 
ries that  had  never  a  poet. — Walpole, 
Horace,  1774-78,  Letters  to  Rev.  W.  Cole 
and  Rev.  W.  Mason ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vols.  VI,  p,  72,  VII,  pp,  50,  54. 

The  progress  of  romance,  and  the  state 
of  learning,  in  the  middle  ages,  are  illus- 
trated by  Mr.  Thomas  Warton,  with  the 
taste  of  a  poet,  and  the  minute  diligence 
of  an  antiquarian.— Gibbon,  Edward, 
1776-78,  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  ch.  xxxviii,  note. 

His  diligence  is  indefatigable,  and  his 
learning  stupendous ;  but  I  believe  every 
reader,  except  a  mere  antiquary,  will  re- 
gret that,  instead  of  a  regular  progressive 
history,  he  did  not  adopt  the  form  of  a 
critical  dissertation,  interspersed  with  an- 
ecdotes. His  taste,  which  is  frequently 
buried  under  piles  of  cumbrous  erudition, 
would  have  had  a  freer  scope. — Green, 
Thomas,  1779-1810,  Diary  of  a  Lover  of 
Literature. 

In  this  latter  author's  (Warton)  an- 
tiquarian mud  we  are  already  above  knee- 
deep,  and  we  must  on  as  fast  as  we  are 
able.  ...  1  trust  that  posterity  (if 
posterity  deserves  it)  will  be  blessed  with 
some  future  anecdotist  like  one  I  could 
name  .  .  .  that  will  select  out  of 
those  three  quartos.  Anecdotes  of  English 
Poetry,  in  two  or  three  small  octavos, 
about  the  size,  for  instance,  of  the  "Royal 
and  Noble  Authors";  and  should  this  be 


the  case,  our  Oxonian  will  not  have  writ- 
ten in  vain.— Mason,  Rev.  William, 
1781,  to  Horace  Walpole,  March  20 ;  Wal- 
pole's  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vill, 
p.  18,  note. 

An  immense  treasury  of  materials. — 
Godwin,  William,  1803,  Life  of  Chaucer. 

The  late  Mr.  Warton,  with  a  poetical 
enthusiasm  which  converted  toil  into  pleas- 
ure, and  gilded,  to  himself  and  his  readers, 
the  dreary  subjects  of  antiquarian  lore^ 
and  with  a  capacity  of  labour  apparently 
inconsistent  with  his  more  brilliant  pow- 
ers, has  produced  a  work  of  great  size, 
and,  partially  speaking,  of  great  interest, 
from  the  perusal  of  which  we  rise,  our 
faficy  delighted  with  beautiful  imagery, 
and  with  the  happy  analysis  of  ancient 
tale  and  song,  but  certainly  with  very 
vague  ideas  of  the  history  of  English 
poetry.  The  error  seems  to  lie  in  a  total 
neglect  of  plan  and  system ;  for,  delighted 
with  every  interesting  topic  which  oc- 
curred, the  historical  poet  perused  it 
to  its  utmost  verge,  without  considering 
that  these  digressions,  however  beautiful 
and  interesting  in  themselves,  abstracted 
alike  his  own  attention,  and  that  of  the 
reader,  from  the  professed  purpose  of  his 
book.  Accordingly,  Warton's  ''History 
of  English  Poetry"  has  remained,  and 
will  always  remain,  an  immense  common- 
place book  of  memoirs  to  serve  for  such  an 
history.  No  antiquary  can  open  it,  with- 
out drawing  information  from  a  mine 
which,  though  dark,  is  inexhaustible  in 
its  treasures ;  nor  will  he  who  reads 
merely  for  amusement  ever  shut  it  for 
lack  of  attaining  his  end  ;  while  both  may 
probably  regret  the  desultory  excursions 
of  an  author,  Avho  wanted  only  system, 
and  a  more  rigid  attention  to  minute  ac- 
curacy, to  have  perfected  the  great  task 
he  has  left  incomplete. — Scott,  Sir  Wal- 
ter, 1804,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Es- 
says, vol.  I,  p.  11. 

Compared  with  this,  how  different  was 
Menander's  case  !  Careless  himself  about 
examining  and  quoting  authorities  with 
punctilious  accuracy,  and  trusting  too  fre- 
quently to  the  ipsedixits  of  good  friends 
— with  a  quick  discernment — a  sparkling 
fancy — great  store  of  classical  knowledge, 
and  a  never  ceasing  play  of  colloquial  wit, 
he  moved  right  onwards  in  his  manly 
course;  the  delight  of  the  gay,  and  the 
admiration   of   the  learned.  —  Dibdin, 


74 


THOMAS  WARTON 


Thomas  Frognall,  1811,  Bibliomania,  or 
Book  Madness. 

He  loved  poetry  dearly — and  he  wrote 
its  history  well ;  that  book  being  a  mine. 
— Wilson,  John,  1831,  An  Hour's  Talk 
about  Poetry,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol. 
30,  p.  483. 

We  have  nothing  historical  as  to  our 
own  poetry  but  the  prolix  volumes  of 
Warton.  They  have  obtained,  in  my 
opinion,  full  as  much  credit  as  they  deserve: 
without  depreciating  a  book  in  which  so 
much  may  be  found,  and  which  has  been 
so  great  a  favourite  with  the  literary  part 
of  the  public,  it  may  be  observed  that  its 
errors  as  to  fact,  especially  in  names  and 
dates,  are  extraordinarily  frequent,  and 
that  the  criticism,  in  points  of  taste,  is 
not  of  a  very  superior  kind. — Hallam, 
Henry,  1837-39,  Introduction  to  the  Lit- 
erature of  Europe,  Preface. 

It  is  pretty  clear,  from  his  observation 
upon  the  rhimes,  and  also  from  his  notice 
of  the  contents,  that  Warton  never  read 
the  poem  ["Hule  and  Nightengale"].  He 
seems,  indeed,  but  seldom  to  have  opened  a 
MS. ;  and  when  he  gives  an  extract,  or  ven- 
tures a  criticism,  both  extract  and  crit- 
icism will  generally  be  found  in  the  Cata- 
logue.—Guest,  Edwin,  1838,  A  History  of 
English  Rhythms,  vol.  ii,  p.  135,  note. 

The  work  has  so  much  both  of  antiquarian 
learning,  of  poetical  taste,  and  of  spirited 
writing,  that  it  is  not  only  an  indispensa- 
ble and  valuable  authority,  but  in  many 
parts  an  interesting  book  to  the  mere  ama- 
teur. Not  without  many  errors,  and  pre- 
senting a  still  larger  number  of  deficien- 
cies, it  has  yet  little  chance  of  being  ever 
entirely  superseded.  —  Spalding,  W^il- 
LiAM,  1852-82,  A  History  of  English 
Literature,  p.  350. 

A  very  curious  and  valuable  work.  It 
has  had  the  reputation  of  a  classic  ever 
since  its  first  publication,  in  1774. — 
Adams,  Charles  Kendall,  1882,  A  Man- 
ual of  Historical  Literature,  p.  501. 

His  work,  indeed,  is  one  which  it  will 
perhaps  be  always  necessary  to  consult 
for  its  facts,  its  references,  and  its  infer- 
ences ;  and  though  in  many  points  it  needs 
to  be  corrected,  a  long  time  will  certainly 
elapse  before  it  will  be  superseded.  All 
this  can  be  said,  and  be  said  truly.  But 
while  the  substantial  merits  of  the  chap- 
ters on  Chaucer  need  not  be  denied,  they 


are  very  far  from  being  perfectly  satis- 
factory. They  were  marked  in  particular 
by  the  defects  which  invariably  character- 
ized the  writings  of  both  the  Wartons. 
In  certain  ways  these  two  scholars  were 
the  most  irritating  of  commentators  and 
literary  critics.  Their  object  was  never 
so  much  to  illustrate  their  author  as  to 
illustrate  themselves.  Instances  of  this 
disposition  occur  constantly  in  those  sec- 
tions of  the  ''History  of  English  Poetry" 
which  treat  of  Chaucer.  Warton  is  con- 
stantly wandering  away  from  his  legiti- 
mate subject  to  furnish  information  about 
matters  that  concerned  very  remotely,  if 
•at  all,  the  business  in  hand.  Much  of  the 
material  he  collected  is  introduced  not  to 
throw  light  upon  the  question  under  con- 
sideration, but  to  parade  his  knowledge. 
Still,  it  is  the  spirit  that  pervades  the 
work  which  is  especially  objectionable. 
About  it  lingered  the  apologetic  air  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  which  talked  as  if  it 
had  something  of  a  contempt  for  itself 
for  taking  interest  in  an  age  when  neither 
language  nor  poetry  had  reached  the 
supreme  elegance  by  which  both  were 
then  distinguished.  Warton's  words  make 
upon  the  mind  the  impression  that  he  ad- 
mired Chaucer  greatly,  and  was  ashamed 
of  himself  for  having  been  caught  in  the 
act.  Whenever  he  abandons  convention- 
ally accepted  ground,  we  recognize  at 
once  the  timid  utterance  of  the  man  who 
feels  called  upon  to  put  in  a  plea  in  ex- 
tenuation of  the  appreciation  he  has  man- 
ifested.—Lounsbury,  Thomas  R.,  1891, 
Studies  in  Chaucer,  vol.  iii,  p.  246. 

Warton's  work  may  be  looked  upon  as 
a  kind  of  classic  fragment,  the  incomplete- 
ness of  which  has  been  emphasised  by  the 
glosses  and  alterations  of  three  genera- 
tions of  commentators.  .  .  .  Had 
Warton  chosen  to  follow  the  course  con- 
templated by  Pope  and  Gray,  few  men 
would  have  been  better  qualified  to  bring 
the  undertaking  to  a  successful  issue. 
His  reading  was  wide,  his  scholarship 
sound,  his  taste  fine  and  discriminating ; 
and  though  he  had  no  pretensions  to  be 
called  a  great  poet,  his  verse  is  at  least 
marked  by  genuine  poetic  sensibility. 
Unfortunately  he  set  about  his  work  in 
the  spirit  of  an  antiquary,  and  in  the 
patience,  the  industry,  and  the  accuracy, 
required  for  this  branch  of  knowledge,  he 
was  inferior  to  men  who  could  not 


THOMAS  WARTON 


75 


compare  with  him  in  capacity  as  a  literary 
critic— COURTHOPE,  W.  J.,  1895,  A  His- 
tory of  English  Poetry,  vol.  i,  pp.  xi,  xii. 

His  cumbrous  and  amorphous  learning, 
too  vast  to  be  exact,  and  too  tenacious  to 
be  discriminating,  might  seem  likely  to 
submit  its  vigorous  independence  to  any 
environment,  however  strong.  But  yet, 
as  a  fact,  the  work  that  Warton  achieved 
would  not  have  been  possible  to  him  had 
he  lived  in  any  previous  age.  His  learn- 
ing would  have  run  into  abstruse  divaga- 
tions, where  pedantry  and  fancy  would 
have  overwhelmed  all  sense  of  proportion. 
To  such  abberations  he  was  by  nature 
only  too  prone.  But  the  scientific  sense 
of  his  age  revealed  to  him  just  the  ques- 
tions in  literary  history  which  called  for 
solution.  He  saw,  by  anticipation,  some 
of  the  fruits  which  the  ,comparative 
method  might  be  made  to  yield ;  and,  as 
a  consequence,  although  he  essayed  a  task 
too  large  for  any  man,  and  achieved  what 
is  doubtless  an  ill-arranged  and  ill-pro- 
portioned fragment,  yet  he  left  the  im- 
press of  his  independent  thought  and  of 
his  vigorous  grasp  upon  our  literature, 
and  traced  the  lines  upon  which  its  history 
must  be  written.— Craik,  Henry,  1895, 
ed., English  Prose,  Introduction,  vol.  iv,  p.S. 

Warton's  "History  of  English  Poetry'^ 
marks,  and  to  some  extent  helped  to  pro- 
duce an  immense  change  for  the  better  in 
the  study  of  English  literature;  and  he 
deserved  the  contemptuous  remarks  of 
some  later  critics  as  little  as  he  did  the 
savage  attacks  of  the  half -lunatic  Ritson. 
But  he  was  rather  indolent;  his  knowl- 
edge, though  wide,  was  very  desultory 
and  full  of  scraps  and  gaps;  and,  like 
others  in  his  century,  he  was  much  too 
fond  of  hypothesis  without  hypostasis,  of 
supposition  without  substance. — Saints- 
bury,  George,  1897,  The  Flourishing  of 
Romance  and  the  Rise  of  Allegory,  p.  139. 

But  Warton's  learning  was  wide,  if  not 
exact;  and  it  was  not  dry  learning,  but 
quickened  by  the  spirit  of  a  genuine  man 
of  letters.  Therefore,  in  spite  of  its 
obsoleteness  in  matters  of  fact,  his  history 
remains  readable,  as  a  body  of  descriptive 
criticism,  or  a  continuous  literary  essay. 
The  best  way  to  read  it  is  to  read  it  as  it 
was  written — in  the  original  edition — dis- 
regarding the  apparatus  of  notes,  which 
modern  scholars  have  accumulated  about 
it,  but  remembering  that  it  is  no  longer  an 


authority  and  probably  needs  correcting 
on  every  page.  Read  thus,  it  is  a  thor- 
oughly delightful  book,  "a  classic  in  its 
way,"  as  Lowell  has  said. — Beers,  Henry 
A.,  1898,  A  History  of  English  Romanti- 
cism in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  205. 

At  the  outset,  Warton's  great  under- 
taking was  cautiously  received.  In  so 
massive  a  collection  of  facts  and  dates, 
errors  were  inevitable.  Warton's  ar- 
rangement of  his  material  was  not  flaw- 
less. Digressions  were  very  numerous. 
His  translation  of  old  French  and  English 
was  often  faulty.  In  1782  Ritson  at- 
tacked him  on  the  last  score  with  a  good 
deal  of  bitterness,  and  Warton,  while  con- 
temptuously refusing  to  notice  the  cen- 
sures of  the  "black-letter  dog,"  was  con- 
scious that  much  of  the  attack  was  justi- 
fied. Horace  Walpole  found  the  work 
unentertaining,  and  Mason  echoed  that 
opinion.  Subsequently  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
impressed  by  its  deficiencies  of  plan, 
viewed  it  as  "an  immense  commonplace 
book  of  memoirs  to  serve  for"  a  his- 
tory ;  and  Hallam  deprecated  enthusiastic 
eulogy.  On  the  other  hand.  Gibbon  de- 
scribed it  as  illustrating  "the  taste  of  a 
poet  and  the  minute  diligence  of  an  anti- 
quarian,"  while  Christopher  North  wrote 
appreciatively  of  the  volumes  as  "a  mine." 
But,  however  critics  have  differed  in  the 
past,  the  whole  work  is  now  seen  to  be 
impregnated  by  an  intellectual  vigor  which 
reconciles  the  educated  reader  to  almost 
all  its  irregularities  and  defects.  Even 
the  mediseval  expert  of  the  present  day, 
who  finds  that  much  of  Warton's  informa- 
tion is  superannuated  and  that  many  of  the 
generalisations  have  been  disproved  by 
later  discoveries,  realises  that  nowhere 
else  has  he  at  his  command  so  well  fur- 
nished an  armoury  of  facts  and  dates  about 
obscure  writers;  while  for  the  student 
of  sixteenth  century  literature,  Warton's 
results  have  been  at  many  points  devel- 
oped, but  have  not  as  a  whole  been  super- 
seded. His  style  is  unaffected  and  invari- 
ably clear.  He  never  forgot  that  he  was 
the  historian  and  not  the  critic  of  the  lit- 
erature of  which  he  treated.  He  handled 
with  due  precision  the  bibliographical  side 
of  his  subject,  and  extended  equal  thor- 
oughness of  investigation  to  every  variety 
of  literary  effort.  No  literary  history 
discloses  more  comprehensive  learning  in 
classical  and  foreign  literature,  as  well  as 


76 


THOMAS  WAR  TON 


in  that  of  Great  Britain.— Lee,  Sidney, 
1899,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography , 
vol.  Lix,  p.  434. 

GENERAL 

You  have  shewn  to  all,  who  shall  here- 
after attempt  the  study  of  our  ancient 
authours,  ["Observations  on  the  Faerie 
Queene"]  the  way  to  success ;  by  directing 
them  to  the  perusal  of  the  books  which 
those  authours  had  read. — Johnson,  Sam- 
uel, 1754,  Letter  to  Warton,  July  16; 
Life  by  Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  i,  p.  314. 

This  is  a  very  splendid  edition;  [ed. 
Theocritus]  and,  after  a  careful  perusal, 
I  can  pronounce  it  as  correct  as  splen- 
did. Every  lover  of  Greek  literature  is 
under  great  obligations  to  the  very  learned 
and  ingenious  Mr.  Warton  for  this  mag- 
nificent edition  of  Theocritus,  and  for 
several  other  immortal  productions. 
Everybody  allows  the  Preface  to  be  a 
beautiful  and  interesting  composition. — 
Harwood,  Edward,  1775-90,  A  View  of 
the  Classics. 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  [*'Ode  on 
Spring"]  and  original  descriptive  poems 
in  our  language,  and  strongly  shews  the 
force  of  poetical  imitation  in  -rendering 
objects  that  have  no  beauty  in  themselves 
highly  beautiful  in  description.  I  sup- 
pose there  are  few  scenes  less  pleasing 
and  picturesque  in  themselves  than  the 
view  from  Catherine  Hill,  near  Winches- 
ter, over  the  bare  adjacent  downs,  and  on 
the  Itchin  at  its  feet,  formed  into  a  navi- 
gable canal,  and  creeping  through  a  wide 
valley  of  flat  water-meadow,  intersected 
often  at  right  angles  by  straight  narrow 
water-courses.  But  hear  the  poet,  and 
observe  how  the  scene  appears  in  the  pic- 
ture he  has  given  of  it,  without  changing 
the  features  of  the  original. — Pye, 
Henry  James,  1788,  Commentary  on 
Aristotle's  Poetic. 

Nor,  amid  the  choir 
Of  pealing  minstrelsy,  was  thy  own  lyre, 
Warton,  unheard ; — as  Fancy  pour'd  the  song. 
The  measur'd  music  flow'd  along, 
Till  all  the  heart  and  all  the  sense 
Felt  her  divinest  influence.    .    .  . 
— Beattie,  James,  1790,  Monody  on  the 
Death  of  Dr.  Warton. 

He  was  a  genuine  poet,  in  its  strictest 
sense.  I  remember  some  years  ago,  when 
it  was  the  fashion  to  deny  him  genius: 
but  I  am  utterly  at  a  loss  to  guess  what 


meaning  those,  who  denied  genius  to 
T.  Warton,  could  affix  to  the  word. — 
Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1800, 
Phillips's  Theatrum  Poetarum  Anglican- 
orum,  p.  Ixi,  note. 

In  one  department  he  is  not  only  un- 
equalled, but  original  and  unprecedented : 
I  mean  in  applying  to  modern  poetry  the 
embellishment  of  Gothic  manners  and 
Gothic  arts;  the  tournaments  and  festi- 
vals, the  poetry,  music,  painting,  and  archi- 
tecture of  ''elder  days."  Nor  can  I  here 
refrain  from  repeating,  that,  though  en- 
gaged in  the  service,  his  talents  were 
never  prostituted  to  the  undue  praise  of 
royalty ;  nor  from  adding  as  a  topic  of  in- 
cidental applau&e,  that,  though  he  wan- 
ders in  the  mazes  of  fancy,  he  may  always 
be  resorted  to  as  supplying  at  least  an 
harmless  amusement ;  and  that  with  Mil- 
ton and  Gray,  whom  he  resembled  in  vari- 
ous other  points,  he  shares  also  this  moral 
commendation,  that  his  laurels,  like  theirs, 
are  untainted  by  impurity,  and  that  he  has 
uniformly  written  (to  use  the  words  of 
another  unsullied  bard) 
Verse  that  a  Virgin  without  blush  may  read. 
— Mant,  Richard,  1802,  Poetical  Works 
of  Thomas  Warton,  Life,  vol.  I,  p.  clxi. 

The  poems  of  Thomas  Warton  are  re- 
plete with  a  sublimity,  and  richness  of 
imagery,  which  seldom  fail  to  enchant: 
every  line  presents  new  beauties  of  idea, 
aided  by  all  the  magic  of  animated  diction. 
From  the  inexhaustible  stores  of  figurative 
language,  majesty,  and  sublimity,  which 
the  ancient  English  poets  afford,  he  has 
culled  some  of  the  richest  and  sweetest 
flowers.  But,  unfortunately,  in  thus  mak- 
ing the  use  of  the  beauties  of  other  writ- 
ers, he  has  been  too  unsparing;  for  the 
greatest  number  of  his  ideas  and  nervous 
epithets  cannot,  strictly  speaking,  be 
called  his  own;  therefore,  however  we 
may  be  charmed  by  the  grandeur  of  his 
images,  or  the  felicity  of  his  expression, 
we  must  still  bear  in  our  recollection, 
that  we  cannot  v/ith  justice  bestow  upon 
him  the  highest  eulogium  of  genius — that 
of  originality.— White,  Henry  Kirke, 
1806-13,  Remains,  ed.  Southey,  vol.  ii, 
p.  207. 

This  beautifully  romantic  poem  [''Pleas- 
ures of  Melancholy"],  though  executed  at  a 
period  so  early  in  life,  betrays  almost 
immediately  the  tract  of  reading,  and  the 
school  of  poetry,  to  which  its  author  had. 


THOMAS  WARTON 


77 


even  then,  sedulously  addicted  himself. 
Every  page  suggests  to  us  the  disciple  of 
Spenser  and  Milton,  yet  without  servile 
imitation;  for,  though  the  language  and 
style  of  imagery  whisper  whence  they 
were  drawn,  many  of  the  pictures  in  this 
poem  are  so  bold  and  highly  coloured, 
as  justly  to  claim  no  small  share  of  origi- 
nality. ...  On  the  genius  of  War- 
ton,  as  a  Poet,  an  adequate  value  has  not 
yet  been  placed ;  for  in  consequence  of  a 
sedulous  imitation  of  the  diction  of  our 
elder  bards,  especially  of  Spenser  and  Mil- 
ton, originality  of  conception  has  been 
very  unjustly  denied  him.  To  his  brother 
Joseph,  with  whom  he  has  been  commonly 
ranked,  he  is  greatly  superior,  both  in 
vigour  and  fertility  of  imagination, 
though,  perhaps,  less  svs^eet  and  polished 
in  his  versification.  In  the  rhymed  penta- 
meter, indeed,  and  in  blank  verse,  in 
point  of  versification,  to  Dryden,  Pope, 
and  Milton;  but  in  the  eight-syllable 
metre,  to  which  he  was  particularly  par- 
tial, he  has  exhibited,  almost  uniformly, 
great  harmony  and  sweetness.  The  mix- 
ture of  trochaics  of  seven  syllables,  and 
iambics  of  eight,  which  has  been  objected 
to  him  as  a  fault,  in  this  species  of  verse, 
I  am  so  far  from  considering  as  a  defect, 
that,  as  in  Milton  and  Gray,  1  esteem  it 
productive  of  much  beauty  and  much  in- 
teresting variety.— Drake,  Nathan,1810, 
Essays,  Illustrative  of  the  Rambler,  Adven- 
turer, and  Idler,  vol.  ii,  pp.  169,  174. 

In  the  best  of  Warton's  there  is  a  stiff- 
ness, which  too  often  gives  them  the  ap- 
pearance of  imitations  from  the  Greek. — 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1817,  Bio- 
graphia  Literaria,  ch.  i. 

Warton  was  a  poet  and  a  scholar,  studi- 
ous with  ease,  learned  without  affectation. 
He  had  a  happiness  which  some  have  been 
prouder  of  than  he,  who  deserved  it  less — 
he  was  a  poet-laureat. 
"And  that  green  wreath  which  decks  the 

bard  when  dead, 
That  laurel  garland,  crown'd  his  living  head." 
But  he  bore  his  honours  meekly,  and  per- 
formed his  half-yearly  task  regularly.  I 
should  not  have  mentioned  him  for  this 
distinction  alone  (the  highest  which  a  poet 
can  receive  from  the  state),  but  for  an- 
other circumstance ;  I  mean  his  being  the 
author  of  some  of  the  finest  sonnets  in 
the  language — at  least  so  they  appear  to 
me;  and  as  this  species  of  composition 


has  the  necessary  advantage  of  being 
short  (though  it  is  sometimes  both 
"tedious  and  brief"),  I  will  here  repeat 
two  or  three  of  them,  as  treating  pleasing 
subjects  in  a  pleasing  and  philosophical 
way. — Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lectures 
on  the  English  Poets,  Lecture  vi. 

Every  Englishman  who  values  the  liter- 
ature of  his  country,  must  feel  himself 
obliged  to  Warton  as  a  poetical  antiquary. 
Asapoet,he  is  ranked  by hisbrother  Joseph 
in  the  school  of  Spenser  and  Milton ;  but 
this  classification  can  only  be  admitted 
with  a  full  understanding  of  the  immense 
distance  between  him  and  his  great  mas- 
ters. He  had,  indeed,  ''spelt  the  fabled 
rhyme;"  he  abounds  in  allusions  to  the 
romantic  subjects  of  Spenser,  and  he  is  a 
sedulous  imitator  of  the  rich  lyrical  man- 
ner of  Milton :  but  of  the  tenderness  and 
peculiar  harmony  of  Spenser  he  has  caught 
nothing;  and  in  his  resemblance  to  Mil- 
ton, he  is  the  heir  of  his  phraseology 
more  than  of  his  spirit.  His  imitation  of 
manner,  however,  is  not  confined  to  Mil- 
ton. .  .  .  If  we  judge  of  him  by  the 
character  of  the  majority  of  his  pieces,  I 
believe  that  fifty  out  of  sixty  of  them  are 
such,  that  we  should  not  be  anxious  to 
give  them  a  second  perusal.  From  that 
proportion  of  his  works,  I  conceive  that  an 
unprejudiced  reader  would  pronounce  him 
a  florid,  unafl^ecting  describer,  whose 
images  are  plentifully  scattered,  but 
without  selection  of  relief.  To  confine 
our  view,  however,  to  some  seven  or 
eight  of  his  happier  pieces,  we  shall  find, 
in  these,  a  considerable  degree  of  graphic 
power,  of  fancy,  and  animation.  His 
''Verses  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds"  are 
splendid  and  spirited.  There  is  also  a 
softness  and  sweetness  in  his  ode  entitled 
"The  Hamlet,"  which  is  the  more  wel- 
come, for  being  rare  in  his  productions ; 
and  his  "Crusade,"  and  "Grave  of 
Arthur,"  have  a  genuine  air  of  martial 
and  minstrel  enthusiasm.  .  .  .  The 
spirit  of  chivalry,  he  may  indeed  be  said 
to  have  revived  in  the  poetry  of  modern 
times.  His  memory  was  richly  stored 
with  all  the  materials  for  description  that 
can  be  got  from  books :  and  he  seems  not 
to  have  been  without  an  original  enthusi- 
asm for  those  objects  which  excite  strong 
associations  of  regard  and  wonder. 
Whether  he  would  have  looked  with  inter- 
est on  a  shepherds'  cottage,  if  he  had  not 


78 


THOMAS  WARTON 


found  it  described  by  Virgil  or  Theocritus, 
may  be  fairly  doubted;  but  objects  of 
terror,  splendour  and  magnificence,  are 
evidently  congenial  to  his  fancy. — Camp- 
bell, Thomas,  1819,  Specimens  of  the 
British  Poets. 

His  style  in  prose,  though  marked  by  a 
character  of  magnificence,  is  at  times 
stiff  and  encumbered.  He  is  too  fond  of 
alliteration  in  prose  as  well  as  in  verse ; 
and  the  cadence  of  his  sentences  is  too 
evidently  laboured.— Gary,  Henry  Fran- 
cis, 1821-24-45,  Lives  of  the  English 
Poets,  p.  162. 

Tom  Warton  was  one  of  the  finest  fel- 
lows that  ever  breathed — and  the  gods  had 
made  him  poetical,  but  not  a  poet. — Wil- 
son, John,  1831,  An  Hour's  Talk  about 
Poetry,  Blackwood's  MagazinCy  vol.  30, 
p.  483. 

Thomas  Warton,  although  not  one  of 
our  greatest,  is  still  a  most  respectable 
literary  name.  He  was  an  elegant  scholar, 
if  not  a  Bentley ;  a  refined  and  genial  critic, 
if  not  a  Johnson ;  a  tender  and  true  poet, 
if  not  a  Milton.  If  we  may  substitute 
comparison  for  contrast,  he  may  be  called, 
as  a  poet,  a  diffuser  Gray,  or  even  a 
weaker  and  less  versatile  Scott.  .  .  . 
Altogether,  looking  at  his  poems  in  the 
light  of  effusions  poured  out  in  the  inter- 
vals of  laborious  research  and  critical  dis- 
cussion, they  are  worthy  of  all  accepta- 
tion ;  and  we  feel  justified  in  binding  the 
Poetical  Works  of  Warton  in  the  same 
volume  with  those  of  Goldsmith  and  Gol- 
lins.  They  are  certainly  three  among  the 
truest  and  most  refined  of  our  minor  poets. 
— GiLPiLLAN,  George,  1854,  The  Poetical 
Works  of  Goldsmith,  Collins  and  T.  War- 
ton,  pp.  152,  154. 

That  robust  scholar  and  genial  poet. — ■ 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  1858-64-90, 
Library  of  Old  Authors;  Prose  Works^ 
Riverside  ed.,  vol.  I,  p.  320. 

Some  of  them  express  real  feelings  with 
an  elegance  so  scholarly,  so  simple,  and 
so  full  of  faith,  that  no  universalist  in  the 
love  of  poetry  who  has  once  read  them 
chooses  to  part  with  them. — Hunt,  Leigh, 
1859  ?-67,  An  Essay  on  the  Sonnet,  ed. 
Lee. 

The  scholia  [Ed.  Theocritus]  are  not 
conveniently  disposed  for  the  purpose  of 
reference ;  and,  in  the  opinion  of  Harles, 
as  well  as  Brunck,  the  editor  has  not  to  the 


full  extent  availed  himself  of  all  the  valu- 
able materials  that  were  within  his  reach. 
— Irving,  David,  1860,  Life  of  Warton, 
Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  Eighth  ed. 

Warton's  numerous  sonnets  cover  a 
wide  range;  but  are  particularly  note- 
worthy for  the  increased  attention  they 
give  to  natural  objects,  and  for  the  tran- 
sition in  the  application  of  the  sonnet  to 
poetical  subjects  of  a  descriptive  kind  which 
this  increase  denotes.  Instead  of  being 
confined,  as  the  sonnet  had  been  very  gen- 
erally, to  amatory,  elegiac,  or  complimen- 
tary subjects,  or  to  the  sublimation  of 
some  abstract  sentiment  or  idea,  his  son- 
nets largely  celebrate  historical  or  famil- 
iar scenes  and  places,  chosen  by  him  for 
the  picturesqueness  of  their  environments, 
or  for  the  interesting  associations  that 
were  clustered  around  them.  Many  of  the 
local  descriptions  in  these  brief  poems  are 
very  attractive;  and,  indeed,  there  is 
scarcely  one  of  his  sonnets,  whatever  their 
theme,  but  will  reward  us  by  the  grace- 
fulness and  delicacy  of  its  sentiments, 
and  the  correctness  of  its  diction  and 
structure.  It  is  true  they  make  no  great 
pretensions,  but  the  level  plain  on  which 
they  travel  reveals  so  many  inviting  bits 
of  retired  loveliness,  and  affords  so  many 
charming  glimpses  of  quiet  beauty,  that 
we  wonder  his  poems  are  so  little  known 
and  prized.  Probably,  however,  the  neg- 
lect into  which  they  have  fallen  is  due  to 
an  excess  of  correctness  of  finish  and  an 
over-refinement  of  taste,  which  impart  to 
them  an  air  of  stiffness  and  effeminacy 
that  a  closer  inspection  would  measur- 
ably dissipate.  To  my  mind,  the  tran- 
scripts of  English  sights  and  scenes  in 
Warton' s  sonnets  are  extremely  pleasing, 
and  will  bear  close  scrutiny. — Deshler, 
Charles  D.,  1879,  Afternoons  with  the 
Poets,  p.  178. 

Thomas  Warton  is  in  his  poetry  chiefly 
imitative,  as  was  natural  in  so  laborious  a 
student  of  our  early  poetical  literature. 
The  edition  of  his  poems  which  was  pub- 
lished by  his  admirer  and  his  brother's 
devoted  pupil,  Richard  Marit,  offers  a 
curious  example  of  a  poet  ''killed  with 
kindness;"  for  the  apparatus  of  parallel 
passages  from  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Mil- 
ton, and  others,  is  enough  to  ruin  any  lit- 
tle claim  to  originality  which  might  have 
been  put  forward  for  him.  .  .  .  There 
are  reasons  why  his  genial  figure  should 


WARTON— FRANKLIN 


79 


not  be  altogether  excluded  from  a  repre- 
sentative English  anthology.  It  has  often 
been  said  that  his  ''History  of  English 
Poetry. ' '  with  Percy's ' ' Reliques, ' '  turned 
the  course  of  our  letters  into  a  fresh 
channel ;  but  what  is  more  noticeable  here 
is  that  his  own  poetry — or  much  of  it,  for 
he  is  not  always  free  from  the  taint  of 
psuedo-classicalism  —  instinctively  deals 
with  materials  like  those  on  which  the 
older  writers  had  drawn.  In  reaction 
against  the  didactic  and  critical  temper 
of  the  earlier  half  of  his  century,  he  is  a 
student  of  nature;  he  is  even  an  enthu- 
siast," in  Whitehead's  sense. — Ward, 
Thomas  Humphry,  1880,  English  Poets, 
vol.  ni,  p.  382. 

Warton's  style  has  no  very  special  char- 
acteristics, and  he  does  not  conform  to  any 
marked  convention  in  the  structure  of  his 
sentences.  But  it  is  at  all  times  forcible, 
clear,  and  free  from  pedantry ;  and  he  un- 
questionably added  something  to  the  re- 
courses of  English  prose,  in  being  the  first 
to  treat  literary  questions  from  the  his- 
torical point  of  view. — ^Craik,  Henry, 
1895,  English  Prose,  vol  iv,  p.  331. 

Of  all  the  laureates,  with  the  exception 
of  Rowe,  Warton  suffered  the  least  from 
satirical  attacks.  His  unmistakable  claim 
to  greatness  seemed  to  impress  the  small 
buzzing  gnats  that  usually  swarmed  about 
the  poets  of  the  day.  Warton's  first  offi- 
cial ode  was  composed  in  haste  and  was 
not  at  all  equal  to  the  poetry  he  has  been 
writing  for  many  years,  and  it  excited 
more  or  less  ridicule ;  but  after  that,  his 
official  work  was  done  with  such  genuine 
power  that  even  the  famous  Wolcot,  who 
under  the  name  of  P.eter  Pindar,  produced 
such  biting,  brilliant,  and  unmerciful  sat- 
ires, contented  himself  with  a  few  harm- 
less thrusts.  Warton  was  too  great  a  poet 
and  too  amiable  a  man  to  treat  such  at- 
tacks with  anything  but  composure  and 
dignity.  —  Howland,  Frances  Louise 
(Ken YON  West),  1895,  The  Laureates  of 
England,  p.  124. 

Fourth-rate  men  like  the  two  Wartons. 


—Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  1896,  English 
Literature,  p.  220. 

His  books  furnish  ample  evidence  of  that 
extraordinary  industry  in  the  discovery 
and  examination  of  manuscript  authorities 
which  characterizes  the  antiquaries  of  the 
period;  and  though  the  accuracy  of  his 
learning  was  severely  impugned  by  Pdtson 
in  1782,  in  the  anonymous  Observations 
on  the  History  of  English  Poetry,  in  a 
Familiar  Letter  to  the  Author,"  yet  the 
majority  of  the  mistakes  acridly  corrected 
in  the  pamphlet  are  far  from  inexcusable 
in  a  work  compiled  from  notes  taken  under 
all  sorts  of  difficulties,  and  Ritson's  attack 
was  considered  merely  malignant.  War- 
ton's  notebooks  and  papers,  a  box  full  of 
which  is  in  the  library  of  Trinity  College, 
though  often  elaborate,  are  generally  very 
slovenly  and  illegible,  and  the  want  of 
method  which  they  display  would  suffi- 
ciently account  for  many  errata.  But 
while  one  is  bound  to  make  every  allowance 
for  accidental  mistakes  and  immaterial  in- 
accuracies, the  interests  of  historical  truth 
demand  that  one  should  expose  without 
hesitation  misstatements  which  appear  to 
be  intentional ;  and,  unpleasant  as  the  task 
is,  it  is  a  duty  to  call  public  attention  to 
some  facts  which  must  seriously  impair  the 
confidence  so  long  reposed  in  the  trust- 
worthiness of  Warton's  historical  work. — 
Blakiston,  Herbert  E.  D.,  1896,  Thomas 
Warton  and  Machyn's  Diary,  English  His- 
torical Review,  vol.  11,  p.  282. 

He  had  also  an  appreciation  of  wild 
nature,  as  we  see  from  the  descriptions  in 
''The  Grave  of  King  Arthur."  Warton's 
work  is  of  interest  because  of  the  many 
attractive  details  scattered  through  his 
poems,  but  there  is  little  unity  of  effect. 
The  general  impression  is  that  he  saw 
nature  first  through  Milton's  eyes,  and 
that  when  he  afterwards  made  many 
charming  discoveries  for  himself  he  tried 
to  express  them  in  the  II  Penseroso 
manner. —  Reynolds,  Myra,  1896,  The 
Treatment  of  Nature  in  English  Poetry, 
p.  128. 


Benjamin  Franklin 

1706-1799. 

Born  at  Boston,  Mass.,  Jan.  17,  1706:  Died  at  Philadelphia,  April  17,  1790.  A 
celebrated  American  philosopher,  statesman,  diplomatist,  and  author.  He  learned  the 
printer's  trade  in  the  office  of  his  elder  brother  James,  and  in  1729  established 
himself  at  Philadelphia  as  editor  and  proprietor  of  the  ''Pennsylvania  Gazette." 


80 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


He  founded  the  Philadelphia  library  in  1731;  began  the  publication  of  *Toor 
Richard's  Almanac"  in  1732;  was  appointed  clerk  of  the  Pennsylvania  assembly 
in  1736 ;  became  postmaster  of  Philadelphia  in  1737 ;  founded  the  American  Philo- 
sophical Society  and  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  in  1743  and  in  1752  demonstrated 
by  experiments  made  with  a  kite  during  a  thunderstorm  that  lightning  is  a  discharge 
of  electricity,  a  discovery  for  which  he  was  awarded  the  Copley  medal  by  the  Royal 
Society  in  1753.  He  was  deputy  postmaster-general  for  the  British  colonies  in  America 
1753-74.  In  1754,  at  a  convention  of  the  New  England  colonies  with  New  York, 
Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland,  held  at  Albany,  he  proposed  a  plan,  known  as  the  "Albany 
Plan,"  which  contemplated  the  formation  of  a  self-sustaining  government  for  all  the 
colonies,  and  which,  although  adopted  by  the  convention,  failed  of  support  in  the 
colonies.  He  acted  as  colonial  agent  for  Pennsylvania  in  England  1757-62  and  1764-75 ; 
was  elected  to  the  second  Continental  Congress  in  1775 ;  and  in  1776  was  a  member 
of  the  committee  of  five  chosen  by  Congress  to  draw  up  a  declaration  of  indepe«idence. 
He  arrived  at  Paris,  Dec.  21,  1776,  as  ambassador  to  the  court  of  France ;  and  in  con- 
junction with  Arthur  Lee  and  Silas  Deane  concluded  a  treaty  with  France,  Feb.  6, 1778, 
by  which  France  recognized  the  independence  of  America.  In  1782,  on  the  advent  of 
Lord  Rockingham's  ministry  tt)  power,  he  began  a  correspondence  with  Lord  Shelburne, 
secretary  of  state  for  home  and  colonies,  which  led  to  negotiations  for  peace ;  and  in 
conjunction  with  Jay  and  Adams  concluded  with  England  the  treaty  of  Paris,  Sept,  3, 
1788.  He  returned  to  America  in  1785 ;  was  president  of  Pennsylvania  1785-88 ;  and 
was  a  delegate  to  the  constitutional  convention  in  1787.  He  left  an  autobiography, 
which  was  edited  by  John  Bigelow  in  1868.  His  works  have  been  edited  by  Jared 
Sparks  (10  vols.,  1836-40)  and  John  Bigelow  (10  vols.,  1887-1888).— Smith,  Benja- 
min E.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  408. 


PERSONAL 

The  Body 
Of 

Benjamin  Franklin, 
Printer, 
(Like  the  cover  of  an  old  book. 
Its  contents  torn  out, 
And  stript  of  its  lettering  and  gilding). 
Lies  here,  food  for  worms. 
Yet  the  work  itself  shall  not  be  lost, 
For  it  will,  as  he  believed,  appear  once  more, 
In  a  new 
And  more  beautiful  edition, 
Corrected  and  amended 
By 

The  Author. 

—Franklin,  Benjamin,  1726?  Proposed 
Epitaph. 

There  was  a  circumstance  that  I  shall 
never  forget,  which  passed  in  one  of  our 
conversations.  Dr.  Wight  and  I  had  seen 
Dr.  Franklin  at  Edinburgh,  as  I  have 
formerly  related ;  we  mentioned  this  phi- 
losopher to  Mr.  Allen  with  the  respect  we 
thought  due,  and  he  answered,  "Yes,  all 
you  have  said  of  him  is  true,  and  I  could 
add  more  in  his  praise ;  but  though  I  have 
now  got  the  better  of  him,  he  has  cost  me 
more  trouble  since  he  came  to  reside 
in  our  State  than  all  mankind  besides; 
and  I  can  assure  you  that  he  is  a  man  so 
turbulent,  and  such  a  plotter,  as  to  be  able 
to  embroil  the  three  kingdoms,  if  he 


has  an  opportunity. ' '  Franklin  was  after 
this  for  several  weeks  in  Edinburgh,  with 
David  Hume,  but  I  did  not  see  him,  having 
been  from  home  on  some  jaunt.  In  1769 
or  '70  I  met  him  at  an  invited  dinner  in 
London,  at  John  Stuart's,  the  Provost's 
son,  I  think  it  was,  where  he  was  silent  and 
inconversible,  but  this  was  after  he  has 
been  refused  the  office  of  Postmaster- 
General  of  America,  and  had  got  a  severe 
dressing  from  Wedderburn,  then  Solicitor 
or  Attorney-General. — Carlyle,  Alex- 
ander, 1763-1860,  Autobiography,  p.  353. 

An  Epitaph  &c.  |  To  the  much  esteem'd 
Memory  of  i  B  .  .  .  F  .  .  .  Esq.,LL.D.  1 
.  .  .   i  Possessed  of  many  lucrative  | 
Offices  1  Procured  to  him  by  the  Interest 
of  Men  i  Whom  he  infamously  treated  | 
And  receiving  enormous  sums  |  from  the 
Province  |  For  Services  i  He  never  per- 
formed I  After  betraying  it  to  Party  and 
Contention  |  He  lived,  as  to  the  Appear- 
ance of  Wealth  |  In  moderate  circum- 
stances; I  His  principal  Estate,  seeming 
to  consist  I  In  his  Hand  Maid  Barbara  |  A 
most  valuable  Slave  |  The  Foster  Mother  | 
of  his  last  offspring  |  Who  did  his  dirty 
Work  I  And  in  two  Angelic  Females  | 
Whom  Barbara  also  served  |  As  Kitchen 
Wench  and  Gold  Finder  |  But  alas  the 
Loss!  I  Providence  for  wise  tho'  secret 
ends  I  Lately  deprived  him  of  his  Mother 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


81 


I  of  Excellency  |  His  Fortune  was  not 
however  impaired  ]  For  he  piously  with- 
held from  her  I  Manes  |  The  pitiful  stipend 
of  Ten  pounds  per  Annum  |  On  which  he 
had  cruelly  suffered  her  |  To  starve  |  Then 
stole  her  to  the  Grave  in  Silence  i  Without 
a  Pall,  the  covering  due  to  her  dignity  ! 
Without  a  tomb  or  even  !  A  Monumental 
Inscription.— Williamson,  Hugh,  1764, 
What  is  Sauce  for  the  Goose  is  also  Sauce 
for  the  Gander. 

There  is  a  general  union  among  the 
colonies,  which  no  artifices  of  a  mininstry 
will  be  able  to  break.  Dr.  Franklin  is  a 
very  popular  character  in  every  part  of 
America.  He  will  be  received,  and  carried 
in  triumph  to  his  house,  when  he  arrives 
amongst  us.  It  is  to  be  hoped  he  will  not 
consent  to  hold  any  more  offices  under 
government.  No  step  but  this  can  pre- 
vent his  being  handed  down  to  posterity 
among  the  first  and  greatest  characters 
in  the  world. — Rush,  Benjamin,  1774, 
Letter  to  Arthur  Lee,  May  4. 

A  man  who  makes  a  figure  in  the  learned 
world. — Kames,  Henry  Home  Lord,  1774, 
Sketches  of  the  History  of  Man,  vol.  iii,  v. 
435. 

After  dinner  we  went  to  the  Academy 
of  Sciences,  and  heard  M.  d'Alembert,  as 
perpetual  secretary,  pronounce  eulogies 
on  several  of  their  members,  lately 
deceased.  Voltaire  and  Franklin  were 
both  present,  and  there  presently  arose  a 
general  cry  that  M.  Voltaire  and  M. 
Franklin  should  be  introduced  to  each 
other.  This  was  done,  and  they  bowed 
and  spoke  to  each  other.  This  was  no 
satisfaction;  there  must  be  something 
more.  Neither  of  our  philosophers  seemed 
to  divine  what  was  wished  or  expected ; 
they,  however,  took  each  other  by  the 
hand.  But  this  was  not  enough;  the 
clamor  continued,  until  the  explanations 
came  out.  "II  faut  s'  embrasser,  a  la 
Frangoise."  The  two  aged  actors  upon 
this  great  theatre  of  philosophy  and 
frivolity  then  embraced  each  other,  by 
hugging  one  another  in  their  arms,  and 
kissing  each  other's  cheeks,  and  then  the 
tumult  subsided.  And  the  cry  immedi- 
ately spread  through  the  whole  kingdom, 
and,  I  suppose,  over  all  Europe— ''Qu'  il 
etait  charmant  de  voir  embrasser  Solon  et 
Sophocle Adams,  John,  1778,  Diary, 
Paris,  Apr.  29. 

Mr.  Fragonard,  the  king's  painter  at 

6C 


Paris,  has  lately  displayed  the  utmost 
efforts  of  his  genius  in  an  elegant  picture 
dedicated  to  the  genius  of  Franklin.  Mr. 
Franklin  is  represented  in  it  opposing 
with  one  hand  the  segis  of  Minerva  to  the 
thunderbolt,  which  he  first  knew  how  to 
fix  by  his  conductors,  and  with  the  other 
commanding  the  god  of  war  to  fight 
against  avarice  and  tyranny  whilst  Amer- 
ica, nobly  reclining  upon  him,  and  holding 
in  her  hand  the  fasces,  a  true  emblem  of 
the  union  of  the  American  States,  looks 
down  with  tranquility  on  her  defeated 
enemies.  The  painter,  in  this  picture, 
most  beautifully  expressed  the  idea  of  the 
Latin  verse,  which  has  been  so  justly  ap- 
plied to  Mr.  Franklin : 
Eripuit  coelo  fulmen  sceptmmque  tyrannis. 
(He  snatched  the  thunderbolt  from  heaven 
and  the  scepter  from  the  hands  of  tyrants). 
—Gazette  of  Amiens,  1779,  on  the  Paint- 
ing of  Franklin. 

In  a  gallery  of  paintings  in  the  Louvre, 
I  was  much  gratified  in  perceiving  the 
portrait  of  Franklin,  near  those  of  the 
king  and  queen,  placed  there  as  a  mark  of 
distinguished  respect,  and,  as  was  under- 
stood, in  conformity  with  royal  directions. 
Few  foreigners  have  been  presented  to  the 
court  of  St.  Cloud  who  have  acquired  so 
much  popularity  as  Dr.  Franklin.  I  have 
seen  the  populace  attend  his  carriage,  in 
the  manner  they  followed  the  king's. 
His  venerable  figure,  the  ease  of  his  man- 
ners, formed  in  an  intercourse  of  fifty 
years  with  the  world,  his  benevolent 
countenance,  and  his  fame  as  a  philosopher, 
all  tended  to  excite  love,  and  to  command 
influence  and  respect.  He  had  attained, 
by  the  exercise  of  these  qualities,  a  power- 
ful interest  in  the  feelings  of  the  beauti- 
ful queen  of  France.  She  held  at  that 
time  a  powerful  political  influence.  The 
exercise  of  that  influence,  adroitly  directed 
by  Franklin,  tended  to  produce  the 
acknowledgment  of  our  independence,  and 
the  subsequent  efficient  measures  pur- 
sued by  France  in  its  support. — Watson, 
Elkanah,  1779,  Memoirs,  p.  106. 
What  diff  'rence  then  can  virtue  claim 

From  vice,  if  it  oblivious  lie? 
While  I  can  sing  your  spotless  name, 

Your  worthy  deeds  shall  never  die. 
Nor  shall  oblivion's  livid  power 

Your  patriotic  toils  conceal : 
Alike  in  good,  or  adverse  hour, 

A  patron  of  the  common -weal. 
Forever  faitliful  and  sincere, 


82 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


Your  hands  from  gilded  baits  are  free: 
The  public  villain  stands  in  fear 

You  should  perpetual  counsel  be. 
The  knave  possest  of  shining  pelf, 

Can  never  sway  your  honest  choice : 
For  justice,  emblem  of  yourself. 

Exalts  above  the  rabble's  voice. 
—Parke,  John,  1781,  To  Lollius. 

Of  all  the  celebrated  persons  whom  in 
my  life  I  have  chanced  to  see.  Dr.  Frank- 
lin, both  from  his  appearance  and  his 
conversation,  seemed  to  me  the  most 
remarkable.  His  venerable  patriarchal 
appearance,  the  simplicity  of  his  manner 
and  language,  and  the  novelty  of  his 
observations,  at  least  the  novelty  of  them 
at  that  time  to  me,  impressed  me  with  an 
opinion  of  him  as  of  one  of  the  most  ex- 
traordinary men  that  ever  existed. — Rom- 
ill  Y,  Sir  Samuel,  1783,  Journal,  Life  by 
his  Sons,  vol.  I,  p.  69. 

A  new  town  in  the  state  of  Massa- 
chusetts having  done  me  the  honor  of 
naming  itself  after  me,  and  proposing 
to  build  a  steeple  to  their  meeting-house, 
if  I  would  give  them  a  bell,  I  have  advised 
the  sparing  themselves  the  expense  of  a 
steeple  for  the  present,  and  that  they 
would  accept  of  books  instead  of  a  bell, 
sense  being  preferable  to  sound.  These 
are  therefore  intended  as  a  commencement 
of  a  little  parochial  library  for  the  use  of 
a  society  of  intelligent,  respectable  farm- 
ers, such  as  our  country  people  generally 
consists  of. — Franklin,  Benjamin,  1785, 
Letter  to  Richard  Price. 

Dear  Sir  :  Amid  the  public  gratulation 
on  your  safe  return  to  America,  after  a 
long  absence,  and  the  many  eminent 
services  you  had  rendered  it — for  which 
as  a  benefited  person  I  feel  the  obligation 
— permit  an  individual  to  join  the  public 
voice  in  expressing  his  sense  of  them  ;  and 
to  assure  you,  that  as  no  one  entertains 
more  respect  for  your  character,  so  none 
can  salute  you  with  more  sincerity  or  with 
greater  pleasure  than  I  do  on  this  occa- 
sion. I  am — dear  sir,  Your  most  obt. 
and  most  Hble.  Servt. — Washington, 
George,  1785,  Letter  to  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, Sep.  25. 

Dr.  Franklin  lives  in  Market  street. 
His  house  stands  up  a  court,  at  some  dis- 
tance from  the  street.  We  found  him  in 
his  garden,  sitting  upon  a  grass-plot, 
under  a  very  large  mulberry  tree,  with 
several  other  gentlemen  and  tw  3e 


ladies..  When  Mr.  Gerry  introduced  me, 
he  rose  from  his  chair,  took  me  by  the 
hand,  expressed  his  joy  at  seeing  me, 
welcomed  me  to  the  city,  and  begged  me 
to  seat  myself  close  to  him.  His  voice 
was  low,  but  his  countenance  open,  frank, 
and  pleasing.  .  .  He  seemed  exceed- 
ingly fond,  through  the  course  of  the  visit, 
of  dwelling  on  philosophical  subjects  and 
particularly  that  of  Natural  History ;  while 
the  other  gentlemen  were  swallowed  up 
with  politics.  This  was  a  favorable  cir- 
cumstance for  me ;  for  almost  the  whole  of 
his  conversation  was  addressed  to  me,  and 
I  was  highly  delighted  with  the  extensive 
knowledge  he  appeared  to  have  of  every 
subject,  the  brightness  of  his  memory,  and 
clearness  and  vivacity  of  all  his  mental 
faculties,  notwithstanding  his  age.  His 
manners  are  perfectly  easy,  and  every- 
thing about  him  seems  to  diffuse  an  unre- 
strained freedom  and  happiness.  He  has 
an  incessant  vein  of  humor,  accompanied 
with  an  uncommon  vivacity,  which  seems 
as  natural  and  involuntary  as  his  breath- 
ing.— Cutler,  Manasseh,  1787,  Journal, 
July  13 ;  Sparks^  Life  of  Franklin,  vol.  i, 
pp.  520,  523. 

Be  it  remembered 
In  honor  of  the  Philadelphia  Youth, 
(then  chiefly  artificers) 
that  in  MDCOXXXL, 
they  cheerfully, 
at  the  instances  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
one  of  their  number, 
instituted  the  Philadelphia  Library, 
which,  though  small  at  first, 
is  become  highly  valuable  and  extensively 
useful 

and  which  the  walls  of  this  edifice 
are  now  destined  to  contain  and  preserve, 
the  first  stone  of  whose  foundation 

was  here  placed, 
the  thirty-first  day  of  August,  1789. 

—Corner  Stone,  Philadelphia  Library, 
1789. 

About  sixteen  days  before  his  death  he 
was  seized  with  a  feverish  indisposition, 
without  any  particular  symptoms  attend- 
ing it,  till  the  third  or  fourth  day,  when 
he  complained  of  a  pain  in  the  left  breast, 
which  increased  till  it  became  extremely 
acute,  attended  with  a  cough  and  laborious 
breathing.  During  this  state  when  the 
severity  of  his  pains  drew  forth  a  groan  of 
complaint,  he  would  observe— that  he  was 
afraid  he  did  not  bear  them  as  he  ought — 
acknowledged  his  grateful  sense  of  the 
many  blessings  he  had  received  from  that 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


83 


Supreme  Being,  who  had  raised  him  from 
small  and  low  beginnings  to  such  high  rank 
and  considerationamongmen — and  made  no 
doubt  but  his  present  afflictions  were 
kindly  intended  to  wean  him  from  a  world, 
in  which  he  was  no  longer  fit  to  act  the 
part  assigned  him.  In  this  frame  of  body 
and  mind  he  continued  till  five  days  before 
his  death,  when  his  pain  and  difficulty  of 
breathing  entirely  left  him,  and  his  family 
were  flattering  themselves  with  the  hopes 
of  his  recovery,  when  an  imposthumation, 
(abscess)  which  had  formed  itself  in  his 
lungs  suddenly  burst,  and  discharged  a 
great  quantity  of  matter,  which  he  con- 
tinued to  throw  up  while  he  had  sufficient 
strength  to  do  it ;  but,  as  that  failed,  the 
organs  of  respiration  became  gradually 
oppressed — a  calm  lethargic  state  suc- 
ceeded—and, on  the  17th  of  April,  1790, 
about  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  he  quietly 
expired,  closing  a  long  and  useful  life  of 
eighty-four  years  and  three  months. — 
Jones,  Dr.  John,  1790,  Account  of  the 
Illness  and  Death  of  Dr.  Franklin. 

Mr.  Speaker :  As  we  have  been  informed, 
not  only  through  the  channel  of  the  news- 
papers, but  by  a  more  direct  communica- 
tion, of  the  decease  of  an  illustrious  charac- 
ter, whose  native  genius  has  rendered 
distinguished  services  to  the  cause  of 
science  and  of  mankind  in  general ;  and 
whose  patriotic  exertions  have  contributed 
in  a  high  degree  to  the  independence  and 
prosperity  of  this  country  in  particular ; 
the  occasion  seems  to  call  upon  us  to  pay 
some  tribute  to  his  memory  expressive  of 
the  tender  veneration  his  country  feels  for 
such  distinguished  merit.  I  therefore 
move  the  following  resolution:  ''The 
House  being  informed  of  the  decease  of 
Benjamin  Franklin,  a  citizen  whose  native 
genius  was  not  more  an  ornament  to  human 
nature  than  his  various  exertions  of  it 
have  been  precious  to  science,  to  freedom, 
and  to  his  country,  do  resolve,  as  a  mark 
of  the  veneration  due  to  his  memory, 
that  the  members  wear  the  customary 
badge  of  mourning  for  one  month." — 
Madison,  James,  1790,  Resolution  of  Con- 
gress, April  22. 

Franklin  is  dead  !  The  genius  that  freed 
America  and  poured  a  flood  of  light  over 
Europe  has  returned  to  the  bosom  of  the 
Divinity;  The  sage  \vhom  two  worlds 
claim  as  their  own,  the  man  for  whom 
the  history  of  science  and  the  history  of 


empires  contend  with  each  other,  held, 
without  doubt,  a  high  rank  in  the  human 
race.  Too  long  have  political  cabinets 
taken  formal  note  of  the  death  of  those 
who  were  great  only  in  their  funeral 
panegyrics.  Too  long  has  the  etiquette 
of  courts  prescribed  hypocritical  mourn- 
ing. Nations  should  wear  mourning  only 
for  their  benefactors.  The  representa- 
tives of  nations  should  recommend  to  their 
homage  none  but  the  heroes  of  humanity. 
The  Congress  has  ordained,  throughout 
the  United  States,  a  mourning  of  one 
month  for  the  death  of  Franklin,  and  at 
this  moment  America  is  paying  this  tribute 
of  veneration  and  gratitude  to  one  of  the 
fathers  of  her  Constitution.  Would  it 
not  become  us,  gentlemen,  to  join  in  this 
religious  act,  to  bear  a  part  in  this  homage, 
rendered,  in  the  face  of  the  world,  both  to 
the  rights  of  man  and  to  the  philosopher 
who  has  most  contributed  to  extend  their 
sway  over  the  whole  earth?  Antiquity 
would  have  raised  altars  to  this  mighty 
genius,  who,  to  the  advantage  of  mankind, 
compassing  in  his  mind  the  heavens  and 
earth,  was  able  to  restrain  alike  thunder- 
bolts and  tyrants.  Europe,  enlightened 
and  free,  owes  at  least  a  token  of  remem- 
brance and  regret  to  one  of  the  greatest 
men  who  has  ever  been  engaged  in  the 
service  of  philosophy  and  liberty.  I  pro- 
pose that  it  be  decreed  that  the  National 
Assembly,  during  three  days  shall  wear 
mourning  for  Benjamin  Franklin. — Mira- 

BEAU,  HONORE  GABRIEL  RlQUETI  COMTE 

DE,  1790,  Speech  Before  the  National  Legis- 
lature of  France,  June  11. 

As  soon  as  his  country  was  so  well 
established  that  she  had  no  need  of  seek- 
ing for  partisans,  his  life  became  more 
retired  and  peaceable.  In  his  retreat  at 
Passy,  there  formed  around  him  a  circle, 
not  large,  of  a  few  friends ;  and  their  com- 
pany, with  simple  pursuits,  occupied  the 
close  of  a  noble  life.  The  course  of  it 
was  broken  by  a  painful  illness,  however, 
and  from  this  moment  his  mind  turned 
toward  his  own  country.  He  left  France, 
giving  her,  as  the  reward  of  her  service, 
a  great  example,  and  lessons  which  could 
not  long  remain  without  profit.  He  sailed 
from  an  English  port,  to  which  he  was 
accompanied  by  M.  Le  Veillard,  who,  while 
he  lived  at  Passy,  had  lavished  all  the 
cares  of  filial  tenderness  upon  him,  and 
wished  to  postpone  to  th'e  last  moment 


84 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


what  was  to  be  an  eternal  separation. 
Franklin  only  stopped  on  the  shores  of 
England.  He  was  so  generous  that  he 
spared  his  humiliated  enemies  the  spec- 
tacle of  his  glory.  The  French  were  his 
friends;  the  English  were  relatives, — ■ 
whose  faults  one  is  glad  to  forget, — with 
regard  to  whom  we  still  respect  the  bonds 
of  nature,  though  they  have  broken  them 
by  their  injustice. — Condorcet,  Marie 
Jean  Marquis  de,  1790,  Address  before 
the  French  Academy,  Nov.  13. 

On  Wednesday,  King  the  American 
minister,  Eliot,  Montagu,  and  Henry 
Thornton  dined  with  me,  Rational  day.  .  . 
Franklin  seems,  from  King,  not  to  be  in 
good  estimation  in  America.  Thought  a 
dishonest,  tricking,  hypocritical  charac- 
ter ;  a  free-thinker  really,  yet  pretending 
to  believe  in  the  authority  of  Scripture. 
— Wilberforce,  William,  1796,  Table 
Talk,  Life  by  his  Sons,  vol.  ii,  p.  179. 

This  self-taught  American  is  the  most 
rational,  perhaps,  of  all  philosophers.  He 
never  loses  sight  of  common  sense  in  any  of 
his  speculations.  .  .  .  No  individual,  per- 
haps, ever  possessed  a  juster  understand- 
ing, or  was  so  seldom  obstructed  in  the 
use  of  it  by  indolence,  enthusiasm,  or 
authority.  Dr.  Franklin  received  no 
regular  education;  and  he  spent  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  in  a  society  where 
there  was  no  relish  and  no  encouragement 
for  literature.  On  an  ordinary  mind, 
these  circumstances  would  have  produced 
their  usual  effects,  of  repressing  all  sorts 
of  intellectural  ambition  or  activity,  and 
perpetuating  a  generation  of  incurious 
mechanics ;  but  to  an  understanding  like 
Franklin's,  we  cannot  help  consider- 
ing them  as  peculiarly  propitious,  and 
imagine  that  we  can  trace  back  to  them 
distinctly  almost  all  the  peculiarities  of 
his  intellectual  character.  —  Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1806,  The  Works  of  Dr. 
Franklin,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  8,  p.  328. 

His  reputation  was  more  universal  than 
that  of  Leibnitz  or  Newton,  Frederick  or 
Voltaire,  and  his  character  more  beloved 
and  esteemed  than  any  or  all  of  them.  .  . 
His  name  was  familiar  to  government  and 
people,  to  kings  and  courtiers,  nobility, 
clergy  and  philosophers,  as  well  as  ple- 
beians, to  such  a  degree  that  there  was 
scarcely  a  peasant  or  a  citizen,  a  valet  de 
chambre:  a  coachman  or  footman,  a  lady^s 
chambermaid  or  a  scullion  in  the  kitchen 


who  was  not  familiar  with  it,  and  who  did 
not  consider  him  as  a  friend  to  human 
kind.  .  .  Nothing,  perhaps,  that  ever 
occurred  upon  the  earth  was  so  well  calcu- 
lated to  give  any  man  an  extensive  and 
universal  celebrity  as  the  discovery  of  the 
efficacy  of  iron  points  and  the  invention  of 
lightning-rods.  The  idea  was  one  of  the 
most  sublime  that  ever  entered  a  human 
imagination,  that  a  mortal  should  disarm 
the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  almost  snatch 
from  his  hand  the  sceptre  and  the  rod." 
The  ancients  would  have  enrolled  him  with 
Bacchus  and  Ceres,  Hercules  and  Minerva. 
His  Paratonneres  erected  their  heads  in  all 
parts  of  the  world,  on  temples  and  palaces 
no  less  than  on  cottages  of  peasants  and 
the  habitations  of  ordinary  citizens. 
These  visible  objects  reminded  all  men  of 
the  name  and  character  of  their  inventor ; 
and,  in  the  course  of  time,  have  not  only 
tranquilized  the  minds ;  and  dissipated  the 
fears  of  the  tender  sex  and  their  timorous 
children,  but  have  almost  annihilated  that 
panic  terror  and  superstitious  horror 
which  was  once  almost  universal  in  violent 
storms  of  thunder  and  lightning. — Adams, 
John,  1811,  Works,  vol.  i.  Appendix,  pp. 
660,  661. 

An  independence  of  thought,  a  constant 
and  direct  reference  to  utility,  a  conse- 
quent abstinence  from  whatever  is  merely 
curious  and  ornamental,  or  even  remotely 
useful,  a  talent  for  ingeniously  betraying 
vice  and  prejudice  into  an  admission  of 
reason,  and  for  exhibiting  their  sophisms 
in  that  state  of  undisguised  absurdity  in 
which  they  are  ludicrous,  and  with  a 
singular  power  of  striking  illustration 
from  homely  objects,  would  justify  us  in 
calling  Franklin  The  American  Socrates. 
—Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  1812,  Life  by 
Mackintosh,  vol.  ii,  p.  203. 

Benjamin  Franklyn,  who,  by  bringing  a 
spark  from  heaven,  fulfilled  the  prophecies 
he  pretended  to  disbelieve ;  Franklyn,  who 
wrote  a  profane  addition  to  the  Book  of 
Genesis,  who  hissed  on  the  colonies  against 
their  parent  country,  who  taught  men  to 
despise  their  Sovereign  and  insult  their 
Redeemer ;  who  did  all  the  mischief  in  his 
power  while  living,  and  at  last  died,  I  think, 
in  America ;  was  beside  all  the  rest,  a 
plagiarist,  as  it  appears ;  and  the  curious 
epitaph  made  on  himself,  and  as  we  long 
believed,  by  himself,  was,  1  am  informed, 
borrowed  without  acknowledgment,  from 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


85 


one,  upon  Jacob  Tonson,  to  whom  it  was 
more  appropriate,  comparing  himself  to 
an  old  book,  eaten  by  worms ;  which  on 
some  future  day,  however,  should  be  new 
edited,  after  undergoing  revisal  and  cor- 
rection by  the  Author. —Fiozzi,  Hester 
Lynch,  1815,  Notes  on  Wraxall,  Autobi- 
ography. 

As  to  the  charge  of  subservience  to 
France,  .  .  .  two  years  of  my  own 
service  with  him  at  Paris,  daily  visits,  and 
the  most  friendly  and  confidential  conver- 
sations, convinced  me  it  had  not  a  shadow 
of  foundation.  He  possessed  the  confi- 
dence of  that  government  in  the  highest 
degree,  insomuch  that  it  may  truly  be 
said,  that  they  were  more  under  his  influ- 
ence than  he  under  theirs.  The  fact  is, 
that  his  temper  was  so  amiable  and  con- 
ciliatory, his  conduct  so  rational,  never 
urging  impossibilities,  or  even  things  un- 
reasonably inconvenient  to  them,  in  short 
so  moderate  and  attentive  to  their  dif- 
ficulties as  well  as  our  own,  that  what  his 
enemies  called  subserviency  I  saw  was 
only  that  reasonable  disposition  which, 
sensible  that  advantages  are  not  all  to  be 
on  one  side,  yielding  what  is  just  and 
liberal,  is  the  more  certain  of  obtaining 
liberality  and  justice.  Mutual  confidence 
produces  of  course  mutual  influence,  and 
this  was  all  which  subsisted  between  Dr. 
Franklin  and  the  government  of  France. 
— Jefferson,  Thomas,  1818,  Letter  to 
Robert  Walsh,  Dec,  4. 

Franklin  enjoyed,  during  the  greater 
part  of  his  life,  a  healthy  constitution,  and 
excelled  in  exercises  of  strength  and 
activity.  In  stature  he  was  above  the 
middle  size ;  manly,  athletic  and  well  pro- 
portioned. His  countenance,  as  it  is  rep- 
resented in  his  portrait,  is  distinguished 
by  an  air  of  serenity  and  satisfaction, 
the  natural  consequence  of  a  vigorous 
temperament,  of  strength  of  mind,  and 
conscious  integrity.  It  is  also  marked,  in 
visible  characters,  by  deep  thought  and 
inflexible  resolution.  Very  rarely  shall 
we  see  a  combination  of  features,  of  more 
agreeable  harmony ;  an  aspect  in  which 
the  human  passions  are  more  happily 
blended  or  more  favourably  modified,  to 
command  authority,  to  conciliate  esteem, 
or  to  excite  love  and  veneration.  His  col- 
loquial accomplishments  are  mentioned 
by  those  who  knew  him,  in  terms  of 
the  highest  praise. — Sanderson,  John, 


1820-28,  Biorjrapny  of  the  Signers  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  vol.  ill,  p.  132. 

Our  Franklin  happily  passes  his  time, 
in  pleasing  sobriety,  with  the  illustrious 
sages  and  philosophers  of  all  nations  and 
ages.  Though  uniformly  cheerful, he  sel- 
dom or  never  laughs;  and,  with  all  the 
engaging  simplicity  of  a  child,  he  pours 
forth  the  matured  and  comprehensive  wis- 
dom of  experience.  Uniting  the  essence 
of  wit,  quickness  of  thought  and  facility 
of  combination,  with  that  brevity  Vv'hich  is 
its  appropriate  garb,  he  charms  without 
effort  and  teaches  without  appearing  the 
master.  It  is  delightful  to  see  him  in 
simple  dress  and  simple  language,  like  one 
of  the  primitive  instructors  of  mankind, 
condensing  some  fine  moral  in  the  compass 
of  a  single  sentence,  or  illustrating  some 
glorious  precept  by  a  happy  allegory  that 
embodies,  and  gives  life  and  being  to  the 
truth.  The  weight  of  wisdom  and  be- 
nignity united  with  good  temper  and 
unaffected  manners,  was  never  more  strik- 
ingly exemplified  than  in  the  influence  of 
this  immortal  Printer  upon  the  country  to 
which  he  was  a  benefactor,  and  the  age  to 
which  he  was  an  ornament. — Paulding, 
James  K.,  1821,  National  Intelligencer, 
Jan.  20;  Literary  Life,  ed.  Paulding, 
p.  155. 

Dr.  Franklin  appeared  at  court  in  the 
costume  of  an  American  cultivator  ;  his  hair 
plainly  brushed,  without  powder.  His 
round  hat  and  plain  coat  of  brown  cloth 
contrasted  strongly  with  the  powdered 
coiffures  and  the  bespangled  and  em- 
broidered coats  of  the  perfumed  courtiers 
of  Versailles.  His  simple  and  novel,  yet 
dignified  appearance  charmed  the  ladies 
of  the  court,  and  many  were  the  fetes  given 
him,  not  only  for  his  fame  as  a  philosopher, 
but  in  acknowledgment  of  his  patriotic 
virtues,  which  led  him  to  enroll  himself 
among  the  noble  supporters  of  the  cause 
of  liberty.  I  assisted  at  one  of  these 
entertainments,  where  the  most  beautiful 
from  among  three  hundred  ladies  was 
designated  to  place  a  crown  of  laurel  on 
the  gray  head,  and  to  salute  with  a  kiss 
each  cheek  of  the  American  philosopher. 
— Campan,  Jeanne  Louise  Henriette, 
1823,  Memoirs  of  Marie  Antoinette. 

His  qualities  were  those  of  a  sterling 
practical  Englishman ;  he  directed  his 
whole  attention  to  the  real  and  substantial 
objects  of  life,  and  therefore  at  a  later 


86 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


period  in  France  he  laughed  at  the  senti- 
mentality, ideality  and  enthusiasm  of  the 
French  in  favour  of  the  freedom  which  he 
announced,  and  even  at  the  manner  in 
which  he  himself  was  idolized ;  but  he  was 
prudently  silent,  and  availed  himself  of  the 
Parisian  mode  for  the  promotion  of  his 
objects.  He  had  now  been  for  thirty  years 
renowned  in  America  as  the  founder  of  a 
printing  establishment,  the  originator  of 
widely  circulated  newspapers  and  journals, 
as  a  popular  writer  and  moralist ;  and  in 
Europe  for  fifteen  years  as  a  natural 
philosopher,  an  acute  observer  and  dis- 
coverer of  some  of  the  grand  phaenomena 
of  the  physical  world.  He  had  become 
strictly  moral  as  soon  as  he  renounced  the 
sins  of  his  youth,  and  was  no  longer 
straitened  or  weighted  down  by  the  pres- 
sure of  poverty ;  he  hov/ever  knew  the  ways 
of  men  too  well  to  feel  himself  always 
bound  to  walk  on  the  narrow  path,  or  to 
renounce  the  course  of  crooked  policy 
when  the  attainment  of  an  important 
object  invited  him  to  pursue  it,  provided 
he  was  not  required  to  commit  any  flagrant 
violations  of  propriety.  —  Schlosser, 
Friedrich  Christoph,  1823,  History  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century y  tr.  Davison,  vol. 
V,  p.  60. 

The  incorruptible  integrity,  sagacious 
intellect,  and  philosophic  spirit  of  Frank- 
lin.— Alison,  Sir  Archibald,  1833-42, 
History  of  Europe  During  the  French  Revo- 
lution, vol.  XIV,  p.  2. 

No  man  in  Paris,  was  more  d  la  mode, 
more  sought  after  than  was  Dr.  Franklin. 
The  crowd  used  to  run  after  him  in  the 
walks  and  in  the  public  resorts;  hats, 
canes,  snuff-boxes,  everything  was  d  la 
Franklin.  Men  and  women  considered  it 
a  piece  of  good  fortune  to  be  invited  to  a 
dinner  at  which  this  celebrated  man  was 
to  be  present.— Lebrun,  Madame  Vigee, 
1835,  Memoirs,  vol.  I,  p.  251. 

Sage  Franklin  next  arose  in  cheerful  mien, 
And  smil'd,  unruffled,  o'er  the  solemn  scene ; 
High  on  his  locks  of  age,  a  wreath  was 
brac'd, 

Palm  of  all  arts  that  e'er  a  mortal  grac'd; 
Beneath  him  lay  the  sceptre  kings  had  borne, 
And  crowns  and  laurels  from  their  temples 
torn. 

— Weems,  Mason  L.,  1835,  Title  Page  to 
Life  of  Franklin. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  men  cer- 
tainly, of  our  times,  as  a  politician,  or  of 
any  age,  as  a  philosopher,  was  Franklin ; 


who  also  stands  alone  in  combining 
together  these  two  characters,  the  great- 
est that  man  can  sustain,  and  in  this,  that 
having  borne  the  first  part  in  enlarging 
science,  by  one  of  the  greatest  discoveries 
ever  made,  he  bore  the  second  part  in 
founding  one  of  the  greatest  empires  in 
the  world.  ...  In  domestic  life  he 
was  faultless,  and  in  the  intercourse  of 
society,  delightful.  There  was  a  constant 
good  humour  and  a  playful  wit,  easy  and 
of  high  relish,  without  any  ambition  to 
shine,  the  natural  fruit  of  his  lively  fancy, 
his  solid,  natural  good  sense,  and  his 
cheerful  temper,  that  gave  his  conversa- 
tion an  unspeakable  charm,  and  alike  suited 
every  circle,  from  the  humblest  to  the 
most  elevated.  With  all  his  strong  opin- 
ions, so  often  solemnly  declared,  so  imper- 
ishably  recorded  in  his  deeds,  he  retained 
a  tolerance  for  those  who  differed  with 
him,  which  could  not  be  surpassed  in  men 
whose  principles  hang  so  loosely  about 
them  as  to  be  taken  up  for  a  convenient 
cloak,  and  laid  down  when  found  to  impede 
their  progress.  In  his  family  he  was 
everything  that  worth,  warm  affections, 
and  sound  prudence  could  contribute,  to 
make  a  man  both  useful  and  amiable, 
respected  and  beloved.  In  religion,  he 
would  by  many  be  reckoned  a  latitudi- 
narian ;  yet  it  is  certain  that  his  mind  was 
imbued  with  a  deep  sense  of  the  Divine 
perfections,  a  constant  impression  of  our 
accountable  nature,  and  a  lively  hope  of 
future  enjoyment.— Brougham,  Henry 
Lord,  1839,  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of 
George  III. 

With  placid  tranquility,  Benjamin 
Franklin  looked  quietly  and  deeply  into  the 
secrets  of  nature.  His  clear  understand- 
ing was  never  perverted  by  passion,  or 
corrupted  by  the  pride  of  theory.  The 
son  of  a  rigid  Calvanist,  the  grandson  of 
a  tolerant  Quaker,  he  had  from  boyhood 
been  familiar  not  only  with  theological 
subtilities,  but  with  a  catholic  respect  for 
freedom  of  mind.  Skeptical  of  tradition 
as  the  basis  of  faith,  he  respected  reason, 
rather  than  authority ;  and,  after  a 
momentary  lapse  into  fatalism,  escaping 
from  the  mazes  of  fixed  decrees  and  free 
will,  he  gained,  with  increasing  years,  an 
increasing  trust  in  the  overruling  provi- 
dence of  God.  Adhering  to  none  *'of  all 
the  religions"  in  the  colonies,  he  yet 
devoutly,  though  without  form,  adhered 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


87 


to  religion.  But  though  famous  as  dis- 
putant, and  having  a  natural  aptitude  for 
metaphysics,  he  obeyed  the  tendency  of 
his  age,  and  sought  by  observation  to  win 
an  insight  into  the  mysteries  of  being.  .  . 
Never  professing  enthusiasm,  never  mak- 
ing a  parade  of  sentiment,  his  practical 
wisdom  was  sometimes  mistaken  for  the 
offspring  of  selfish  prudence ;  yet  his  hope 
was  steadfast,  like  that  hope  which  rests 
on  the  Rock  of  Ages,  and  his  conduct  was 
as  unerring  as  though  the  light  that  led 
him  was  a  light  from  heaven.  He  ever 
anticipated  action  by  theories  of  self- 
sacrificing  virtue ;  and  yet,  in  the  moments 
of  intense  activity,  he,  from  the  highest 
abodes  of  ideal  truth,  brought  down  and 
applied  to  the  affairs  of  life  the  sublimest 
principles  of  goodness,  as  noiselessly  and 
unostentatiously  as  became  the  man  who, 
v;ith  a  kite  and  hempen  string,  drev/  the 
lightning  from  the  skies. — Bancroft, 
George,  1844,  History  of  the  United 
States,  vol.  ill,  p.  378. 

Franklin  was  the  greatest  diplomatist 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  He  never 
spoke  a  word  too  soon ;  he  never  spoke  a 
word  too  late ;  he  never  spoke  a  word  too 
much ;  he  never  failed  to  speak  the  right 
word  at  the  right  season. — Bancroft, 
George,  1852,  iYew;  York  Historical  Society 
Lecture,  Dec.  9. 

The  historic  image  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, does  not  so  vividly  impress  the  mind 
as  the  grander,  more  colossal  figures 
which,  instinct  with  the  glory  of  brilliant 
genius,  star-stud  the  vista  of  the  dim  past 
— but  its  paler,  less  dazzling  light,  is— 
we  may  be  permitted  to  repeat — a  more 
hopeful  and  cheering  one  to  the  masses  of 
mankind,  for  it  shines  upon  a  path  to 
eminence  which  it  requires  no  seraph's 
wing, — no  transcendant  mental  power — 
to  over  sweep  or  climb, — nothing  but  the 
qualities,  prudently  but  courageously  exer- 
cised, which  he  himself  possessed, — a  clear 
intellect,  — firm  purpose,  — self-denial,  — 
energetic  labour, — and  perhaps  the  moral 
of  his  life  is  all  the  more  pertinent  and 
instructive,  inasmuch  that  he  stumbled 
heavily  upon  the  threshold  of  his  career, 
and  recovered  himself  unaided  save  by  God 
and  his  own  brave  honesty  of  will. — Rus- 
sell, William,  1853,  Extraordinary  Men, 
p.  102. 

To-morrow  we  are  to  inaugurate  Green- 
ough's   Franklin   with    a  tremendous 


procession — which  I  look  at  solely  from  a 
Mabelian  point  of  view.  Did  I  say  solely? 
Well,  let  it  stand.  But  I  may  just  mention 
that  the  American  Academy  comes  in 
before  the  governor,  and  Charles  perhaps 
can  tell  you  who  some  of  the  fellows  are. 
It  is  thought  that  they  will  find  carriages 
provided  for  them.  That  under  these 
circumstances  I  should  find  composure  to 
write  to  you  is  a  curious  biological  (1 
believe  that's  the  word  now)  fact.  There 
are  to  be  two  addresses  and  an  oration. 
Only  think  how  interesting!  And  we 
shall  find  out  that  Franklin  was  born  in 
Boston,  and  invented  being  struck  with 
lightning  and  printing  and  the  Franklin 
medal,  and  that  he  had  to  move  to  Phila- 
delphia because  great  men  were  so  plenty 
in  Boston  that  he  had  no  chance,  and  that 
he  revenged  himself  on  his  native  town  by 
saddling  it  with  the  Franklin  stove,  and 
that  he  discovered  the  almanac,  and  that 
a  penny  saved  is  a  penny  lost,  or  something 
of  the  kind.  So  we  put  him  up  a  statue. 
/  mean  to  invent  something — in  order  to 
encourage  sculptors. —  Lowell,  James 
Russell,  1856,  Letters,  ed.  Norton,  vol.  i, 
p.  271. 

Go  forth  then,  Benjamin  Franklin, 
printer,  to  thy  great  calling ;  master,  not 
of  arts,  but  of  the  art  of  arts ;  graduate, 
not  of  academic  halls,  but  of  the  three 
great  faculties  of  temperance,  industry, 
and  generous  ambition.  There  is  a  con- 
flict before  thee  long  and  sharp,  but  the 
press  has  taught  thy  hands  to  war  and  thy 
fingers  to  fight ;  the  victory  is  certain,  the 
reward  is  glorious.  Seas  of  trouble  shall 
stretch  before  thee,  but  they  shall  roll  up 
their  crystal  walls  on  thy  right  hand  and 
on  thy  left,  and  thou  shall  pass  through 
on  dry  ground.  Events  of  unexampled 
magnitude  for  thee  and  thy  country  attend 
thy  career ;  great  wars  are  to  be  fought ; 
oppressive  rulers  set  at  defiance  ;  arduous 
negotiations  conducted;  alliances  con- 
tracted abroad,  confederacies  entered  into 
at  home,  constitutions  framed,  and 
governments  administered  ; — and  in  all 
these  vast  concerns  thou,  even  thou, 
Benjamin  Franklin,  printer,  shalt  bear 
a  responsible  and  even  a  leading  part, 
with  the  sages,  the  patriots,  and  the  mon- 
archs  of  Europe,  with  the  most  honoured 
and  trusted  of  thy  own  counntry,  with 
Adams,  with  Jefferson,  with  Jay,  with 
Laurens,  and  above  all,  with  Washington. 


88 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


Boston  now  sends  thee  forth  a  penniless 
fugitive;  Philadelphia  receives  thee  a 
homeless  adventurer ;  but  ere  thou  shalt 
taste  of  death,  America,  Europe,  shall  be 
too  narrow  for  thy  fame ;  and  in  times  to 
come,  the  friendly  strife  of  the  city  of  thy 
birth  and  the  city  of  thy  adoption  shall 
be  which  best,  which  most,  shall  do  honor 
to  thy  memory.— Everett,  Edward, 
1859,  Franklin  the  Boston  Boy,  Orations 
and  Speeches,  vol.  iv,  p.  128.  - 

Well,  Sir,  this  part  of  the  town,  I  think, 
should  have  an  interest  for  people  from 
your  side  of  the  water,  for  it  has  associa- 
tions connected  with  a  certain  countryman 
of  yours  named  Benjamin  Franklin.  When 
he  was  toiling  as  a  journeyman  printer  in 
the  metropolis,  more  than  a  century  ago, 
he  was  accustomed  to  stroll  upon  the  Sun- 
day afternoon  along  the  banks  of  Father 
Thames,  and  this  end  of  this  Cheyne  Row 
was  usually  his  goal.  One  day,  as  he 
walked  discoursing  with  a  friend,  he  de- 
clared himself  able  to  swim  from  here  to 
London  Bridge,  distant  about  five  miles. 
His  friend  offered  a  wager  that  it  was  im- 
possible ;  and  he,  upon  the  instant  strip- 
ping, plunged  boldly  in,  and  started  for 
his  mark,  while  his  friend,  bearing  the 
clothes,  strode  down  the  bank ;  and  a 
great  multitude  of  spectators,  growing 
ever  greater  as  he  proceeded,  followed  to 
see  the  feat.  He,  with  brave  stroke  and 
lusty  sinew  buffeting  the  tide,  gained  the 
bridge  and  the  wager.  Whereupon,  amidst 
great  acclamations,  the  people  suggested 
that  he  should  start  a  swimming  school. 
But  God  had  other  work  for  him  to  do : 
for  in  later  years  he  was  to  teach  the 
people  of  your  continent  how,  by  Frugality 
and  Labor,  and  Patience  and  Courage,  any 
man  might  buffet  the  waves  of  Fortune, 
and  swim  straight  on  to  prosperity  and 
success.  And  that  was  the  swimming- 
school  which  he  was  to  establish. — Car- 
LYLE,  Thomas,  1860  ?  Conversation  with  Dr. 
Milburn ;  Guernsey's  Life  of  Carlyle,  p.  17. 

Dr.  Sprague,  of  Albany,  who  has  col- 
lected a  great  number  of  autographs, 
made  application,  some  time  since,  to  a 
certain  gentleman  for  that  of  Dr.  Franklin. 
*'0h,  you  have  one  already, "  said  the 
person  referred  to.  * '  No  matter, ' '  replied 
the  determined  collector.  ''I  want  it  for 
exchange.  One  Benny  Franklin  in  Europe 
is  worth  two  kings ! " — Norton,  John  N., 
1861,  Life  of  Doctor  Franklin,  p.  177,  note. 


Of  the  men  whom  the  world  currently 
terms  Self-Made — that  is,  who  severally 
fought  their  life-battles  without  the  aid 
of  inherited  wealth,  or  family  honors, 
or  educational  advantages,  perhaps  our 
American  Franklin  stands  highest  in  the 
civilized  world's  regard.  ...  I  think  I 
adequately  appreciate  the  greatness  of 
Washington,  yet  I  must  place  Franklin 
above  him  as  the  consummate  type  and 
flowering  of  human  nature  under  the  skies 
of  colonial  America.  Not  that  Washing- 
ton was  born  to  competence  and  all  need- 
ful facilities  for  instruction,  so  that  he 
began  responsible  life  on  vantage  ground 
that  Franklin  toiled  twenty  arduous,  pre- 
cious years  to  reach ;  I  can  not  feel  that 
this  fact  has  undue  weight  with  me.  I 
realize  that  there  are  elements  of  dignity, 
of  grandeur,  in  the  character  of  Washing- 
ton for  which  that  of  Franklin  affords  no 
parallel.  But  when  I  contemplate  the 
immense  variety  and  versatility  of  Frank- 
lin's services  to  his  country  and  to  man- 
kind; when  I  think  of  him  as  a  writer 
whose  first  effusions  commanded  attention 
in  his  early  boyhood ;  as  a  monitor  and 
teacher  of  his  fellow  journeymen  in  a 
London  printing  office  ;  as  almost  from  the 
outset  a  prosperous  and  influential  editor 
when  journalism  had  never  before  been  a 
source  of  power ;  as  taking  his  place 
naturally  at  the  head  of  the  postal  service 
in  America,  and  of  the  earliest  attempts 
to  form  a  practical  confederation  of  the 
colonies ;  when  I  see  him,  never  an  enthu- 
siast, and  now  nearly  three-score-and-ten, 
renouncing  office,  hazarding  fame,  fortune, 
everything,  to  struggle  for  the  independ- 
ence of  his  country,  he  having  most  to  lose 
by  failure  of  any  American,  his  only  son  a 
bitter  Loyalist,  he  cheerfully  and  repeat- 
edly braving  the  dangers  of  an  ocean 
swarming  with  enemes,  to  render  his 
country  the  service  as  ambassador  which 
no  other  man  could  perform,  and  finally, 
when  more  than  eighty  years  old,  crown- 
ing a  life  of  duty  and  honor  by  helping  to 
frame  that  immortal  Constitution  which 
made  us  one  nation  forever,  I  cannot  place 
Franklin  second  to  any  other  American. 
He  could  not  have  done  the  work  of 
Washington— no  other  man  could;  but 
then  he  did  so  many  admirable  things 
which  Washington  had  too  sound  a  judg- 
ment even  to  attempt.  And,  great  as 
Washington  was,  he  ?\ras  not  great  enough 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


89 


to  write  and  print  after  he  had  achieved 
power  and  world-wide  fame,  a  frank, 
ingenuous  confession  of  his  youthful  fol- 
lies and  sins  for  the  instruction  and  ad- 
monition of  others.  Many  a  man  can 
look  calmly  down  the  throats  of  roaring 
cannon  who  lacks  the  courage  and  true 
philanthropy  essential  to  those  called  to 
render  this  service  to  mankind. — Gree- 
ley, Horace,  1862,  Self-Made  Men. 

Men  have  lived  who  were  more  mag- 
nificently endowed  than  Franklin.  Men 
have  lived  whose  lives  were  more  splendid 
and  heroic  than  his.  If  the  inhabitants  of 
the  earth  were  required  to  select,  to  rep- 
resent them  in  some  celestial  congress 
composed  of  the  various  orders  of  intel- 
ligent beings,  a  specimen  of  the  human 
race,  and  we  should  send  a  Shakespeare, 
the  celestials  would  say,  He  is  one  of  us ; 
or  a  Napoleon,  the.  fallen  angels  might 
claim  him.  But  if  we  desired  to  select  a 
man  who  could  present  in  his  own  charac- 
ter the  largest  amount  of  human  worth 
with  the  least  of  human  frailty,  and  in  his 
own  lot  on  earth  the  largest  amount  of 
enjoyment  with  the  least  of  suffering ;  one 
whose  character  was  estimable  without 
being  too  exceptionally  good,  and  his  lot 
happy  without  being  too  generally  unat- 
tainable ;  one  who  could  bear  in  his  letter 
of  credence,  with  the  greatest  truth.  This 
is  a  Man,  and  his  lije  on  earth  was  such  as 
good  men  may  live,  I  know  not  who,  of  the 
renowned  of  all  ages,  we  could  more 
fitly  choose  to  represent  us  in  that  high 
court  of  the  universe,  than  Benjamin 
Franklin,  printer,  of  Philadelphia. — Par- 
ton,  James,  1864,  Life  and  Times  of  Ben- 
jamin Franklin,  vol.  ii,  p.  655. 

No  one  began  lower  than  the  poor  ap- 
prentice of  Boston ;  no  one  raised  himself 
higher,  by  his  own  energy,  than  did  the 
inventor  of  the  lightning-rod ;  no  one  has 
rendered  more  splendid  services  to  his 
country  than  the  diplomatist  who  signed 
the  peace  of  1783  and  secured  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  United  States. — Labou- 
LAYE,  Edouard,  1866,  Memoir  of  Franklin. 

The  ideal  American,  as  he  has  been 
painted  for  us  of  late,  is  a  man  who  has 
shaken  off  the  yoke  of  definite  creeds, 
while  retaining  their  moral  essence,  and 
finds  the  highest  sanctions  needed  for  the 
conduct  of  human  life  in  experience  tem- 
pered by  common  sense.  Franklin  is 
'generally  supposed  to  have  reached  this 


ideal  by  anticipation,  and  there  is  a  half- 
truth  in  the  supposition.  But  whoever 
will  study  this  great  master  of  practical 
life  in  the  picture  here  painted  by  himself, 
will  acknowledge  that  it  is  only  super- 
ficially true,  and  that  if  he  never  lifts  us 
above  the  earth  or  beyond  the  domain  of 
experience  and  common-sense,  he  retained 
himself  a  strong  hold  on  the  invisible 
which  underlies  it,  and  would  have  been 
the  first  to  acknowledge  that  it  was  this 
which  enabled  him  to  control  the  accidents 
of  birth,  education,  and  position,  and  to 
earn  the  eternal  gratitude  and  reverence 
of  the  great  nation  over  whose  birth  he 
watched  so  wisely  and  whose  character  he 
did  so  much  to  form. — Hughes,  Thomas, 
1879,  Benjamin  Franklin,  The  Contem- 
porary Review,  vol.  35,  p.  594. 

The  Declaration  did  its  work ;  the  rep- 
resentative of  America  in  Paris  was  doing 
his.  Edmund  Burke  was  right  when,  in  a 
letter  to  a  friend,  he  remarked  that  Frank- 
lin's presence  in  France  was  in  itself  a 
triumph  for  the  Colonies.  The  man  who 
it  was  said  had  "snatched  the  thunderbolt 
from  heaven  and  the  sceptre  from  tyrants' ' 
received  such  men  as  Turgot,  who  had 
resigned  his  portfolio,  and  Yergennes  who 
was  still  in  power;  naturalists,  such  as 
Buffon ;  nobles,  such  as  La  Rochefoucauld ; 
philosophers,  such  as  D'Alembert  and 
Helvetius ;  physicians,  such  as  Cabanis  and 
Vicq  d'Azyr;  men  of  letters,  such  as 
Rynal,  Morellet,  and  Mably ;  jurists,  such 
as  Malesherbes,  the  admirer  of  a  country 
that  sent  a  tallow-chandler's  son  as  its 
envoy  to  a  court.  All  these  Franklin 
charmed  and  captivated  by  a  power  so 
subtle  and  magnetic  as  to  be  well-nigh 
indefinable.  The  people  read  with  admira- 
tion the  ' '  Science  du  Bonhomme  Richard. ' ' 
At  Paris  they  called  it  with  praise  "a  very 
little  book  treating  great  subjects. ' '  Many 
purchased  and  read  a  thin  volume  which 
then  appeared  and  which  contained  the 
American  Colonies'  Constitution.  Num- 
bers called  on  Franklin  at  his  house  and 
discussed  public  affairs  with  him.  Those 
who  came,  those  who  discussed,  those  who 
read  were  equally  ardent  for  the  American 
struggle.  —  Rosenthal,  Lewis,  1882, 
America  and  France,  p.  32. 

To  say  that  his  life  is  the  most  interest- 
ing, the  most  uniformly  successful,  yet 
lived  by  any  American,  is  bold.  But  it  is 
nevertheless,  strictly  true.    Not  the  least 


90 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


of  the  many  glories  of  our  country  is  the 
long  list  of  men  who,  friendless,  half- 
educated,  poor,  have,  by  the  sheer  force  of 
their  own  abilities,  raised  themselves  from 
the  humblest  beginnings  to  places  of 
eminence  and  command.  Many  of  these 
have  surpassed  him.  Some  have  specu- 
lated more  deeply  on  finance,  have  been 
more  successful  as  philanthropists,  have 
made  greater  discoveries  in  physics,  have 
written  books  more  commonly  read  than 
his.  Yet  not  one  of  them  has  attained  to 
greatness  in  so  many  ways,  or  has  made  so 
lasting  an  impression  on  his  countrymen. 
His  face  is  as  well  known  as  the  face 
of  Washington,  and,  save  that  of  Wash- 
ington, is  the  only  one  of  his  time 
that  is  now  instantly  recognized  by  the 
great  mass  of  his  countrymen.  His 
maxims  are  in  every  man's  mouth.  His 
name  is,  all  over  the  country,  bestowed 
on  counties  and  towns,  on  streets,  on 
societies,  on  corporations. — McMaster, 
John  Bach,  1887.  Benjamin  Franklin  as 
a  Man  of  Letters  (American  Men  of  Let- 
ters), p.  281. 

To  this  day  Franklin  is  cordially  remem- 
bered in  France.  Nor  can  any  one  well 
study  the  history  of  the  years  of  his  life, 
which  proved  so  important  to  his  country, 
without  constant  reference  to  the  archives 
of  that  other  country  which  he  loved  next 
to  his  own. — Hale,  Edward  Everett, 
AND  Hale,  Jr.,  Edward  Everett,  1888, 
Franklin  in  France,  pt.  ii,  p.  416. 

One  cannot  rise  from  a  perusal  of  these 
documents  without  entertaining  a  higher 
regard  for  Benjamin  Franklin  as  a  man  of 
feeling.  He  is  generally  considered  to 
have  been  one  in  whom  excess  of  intel- 
lectual activity  and  Yankee  shrewdness 
overbalanced  the  exercise  of  his  emotional 
nature.  That  he  is  capable  of  warm  and 
enduring  friendship,  however,  becomes  at 
once  apparent  in  these  genial  letters, 
written  by  the  American  printer  to  his 
brother  printer  across  the  seas.— Benja- 
min, S.  G.  W.,  1888,  Unpublished  Letters 
of  Franklin  to  Strahan,  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  61,  p.  21. 

He  was  sanguine  by  nature,  by  resolu- 
tion, and  by  policy ;  and  his  way  of  allur- 
ing good  fortune  was  to  welcome  it  in 
advance. — Morse,  Jr.,  John  T.,  1889, 
Benjamin  Franklin  (American  Statesmen) , 
p.  264. 

The  Frenchman's  American  is  Benjamin 


Franklin.  It  was  so  when  they  first  began 
to  know  him,  when  he  went  in  and  out 
among  them  a  living  man,  and  it  is  so  to- 
day, when  an  even  century  has  closed 
around  his  simple  tomb.  There  is  some- 
thing grand  in  the  personality  of  this  man 
who  was  able  to  inspire  such  deep  admira- 
tion and  such  sinister  hatred  by  the  same 
act.  Benjamin  Franklin  was,  without 
doubt,  a  strong  man— a  man  of  strong  and 
positive  character,  whose  friends  and 
enemies  were  equally  strong  in  their  feel- 
ings of  like  and  dislike.  The  men  who 
were  ranged  as  his  enemies  have  been 
relegated  to  a  second  place  on  the  page  of 
history,  while  those  who  were  his  friends 
stand  out  boldly  in  the  front  rank  of  the 
notable  characters  of  the  past.  If  we 
were  asked  to  say  what  was  the  charac- 
teristic in  Franklin  that  made  him  an  idol 
among  the  French  nation,  we  should  answer 
his  versatility.  He  was  the  adroit  diplo- 
mat and  the  simple  bourgeois,  the  learned 
philosopher  and  scientist,  and  the  gay  bon 
vivant  and  bonhomme.  He  could  write  a 
dispatch  or  an  epigram  with  equal  facility, 
and  he  could  control  the  electric  fluid  and 
a  smoky  chimney  with  equal  success.  He 
at  turns  could  be  the  chivalric  courtier  or 
the  simple  representative  of  the  infant 
republic,  and  whatever  he  did  or  whatever 
pose  he  assumed  he  was  the  same  peerless 
Franklin :  and  now  that  he  has  been  at  rest 
these  hundred  years  he  stands  forth  on  the 
page  of  history  as  the  first  American — 
not  even  second  to  Washington  himself. — 
Hart,  Charles  Henry,  1890,  Franklin 
in  Allegory,  The  Century,  vol.  19,  p.  197. 

While  Thomas  Jelferson,  with  that 
breadth  of  statesmanship  which  charac- 
terized all  of  his  labors,  kept  unceasingly 
before  his  view  the  importance  of  popular 
education  to  reinforce  and  make  effective 
the  operations  of  the  principle  of  local 
self-government,  on  the  other  hand,  Dr. 
Franklin,  himself  a  noteworthy  example  of 
a  self-educated  man,  kept  in  view  the  im- 
portance of  education  as  the  foundation  of 
thrift  and  social  development.  These  two 
men  seem  to  have  furnished  more  than  any 
other  two  men  the  guiding  principles  which 
have  prevailed  in  our  civilization,  political 
and  social.  .  .  .  Benjamin  Franklin  stands 
somewhat  in  contrast  to  Jefferson  in  the 
fact  that  he  looks  more  to  the  social  wel- 
fare than  to  the  political  funccion  of  the 
people.    His  most  pronounced  idea  is  that 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


91 


of  thrift.  He  wishes  to  have  it  impressed 
on  each  man  or  woman  or  child  that  in- 
dustry and  economy  are  prime  sources  of 
power.  But  he  is  in  agreement  with 
Thomas  Jefferson  as  to  the  importance  of 
an  elementary  education  to  prepare  the 
citizen  for  intelligent  application  of  the 
lessons  of  industry  and  thrift. — Harris, 
William  T.,  1893,  Benjamin  Franklin 
and  The  University  of  Pennsylvania^  ed. 
Thorpe,  Introduction,  pp.  1,  2. 

The  difficulty  of  a  study  of  Franklin  is 
intensified  by  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
most-sided  man  that  ever  appeared  in  our 
history,  if  not,  indeed,  in  history  at  all. 
To  be  comprehended  we  must  know  him, 
not  only  as  a  diplomatist,  but  as  the  fore- 
most scientist  in  the  world;  a  most  re- 
markable financier  and  business  manager  ; 
an  author  whose  work  has  a  fixed  place 
among  the  higher  classics ;  a  philosopher 
who  found  rank  with  Voltaire  and 
Leibnitz;  as  Kant  expressed  it,  ''the 
Prometheus  of  modern  days."  John 
Adams,  whose  jealousy  was  irrepressible, 
wrote  from  Paris  that  Franklin's  reputa- 
tion was  "more  universal  than  that  of 
Newton. "  Nor  do  we  find  our  task  minified 
by  the  fact  that  Franklin  was  a  man  as 
simple  as  he  was  great,  as  childlike  as  he 
was  philosophic.  Like  Lincoln,  he  loved 
a  joke,  but,  unlike  Lincoln,  he  put  his  jokes 
into  state  papers.  It  has  been  hinted  that 
for  this  reason  no  great  historic  document 
of  the  period  was  intrusted  to  his  pen. 
His  economy  was  not  only  political,  it  was 
domestic;  and  in' 'Poor  Richard"  popular 
estimation  cannot  easily  recognize  the 
controlling  mind  of  the  v/orld's  affairs  and 
the  builder  of  democracy.  He  wrote 
alamnacs  instead  of  constitutions.  He 
was  as  marked  for  his  toleration  in  theol- 
ogy as  for  his  democracy  in  statecraft. 
In  both  he  was  clearsighted  and  even  pro- 
phetic, far  beyond  his  age. — Powell,  E. 
P.,  1893,  A  Study  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
The  Arena,  vol.  8,  p.  477. 

Those  persons  who  knew  Franklin,  the 
inventor,  only  as  the  genius  to  whom  we 
owe  the  lightning  rod,  will  be  amazed  at  the 
range  of  his  activity.  For  half  a  century 
his  mind  seems  to  have  been  on  the  alert 
concerning  the  why  and  wherefore  of  every 
phenomenon  for  which  the  explanation 
was  not  apparent.  Nothing  in  nature 
failed  to  interest  him.  Had  he  lived  in  an 
era  of  patents  he  might  have  rivalled 


Edison  in  the  number  of  his  patentable 
devices,  and  had  he  chosen  to  make  money 
for  such  devices,  his  gains  would  certainly 
have  been  fabulous.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
Franklin  never  applied  for  a  patent,  though 
frequently  urged  to  do  so,  and  he  made  no 
money  by  his  inventions.  .  .  .  The  com- 
plete list  of  inventions,  devices,  and  im- 
provements of  which  Franklin  was  the 
originator,  or  a  leading  spirit  and  con- 
tributor, is  so  long  a  one  that  a  dozen 
pages  would  not  suffice  for  it. — Hubert, 
Jr.,  Philip  G.,  1893,  Inventors,  pp.  9,  10. 

A  characteristic  as  well  as  a  memorable 
product  of  colonial  civilization  at  this 
epoch  was  Benjamin  Franklin,  by  birth  and 
education  a  New  Englander,  by  adoption  a 
Pennsylvanian.  He  cannot  be  said  to 
have  been  an  offspring  of  the  theocracy, 
inasmuch  as  he  was  a  latitudinarian  in 
religion  and  had  a  natural  son.  But  he 
was  an  offspring  of  New  England  Puri- 
tanism grown  mellow.  His  commercial 
shrewdness,  his  practical  inventiveness, 
his  fundamental  integrity,  his  public  spirit, 
his  passion  for  improvement,  were  native 
to  his  community  in  the  phase  which  it 
had  now  reached,  no  less  than  were  his 
"Poor  Richard"  philosophy  of  life  and  the 
absence  in  him  of  anything  spiritual  or 
romantic.  He  it  was  who  in  his  boyhood 
had  suggested  to  his  father  that  much 
time  might  be  saved  by  saying  grace  at 
once  over  a  whole  barrel  of  red  herrings. 
He  leads  up  the  mighty  army  of  Ameri- 
can inventors.  At  the  same  time  though 
no  revolutionist  by  nature  he  was  the 
destined  harbinger  of  the  Revolution.  He 
had  been  the  first  projector  of  a  general 
union  of  the  colonies.  His  figure  marks 
the  transition  to  the  revolutionary  and 
national  period  which  is  now  opening  from 
that  of  the  Puritan  commonwealth. — 
Smith,  Goldwin,  1893,  The  United  States, 
An  Outline  of  Political  History,  1492- 
1871,  p.  62. 

Humor,  indeed,  he  had  so  abundantly 
that  it  was  almost  a  failing.  Like  Abra- 
ham Lincoln,  another  typical  American, 
he  never  shrank  from  a  jest.  Like 
Lincoln,  he  knew  the  world  well  and 
accepted  it  for  what  it  was,  and  made  the 
best  of  it,  expecting  no  more.  But 
Franklin  lacked  the  spirituality,  the  faith 
in  the  ideal,  which  was  at  the  core  of 
Lincoln's  character.  And  here  was  Frank- 
lin's limitation :  what  lay  outside  of  the 


92 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


bounds  of  common  sense  he  did  not  see — 
probably  he  did  not  greatly  care  to  see ; 
but  common  sense  he  had  in  a  most 
uncommon  degree.  One  of  his  chief 
characteristics  was  curiosity — in  the 
wholesome  meaning  of  that  abused  word. 
He  never  rested  till  he  knew  the  why  and 
wherefore  of  all  that  aroused  his  atten- 
tion.— Matthews,  Brander,  1896,  An 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  American 
Literature,  p.  36. 

One  of  the  first  men  to  exhibit  this 
American  spirit  with  an  unmistakable 
touch  of  greatness  and  distinction  >vas 
Benjamin  Franklin.  It  was  characteristic 
of  America  that  this  self-made  man  should 
become  a  philosopher,  a  founder  of  philo- 
sophical societies,  an  authoritative  man  of 
science ;  that  his  philosophy  of  life  should 
be  so  homely  and  so  practical  in  its 
maxims,  and  uttered  with  so  shrewd  a  wit ; 
that  one  region  should  be  his  birthplace 
and  another  his  home;  that  he  should 
favor  effective  political  union  among  the 
colonies  from  the  first,  and  should  play  a 
sage  and  active  part  in  the  establishment  of 
national  independence  and  the  planning  of 
a  national  organization  ;  and  that  he  should 
represent  his  countrymen  in  diplomacy 
abroad.  They  could  have  had  no  spokes- 
man who  represented  more  sides  of  their 
character.  Franklin  was  a  sort  of  multiple 
American.  He  was  versatile  without 
lacking  solidity ;  he  was  a  practical  states- 
man without  ceasing  to  be  a  sagacious 
philosopher.  He  came  of  the  people,  and 
was  democratic ;  but  he  had  raised  himself 
out  of  the  general  mass  of  unnamed  men, 
and  so  stood  for  the  democratic  law,  not  of 
equality,  but  of  self-selection  in  endeavor. 
One  can  feel  sure  that  Franklin  would 
have  succeeded  in  any  part  of  the  national 
life  that  it  might  have  fallen  to  his  lot  to 
take  part  in.  He  will  stand  the  final  and 
characteristic  test  of  Americanism:  he 
would  unquestionably  have  made  a  suc- 
cessful frontiersman,  capable  at  once  of 
wielding  the  axe  and  of  administering 
justice  from  the  fallen  trunk. — Wilson, 
WooDROW,  1896,  Mere  Literature,  p.  200. 

He  was  the  Abou  ben  Adhem  of  his 
times.  If  service  is  the  test  of  love,  few 
men  have  loved  their  fellows  better  than 
did  this  unsentimental,  unspiritual  homely 
old  body,  American's  patron  saint  of  com- 
mon sense. — Bates,  Katharine  Lee, 
1897,  American  Literature  p.  58. 


In  the  long  and  angry  disputes  of  the 
American  Revolution,  the  part  taken  in 
them  by  Franklin  was  very  much  like  that 
which  Socrates  might  have  taken  had  he 
been  born  in  Boston  in  the  early  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  had  he  been  for 
many  years  a  printer  and  a  politician  in 
Philadelphia,  and  had  he  filled  at  London 
and  Paris  the  diplomatic  stations  that  were 
filled  by  Franklin.  Indeed,  the  likeness 
between  Franklin  and  Socrates  was  more 
than  superficial ;  for,  besides  the  plebeian 
origin  of  both  and  some  trace  of  plebeian 
manners  which  clung  to  both,  and  the 
strain  of  animal  coarseness  from  which 
neither  was  ever  entirely  purified,  they 
both  had  an  amazing  insight  into  human 
nature  in  all  its  grades  and  phases,  they 
were  both  indifferent  to  literary  fame, 
they  were  both  humorists,  they  both  ap- 
plied their  great  intellectual  gifts  in  a 
disciplinary  but  genial  way  to  the  improve- 
ment of  their  fellow-men,  and  in  dealing 
controversially  with  the  opinions  of  others 
they  both  understood  and  practised  the 
strategy  of  coolness,  playfulness,  an  un- 
assuming manner,  moderation  of  state- 
ment, the  logical  parallel,  and  irony. — 
Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  1897,  The  Literary 
History  of  the  American  Revolution,nQS- 
1783,  vol,  II,  p,  371. 

There  are,  I  conceive,  two  chief  reasons 
why  the  name  of  Franklin  is  so  constantly 
on  our  lips  and  his  memory  so  impressed 
upon  our  hearts — why,  in  other  words,  he 
really  lives  for  us  instead  of  being  a  mere 
fossil  in  the  strata  of  history.  One  is  that 
as  an  embodiment  of  practical  learning, 
shrewd  mother  wit,  honesty,  and  patriot- 
ism he  is  a  typical  and  in  many  respects 
unapproachable  product  of  true  Ameri- 
canism. The  other  is  that  he  is  the  most 
complete  representative  of  his  century 
that  any  nation  can  point  to.  With  re- 
gard to  the  typical  character  of  his  Ameri- 
canism few  cavils  will  be  raised,  but  with 
regard  to  the  claim  that  he  best  represents 
the  eighteenth  century  there  will  probably 
be  not  a  little  dissension.  Washington, 
Dr.  Johnson,  Frederick  the  Great,  and 
Voltaire  might  each  and  all  be  put  in 
competition  with  the  sage  who  snatched 
the  lightning  from  heaven  and  the  sceptre 
from  tyrants,  and  would  have  many  sup- 
porters. But  in  none  of  these  does  the 
age  of  prose  and  reason  seem  to  find  such 
adequate  and  complete  expression  as 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


93 


in  Franklin.  Washington  is  beyond  his 
own  or  any  century.  Dr.  Johnson  does 
not  sufficiently  represent  the  age  on  its 
'rational  side ;  Frederick  is  too  extreme  a 
combination  of  daring  and  sublime  serious- 
ness of  purpose  and  petty  affectation; 
while  Voltaire  is  at  once  too  intense  and 
not  radical  enough,  and  is,  after  all,  too 
entirely  a  man  of  letters.  Franklin,  on 
the  other  hand,  thoroughly  represents  his 
age  in  its  practicality,  in  its  devotion  to 
science,  in  its  intellectual  curiosity,  in  its 
humanitarianism,in  its  lack  of  spirituality, 
in  its  calm  self-content — in  short,  in  its 
exaltation  of  prose  and  reason  over  poetry 
and  faith.— Trent,  W.  P.,  1897,  The 
Makers  of  the  Uniorij  McClure^s  Magazine, 
vol.  8,  p.  273. 

Franklin  was  now  well  in  the  way  of 
prosperity,  aged  twenty-four,  with  a  little 
printing  business;  plans  plus,  and  ambi- 
tions to  spare.  He  had  had  his  little  fling  in 
life,  and  had  done  various  things  of  which 
he  was  ashamed;  and  the  foolish  things 
that  Deborah  had  done  were  no  worse  than 
those  of  which  he  had  been  guilty.  So 
he  called  on  her,  and  they  talked  it  over 
and  made  honest  confessions  that  are  good 
for  the  soul.  The  potter  disappeared— no 
one  knew  where — some  said  he  was  dead, 
but  Benjamin  and  Deborah  did  not  wear 
mourning.  They  took  rumor '  s  word  for  it, 
and  thanked  God,  and  went  to  a  church  and 
were  married.  Deborah  brought  to  the 
firm  a  very  small  dowry;  and  Benjamin 
contributed  a  bright  baby  boy,  aged  two 
years,  captured  no  one  knows  just  where. 
This  boy  was  William  Franklin,  who  grew 
up  into  a  very  excellent  man,  and  the 
worst  that  can  be  said  of  him  is,  that  he 
became  Governor  of  New  Jersey.  He 
loved  and  respected  his  father,  and  called 
Deborah  mother,  and  loved  her  very  much. 
And  she  was  worthy  of  all  love  and  ever 
treated  him  with  tenderness  and  gentlest 
considerate  care.  Possibly  a  blot  on  the 
'scutcheon  may,  in  the  working  of  God's 
providence,  not  always  be  a  dire  misfor- 
tune, for  it  sometimes  has  the  effect  of 
binding  broken  hearts  as  nothing  else  can, 
a  citatrice  toughens  the  fibre.  Deborah 
had  not  much  education,  but  she  had  good, 
sturdy  common  sense,  which  is  better  if 
you  are  forced  to  make  choice.  She  set 
herself  to  help  her  husband  in  every  way 
possible  and  so  far  as  I  know,  never  sighed 
for  one  of  those  things  you  call  '*a 


career."  She  even  worked  in  the  print- 
ing office,  folding,  stitching,  and  doing  up 
bundles.  Long  years  afterward,  when 
Franklin  was  Ambassador  of  the  American 
Colonies  in  France,  he  told  with  pride  that 
the  clothes  he  wore  were  spun,  woven, 
cut  out,  and  made  into  garments  all  by  his 
wife's  own  hands.  Frankllin's  love  for 
Deborah  was  very  steadfast.  Together 
they  became  rich  and  respected,  won  world- 
wide fame,  and  honors  came  that  way  such 
as  no  American  before  or  since  has  ever 
received.— Hubbard,  Elbert,  1898,  Little 
Journeys  to  the  Homes  of  American  States- 
men, p.  58. 

Franklin  was  a  rather  large  man,  and 
is  supposed  to  have  been  about  five  feet 
ten  inches  in  height.  In  his  youth  he  was 
stout,  and  in  old  age  corpulent  and  heavy, 
with  rounded  shoulders.  The  portraits  of 
him  reveal  a  very  vigorous-looking  man, 
with  a  thick  upper  arm  and  a  figure 
which,  even  in  old  age,  was  full  and 
rounded.  In  fact,  this  rounded  contour  is 
his  most  striking  characteristic  .  .  . 
Franklin's  figure  was  a  series  of  harmo- 
nious curves,  which  make  pictures  of  him 
always  pleasing.  These  curves  extended 
over  his  head  and  even  to  the  lines  of  his 
face,  softening  the  expression,  slightly 
veiling  the  iron  resolution,  and  entirely 
consistent  with  the  wide  sympathies, 
varied  powers,  infinite  shrewdness,  and 
vast  experience  which  we  know  he  pos- 
sessed.—Fisher,  Sydney  George,  1899, 
The  True  Benjamin  Franklin,  p.  17. 

Benjamin  Franklin  is  considered  all 
over  the  world  a  polyhistor  of  the  fore- 
most rank.  Nothing  escaped  his  atten- 
tion. However,  it  was  not  merely  of  a 
receptive  kind.  Like  Leonardo  da  Vinci, 
our  ''patriot  and  sage,"  as  he  was  called 
in  eulogies,  never  received  without  giving. 
Whoever  went  through  John  Bigelow's 
edition  of  Franklin's  complete  works 
knows  that  he  suggested  inventions  and 
improvements,  not  only  in  electricity, 
printing,  flying  machines — the  latter  in 
the  modern  sense,  not  of  fast  stage 
coaches,  as  in  the  terminology  of  the 
eighteenth  century — optics,  chemistry, 
submarine  boats,  but  also  in  very  many 
other  directions.  Strangely  enough,  the 
invention  of  the  musical  glasses,  or  har- 
monica, which  since  more  than  a  hundred 
and  thirty  years  has  been  attributed  to 
Franklin,  was  not  his  invention.    He  only 


94 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


suggested  some  important  improvements. 
.  .  .  Benjamin  Franklin  possessed  a 
keen  interest  for  music  and  a  certain 
knowledge  of  its  literature.  But  so  far, 
with  exception  of  his  traditional  inven- 
tion of  the  musical  glasses,  he  did  not 
surpass  the  many  other  lovers  of  music  in 
colonial  America.  ...  He  can  justly 
be  classified  among  the  most  critical  and 
boldest  writers  on  musical  declamation  of 
that  period.  Very  few  critics  and  pro- 
fessional musicians  had  or  have  equally 
independent  esthetical  reasoning  powers, 
and  certainly  the  contemporaneous  artists, 
when  ''talking  shop"  with  Franklin, 
have  haughtily  sneered  at  the  ideas  of  the 
musical  greenhorn  from  the  American 
prairies  and  backwoods. — Sonneck,  0. 
G.,  1900,  Benjamin  Franklin's  Relation 
to  Music,  Music,  vol.  19,  p-p.  1,  7,  11. 

He  acted  at  one  time  as  a  commander 
of  troops, yet  cannot  be  called  a  soldier ;  he 
was  a  great  statesman,  yet  not  among  the 
greatest ;  he  made  famous  discoveries  in 
science,  yet  was  scarcely  a  professional 
scientist;  he  was  lauded  as  a  philosopher, 
yet  barely  outstepped  the  region  of  com- 
mon sense ;  he  wrote  ever  as  a  moralist, 
yet  in  some  respects  lived  a  free  life ;  he 
is  one  of  the  few  great  American  authors, 
yet  never  published  a  book;  he  was  a 
shrewd  economist,  yet  left  at  his  death 
only  a  moderate  fortune ;  he  accomplished 
much  as  a  philanthropist,  yet  never  sac- 
rificed his  own  weal.  Above  all  and  in 
all  things  he  was  a  man,  able  to  cope  with 
every  chance  of  life  and  wring  profit  out 
of  it ;  he  had  perhaps  the  alertest  mind  of 
any  man  of  that  alert  century.  In  his 
shrewdness,  versatility,  self-reliance,  wit, 
as  also  in  his  lack  of  the  deeper  reverence 
and  imagination,  he,  I  think,  more  than 
any  other  man  who  has  yet  lived,  repre- 
sents the  full  American  character. — More, 
Paul  Elmer,  1900,  Benjamin  Franklin 
(Riverside  Biographical  Series),  p.  1. 

THE  HUTCHINSON  LETTERS 

Sir, — Finding  that  two  gentlemen  have 
been  unfortunately  engaged  in  a  duel 
about  a  transaction  and  its  circumstances 
of  which  both  of  them  are  totally  ignorant 
and  innocent,  I  think  it  incumlDent  upon 
me  to  declare  (for  the  prevention  of 
further  mischief,  as  far  as  such  a  declar- 
ation may  contribute  to  prevent  it)  that  I 
alone  am  the  person  who  obtained  and 


transmitted  to  Boston  the  letters  in  ques- 
tion. Mr.  Whately  could  not  communi- 
cate them,  because  they  were  never  in  his 
possession ;  and  for  the  same  reason  they 
could  not  be  taken  from  him  by  Mr. 
Temple.  They  were  not  of  the  nature 
of  private  letters  between  friends.  They 
were  written  by  public  officers  to  persons 
in  public  stations  on  public  affairs,  and 
intended  to  procure  public  measures ;  they 
were  therefore  handed  to  other  public 
persons,  who  might  be  influenced  by  them 
to  produce  those  measures.  Their  tend- 
ency was  to  incense  the  mother  country 
against  her  colonies,  and,  by  the  steps  rec- 
ommended, to  widen  the  breach  which  they 
effected.  The  chief  caution  expressed 
with  regard  to  privacy  was,  to  keep  their 
contents  from  the  colony  agents,  who,  the 
writers  apprehended,  might  return  them, 
or  copies  of  them,  to  America.  That 
apprehension  was,  it  seems,  well  founded, 
for  the  first  agent  who  laid  his  hands  on 
them  thought  it  his  duty  to  transmit  them 
to  his  constituents. — Franklin,  Benja- 
min, 1773,  To  the  Printer  of  the  ''Public 
Advertiser,'^  Dec.  25. 

I  hope,  my  lords,  you  will  mark  and 
brand  the  man,  for  the  honour  of  this 
country,  of  Europe,  and  of  mankind. 
Private  correspondence  has  hitherto  been 
held  sacred  in  times  of  the  greatest  party 
rage,  not  only  in  politics,  but  in  religion. 
The  betrayer  of  it  has  forfeited  all  the 
respect  of  the  good,  and  of  his  own  asso- 
ciates. Into  what  companies  will  the  fab- 
ricator of  this  iniquity  hereafter  go  with  an 
unembarassed  face,  or  with  any  semblance 
of  the  honest  intrepidity  of  virtue  ?  Men 
will  watch  him  with  a  jealous  eye — they 
will  hide  their  papers  from  him,  and  lock 
up  their  escritoires.  Having  hitherto  as- 
pired after  fame  by  his  writings,  he  will 
henceforth  esteem  it  a  libel  to  be  called  a 
man  of  letters — ''homo  trium  liter  arum." 
But  he  not  only  took  away  these  papers 
from  one  brother,  ^ — he  kept  himself  con- 
cealed till  he  nearly  occasioned  the  mur- 
der of  another.  It  is  impossible  to  read 
his  account,  expressive  of  the  coolest  and 
most  deliberate  malice,  without  horror. 
Amidst  these  tragical  events,  of  one  per- 
son nearly  murdered — of  another  answer- 
able for  the  issue — of  a  worthy  governor 
hurt  in  the  dearest  interests — the  fate  of 
America  in  suspense — here  is  a  man  who, 
with  the  utmost  insensibility  or  remorse, 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


95 


stands  up  and  avows  himself  the  author  of 
all.  I  can  compare  him  only  to  Zanga  in 
Dr.  Young's  Revenge — 

 "Kuow,  then,  'twas  I. 

I  forged  the  letter— I  disposed  the  picture — 
I  hated,  I  despised— aud  I  destroy!" 
I  ask,  my  Lords,  whether  the  revengeful 
temper  attributed  by  poetic  fiction  only 
to  the  bloody-minded  African,  is  not  sur- 
passed by  the  coolness  and  apathy  of  the 
wily  New  Englander  ?  —  Wedderburn, 
Alexander  (Lord  Loughborough),  1774, 
Speech  before  the  Committee  of  the  Privy 
Council,  Jan.  29. 

The  character  of  the  inquiry,  and  the 
dignity  of  the  tribunal  to  whose  investi- 
gation it  was  submitted,  were  not  duly 
considered.  Ministers,  taught  by  expe- 
rience, ought  to  have  known  the  degrada- 
tion which  they  must  inevitably  incur 
when  they  elevated  an  individual  into  the 
rank  of  a  personal  opponent.  .  .  .  Dr. 
Franklin,  who  had  recently  completed  his 
sixty-seventh  year,  who  was  known  and 
honoured  in  the  most  eminent  philosophical 
and  literary  societies  in  Europe,  sat  with 
his  grey,  unadorned  locks,  a  hearer  of  one 
of  the  severest  invectives  that  ever  pro- 
ceeded from  the  tongue  of  man,  and  an 
observer  of  a  boisterous  and  obstreperous 
merriment  and  exultation,  which  added 
nothing  to  the  dignity  of  his  judges.  He 
had  sufficient  self-command  to  suppress  all 
display  of  feeling ;  but  the  transactions  of 
the  day  sunk  deeply  into  his  mind,  and 
produced  an  unextinguishable  rancour 
against  this  country,  which  coloured  all 
the  acts  of  his  subsequent  life,  and  occa- 
sioned extensive  and  ever  memorable  con- 
sequences.— Adolphus,  John,  1802,  His- 
tory of  England  During  the  Reign  of  George 
III,  vol.  n,  pp.  46,  47. 

The  conduct  of  Franklin  in  the  affair 
of  the  letters  was  unworthy  a  man  of 
honour  and  a  gentleman. — Massey,  Wil- 
liam, 1855,  A  History  of  England  during 
the  reign  of  George  III,  vol.  ii,  p.  145. 

As  we  review  the  whole  story  of  the 
transaction  of  this  day,  in  cool  blood,  we 
can  hardly  understand  how  it  occurred; 
and  there  are  those  on  the  other  side  of 
the  ocean,  if  not  on  our  own  side,  who 
fail  to  perceive  how  it  could  have  been 
justified,  as  it  was,  by  so  many  of  our 
calmest,  wisest,  and  most  conscientious 
patriots.  For,  certainly,  the  men  who  were 
intrusted  with  the  letters  were  second 


to  none  in  Massachusetts  for  integrity 
and  principle.  Chauncy  and  Cooper,  as 
we  all  know,  were  Doctors  of  Divinity, 
who  could  hardly  have  been  invited  to  take 
part  in  an  unworthy  act.  Doctor  AVin- 
throp — very  remotely  connected  with  my- 
self, and  of  whom  I  may  therefore  speak 
without  delicacy — was  the  foremost  man 
of  science  at  Harvard  University,  a  mem- 
ber, too,  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  a  gen- 
tleman of  the  highest  character.  And 
Bowdoin,  who  stands  first  on  the  list, 
would  have  been  singled  out  among  all  the 
patriots  of  that  period  as  a  man  of  the 
greatest  moderation,  of  inflexible  princi- 
ple, and  of  the  nicest  sense  of  honor. 
Yet  Bowdoin,  in  a  letter  to  Franklin  of 
Sept.  6,  1774,  calls  the  sending  of  the 
letters  ''that  most  meritorious  act;" 
and  I  am  not  aware  of  any  other  view 
of  the  affair  having  been  expressed, 
at  the  time  it  occurred,  by  him,  or  by 
any  other  of  our  Revolutionary  Fathers. 
— "WiNTHROP,  Robert  C.,1878,  The  Hutch- 
inson Letters,  Addresses  and  Speeches,  vol. 
IV,  p.  3. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  the  question 
whether  Franklin  should  have  sent  these 
letters  to  be  seen  by  the  leading  men  of 
Massachusetts  involves  points  of  some 
delicacy.  The  very  elaborateness  and 
vehemence  of  the  exculpations  put  forth 
by  American  writers  indicate  a  lurking 
feeling  that  the  opposite  side  is  at  least 
plausible.  I  add  my  opinion  decidedly 
upon  Franklin's  side,  though  I  certainly 
see  force  in  the  contrary  view.  Yet  be- 
fore one  feels  fully  satisfied  he  would  wish 
to  know  from  whom  these  letters  came  to 
Franklin's  hands,  the  information  then 
given  him  concerning  them,  and  the  au- 
thority which  the  giver  might  be  supposed 
to  have  over  them,  in  a  word,  all  the  at- 
tendant and  qualifying  circumstances  and 
conversation  upon  which  presumptions 
might  have  been  properly  founded  by 
Franklin.  Upon  these  essential  matters 
there  is  absolutely  no  evidence.  Franklin 
was  bound  to  secrecy  concerning  them,  at 
whatever  cost  to  himself.  But  it  is  evi- 
dent that  Franklin  never  for  an  instant 
entertained  the  slightest  doubt  of  the  en- 
tire propriety  of  his  action,  and  even  in 
his  own  cause  he  was  wont  to  be  a  fair- 
minded  judge.  —Morse,  Jr.  ,  John  T.  ,  1889, 
Benjamin  Franklin  (American  Statesmen), 
p.  182,  note. 


96 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


POOR  RICHARD'S  ALMANAC 

1733. 

Courteous  Reader  : — I  might  attempt 
in  this  place  to  gain  thy  favor  by  declar- 
ing that  1  write  Almanacs  with  no  other 
view  than  that  of  the  public  good,  but  in 
this  I  should  not  be  sincere.  .  .  .  The 
plain  truth  of  the  matter  is,  I  am  exces- 
sive poor,  and  my  wife,  good  woman,  is, 
1  tell  her,  excessive  proud:  she  cannot 
bear,  she  says  to  sit  spinning  in  her  shift 
of  tow,  while  I  do  nothing  but  gaze  at  the 
stars ;  and  has  threatened  more  than  once 
to  burn  all  my  books  and  rattling  traps 
(as  she  calls  my  instruments)  if  I  do  not 
make  some  profitable  use  of  them  for  the 
good  of  my  family.  The  printer  has 
offered  me  some  considerable  share  of  the 
profits,  and  I  have  thus  begun  to  comply 
with  my  dame's  desire. — Saunders,  Dr. 
Richard,  1733,  Poor  Richard's  Almanac. 

While  in  this  weary  state  of  suspense, 
a  prey  to  impatience,  anxiety,  and  morti- 
fication, Jones  happened  one  day  to  be 
looking  over  an  old  number  of  Franklin's 
Pennsylvania  Almanac,  when  his  attention 
was  struck  with  the  saying  of  Poor  Rich- 
ard :  "If  you  v/ould  have  your  business 
done,  go;  if  not,  send."  It  immediately 
occurred  to  him,  that  the  delay  of  his  own 
business  was  in  no  slight  degree  owing 
to  his  having  so  long  remained  at  a  dis- 
tance, sending  letters  to  court,  instead  of 
going  to  attend  to  it  in  person.  He  set 
out  forthwith  for  the  capital,  and  made 
such  good  speed  in  his  errand,  that,  ere 
many  days  had  elapsed,  he  received  from 
the  reluctant  M.  de  Sartine,  the  following 
conclusive  letter,  dated  at  Versailles,  on 
the  4th  of  February,  1779.  .  .  . 
Feeling  that  his  final  success  in  obtaining 
a  command  had  been  owing  to  his  having 
adopted  the  good  advice  which  he  had  met 
with  in  Dr.  Franklin's  Almanac,  and  out 
of  compliment  to  the  sage,  for  whom  his 
veneration  was  so  unbounded,  Paul  Jones 
had  asked  leave, as  appears  by  M.  Sartine's 
letter,  to  give  the  ship  of  which  the  com- 
mand was  now  conferred  upon  him,  the 
name  of  the  Bon  Homme  Richard,  the 
Poor  Richard:  a  name  v/hich  his  heroism 
was  destined  to  render  as  enduring  as  his 
own.— Mackenzie,  Alexander  Slidell, 
1841,  The  Life  of  Paul  JoneSy  vol.  i,  pp. 
133,  136. 

''But,  pray,  dear  father,  tell  us  what 
made  him  so  famous, "  said  George.  ''I 


have  seen  his  portrait  a  great  many  times. 
There  is  a  wooden  bust  of  him  in  one  of 
our  streets;  and  marble  ones,  I  suppose 
in  some  other  places.  And  towns,  and  ships 
of  war,  and  steamboats,  and  banks,  and 
academies,  and  children,  are  often  named 
after  Franklin.  Why  should  he  have 
grown  so  very  famous  ?"  "  Your  question 
is  a  reasonable  one,  George,"  answered 
his  father.  doubt  whether  Franklin's 
philosophical  discoveries,  important  as 
they  were,  or  even  his  vast  political  ser- 
vices, would  have  given  him  all  the  fame 
which  he  acquired.  It  appears  to  me  that 
Toor  Richard's  Almanac'  did  more  than 
anything  else  towards  making  him  famil- 
iarly known  to  the  public.  As  the  writer 
of  those  proverbs  which  Poor  Richard  was 
supposed  to  utter.  Franklin  became  the 
counsellor  and  household  friend  of  almost 
every  family  in  America.  Thus  it  was 
the  humblest  of  all  his  labors  that  has 
done  the  most  for  his  fame." — Haw- 
thorne, Nathaniel,  1842,  Biographical 
Stories,  Works,  Riverside  ed.,  vol.  xii, 
p.  202. 

Some  of  the  best  fun  Franklin  ever 
wrote,  occurs  in  the  prefaces  to  'Toor 
Richard.".  .  .  "Poor  Richard,"  at  this 
day,  would  be  reckoned  an  indecent  pro- 
duction. All  great  humorists  were  more 
or  less  indecent  before  Charles  Dickens ; 
i.  e.,  they  used  certain  words  which  are 
now  never  pronounced  by  polite  persons, 
and  are  never  printed  by  respectable 
printers ;  and  they  referred  freely  to  cer- 
tain subjects  which  are  familiar  to  every 
living  creature,  but  which,  it  is  now 
agreed  among  civilized  beings,  shall  not 
be  topics  of  conversation.  In  this  re- 
spect, "Poor  Richard"  was  no  worse,  and 
not  much  better,  than  other  colonial  peri- 
odicals, some  of  which  contained  things 
incredibly  obscene;  as  much  so  as  the 
broadest  passages  of  Sterne,  Smollett, 
Fielding,  and  Defoe.— Parton,  James, 
1864,  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, vol.  I,  pp.  228,  234. 

The  almanac  went  year  after  year,  for 
a  quarter  of  a  century,  into  the  house  of 
nearly  every  shopkeeper,  planter,  and 
farmer  in  the  American  provinces.  Its 
wit  and  humor,  its  practical  tone,  its 
shrewd  maxims,  its  worldly  honesty,  its 
morality  of  common  sense,  its  useful  in- 
formation, all  chimed  well  with  the 
national  character.    It    formulated  in 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


97 


homely  phrase  and  with  droll  illustration 
what  the  colonists  more  vaj2;uely  knew, 
felt,  and  believed  upon  a  thousand  points 
of  life  and  conduct.  In  so  doing  it  greatly 
trained  and  invigorated  the  natural 
mental  traits  of  the  people.  "Poor  Rich- 
ard" was  the  revered  and  popular  school- 
master of  a  young  nation  during  its  period 
of  tutelage.  His  teachings  are  among  the 
powerful  forces  which  have  gone  to  shap- 
ing the  habits  of  Americans.  His  terse 
and  picturesque  bits  of  the  wisdom  and 
the  virtue  of  this  world  are  familiar  in 
our  mouths  today ;  they  moulded  our 
great-grandparents  and  their  children; 
they  have  informed  our  popular  traditions ; 
they  still  influence  our  actions,  guide  our 
ways  of  thinking,  and  establish  our  points 
of  view,  with  the  constant  control  of  ac- 
quired habits  which  we  little  suspect.*  If 
we  were  accustomed  still  to  read  the  litera- 
ture of  the  almanac,  we  should  be  charmed 
with  its  humor.  The  world  has  not  yet 
grown  away  from  it,  nor  ever  will.  Ad- 
dison and  Steele  had  more  polish  but 
vastly  less  humor  than  Franklin.  "Poor 
Richard"  has  found  eternal  life  by  pass- 
ing into  the  daily  speech  of  the  people, 
while  the  "Spectator"  is  fast  being 
crowded  out  of  the  hands  of  all  save 
scholars  in  literature.— Morse,  Jr.,  John 
T.,  1889,  Benjamin  Franklin  {American 
Statesmen),  p.  22. 

"Poor  Richard's  Almanac"  was  so 
much  the  best  that  it  soon  took. the  place 
of  all  others,  and  its  wise  maxims  were  in 
people's  mouths  nearly  as  often  as  Bible 
verses.  Indeed,  I  have  heard  people  quote 
Franklin's  proverbs  as  Solomon's,  though 
they  are  generally  very  different.  These 
homely  sayings  had  a  wonderful  effect  on 
the  New  England  colonists:  they  helped 
to  make  them  sharp,  business-like,  active, 
cautious,  hard-working,  saving.  Frank- 
lin was  the  first  well-known  type  and  the 
best  type  of  the  true  "Yankee." — Wat- 
kins,  Mildred  Cabell,  1894,  American 
Literature,  p,  20. 

Franklin's  Almanack,  his  crowning  work 
in  the  sphere  of  journalism,  published 
under  the  pseudonym  of  Richard  Saunders, 
— better  known  since  as  Poor  Richard, 
— is  still  one  of  the  marvels  of  mod- 
ern literature.  Under  one  or  another  of 
many  titles  the  contents  of  this  publica- 
tion, exclusive  of  its  calendars,  have  been 
translated  into  every  tongue  having  any 

7C 


pretensions  to  a  literature ;  and  have  had 
more  readers,  probably,  than  any  other 
publication  in  the  English  or  indeed  in  any 
other  language,  with  the  single  exception 
of  the  Bible.  It  was  the  first  issue  from 
an  American  press  that  found  a  popular 
welcome  in  foreign  lands,  and  it  still  en- 
joys the  special  distinction  of  being  the 
only  almanac  ever  published  that  owed 
its  extraordinary  popularity  entirely  to  its 
literary  merit.  What  adds  to  the  surprise 
with  which  we  contemplate  the  fame  and 
fortunes  of  this  unpretentious  publication, 
is  the  fact  that  its  reputation  was  estab- 
lished by  its  first  number,  and  when  its 
author  was  only  twenty-six  years  of  age. 
For  a  period  of  twenty-six  years,  and  un- 
til Franklin  ceased  to  edit  it,  this  annual 
was  looked  forward  to  by  a  larger  portion 
of  the  colonial  population  and  with  more 
impatience  than  now  awaits  a  President's 
annual  message  to  Congress. — Bigelow, 
John,  1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best 
Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol.  x,  p.  5926. 

And  thus  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  or 
more  Poor  Richard  preached  his  little  line- 
long  sermons,  year  after  year;  sermons 
from  very  old  texts,  many  of  them — waifs 
of  common  knowledge  or  tradition — Bib- 
lical many  of  them  and  as  old  as  Solomon, 
but  given  a  new  twang  by  quaint  or  sharp 
wording,  which  set  them  upon  new  and 
wider  flight.  Let  us  not  speak  reproach- 
fully of  the  stealing;  'tis  a  good  sort  of 
stealing,  like  Chaucer's  in  his  "Canter- 
bury Tales;"  whoever  can  put  new  force 
and  new  beauty  into  an  old  truth  by  his 
method  of  re-stating  it,  is  doing  good 
work — doing  indeed  what  most  of  the 
good  sermonizers  are  bent  upon.  No  mat- 
ter what  old  metal  you  may  use,  if  you 
can  put  enough  of  your  own  powder  be- 
hind it  'twill  reach  the  mark. — Mitchell, 
Donald  G.,  1897,  American  Lands  and 
Letters,  The  Mayflower  to  Rip-Van-  Winkle, 
p.  107. 

It  was  in  "Poor  Richard,"  indeed,  that 
we  see  Franklin  in  his  most  striking  light 
as  a  philosopher  of  the  people — a  hard- 
headed,  practical  thinker,  an  epigrammatic 
moralist,  and  an  exploiter  or  adapter  of 
adages,  almost  any  one  of  which  might 
have  made  him  famous.  For  Mr.  Saun- 
ders had  a  terse  way  of  telling  plain 
truths,  and  while  his  sayings  were  not,  for 
the  most  part,  exactly  original,  nearly 
every  one  of  them,  even  v\'hen  a  more 


98 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


modern  setting  to  an  ancient  saw,  bore 
the  hall-mark  of  Franklin's  genius  for  apt 
expression.— Robins,  Edward,  1898,  Ben- 
jamin Franklin  {American  Men  of  Energy), 
p.  44. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

From  the  poverty  and  obscurity  in  which 
I  was  born,  and  in  which  1  passed  my  earli- 
est years,  I  have  raised  myself  to  a  state 
of  affluence  and  some  degree  of  celebrity 
in  the  world.  As  constant  good  fortune 
has  accompanied  me  even  to  an  advanced 
period  of  life,  my  posterity  will  perhaps 
be  desirous  of  learning  the  means  which 
I  employed,  and  which,  thanks  to  Provi- 
dence, so  well  succeeded  with  me.  They 
may  also  deem  them  fit  to  be  imitated, 
should  any  of  them  find  themselves  in 
similar  circumstances.  This  good  for- 
tune, when  I  reflect  on  it,  which  is  fre- 
quently the  case,  has  induced  me  some- 
times to  say,  that  if  it  were  left  to  my 
choice,  I  should  have  no  objection  to  go 
over  the  same  life  from  its  beginning  to 
the  end:  requesting  only  the  advantage 
authors  have,  of  correcting  in  a  second 
edition  the  faults  of  the  first.  So  would 
1  also  wish  to  change  some  incidents  of  it 
for  others  more  favourable.  Notwith- 
standing, if  this  condition  was  denied,  I 
should  still  accept  the  offer  of  recom- 
mencing the  same  life.  But  as  this  repe- 
tition is  not  to  be  expected,  that  which 
resembles  most  living  one's  life  over 
again,  seems  to  be  to  recall  all  the  circum- 
stances of  it ;  and,  to  render  this  remem- 
brance more  durable,  to  record  them  in 
writing.  In  thus  employing  myself  I 
shall  yield  to  the  inclination  so  natural 
to  old  men,  of  talking  of  themselves  and 
their  own  actions ;  and  I  shall  indulge  it 
without  being  tiresome  to  those  who,  from 
respect  to  my  age,  might  conceive  them- 
selves obliged  to  listen  to  me,  since  they 
will  be  always  free  to  read  me  or  not. 
—Franklin,  Benjamin,  1771,  Memoirs 
Written  by  Himself. 

There  is  a  simplicity  in  this  book  which 
charms  us  in  the  same  way  with  the 
humorous  touches  of  nature  in  the  ''Vicar 
of  Wakefield. ' '  Franklin's  Boston  brother 
in  the  printing-office, — irascible,  jealous, 
and  mortified  on  the  return  of  the  suc- 
cessful adventurer,  who  is  playing  off  his 
prosperity  before  the  workmen,  is  an 
artist's  picture  of  life,  drawn  in  a  few 
conclusive  touches.    So,  too,  is  Keimer 


as  happily  hit  off  as  any  personage  in  Gil 
Bias,  particularly  in  that  incident  at  the 
break-up  of  Franklin's  system  of  vegeta- 
ble diet,  which  he  had  adopted ;  he  invites 
his  journeymen  and  two  women  friends  to 
dine  with  him,  providing  a  roast  pig  for 
the  occasion,  which  being  prematurely 
served  up,  is  devoured  by  the  enthusiast, 
before  the  company  arrives ;  in  that  effect- 
ive sketch,  in  a  paragraph  of  the  Phila- 
delphia City  Croaker,  whose  ghost  still 
walks  every  city  in  the  world,  mocking 
prosperity  of  every  degree, — *'a  person 
of  note,  an  elderly  man,  with  a  wise  look 
and  a  very  grave  manner  of  speaking." — 
DuYCKiNCK,  Evert  A.,  and  George  L., 
1855-65-75,  C^/cZcjocEc^m  of  American  Liter- 
ature, ed.  Simons,  vol.  i,  p.  117. 

Of  this  fragment  of  ''Autobiography" 
I  have  sometimes  been  imprudent  enough 
to  say,  that  it  is  the  only  piece  of  writing 
yet  produced  on  the  continent  of  America 
which  is  likely  to  be  generally  known 
two  centuries  hence. — Parton,  James, 
1864,  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, vol.  I,  Preface,  p.  6. 

It  is  now  eighty  years  since  the  death 
of  Dr.  Franklin,  and  during  this  time  his 
"Autobiography"  has  been  more  exten- 
sively read  in  this  country  than  any  other 
historical  work.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  earli- 
est American  book  that  acquired  and  sus- 
tained a  great  popularity. — Greene,  Sam- 
uel A.,  1871,  The  Story  of  a  Famous  Book, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  27,  p.  207. 

Wherever  he  lived  he  was  the  inevita- 
ble centre  of  a  system  of  influences  always 
important  and  constantly  enlarging ;  and 
dying,  he  perpetuated  it  by  an  autobiogra- 
phy which  to  this  day  not  only  remains 
one  of  the  most  widely  read  and  readable 
books  in  our  language,  but  has  had  the 
distinction  of  enriching  the  literature  of 
nearly  every  other.  No  man  has  ever 
lived  whose  life  has  been  more  universally 
studied  by  his  countrymen  or  is  more 
familiar  to  them.— BiGELOW,  John,  1879, 
Franklin,  A  Sketch. 

A  greater  Autobiography  than  Edward 
Gibbon's  is  our  own  Benjamin  Franklin's. 
Franklin  had  exactly  the  genius  and 
temperament  of  an  autobiographer.  He 
loved  and  admired  himself ;  but  he  was  so 
bent  upon  analysis  and  measurement  that 
he  could  not  let  even  himself  pass  without 
discrimination.    The  style  is  like  Defoe. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


99 


Indeed  we  are  pleased  to  find  that  he 
placed  great  value  both  on  Defoe  and  Bun- 
yan,  whose  stories  are  told  so  like  his  own. 
He  watches  his  own  life  as  he  watched  one 
of  his  own  philosophical  experiments. 
He  flies  his  existence  as  he  flew  his  kite, 
and  tells  the  world  about  it  all  just  as  a 
thoughtful  boy  might  tell  his  mother  what 
he  had  been  doing — sure  of  her  kindly  in- 
terest in  him.  The  world  is  like  a  mother 
to  Ben  Franklin  always :  so  domestic  and 
familiar  is  his  thought  of  her.  He  who 
has  read  this  book  has  always'  afterward 
the  boy-man  who  wrote  it  clear  and  dis- 
tinct among  the  men  he  knows. — Brooks, 
Phillips,  1880-94,  Biography,  Essays  and 
Addresses,  p.  441. 

But  to  Benjamin  Franklin's  Autobiog- 
raphy" I  feel  that  I  owe  more  than  to  any 
other  book,  and  the  greatest  literary 
treasure  I  own  is  an  old  edition  of  this 
work,  in  two  tiny  volumes,  printed  in 
London  in  1799.  I  picked  it  up  at  a  book 
sale  some  years  ago  for  fifty  cents.  It  is 
a  very  rare  edition,  I  believe,  and  is  not 
to  be  found  in  the  Stevens  collection  of 
Franklin's  works,  now  in  the  possession 
of  our  government. — Gilder,  Jeannette 
h.,lSSS, Books  That  Have  Helped  Me,  p.  72. 

The  style  of  this  work  is  inimitable ;  it 
is  as  simple,  direct,  and  idiomatic  as  Bun- 
yan's;  it  is  a  style  which  no  rhetorician 
can  assist  us  to  attain,  and  which  the  least 
touch  of  the  learned  critic  would  spoil. 
—Underwood,  Francis  H.,  1893,  The 
Builders  of  American  Literature,  First 
Series,  p.  46. 

GENERAL 

I  am  very  sorry  that  you  intend  soon  to 
leave  our  hemisphere.  America  has  sent 
us  many  good  things, — gold,  silver,  sugar, 
tobacco,  indigo,  and  so  forth;  but  you 
are  the  first  philosopher,  and  indeed  the 
first  great  man  of  letters,  for  whom  we 
are  beholden  to  her. — Hume,  David,  1762, 
Letter  to  Franklin,  May  10. 

One  of  the  first  philosophers,  one  of  the 
most  eminent  literary  characters,  as  well 
as  one  of  the  most  important  in  the  polit- 
ical world,  that  the  present  age  can  boast 
of.— CowPER,  William,  1782,  Letter  to 
the  Rev.  William  Unwin,  May  27,  Works, 
vol.  II,  p.  426. 

The  peculiar  charm  of  his  Avritings,  and 
his  great  merit  also  in  action,  consisted 
in  the  clearness  with  which  he  saw  his 


object, — and  the  bold  and  steady  pursuit 
of  it,  by  the  surest  and  the  shortest  road. 
He  never  suffered  himself,  in  conduct,  to 
be  turned  aside  by  the  seductions  of  inter- 
est or  vanity,  or  to  be  scared  by  hesitation 
and  fear,  or  to  be  misled  by  the  arts  of 
his  adversaries.  Neither  did  he,  in  discus- 
sion, ever  go  out  of  his  way  in  search 
of  ornament,  or  stop  short  from  dread  of 
the  consequences.  He  never  could  be 
caught,  in  short,  acting  absurdly,  or  writ- 
ing nonsensically: — at  all  times,  and  in 
every  thing  he  undertook,  the  vigour  of  an 
understanding,  at  once  original  and  prac- 
tical, was  distinctly  perceivable.  But  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  his  writings 
are  devoid  of  ornament  or  amusement. 
The  latter  especially  abounds  in  almost  all 
he  ever  composed ;  only  nothing  is  sacri- 
ficed to  them.  On  the  contrary,  they 
come  most  naturally  into  their  places ;  and 
they  uniformly  help  on  the  purpose  in 
hand,  of  which  neither  writer  nor  reader 
ever  loses  sight  for  an  instant.  Thus,  his 
style  has  all  the  vigour  and  even  concise- 
ness of  Swift,  without  any  of  his  harsh- 
ness. It  is  in  no  degree  more  flowery, 
yet  both  elegant  and  lively.  The  wit,  or 
rather  humour,  which  prevails  in  his 
works,  varies  with  the  subject.  Some- 
times he  is  bitter  and  sarcastic ;  oftener 
gay,  and  even  droll ;  reminding  us,  in  this 
respect,  far  more  frequently  of  Addison 
than  of  Swift,  as  might  be  naturally  ex- 
pected from  his  admirable  temper,  or  the 
happy  turn  of  his  imagination.  .  .  . 
There  is  nothing  more  delightful  than  the 
constancy  with  which  those  amiable  feel- 
ings, those  sound 'principles,  those  truly 
profound  views  of  human  affairs,  make  their 
appearance  at  every  opportunity^  whether 
the  immediate  subject  be  speculative  or 
practical — of  a  political,  or  of  a  general, 
description.  .  .  .  We  have  said  little 
respecting  his  language,  which  is  pure, 
and  English.  A  few,  and  but  a  few,  for- 
eign expressions  may  be  traced,  and  these 
French,  rather  than  American ;  as,  for  in- 
stance, influential.  Indeed,  we  cannot 
reckon  him  more  as  an  American  than  an 
European. . —  Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord, 
1817,  Franklin's  Correspondence,  Edin- 
burgh Review,  vol.  28,  pp.  276,  277. 

Taken  all  together,  this  collection  of 
letters  would,  we  think,  in  the  absence  of 
all  other  documents  and  representations, 
afford  suflicient  means  for  a  competent 


100 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


estimate  of  the  writer.  The  character 
displayed  by  them  is  an  unusual  combina- 
tion of  elements.  The  main  substance  of 
the  intellectual  part  of  it  is  a  superlative 
good  sense,  evinced  and  acting  in  all  the 
modes  of  that  high  endowment ;  such  as 
an  intuitively  prompt  and  perfect,  and 
steadily  continuing  appprehension ;  a  sagac- 
ity which  with  admirable  ease  strikes 
through  all  superficial  and  delusive  ap- 
pearances of  things  to  the  essence  and 
the  true  relations ;  a  faculty  of  reasoning 
in  a  manner  marvelously  simple,  direct, 
and  decisive ;  a  power  of  reducing  a  sub- 
ject or  question  to  its  plainest  principles ; 
an  unaffected  daring  to  meet  whatever  is 
to  be  opposed,  in  an  explicit,  direct  man- 
ner, and  in  the  point  of  its  main  strength  ; 
a  facility  for  applying  familiar  truths  and 
self-evident  propositions,  for  resolving 
the  most  uncommon  difficulties;  and  a 
happy  adroitness  of  illustration,  by  par- 
allel cases,  supposed  or  real,  the  real  ones 
being  copiously  supplied  by  a  large  and 
most  observant  acquaintance  with  the 
world.  It  is  obvious  how  much  this  same 
accurate  observation  of  the  world  would 
contribute  to  that  power  of  interpreting 
the  involuntary  indications  of  character, 
and  of  detecting  motives  and  designs  in 
all  sorts  of  persons  he  had  to  deal  with, 
and  to  that  foresight  of  consequences  in 
all  practical  concerns,  in  which  he  was 
probably  never  surpassed. — Foster,  John, 
1818,  Benjamin  Frankliriy  Critical  Essays, 
ed.  Ryland,  vol.  ii,  p.  413. 

Though  after  the  first  conception  of  an 
electrical  charge  as  a  disturbance  of  equi- 
librium, there  was  nothing  in  the  develop- 
ment or  details  of  Franklin's  views  which 
deserved  to  win  for  them  any  peculiar 
authority,  his  reputation,  and  his  skill  as 
a  writer,  gave  a  considerable  influence  to 
his  opinions.  Indeed,  for  a  time  he  was 
considered,  over  a  large  part  of  Europe, 
as  the  creator  of  the  science,  and  the 
terms,  Franklinism,  Franklinist,  Frank- 
linian  system,  occur  in  almost  every  page 
of  continental  publications  on  the  subject. 
Yet  the  electrical  phenomena  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  which  Franklin  added  least,  those 
of  induction,  were  those  by  which  the 
progress  of  the  theory  was  most  promoted. 
— Whewell,  William,  1837,  History  of 
the  Inductive  Sciences,  vol.  ii,  p.  202. 

Few  writers  have  been  so  regardless  of 
literary  reputation  as  Franklin.  Scarcely 


any  of  his  compositions  were  published 
under  his  own  eye ;  many  of  them  were 
not  written  for  the  press ;  and  the  fame 
of  authorship  appears  rarely  to  have  been 
among  the  motives  by  which  he  was  in- 
duced to  employ  his  pen.  It  is  true,  that, 
in  early  life  and  afterwards,  he  cultivated 
with  uncommon  assiduity  the  art  of  writ- 
ing, till  he  attained  a  mastery  over  the 
language,  which  has  raised  his  name  to 
the  first  rank  in  English  literature.  Yet 
it  was  his  primary  object,  not  so  much  to 
become  distinguished  by  this  accomplish- 
ment ;  as  to  acquire  the  power  of  acting 
on  the  minds  of  others,  and  of  communi- 
cating, in  the  most  attractive  and  effec- 
tual manner,  such  discoveries  as  he  might 
make,  and  his  schemes  for  the  general 
improvement,  the  moral  culture,  the  com- 
fort, the  happiness  of  mankind.  He  sel- 
dom affixed  his  name  to  any  of  his  writ- 
ings. They  were  mostly  designed  for  a 
particular  purpose;  and,  when  they  had 
answered  the  end  for  which  they  were 
intended,  he  seems  to  have  given  himself 
little  concern  about  their  future  destiny. 
—Sparks,  Jared,  1840,  ed.,  Works  of 
Benjamin  Franklin,  Preface,  vol.  I,  p.  v. 

The  beginner  of  this  literature,  amiable 
and  subtle  scholar  of  Defoe  and  Addison, 
was  Benjamin  Franklin.  He  announced 
the  advent  of  a  milder  and  more  indulgent 
civilization.  Addison's  apologue  and  deli- 
cacy ;  the  popular,  plain-speaking  of  Defoe 
and  Bunyan,  were  softened  and  melted 
into  a  pleasant  composition,  which  char- 
acterized the  first  essays  of  colonial  liter- 
ature, essays  remarkable  for  the  sobriety 
of  their  tone,  and  the  absence  of  high 
color.  Imagination,  magnificent  and  dan- 
gerous gift,  is  not  found  in  the  works  of 
Franklin,  nor  do  any  of  his  contemporaries 
or  friends  possess  it. — Chasles,  Phila- 
RETE,  1852,  Anglo-American  Literature 
and  Manners,  p.  3. 

If  ever  the  doctrine  of  saving  has  at- 
tained a  sort  of  homely  poetry  of  expres- 
sion, by  dint  of  contentment  and  liveli- 
ness, it  is  in  Franklin  that  we  must  seek 
for  it.  An  inner  warmth  of  sentiment 
animates  his  prudence ;  a  ray  of  sunshine 
illumines  and  enlivens  his  honesty.  .  .  . 
Franklin's  correspondence  in  these  years 
is  most  agreeable  and  soothing  reading ; 
the  perfect  balance,  the  precision,  the 
absence  of  all  evil  passion  and  of  all  heat, 
the  good  use  to  which  he  puts  even  his 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


101 


enemies,  an  affectionate  sentiment  which 
mingles  with  a  correct  appreciation  of 
things,  and  which  banishes  dryness,  an 
elevated  sentiment  whenever  necessary,  a 
certain  lightsome  air  diffused  over  the 
w^hole,  compose  a  real  treasure  of  morality 
and  wisdom.  Compared  with  the  Corre- 
spondence of  Voltaire,  that  of  Franklin 
gives  rise  to  many  reflections ;  everything 
there  is  wholesome,  upright,  and  animated 
as  it  were  with  a  lively  and  constant  se- 
renity. Franklin  possessed  gay,  clear,  and 
brilliant  good  sense ;  he  called  bad  tem- 
per the  uncleanliness  of  the  mind. — Sainte- 
Beuve,  C.  a.,  1852,  English  Portraits, 
pp.  63,  104. 

He  wrote  no  elaborate  histories,  or 
learned  treatises,  or  stately  tomes.  Short 
essays  or  tracts,  thrown  off  at  a  heat  to 
answer  an  immediate  end, — letters  to  his 
associates  in  science  or  politics, — letters 
to  his  family  and  friends, — these  make  up 
the  great  bulk  of  his  literary  productions ; 
and  under  the  admirable  editorship  of  Mr. 
Sparks,  nine  noble  volumes  do  they  fill, 
— abounding  in  evidences  of  a  wisdom, 
sagacity,  ingenuity,  diligence,  freshness 
of  thought,  fullness  of  information,  com- 
prehensiveness of  reach,  and  devotedness 
of  purpose,  such  as  are  rarely  to  be  found 
associated  in  any  single  man. — WiN- 
THROP,  Robert  C.,1S56,  Address  at  the  In- 
auguration of  the  Franklin  Statue  at  Boston. 

The' pervading  trait  of  Franklin's  char- 
acter was  allegiance  to  the  practical. 
Few  devotees  of  knowledge  have  so  con- 
sistently manifested  this  instinct,  the  more 
remarkable  because  united  to  speculative 
tendencies  which  quickened  his  intelli- 
gence and  occupied  his  leisure  to  the  very 
close  of  his  existence.  For  the  intangi- 
ble aims  of  the  metaphysician,  the  vaga- 
ries of  the  imaginative,  the  "airy  bubble 
reputation, "  he  exhibited  no  concern ;  but 
the  application  of  truth  to  the  facts  of 
nature  and  of  life,  the  discovery  of  mate- 
rial laws  and  their  conversion  to  human 
welfare,  the  actual  influence  of  morals, 
economy,  politics,  and  education,  upon 
civil  society  and  individual  development, 
were  problems  upon  which  he  never  failed 
to  think,  read,  talk,  write,  and  experi- 
ment.—Tuckerman,  Henry  T.,  1857, 
Essays,  Biographical  and  Critical,  p.  456. 

Wrote  several  miscellaneous  papers, 
scientific  and  political,  which  have  doubt- 
less had  no  small  influence  in  forming 


American  style.  .  .  .  His  writings 
are  remarkable  for  simplicity,  terseness, 
and  force.  Both  the  language  and  the 
illustrations  fit  the  meaning  with  emphatic 
closeness.  He  affects  no  graces  of  style : 
a  hard-headed,  practical  man,  he  seeks  to 
convey  his  meaning  as  briefly  and  as  em- 
phatically as  possible.  — Minto,  William, 
1872-80,  A  Manual  of  English  Prose  Liter- 
ature, p.  434. 

The  venerable  Nestor  of  three  genera- 
tions ;  born  in  the  old  puritan  time,  with 
the  shades  of  the  past  hanging  about  his 
home;  traversing  the  military  period  of 
two  wars,  from  Wolfe  to  Washington, 
from  Quebec  to  Yorktown ;  privileged  to 
partake  of  the  new  era  of  laws  and  legis- 
lation— the  old  sage,  full  of  years  and 
honors,  has  now  at  length  finished  his 
work.  He  has  inaugurated  a  new  period 
in  philosophy ;  he  has  heralded  new  prin- 
ciples in  politics,  he  has  shown  his  country- 
men how  to  think  and  write;  he  has  em- 
balmed the  wisdom  of  his  life  in  immor- 
tal compositions;  he  has  blessed  two 
great  cities  with  associations  of  pleasure 
and  profit  clustering  about  his  name ;  he 
has  becom.e  the  property  of  the  nation  and 
the  world ;  there  is  nothing  further  but 
retirement  and  death.  —  Duyckixck, 
Evert  A.,  1873,  Portrait  Gallery  of  Emi- 
nent Men  and  Women,  vol.  i,  p.  203. 

Franklin  is  not  often  spoken  of  as  a 
witty  man,  but  his  wit  was  as  remarkable 
as  his  statesmanship.  I  think  that  he 
would  have  had  as  much  wit  as  Swift  or 
as  \  oltaire  if  he  had  but  cultivated  this 
talent.  Only  his  clear,  practical  good 
sense  predominated,  and  he  never  showed 
himself  in  the  capacity  of  a  humorist  save 
when  some  practical  purpose  was  to  be 
affected  by  it.— Bryant,  William  Cul- 
len,  1874,  Franklin  as  Poet,  Prose  Writ- 
ings, ed.  Godwin,  vol.  ii,  p.  330. 

Our  humorous  writers,  with  a  few  ex- 
ceptions, are  not  strictly  national.  Even 
Franklin,  our  first,  best  humorist,  stifled 
his  humor  in  the  Addisonian  style.  His 
was  too  earnest  a  character  to  make 
the  humorous  trait  very  prominent;  but 
his  sly,  shining  threads  of  observation, 
intertwisted  into  the  strong  strand  of  his 
practical  sense,  have  had  their  effect  on 
the  older  men  of  this  generation. — Cox, 
S.  S.,  1875,  American  Humor,  Harpefs 
Magazine,  vol.  50,  p.  699. 

In  whom  the  acuteness  of  the  philosopher 


102 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


was  curiously  blended  with  the  cunning 
of  the  trader. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1876, 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eight- 
^eenth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  299. 

Of  Franklin  then  it  must  be  said,  that 
he  not  only  did  not  advance  the  growth  of 
economic  science,  but  that  he  seems  not 
even  to  have  mastered  it  as  it  was  already 
developed ;  and  little  more  can  be  said  for 
any  of  our  public  men  or  writers  during 
the  period  of  Franklin's  activity. — Dun- 
bar, Charles  F.,  1876,  Economic  Science 
in  America,  1776-1876,  North  American 
Review,  vol.  122,  p.  130. 

He  employed  his  admirable  style,  his 
lucid  thought,  in  defending  before  the 
world  the  rights  of  man.  Calmness  was 
the  chief  trait  of  his  intellect ;  his  politi- 
cal pieces  have  a  weight  and  clearness 
that  few  others  have  attained ;  the  fierce 
but  clouded  reasoning  of  Junius,  the  rude 
splendor  of  Johnson,  the  thoughtful  ver- 
biage of  Burke,  grow  feeble  and  over- 
strained when  placed  by  the  side  of  one  of 
Franklin's  irrefutable  arguments.  His  was 
the  voice  of  humanity,  the  opening  of  an 
age  of  reason. — Lawrence,  Eugene,  1880, 
A  Primer  of  American  Literature,  p.  32. 

I  intended  in  these  pages  to  limit  my 
remarks  to  Franklin's  scientific  position, 
but  that  would  be  to  represent  very  inade- 
quately the  whole  life  of  this  great  man. 
Let  us  remember  that  his  electrical  re- 
searches, on  which  his  scientific  celebrity 
must  mainly  depend,  occupied  at  the  most 
only  seven  or  eight  years,  and  then  were 
abandoned  because  of  the  pressure  of 
political  affairs.  Not  by  his  scientific  life, 
but  by  his  political,  will  Franklin  be 
judged  of  by  his  countrymen.  In  that 
his  true  grandeur  is  seen.  He  conducted 
the  foreign  affairs  that  gave  independence 
to  America.  No  other  American  could 
have  stood  in  his  place,  and  have  done 
what  he  did.  Very  true,  his  scientific 
reputation  gave  him  position  before  the 
eyes  of  the  French  court,  and  added  force 
to  his  urgent  entreaties  for  money  and  an 
army  and  a  fleet  to  aid  his  struggling 
countrymen.  No  one  can  rise  from  a 
perusal  of  his  political  writings,  from  the 
time  of  the  Albany  Commission  to  the 
close  of  his  eventful  life,  without  recog- 
nizing his  great  intellectual  ability,  his 
political  foresight.  To  meet  the  trained 
statesmen  of  England,  to  conduct  success- 
fully to  a  close  negotiations  which  were 


the  most  important  in  which  they  could 
engage,  since  the  partition,  the  disruption, 
of  the  British  Empire  was  involved,  de- 
manded a  clear  head,  a  piercing  eye,  and 
a  calm  judgment.  The  result  he  accom- 
plished was  of  far  more  importance  to 
mankind  than  any  philosophical  experi- 
ment he  ever  made — a  vast  continent 
dedicated  to  human  freedom.'  Contem- 
plated from  this  point  of  view,  Franklin 
appears  as  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  his 
generation.  His  electrical  discoveries, 
brilliant  as  they  were,  were  only  embellish- 
ments of  his  life. — Draper,  John  Wil- 
liam, 1880,  Franklin^ s  Place  in  the  Science 
of  the  Last  Century,  Harper's  Magazine, 
vol.  61,  p.  275. 

Franklin  is,  indeed,  one  of  the  very 
small  class  of  men  who  can  be  said  to  have 
added  something  of  real  value  to  the  art 
of  living.  Very  few  writers  have  left  so 
many  profound  and  original  observations 
on  the  causes  of  success  in  life,  and  on 
the  best  means  of  cultivating  the  intellect 
and  the  character.  To  extract  from  sur- 
rounding circumstances  the  largest  possi- 
ble amount  of  comfort  and  rational  enjoy- 
ment, was  the  ideal  he  placed  before  him- 
self and  others,  and  he  brought  to  its  at- 
tainment one  of  the  shrewdest  and  most 
inventive  of  human  intellects,  one  of  the 
calmest  and  best  balanced  of  human  char- 
acters.— Lecky,  William  Edward  Hart- 
pole,  1882,  A  History  of  England  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  voL  iii,  p.  407. 

Edwards  would  doubtless  have  consid- 
ered Franklin  a  child  of  wrath,  but  Fran- 
cis Bacon  would  have  hailed  him  as  one 
of  that  band  of  explorers,  who,  by  serving 
Nature,  will  in  the  end  master  her  mys- 
teries, and  use  their  knowledge  for  the 
service  of  man.  Indeed,  the  cheerful, 
hopeful  spirit  which  runs  through  Frank- 
lin's writings,  even  when  he  was  tried 
by  obstacles  which  might  have  tasked 
the  proverbial  patience  of  Job,  is  not  one 
of  the  least  of  his  claims  upon  the  con- 
sideration of  those  who  rightfully  glory 
in  having  such  a  genius  for  their  country- 
men. The  spirit  which  breathes  through 
Franklin's  life  and  works  is  that  which 
has  inspired  every  pioneer  of  our  Western 
wastes,  every  poor  farmer  who  has  tried 
to  make  both  ends  meet  by  the  exercise 
of  rigid  economy,  every  inventor  who 
has  attempted  to  serve  men  by  making 
machines  do  half  the  drudgery  of  their 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


103 


work,  every  statesman  who  has  striven 
to  introduce  large  principles  into  our 
somewhat  confused  and  contradictory 
legislation,  every  American  diplomatist 
who  has  upheld  the  character  of  his  coun- 
try abroad  by  sagacity  in  managing  men, 
as  well  as  by  integrity  in  the  main  pur- 
pose of  his  mission,  and  every  honest  man 
who  has  desired  to  diminish  the  evil  there 
is  in  the  world,  and  to  increase  every  pos- 
sible good  that  is  conformable  to  good 
sense.  Franklin  is  doubtless  our  Mr. 
Worldly  Wiseman,  but  his  worldly  wisdom 
ever  points  to  the  Christian's  prayer  that 
God's  will  shall  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is 
done  in  heaven. — Whipple,  Edwin  Percy, 

1886,  American  Literature  and  Other 
Papers,  ed.  Whittier,  p.  8. 

The  truth  about  Franklin  as  a  miscel- 
laneous writer — a  truth  which  any  one 
may  verify  by  a  day's  reading  in  his  col- 
lected works — is  that  most  of  his  produc- 
tions, while  respectable,  of  wide  range, 
well-written,  sensible,  and  telling,  are  not 
of  the  highest  rank,  and  that,  measured 
by  the  tests  of  English  literature  between 
1725  and  1775,  they  are  commonplace. 
From  the  several  editions  of  his  works  but 
three  things  stand  out  because  of  inher- 
ent literary  merit :  his  "  Autobiography, ' ' 
his  highly  important  papers  on  electricity, 
and  the  maxims  in  *Toor  Richard's  Alma- 
nac"— the  last  being  chief  and  sufficient 
in  themselves  to  perpetuate  his  fame  as 
a  writer. — Richardson,   Charles  F., 

1887,  American  Literature,  1607-1885, 
vol.  I,  p.  159. 

Franklin  was  admirably  equipped  as  a 
popular  teacher.  Long  study  of  the  best 
models  of  English  prose,  aided  by  his  fine 
literary  sense,  gave  him  a  style  unsur- 
passed for  clearness  and  directness ;  while 
his  rich  vein  of  humor,  his  command  of 
satire,  of  anecdote,  and  of  terse,  senten- 
tious phrase,  enabled  him  to  convey  large 
truths  in  such  portable  and  attractive 
forms,  that  his  teachings  soon  spread  far 
and  wide,  and  fixed  themselves  in  the 
memory  and  speech  of  men.  But  here, 
as  in  all  cases,  that  which  gave  most 
weight  to  his  teachings  were  the  charac- 
ter and  the  life  of  the  teacher.  He  made 
the  newspaper  press  a  power  for  good,  as 
it  had  never  been  before ;  and  he  set  the 
example,  and  adhered  to  it  throughout  his 
editorial  career,  of  preserving  the  columns 
of  his  paper  free  from  all  libelling  and 


personal  abuse,  and  all  purveying  to  the 
prurient  taste  of  a  section  of  the  commu- 
nity.—Pepper,  William,  1887,  An  Ad- 
dress on  Benjamin  Franklin,  p.  8. 

The  place  to  be  allotted  Franklin 
among  American  men  of  Letters  is  hard  to 
determine.  He  founded  no  school  of  lit- 
erature. He  gave  no  impetus  to  letters. 
He  put  his  name  to  no  great  work  of  his- 
tory, of  poetry,  of  fiction.  Till  after  his 
day,  no  such  thing  as  American  literature 
existed.  To  place  him,  with  respect  to 
Irving,  Bryant,  ('ooper,  Prescott,  and  the 
host  of  great  men  that  came  after  him, 
is  impossible.  There  is  no  common  ground 
of  comparison.  Unlike  them,  he  never 
wrote  for  literary  fame.  Had  he  cared 
for  such  fame,  he  would  not  have  permit- 
ted friends  and  strangers  to  gather  and 
edit  his  writings  during  his  lifetime ;  he 
would  not  have  suffered  death  to  over- 
take him  when  the  Autobiography  was  but 
half  done ;  he  would  not  have  made  it  an 
invariable  rule  to  never  send  anything  to 
the  press  over  his  own  name.  His  place  is 
among  that  giant  race  of  pamphleteers 
and  essayists  most  of  whom  went  before, 
but  a  few  of  whom  came  immediately 
after,  the  war  for  independence.  And 
among  them  he  is  easily  first.  Their 
merit  lies  in  what  they  said :  the  merit 
of  Franklin  lies  not  only  in  what  he  said, 
but  in  the  way  in  which  he  said  it.  .  .  . 
No  other  writer  has  left  so  many  just  and 
original  observations  on  success  in  life. 
No  other  writer  has  pointed  out  so  clearly 
the  way  to  obtain  the  greatest  amount  of 
comfort  out  of  life.  What  Solomon  did 
for  the  spiritual  man  that  did  Franklin  for 
the  earthlyman.  The  Book  of  Proverbs  is 
a  collection  of  receipts  for  laying  up  treas- 
ures in  heaven.  ' '  Poor  Richard' '  is  a  col- 
lection of  receipts  for  laying  up  treasures 
on  earth. — McMaster,  John  Bach,  1887, 
Benjamin  Franklin  as  a  Man  of  Letters 
{American  Men  of  Letters),  pp.  272,  277. 

By  far  the  most  eminent  of  the  early 
American  writers  was  Benjamin  Franklin. 
.  .  .  Franklin's  style  is  notoriously 
graceful  and  charming,  but  he  is  almost 
the  only  American  writer  before  the  Inde- 
pendence who  can  be  named  with  the 
recognised  masters  of  eighteenth-century 
English. — Gosse,  Edmund,  1888,  .4  History 
of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  p.  398. 

Franklin  is  perhaps  the  real  starting- 
point  of  American  literature.    As  he  was 


104 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


the  first  American  scientific  discoverer 
of  renown,  the  first  American  diplomatist, 
the  founder  of  the  first  public  library  and 
the  first  permanent  philosophical  society 
in  this  country,  so  he  was  the  first  writer 
in  the  field  of  general  literature.  His 
writings  are  full  of  acute  thought  on  prac- 
tical themes,  and  suited  to  the  genius  of 
a  busy  people  engrossed  with  their  out- 
ward affairs. — Eggleston,  Edward,  1888- 
92,  The  Household  History  of  the  United 
States  and  its  People,  p.  373. 

He  could  so  marry  words  to  things  as 
to  make  them  seem  one;  he  expressed 
positive  thoughts  and  emotions,  without 
ornament  or  amplification ;  his  style  was 
the  true  reflection  of  his  intellectual  and 
moral  stature.  He  was,  it  is  true,  the 
first  American  to  cultivate  the  art  of  lit- 
erary phrasing ;  but  this  was  an  instinct 
of  his  temperament,  which  loved  pith, 
point,  clearness  and  homely  symbolism. 
.  .  .  Humor  was  another  of  Franklin's 
literary  gifts,  and  literary,  in  his  case, 
because  it  was  first  personal.  It  was  not 
the  thin,  smirking  artifice  which  is  re- 
garded as  humor  by  some  of  our  contem- 
porary writers,  and  which  is  as  carefully 
studied  as  a  new  dialect  or  a  recondite 
title ;  it  was  the  native,  ineradicable  qual- 
ity of  the  man,  the  natural  armor  of  his 
strength,  his  worldly  wisdom,  his  kindly 
human  sympathy  and  his  shrewd  Yankee 
insight.  Many  a  portentous  predicament 
had  he  faced  in  his  day,  but  he  was  never 
for  a  moment  scared  out  of  his  humor. 
It  forms  the  predominating  flavor  of  his 
writings,  which  are  almost  always  in  ear- 
nest, but  seldom  quite  solemn ;  the  demure 
twinkle  of  the  eye  is  there,  though  the 
hasty  or  the  foolish  miss  it.  It  was  some- 
times a  trifle  broad  for  modern  taste,  but 
it  is  of  itself  enough  to  preserve  his 
productions  from  oblivion. — Hawthorne, 
Julian,  and  Lemmon,  Leonard,  1891, 
American  Literature,  pp.  16,  17. 

He  had  a  gift  for  putting  much  prudence 
into  few  words.  His  low  ideals  and  the 
self-complacence  which  appear  in  his  auto- 
biography do  him  little  credit,  but  as  a 
counselor  in  matters  of  expediency  he  was 
much  needed  by  his  excitable,  extrava- 
gant, and  often  over-sanguine  country- 
men.—IVIabie,  Hamilton  W.,  1892,  The 
Memorial  Story  of  America,  p.  586. 

It  is  the  tradition  of  his  life  that  has 
survived  rather  than  any  wide  knowledge 


of  what  he  wrote.  No  figure  in  our  his- 
tory is  more  generally  remembered,  nor 
any  more  deservedly ;  for  whatever  his 
merits  on  a  moral  scale,  the  man  was  in 
his  life  first,  last,  and  always  an  Ameri- 
can. Shrewd  common-sense  never  had  a 
more  palpable  incarnation ;  nor  that  pecul- 
iar, ever-present,  not  needlessly  obtru- 
sive personal  independence  which  so  gen- 
erally makes  a  native  Yankee,  wherever 
he  goes,  a  troublesome  match  for 
people  who  assume  to  be  his  betters. 
Himself,  then,  we  remember  first ;  and  if 
we  are  suddenly  asked  what  he  was  besides 
being  himself,  our  impulse  would  be  in 
conveniently  general  terms  to  answer  that 
he  was  a  statesman  and  a  philosopher. — 
Wendell,  Barrett,  1893,  Stelligeri  and 
Other  Essays  Concerning  America,  p.  123. 

Either  we  must  be  willing  to  give  a 
place  in  economic  science  to  Franklin,  or 
we  must  deny  the  same  privilege  to  all 
writers  on  economic  matters  who  preceded 
Adam  Smith.  It  is  true  that  Franklin 
was  largely  a  man  of  expedients,  if  by 
that  we  mean  that  he  was  interested  in 
that  truth  which  could  be  immediately 
applied  for  the  good  of  mankind.  But  we 
maintain  also  that  Franklin  was  a  man 
who  understood  thoroughly  the  working 
of  certain  economic  principles.  No  one 
else  saw  more  clearly  than  he  did  the  in- 
jurious effect  of  the  many  trade  restric- 
tions prevalent  in  the  civilized  world  in 
his  day.  In  that  ''great  reaction  of  the 
eighteenth  century  against  artificial  con- 
ditions of  life,"  in  that  movement  of 
liberty,  industrial  as  well  as  political, 
we  claim  that  Franklin  was  one  of  the 
first  as  well  as  one  of  the  leading  fac- 
tors. And  it  must  be  admitted  that  on 
the  subject  of  population  he  did  not  always 
indulge  in  the  "crudest  speculations  as  to 
the  operation  of  causes  in  any  degree  re- 
mote." No  one  knew  better  than  he  did 
the  causes  both  of  the  increase  of  popu- 
lation and  of  the  adjustment  of  people 
among  the  nations  of  the  earth. — Wet- 
zel, W.  A.,  1895,  Benjamin  Franklin  as 
an  Economist,  p.  54. 

We  might  be  led  to  believe  at  first 
thought  that  the  extraordinary  repute 
into  which  he  rose  was  relative,  and  that 
the  world's  appreciation  of  him,  and  par- 
ticularly the  feeling  of  his  own  country- 
men, was  exaggerated  by  the  surprise 
that  the  colonies,  then  so  young  and 


BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


105 


primitive,  should  have  produced  so  able 
and  versatile  a  man.  But  this  would  be  an 
incorrect  view.  Franklin's  fame  was  a 
tribute  to  his  real  eminence.  The  more 
his  life  and  achievements  are  studied  the 
more  clearly  does  it  appear  that  Franklin's 
greatness  was  of  the  whole  world  and 
would  have  been  as  prominent  in  any  age ; 
and  that  in  any  group  of  leaders  of  prog- 
ress, from  whatever  time  or  nation  they 
might  be  selected,  he  would  find  his  place 
near  the  head. — Youmans,  William  Jay, 

1896,  ed.,  Pioneers  of  Science  in  Amer- 
ica,  p.  1. 

The  Doric  simplicity  of  his  style ;  his 
incomparable  facility  of  condensing  a 
great  principle  into  an  apologue  or  an 
anecdote,  many  of  which,  as  he  applied 
them,  have  become  the  folk-lore  of  all 
nations :  his  habitual  moderation  of  state- 
ment, his  aversion  to  exaggeration,  his 
inflexible  logic,  and  his  perfect  truthful- 
ness,— made  him  one  of  the  most  persua- 
sive men  of  his  time,  and  his  writings  a 
model  which  no  one  can  study  without 
profit.  A  judicious  selection  from  Frank- 
lin's wTitings  should  constitute  a  part  of 
the  curriculum  of  every  college  and  high 
school  that  aspires  to  cultivate  in  its 
pupils  a  pure  style  and  correct  literary 
taste.— BiGELOW,  John,  1897,  Library  of 
the  World's  Best  Literature,  vol.  x,  p.  5933. 

He  was  one  of  the  best  American  prose 
writers  of  the  century. — Morris,Charles, 

1897,  A  History  of  the  United  States  of 
America,  p.  176. 

Undoubtedly,  his  best  work  in  letters 
was  done  after  the  year  1764,  and  thence 
forward  down  to  the  very  year  of  his 
death ;  for,  to  a  degree  not  only  unusual 
but  almost  without  parallel  in  literary  his- 
tory, his  mind  grew  more  and  more  viva- 
cious with  his  advancing  years,  his  heart 
more  genial,  his  inventiveness  more 
sprightly,  his  humor  more  gay,  his  style 
brighter,  keener,  more  deft,  more  delight- 
ful. Yet  even  in  these  earlier  writings 
of  his.  Franklin  is  always  Franklin.  .  .  . 
It  is  only  by  a  continuous  reading  of 
the  entire  body  of  Franklin's  Revolution- 
ary writings,  from  grave  to  gay,  from 
lively  to  severe,  that  any  one  can  know 
how  brilliant  was  his  wisdom,  or  how  wise 
was  his  brilliance,  or  how  humane  and 
gentle  and  helpful  were  both.  No  one 
who,  by  such  a  reading,  procures  for  him- 
self such  a  pleasure  and  such  a  benefit. 


will  be  likely  to  miss  the  point  of  Sydney 
Smith's  playful  menace  to  his  daughter, 
— '4  will  disinherit  you,  if  you  do  not 
admire  everything  written  by  Franklin." 
—Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  1897,  The  Literary 
History  of  the  American  Revolution,  1763- 
1783,  vol  II,  pp.  365,  381. 

The  peculiar  dryness  especially  charac- 
teristic of  Yankee  drollery  is  better  illus- 
trated from  Franklin's  shrewd  proverbs 
than  from  Irving's  spontaneous  and  spark- 
ling descriptions.  —  Bates,  Katharine 
Lee,  1897,  American  Literature,  p.  285. 

Franklin's  individualism  ultimately 
found  political  application  in  the  essential 
doctrines  of  that  great  party  of  which 
Jefferson  is  commonly  called  the  founder. 
His  influence  for  this  reason  has  been,  and 
to  this  day  is,  confounded  with  that  of 
Jefferson  and  Voltaire.  It  differed  from 
theirs  in  being  more  conservative.  Its 
conservatism  consisted  in  its  sanity.  His 
conception  of  government  was  one  based 
on  experience  and  ''adapted  to  such  a 
country  as  ours." — Thorpe,  Francis 
Newton,  1898,  A  Constitutional  History 
of  the  American  People,  1776-1850,  vol. 
I,  p.  42. 

Franklin  was  indeed  read,  and  exercised 
a  good  deal  of  influence,  especially  in  his 
own  city ;  and  Franklin  was  a  writer  of  no 
small  literary  abilities.  Still,  his  popular- 
ity was  due  largely  to  his  labors  in  behalf 
of  his  country,  his  interest  in  scientific 
matters,  and  the  common-sense  practical- 
ity of  his  maxims,  which  appealed  to  the 
shrewd  commercial  instincts  of  his  coun- 
trymen.—Cairns,  William  B.,  1898,  On 
the  Development  of  American  Literature 
from  1815  to  1833,  p.  24. 

Jonathan  Edwards  and  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin are  like  enormous  trees  (say  a  pine  and 
an  oak),  which  may  be  seen  from  a  great 
distance  dominating  the  scrubby,  homel5% 
second  growth  of  our  provincial  litera- 
ture. They  make  an  ill-assorted  pair, — 
the  cheery  man  of  the  world  and  the  in- 
tense man  of  God — but  they  owe  their 
preeminence  to  the  same  quality.  Frank- 
lin, it  is  true,  is  remarkable  for  his  unfail- 
ing common  sense,  a  quality  of  which  Ed- 
wards had  not  very  much,  his  keenest 
sense  being  rather  uncommon.  But  it 
was  not  his  common  sense,  but  the  cause 
of  his  common  sense,  namely,  his  faculty 
of  realization,  that  made  Franklin  emi- 
nent.   This  faculty  is  rare  among  men, 


106 


FRANKLIN— HENR  Y 


but  it  was  possessed  by  Franklin  to  a 
great  degree.  His  perceptions  of  his 
surroundings — material,  intellectual,  per- 
sonal, social,  political— had  power  to 
affect  his  mind  and  action.  He  took  real 
account  of  his  circumstances. — Hale, 
Edward  Everett,  Jr.,  1898,  American 
Prose,  ed.  Carpenter,  p.  13. 

Almost  every  event  of  his  life  has  been 
distorted  until,  from  the  great  and  ac- 
complished man  he  really  was,  he  has  been 
magnified  into  an  impossible  prodigy. 
Almost  everything  he  wrote  about  in 
science  has  been  put  down  as  a  discovery. 
His  wonderful  ability  in  expressing  him- 
self has  assisted  in  this ;  for  if  ten  men 
wrote  on  a  subject  and  Franklin  was  one 
of  them,  his  statement  is  the  one  most 
likely  to  be  preserved,  because  the  others, 
being  inferior  in  language,  are  soon  for- 
gotten and  lost.  Every  scrap  of  paper 
he  wrote  upon  is  now  considered  a  pre- 
cious relic  and  a  great  deal  of  it  is  printed, 
so  that  statements  which  were  but  mem- 
oranda or  merely  his  way  of  formulating 
other  men's  knowledge  for  his  own  con- 
venience or  for  the  sake  of  writing  a 
pleasant  letter  to  a  friend,  are  given  un- 
due importance.  Indeed,  when  we  read 
one  of  these  letters  or  memoranda  it  is  so 
clearly  and  beautifully  expressed  and  put 
in  such  a  captivating  form  that,  as  the 
editor  craftily  forbears  to  comment  on  it, 
we  instinctively  conclude  that  it  must 
have  been  a  gift  of  new  knowledge  to 
mankind. — ^Fisher,  Sydney  George,  1899, 
The  True  Benjamin  Franklin,  Preface,  p.  7. 

To  judge  Franklin  from  the  literary 
standpoint  is  neither  easy  nor  quite  fair. 
It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  as  a  philoso- 
pher, as  a  statesman,  and  as  a  friend,  he 


owed  much  of  his  success  to  his  ability  as  a 
writer.  His  letters  charmed  all,  and 
made  his  correspondence  eagerly  sought. 
His  political  arguments  were  the  joy  of  his 
party  and  the  dread  of  his  opponents. 
His  scientific  discoveries  were  explained 
in  language  at  once  so  simple  and  so  clear 
that  plow-boy  and  exquisite  could  follow 
his  thought  or  his  experiment  to  its  con- 
clusion. Yet  he  was  never  a  literary  man 
in  the  true  and  common  meaning  of  the 
term.  Omitting  his  uncompleted  autobi- 
ography and  his  scientific  writings,  there 
is  hardly  a  line  of  his  pen  which  was  not 
privately  or  anonymously  written,  to  exert 
a  transient  influence,  fill  an  empty  column, 
or  please  a  friend.  The  larger  part  of 
his  work  was  not  only  done  in  haste,  but 
never  revised  or  even  proof-read.  Yet 
this  self-educated  bov  and  busy,  practical 
man  gave  to  American  literature  the  most 
popular  autobiography  ever  written,  a 
series  of  political  and  social  satires  that 
can  bear  comparison  with  those  of  the 
greatest  satirists,  a  private  correspond- 
ence as  readable  as  Walpole's  or  Chester- 
field's ;  and  the  collection  of  Poor  Rich- 
ard's epigrams  has  been  oftener  printed 
and  translated  than  any  other  production 
of  an  American  pen. — ^Ford,  Paul  Lei- 
cester, 1899,  TJie  Many-Sided  Franklin. 

Franklin  was  the  best  letter-writer  of 
his  day  in  America.  In  comparison  with 
Washington's  uniform  epistolary  style. 
Franklin's  is  striking  for  its  flexibility — 
dignified  in  weighty  matters,  in  familiar 
letters,  playful  as  a  kitten,  frequently 
witty  and  fanciful,  pleasing  always  by 
clearness,  naturalness  and  ease. — Bron- 
SON,  Walter  C,  1900,  A  Short  History 
of  American  Literature,  p.  56. 


Robert  Henry 

1718-1790 

Robert  Henry,  the  author  of  the  "History  of  Great  Britain  written  on  a  new  plan,'' 
was  the  son  of  a  farmer,  and  was  born  in  the  parish  of  St.  Ninians,  near  Stirling, 
18th  February  1718.  He  received  his  early  education  at  the  school  of  his  native 
parish,  and  at  the  grammar  school  of  Stirling,  and  after  completing  a  course  of  study 
at  Edinburgh  University  became  master  of  the  grammar  school  of  Annan.  In  1746. 
he  was  licensed  to  preach  by  the  Annan  presbytery,  shortly  after  which  he  was  chosen 
minister  of  a  Presbyterian  congregation  at  Carlisle,  where  he  remained  until  1760, 
when  he  was  removed  to  a  similar  charge  at  Berwick-on-Tweed.  It  was  during  his 
stay  at  Berwick  that  the  idea  of  his  ''History"  first  occurred  to  him,  but  the  dearth 
of  books  and  the  difficulty  of  consulting  original  authorities  compelled  him  to  postpone 
the  execution  of  his  design  till  his  removal  to  Edinburgh,  as  minister  of  New  Greyfriars, 
in  1768.    The  first  volume  of  his  ''History"  appeared  in  ^771,  and  the  others  followed 


ROBERT  HENRY 


107 


at  irregular  intervals  until  1785,  when  the  fifth  was  published,  brin^inj^  down  the 
narrative  to  the  Tudor  dynasty.  The  work  was  virulently  assailed  by  Gilbert  »Stuart, 
but  the  attack  was  overdone,  and  although  it  for  a  time  hindered  the  sale,  the  injury 
effected  was  only  temporary.  For  the  volumes  published  in  his  lifetime  Henry  real- 
ized as  much  as  £3300,  and  through  the  influence  of  Lord  Mansfield  he  was  in  1781 
rewarded  with  a  pension  of  £100  a  year  from  George  111.  In  1784  he  received  the 
degree  of  D.  D.  from  the  university  of  Edinburgh.  He  died  in  1790  before  his  tenth 
volume  was  quite  ready  for  the  press.  Four  years  after  his  death  it  was  published 
under  the  care  of  Malcolm  Laing,  who  supplied  the  entire  chapters  v.  and  vii.,  and 
added  an  index. — Baynes,  Thomas  Spencer,  eri.,  1880,  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  vol.  xi. 


PERSONAL 

To-morrow  morning  Henry  sets  off  for 
London,  with  immense  hopes  of  selling 
his  history.  I  wish  he  had  delayed  till 
our  last  review  of  him  had  reached  your 
city.  But  I  really  suppose  that  he  has 
little  probability  of  getting  any  gratuity. 
The  trade  are  too  sharp  to  give  precious 
gold  for  perfect  nonsense.  I  wish  sin- 
cerely that  I  could  enter  Holborn  the 
same  hour  with  him.  He  should  have  a 
repeated  fire  to  combat  with.  I  entreat 
that  you  may  be  so  kind  as  to  let  him  feel 
some  of  your  thunder.  I  shall  never  for- 
get the  favour.  If  Whitaker  is  in  Lon- 
don, he  could  give  a  blow.  Patterson 
will  give  him  a  knock.  Strike  by  all 
means.  The  wretch  will  tremble,  grow 
pale,  and  return  with  a  consciousness  of 
his  debility.  I  entreat  I  may  hear  from 
you  a  day  or  two  after  you  have  seen  him. 
He  will  complain  grievously  of  me  to 
Strahan  and  Rose.  I  shall  send  you  a 
paper  about  him — an  advertisement  from 
Parnassus,  in  the  manner  of  Boccalini. — 
Stuart,  Gilbert,  1774,  Letter,  March  21, 
Disraeli's  Calamities  of  Authors. 

To  proceed  with  our  Literary  Conspir- 
acy, which  was  conducted  by  Stuart  with 
a  pertinacity  of  invention  perhaps  not  to 
be  paralleled  in  literary  history.  That  the 
peace  of  mind  of  such  an  industrious  au- 
thor as  Dr.  Henry  was  for  a  considerable 
time  destroyed ;  that  the  sale  of  a  work 
on  which  Henry  had  expended  much  of  his 
fortune  and  his  life  was  stopped ;  and  that, 
when  covered  with  obloquy  and  ridicule, 
in  despair  he  left  Edinburgh  for  London, 
still  encountering  the  same  hostility  ;  that 
all  this  was  the  work  of  the  same  hand 
perhaps  was  never  even  known  to  its 
victim.  The  multiplied  forms  of  this 
Proteus  of  the  Malevoli  were  still  but  one 
devil ;  fire  or  water,  or  a  bull  or  a  lion ; 
still  it  was  the  same  Proteus,  the  same 
Stuart.— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13,  Lit- 
erary Hatred,  Calamities  of  Authors. 


Dr.  Henry  was  one  of  those  character- 
istic Moderates  of  the  old  school  who 
were  genial  in  society,  humorous  at  table, 
and  deplorably  dry — and  deliciously  con- 
scious of  being  dry — in  the  pulpit.  He 
belonged  to  that  class  of  ministers  who, 
according  to  Lord  Robertson,  of  facetious 
memory,  *'are  better  in  bottle  than  in 
wood."— Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901, 
Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the  EighteMh 
Century,  p.  429. 

HISTORY  OF  GREAT  BRITAIN 

1771-90 

He  neither  furnishes  entertainment  nor 
instruction.  Diffuse,  vulgar,  andungram- 
matical,  he  strips  history  of  all  her  orna- 
ments. As  an  antiquary,  he  wants  ac- 
curacy and  knowledge ;  and,  as  an  his- 
torian, he  is  destitute  of  fire,  taste,  and 
sentiment.  His  work  is  a  gazette,  in 
which  we  find  actions  and  events  without 
their  causes,  and  in  which  v;e  meet  with 
the  names,  without  the  characters,  of  per- 
sonages. He  has  amassed  all  the  refuse 
and  lumber  of  the  times  he  would  record. 
.  .  .  The  mind  of  his  reader  is  affected 
with  no  agreeable  emotions ;  it  is  awak- 
ened only  to  disgust  and  fatigue. — Stu- 
art, Gilbert,  1773,  Edinburgh  Review 
and  Magazine,  vol.  i,  pp.  266,  270. 

His  historical  narratives  are  as  full  as 
those  remote  times  seem  to  demand,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  his  inquiries  of  the  anti- 
quarian kind  omit  nothing  which  can  be 
an  object  of  doubt  or  curiosity.  The  one 
as  well  as  the  other  is  delineated  with 
great  perspicuity,  and  no  less  propriety, 
which  are  the  true  ornaments  of  this  kind 
of  writing ;  all  superfluous  embellishments 
are  avoided;  and  the  reader  will  hardly 
find  in  our  language  any  performance  that 
unites  together  so  perfectly  the  two  great 
points  of  entertainment  and  instruction. 
— Hume,  David,  1773,  Review  of  Henry  s 
History. 

Dr.  Johnson. — have  heard  Henry's 


108 


HENR  Y— LIVINGSTON 


*  History  of  Britain'  well  spoken  of:  I 
am  told  it  is  carried  on  in  separate 
divisions,  as  the  civil,  the  military,  the 
religious  history :  I  wish  much  to  have 
one  branch  well  done,  and  that  is  the 
history  of  manners  of  common  life." 
Dr.  Robertson. — ''Henry  should  have 
applied  his  attention  to  that  alone,  which 
is  enough  for  any  man  ;  and  he  might  have 
found  a  great  deal  scattered  in  various 
books,  had  he  read  solely  with  that  view. 
Henry  erred  in  not  selling  his  first  volume 
at  a  moderate  price  to  the  booskellers, 
that  they  might  have  pushed  him  on  till 
he  had  got  reputation." — Boswell, 
James,  1791-93,  Life  of  Johnson,  ed.  Hill, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  379. 

The  work  of  Dr.  Henry  is  an  ornament 
and  an  honour  to  his  country.  —  DiB- 
DiN,  Thomas  Frognall,  1809,  The  Bib- 
liomania ;  or  Book  Madness. 

Those  parts  of  Henry's  history  which 
profess  to  trace  the  progress  of  govern- 
ment are  still  more  jejune  than  the  rest 
of  his  volumes.— Hallam,  Henry,  1818, 
View  of  the  State  of  Europe  During  the 
Middle  Ages,  Preface. 

Much  of  this  sort  of  information  [re- 
specting the  early  constitutional  history 
of  England],  and  of  every  other  historical 
information,  may  be  found  in  the  "His- 
tory" of  Dr.  Henry;  but  the  same  facts, 
when  collected  and  printed  in  a  modern 
dress,  properly  arranged,  and  to  be  read 
without  difficulty,  as  they  are  in  the  work 
of  Dr.  Henry,  no  longer  excite  the  same 
reflection  nor  obtain  the  same  possession 
of  the  memory  which  they  do  when  seen 
in  something  like  their  native  garb,  in 
their  proper  place,  and  in  all  the  sim- 
plicity, singularity,  and  quaintness  which 
belong  to  them.— Smyth,  William,  1840, 
Lectures  on  Modern  History. 

Considerable  merit  in  the  execution, 
and  complete  originality  in  the  plan,  of 
his  history. — Cockburn,  Henry  Thomas 
Lord,  1854?  Memorials  of  his  Times, 
ch.  I. 


To  this  great  work  Henry  devoted  the 
anxious  labour  of  nearly  thirty  years ;  and 
he  has  certainly  accumulated  a  vast  store 
of  useful  information.  But  to  write  phil- 
osophically and  entertainingly  upon  so 
many  heterogeneous  subjects  exceeds 
man's  might.  Even  when  the  scope  is  far 
less  ambitious,  the  charm  of  style  pos- 
sessed by  a  Hume,  a  Robertson,  a  Macau- 
lay,  a  Prescott,  or  a  Bancroft,  can  alone 
interest  the  desultory  reader  in  histor- 
ical details.  For  all  practical  purposes, 
Henry's  history  has  been  superseded  by 
the  noble  work  published  by  Charles 
Knight.— Allibone,  S.  Austin,  1854-58, 
A  Critical  Dictionary  of  English  Litera- 
ture, vol.  I,  p.  825. 

A  work  valuable  for  the  numerous  facts 
it  contains  illustrative  of  manners  and 
the  state  of  society,  which  are  not  to  be 
found  in  any  of  our  previous  general  his- 
torians, but  chiefly  meritorious  as  having 
been  our  first  English  history  compiled 
upon  that  plan. — Craik,  George  L., 
1861,  A  Compendious  History  of  English 
Literature  and  of  the  English  Language, 
vol.  II,  p.  359. 

For  this  history,  Henry  received  the 
sum  of  3200Z.  from  the  booksellers,  and 
from  the  Crown  a  pension  of  100/.  a  year 
— a  reward  not  due  to  his  style  or  even  to 
the  accuracy  of  the  research,  but  to  the 
growing  interest  among  all  classes  in  the 
domestic  life  of  our  ancestors  and  in  the 
condition  of  the  people.  Henry  was  the 
first  to  direct  attention  to  these  themes. 
His  idea  has  been  carried  out  with  a  large 
amount  of  corrected  and  additional  infor- 
mation in  the  popular  history  of  England 
by  Charles  Knight.—  Angus,  Joseph, 
1865,  The  Handbook  of  English  Literature, 
p.  573. 

As  a  popular  and  comprehensive  history 
it  has  much  merit,  but  it  lacks  original 
research ;  while  its  style  and  method  de- 
tracts from  its  literary  value. — Hender- 
son, T.  F.,  1891,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xxvi,  p.  127. 


William  Livingston 

1723-1790 

An  eminent  statesman  who  was  governor  of  New  Jersey,  1776-90.  ''Philosophic 
Solitude,"  a  poem;  ''Review  of  the  Military  Operations  in  North  America,"  1757; 
"Digest  of  the  Laws  of  New  York."— Adams,  Oscar  Fay,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of 
American  Authors,  p.  232. 


WILLIAM  LIVINGSTON 


109 


PERSONAL 
Livingston  appears  to  have  had  but 
little  vanity,  either  as  a  private  or  public 
man.  His  real  learning  and  the  quaint 
style  of  the  day,  sometimes  give  his  vv^rit- 
ings  an  air  of  formality,  which  might  be 
mistaken  for  pedantry ;  but  on  a  close 
examination,  his  character  bears  few,  if 
any  traces  of  affectation.  His  conversa- 
tion was  entirely  free  of  egotism.  As 
governor,  he  despised,  and  altogether 
threw  off  the  state,  which  his  predeces- 
sors under  the  crown  had  assumed,  and 
thus  early  adapted  himself  to  the  rapidly 
changing  tastes  of  the  people.  Nor  does 
this  appear  to  have  sprung  so  much  from 
necessity  as  inclination.  He  was  plain 
and  indifferent,  almost  to  slovenliness,  in 
his  dress.  ...  In  his  family,  Liv- 
ingston was  a  fond  husband,  and  a  gener- 
ous father,  ready  at  all  times  to  make 
every  sacrifice  which  the  welfare  of  his 
children  demanded;  while  at  the  same 
time  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  a  temper, 
originally  irritable,  and  rendered  more  so 
by  the  difficulties  and  responsibility  of  his 
situation,  was  sometimes  less  restrained 
in  his  domestic  circle,  than  where  it  was 
checked  by  the  presence  of  strangers. 
An  extreme  sensitiveness  to  noise;  an 
occasional  unwillingness  to  converse  when 
not  excited  by  society ;  and  a  sensibility 
more  quickly  manifested  with  regard  to 
trifling  vexations  than  serious  evils,  some- 
times threw  a  gloom  over  the  fireside  of 
Liberty  Hall.  ...  He  was  consider- 
ably above  the  middle  stature,  and  in 
early  life,  so  very  thin  as  to  receive  from 
some  female  wit  of  NeW-York,  perhaps  in 
allusion  to  his  satirical  disposition,  the 
nickname  of  the  ''whipping-post."  In 
later  years  he  acquired  a  more  dignified 
corpulency.  Speaking  of  himself,  in  the 
language  of  one  of  his  opponents  in  the 
American  Whig  (1768),  he  says,  ''The 
Whig  is  a  long-nosed,  long-chinned,  ugly- 
looking  fellow."  .  .  .  Of  his  schol- 
arship, it  may  be  said  that  it  was  dis- 
tinguished in  days  when  scholarship  was 
more  common.  Greek  he  abandoned  early 
in  life,  but  of  the  Latin  he  retained  a  famil- 
iar knowledge ;  the  French  and  Dutch  he 
read  with  great  facility,  writing  them  both 
with  considerable  ease,  though  without 
elegance.  With  the  literature  of  his  own 
language,  he  was  intimately  acquainted. 
In  polemical  divinity,  a  study  now  fallen 


into  considerable  disrepute,  he  was  also 
well  read.  His  religious  taste  and  read- 
ings tinge  most  of  his  literary  produc- 
tions, which  often  borrow  point  and  elo- 
quence from  the  rich  treasure-house  of 
scriptural  allusions  and  quotations.  His 
skill  in  literature  was  not  confined  to  the 
closet  or  his  own  gratification ;  we  have 
seen  it  rendering  more  effective  his  exer- 
tions directed  to  Holland  ;  and  in  his  own 
country,  he  was  active  in  supplying  the 
want  of  instruction  in  the  different  States, 
to  do  which  he  was  more  than  once  re- 
quested ;  while  at  the  same  time  as  trustee 
ex-officio  of  Princeton  and  Rutgers  Colleges, 
he  exercised  a  supervision  over  the  literary 
interests  of  New  Jersey.  —  Sedgwick, 
Theodore,  1833,  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  of 
William  Livingston,  pp.  443, 445, 446, 447. 

In  person  he  was,  in  middle  life,  tall 
and  spare,  later  slightly  corpulent;  in 
dress,  careless,  almost  slovenly,  but  his 
biographer  informs  us  that  he  was  a  cap- 
ital fisherman  and  wrote  a  bad  hand,  two 
unerring  marks  of  a  gentleman.  He  was 
an  excellent  Latin  scholar,  read  and  wrote 
French  and  Dutch  with  ease,  and  was 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  English  liter- 
ature. .  .  .  Among  the  m.en  of  this 
historic  period,  no  one  affords  a  more  in- 
teresting study  than  this  staunch,  origi- 
nal and  devoted  friend  of  the  liberties  and 
rights  of  man.— Stevens,  John  Austin, 
1878,  William  Livingston,  Magazine  of 
American  History,  vol.  2,  pp.  487,  488. 

At  the  head  of  the  New  Jersey  delega- 
tion stood  her  famous  war  governor,  Wil- 
liam Livingston,  who  had  reached  his  sixty- 
fifth  year.  He  had  been  an  eminent  mem- 
ber of  the  New  York  bar  as  early  as  1752, 
and  was  one  of  the  most  caustic  and  for- 
cible essayists  in  the  country;  he  was 
also  one  of  the  few  poets  of  his  time.  It 
was  next  to  impossible  for  him  to  make  a 
speech  that  was  not  seasoned  with  dry 
humor  and  stinging  satire.  He  was  prob- 
ably the  best  classical  scholar  in  the  as- 
semblage. He  had  through  a  long  career 
of  active  public  and  political  service  ac- 
quitted himself  with  honor. — Lamb,  Mar- 
tha J.,  1885,  The  Framers  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, Magazine  of  American  History,  i"o/.13, 
p.  338. 

PHILOSOPHIC  SOLITUDE 

1747 

This  poem  is  obviously  the  effort  of  a 
rhyming  apprentice,  still  in  bondage  to 


110 


LIVINSTON—  WESLEY 


the  methods  of  his  master,  Alexander 
Pope;  yet  he  catches  the  knack  of  his 
master,  with  a  cleverness  proving  the 
possibility  of  original  work,  on  his  own 
account,  by  and  by.  It  illustrates,  like- 
wise, a  trait  of  human  nature,  that  this 
young  lawyer  and  politician,  having  given 
himself  to  a  practical  career  in  the  thick 
of  the  world's  affairs,  and  one  made 
tumultuous  by  his  own  aggressive  spirit, 
should  have  begun  it  by  depicting,  in  en- 
thusiastic verse,  his  preference  for  a  life 
of  absolute  retirement  and  serene  medita- 
tion. .  .  ,  He  would  have  books  for 
his  most  intimate  friends.  .  .  .  The 
voluptuous  languors  of  this  poem,  report 
a  quality  in  the  author  that  did  not 


control  him;  and  henceforward,  through 
nearly  half  a  century,  his  real  life  was  a 
battle  for  stern  and  great  ideas. — Tyler, 
Moses  Coit,  1878,  A  History  of  American 
Literature,  1676-1765,  vol.  ii,  pp.  218,  220. 

A  poem  on  ''Philosophic  Solitude" 
which  reproduces  the  trick  of  Pope's  an- 
titheses and  climaxes  with  the  imagery  of 
the  * 'Rape  of  the  Lock,"  and  the  didactic 
morality  of  the  "Imitations  from  Horace" 
and  the  "Moral  Essays."— Beers,  Henry 
A.,  1887,  An  Outline  Sketch  of  American 
Literature,  p.  66. 

Written  in  the  conventional  eighteenth- 
century  manner,  but  is  smooth  and  pretty. 
— Bronson,  Walter  C,  1900,  A  Short 
History  of  American  Literature,  p.  40. 


John  Wesley 

1703-1791 

1703,  June  17,  John  Wesley  born.  1707  (end  of),  Charles  Wesley  born.  1709, 
Fire  at  Epworth  rectory.  1714,  John  Wesley  goes  to  the  Charterhouse.  George 
Whitefield  born.  1716-17,  December  2 — end  of  January,  Epworth  ghost.  1720, 
John  Wesley  goes  up  to  Christchurch,  Oxford.  1725,  September  19,  Ordained  deacon. 
1726,  March  17,  Elected  Fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford.  Charles  Wesley  goes  up 
to  Chirstchurch,  Oxford,  from  Westminster  School.  1727-29,  August,  1727,  Novem- 
ber, 1729,  Curate  to  his  father  at  Wroote,  Epworth.  1728,  September  22,  Ordained 
priest.  1729,  John  Wesley  becomes  "Father  of  the  Holy  Club."  1732,  Whitefield 
servitor  at  Pembroke  College.  1733  (circa),  John  Wesley  makes  William  Law's 
acquaintance.  1735,  April  25,  the  Rev.  Samuel  Wesley,  John's  father,  died. 
Charles  Wesley  ordained.  October  14,  John  and  Charles  Wesley  sail  from  Gravesend 
for  Georgia.  1736,  Charles  Wesley  returns.  1738,  February  1,  John  returns  to 
England,  landing  at  Deal.  George  Whitefield  leaves  for  Georgia.  Wesley's  conver- 
sion and  visit  to  the  Moravians  at  Herrnhut.    Whitefield  returns  from  Georgia. 

1739,  February  17,  Whitefield  begins  field  preaching.  Wesley  begins  field  preaching. 
Whitefield  returns  to  Georgia.    May  12,  Stone  of  first  Methodist  meeting-house  laid. 

1740,  Wesley's  breach  with  the  Moravians.  1740-48,  Wesley  separates  from  White- 
field  on  predestination.  Breach  with  Calvinists.  1740-90,  Period  of  Wesley's  itiner- 
ant preaching.  1741-45,  Opposition  and  violence  of  mobs  and  magistrates  to  itiner- 
ant preaching.  1742,  July,  Susannah  Wesley,  John's  mother,  dies.  1744,  June  25, 
First  Methodist  Conference.  1748,  Whitefield  returns  from  Georgia.  1751,  John 
Wesley  marries  Mrs.Vazeille.  1768,  Regular  Methodist  society  formed  in  New  York, 
U.  S.  1770,  Whitefield  dies  at  Newburyport,  Mass.  1777,  April  1,  Foundation 
stone  of  City  Road  Chapel  laid.  1784,  Legal  settlement  of  Conference  elfected. 
September  2,  Wesley  ordains  Dr.  Coke  a  bishop,  and  so  founds  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church.  1788,  March  29,  Charles  Wesley  died.  1791,  March  2,  John  Wesley  died. 
— Banfield,  Frank,  1900,  John  Wesley,  p.  xiii. 


PERSONAL 
Dear  Son, — I  came  hither  to-day  be- 
cause I  cannot  be  at  rest  till  I  make  you 
easier.  I  could  not  possibly  manufacture 
any  money  for  you  here  sooner  than  next 
Saturday.  On  Monday  1  design  to  wait 
on  Dr.  Morley,  and  will  try  to  prevail 
with  your  brother  to  return  you  £8,  with 
interest.    I  will  assist  you  in  the  charges 


for  ordination,  though  I  am  just  now  strug- 
gling for  life.  This  £8  you  may  depend 
on  the  next  week,  or  the  week  after. 
Your  affectionate  father. --Wesley,  Sam- 
uel, 1725,  Letter  to  John  Wesley,  Sept.  1. 

In  the  evening  I  went  to  a  house  in 
Alder sgate  Street  (London),  where  one 
was  reading  Luther's  preface  to  the  Epis- 
tle to  the  Romans.    About  a  quarter 


JOHN  WESLEY 


111 


before  nine,  while  he  was  describing  the 
change  which  God  works  in  the  heart 
through  faith  in  Christ,  I  felt  my  heart 
strangely  warmed.  I  felt  I  did  trust  in 
Christ,  Christ  alone,  for  salvation ;  and 
an  assurance  was  given  me  that  he  had 
taken  away  my  sins,  even  vniiie,  and  saved 
me  from  the  law  of  sin  and  death.  J.  began 
to  pray  with  all  my  might  for  those  who 
had,  in  a  more  especial  manner,  despite- 
fuUy  used  me,  and  persecuted  me.  I  then 
testified  openly  to  all  there,  what  I  now 
first  felt  in  my  heart.— Wesley,  John, 
1738,  Journal,  May  24. 

The  regard  I  have  always  had  for  you 
and  your  brother,  is  still  as  great  as  ever; 
and  I  trust  we  shall  give  this  and  future 
ages  an  example  of  true  Christian  love 
abiding,  notwithstanding  difference  in 
judgment.  Why  our  lord  has  permitted 
us  to  diflier  as  to  some  points  of  doctrine, 
will  be  discovered  at  the  last  day.  I 
have  had  the  pleasure  of  reading  the  con- 
tinuance of  your  Appeal ;  and  pray,  that 
God  would  prosper  every  labour  of  your 
pen  andlip.— Whitefield,  George,  1746, 
Letter  to  John  Wesley. 

Here  lieth  the  Body 
of 

JOHN  WESLEY, 
A  Brand  plucked  out  of  the  burning  f 
Who  died  of  a  Consumption  in  the  Fifty-first 
Year  of  his  Age, 
not  leaving,  after  his  Debts  are  paid, 
Ten  Pounds  behind  him : 
Praying 

God  be  merciful  to  me,  an  unprofitable 
Servant ! 

He  ordered,  that  this,  if  any,  inscription 
should  be  placed  on  his  tombstone. 
— Wesley,  John,  1753,  Proposed  Epitaph. 

I  was  once  a  kind  of  oracle  with  Mr. 
Wesley.  I  never  suspected  anything  bad 
of  him,  or  ever  discovered  any  kind  or 
degree  of  falseness  or  hypocrisy  in  him. 
But  during  all  the  time  of  his  intimacy 
with  me,  I  judged  him  to  be  much  under 
the  power  of  his  own  spirit,  which  seemed 
to  have  the  predominance  in  every  good 
thing  or  way  that  his  zeal  carried  him  to. 
It  was  owing  to  his  unwillingness  or  ina- 
bility to  give  up  his  own  spirit  that  he  was 
forced  into  that  false  and  rash  censure 
which  he  published  in  print  against  the 
mystics : — as  enemies  to  good  works,  and 
even  tending  to  atheism.  A  censure  so 
false,  and  regardless  of  right  and  wrong, 
as  hardly  anything  can  exceed  it ;  which 


is  to  be  found  in  a  preface  of  his  to  a 
book  of  hymns. — Law,  William,  1756, 
Works,  vol.  IX,  p.  123. 

A  lean,  elderly  man,  fresh  colored,  his 
hair  smoothly  combed,  but  with  a  soupcon 
of  curls  at  the  ends.  Wondrous  clean,  but 
as  evidently  an  actor  as  Garrick. — ^Wal- 
pole,  Horace,  1766,  To  John  Chute,  Oct. 
10 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  v,  p.  16. 

By  only  erasing  about  half-a-dozen  lines 
from  the  whole,  I  might  defy  the  shrewd- 
est of  his  readers  to  discover  whether  the 
lying  apostle  of  the  Foundery.  be  a  Jew,  a 
papist,  a  pagan,  or  a  Turk.  ...  As 
unprincipled  as  a  rook,  and  as  silly  as  a 
jackdaw,  first  pilfering  his  neighbour's 
plumage,  and  then  going  proudly  forth, 
displaying  his  borrowed  tail  to  the  eyes 
of  a  laughing  world.  .  .  .  Persons 
that  are  toad  eaters  to  Mr.  John  Wesley 
stand  in  need  of  very  wide  throats,  and 
that  which  he  wishes  them  to  swallow  is 
enough  to  choke  an  elephant.  .  .  . 
Wesley  is  a  crafty  slanderer,  an  unfeeling 
reviler,  a  liar  of  the  most  gigantic  magni- 
tude, a  Solomon  in  a  cassock,  a  wretch,  a 
disappointed  Orlando  Furioso,  a  miscreant 
apostate,  whose  perfection  consists  in  his 
perfect  hatred  of  all  goodness  and  good 
men. — Hill,  Rowland,  1777,  Imposture 
Detected,  and  the  Dead  Vindicated ;  in  a 
Letter  to  a  Friend :  containing  some  gentle 
Strictures  on  the  false  and  libellous  Ha- 
rangue, lately  delivered  by  Mr.  John  Wes- 
ley, upon  his  laying  the  first  stone  of  his 
new  Dissenting  meeting-house,  near  the  City 
Road. 

He  said,  *'John  Wesley's  conversation 
is  good,  but  he  is  never  at  leisure.  He 
is  always  obliged  to  go  at  a  certain  hour. 
This  is  very  disagreeable  to  a  man  who 
loved  to  fold  his  legs  and  have  out  his 
talk,  as  I  do." — Johnson,  Samuel,  177^, 
Life  by  Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  iii,  p.  261. 

Very  lately  I  had  an  opportunity,  for 
some  days  together,  of  observing  Mr. 
Wesley  with  attention.  I  endeavoured  to 
consider  him,  not  so  much  with  the  eye  of 
a  friend,  as  with  the  impartiality  of  a 
philosopher;  and  I  must  declare,  every 
hour  I  spent  in  his  company  afforded  me 
fresh  reasons  for  esteem  and  veneration. 
So  fine  an  old  man  I  never  saw !  The 
happiness  of  his  mind  beamed  forth  in  his 
countenance  :  every  look  showed  how  fully 
he  enjoyed 

The  gay  remembrance  of  a  life  well  spent. 


112 


JOHN  V/ESLEY 


Wherever  he  went  he  diffused  a  portion 
of  his  own  felicity.  Easy  and  affable  in 
his  demeanour,  he  accommodated  himself 
to  every  sort  of  company ;  and  showed 
how  happily  the  most  finished  courtesy 
may  be  blended  with  the  most  perfect 
piety.  In  his  conversation,  we  might  be 
at  a  loss  whether  to  admire  most  his  fine 
classical  taste,  his  extensive  knowledge  of 
men  and  things,  or  his  overflowing  good- 
ness of  heart.  While  the  grave  and  seri- 
ous were  charmed  with  his  wisdom,  his 
sportive  sallies  of  innocent  mirth  delighted 
even  the  young  and  thoughtless;  and  both 
saw  in  his  uninterrupted  cheerfulness  the 
excellency  of  true  religion.  No  cynical 
remarks  on  the  levity  of  youth  embittered 
his  discourses.  No  applausive  retrospect 
to  past  times  marked  his  present  discon- 
tent. In  him  even  old  age  appeared  de- 
lightful, like  an  evening  without  a  cloud ; 
and  it  was  impossible  to  observe  him  with- 
out wishing  fervently,  *'May  my  latter  end 
be  like  his!'' — Knox,  Alexander,  1789, 
Letter. 

Sacred  to  the  Memory 
(f)f  tae  QRet).  So3n  ^^esfeg,  (m. 

SOMETIME  FELLOW  OF  LINCOLN  COLLEGE, 
OXFORD ; 

A  Man  in  Learning  and  sincere  Piety 
Scarcely  inferior  to  any ; 
In  Zeal,  Ministerial  Labours,  and  extensive 
Usefulness, 
Superior,  perhaps,  to  all  Men, 
Since  the  days  of  St.  Paul. 
Regardless  of  fatigue,  personal  Danger,  and 
Disgrace, 

He  went  out  into  the  highways  and  hedges 
Calling  Sinners  to  Repentance. 
And  Publishing  the  Gospel  of  Peace. 
He  was  the  Founder  of  the  Methodist 
Societies, 
And  the  chief  Promoter  and  Patron 
Of  the  Plan  of  Itinerant  preaching, 
Wliich  he  extended  through  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland, 
The  West  Indies,  and  America, 
With  unexampled  Success. 
He  was  born  the  17th  of  June,  1703; 
And  died  the  2d  of  March,  1791, 
In  sure  and  certain  hope  of  Eternal  Life, 
Through  the  Atonement  and  Mediation  of  a 
Crucified  Saviour. 
He  was  sixty-five  Years  in  the  Ministry, 

And  fifty-two  an  Itinerant  Preacher : 
He  lived  to  see,  in  these  Kingdoms  only. 
About  three  hundred  Itinerant, 
And  one  thousand  Local  Preachers, 
Raised  up  from  the  midst  of  his  own  People ; 
And  eighty  thousand  Persons  in  the  Socie- 
ties under  his  care. 


His  Name  will  be  ever  had  in  grateful 
Remembrance 
By  all  who  rejoice  in  the  universal  Spread 
Of  the  Gospel  of  Christ. 
Soli  Deo  Gloria. 

—Inscription  on  Tablet,  City  Road 
Chapel. 

His  face  for  an  old  man  was  one  of  the 
finest  I  have  seen  A  clear,  smooth  fore- 
head, an  aquiline  nose,  an  eye  the  bright- 
est and  most  piercing  that  can  be  con- 
ceived, and  a  freshness  of  complexion 
scarcely  ever  to  be  found  at  his  years  and 
impressive  of  the  most  perfect  health, 
conspire  to  render  him  a  venerable  and 
interesting  figure.  ...  A  narrow 
plaited  stock,  a  coat  with  a  small  upright 
collar,  no  buckles  at  his  knees,  no  silk  or 
velvet  in  any  part  of  his  apparel,  and  a 
head  as  white  as  snow,  gave  an  idea  of 
something  primitive  and  apostolical ;  while 
an  air  of  neatness  and  cleanliness  was  dif- 
fused over  his  whole  person.  .  .  . 
In  social  life  Mr.  Wesley  was  lively  and 
conversible,  and  of  exquisite  companion- 
able talents.  He  had  been  much  accus- 
tomed to  society,  was  well  acquainted 
with  the  rules  of  good  .breeding ;  and  in 
general  perfectly  attentive  and  polite. 
The  abstraction  of  a  scholar  did  not  ap- 
pear in  his  behaviour.  He  spoke  a  good 
deal  in  company  ;  and  as  he  had  seen  much 
of  the  world,  and  in  the  course  of  his 
travels  through  every  corner  of  the  nation 
had  acquired  an  infinite  fund  of  anecdote 
and  observation,  he  was  not  sparing  in  his 
communications,  and  the  manner  in  which 
he  related  them  was  no  inconsiderable 
addition  to  the  entertainment  they 
aiforded.  His  manner  in  private  life  was 
the  reverse  of  cynical  or  forbidding.  It 
was  sprightly  and  pleasant  to  the  last 
degree,  and  presented  a  beautiful  contrast 
to  the  austere  deportment  of  many  of  his 
preachers  and  people,  who  seemed  to  have 
ranked  laughter  among  the  mortal  sins. 
It  was  impossible  to  be  long  in  his  com- 
pany without  partaking  his  hilarity. 
Neither  infirmities  of  age  nor  the  ap- 
proach of  death  had  any  apparent  influence 
on  his  manners.  His  cheerfulness  con- 
tinued to  the  last,  and  was  as  conspicuous 
at  fourscore  as  at  one-and-twenty. — 
Hampson,  John,  1791,  Memoirs  of  the 
Late  Rev.  John  Wesley. 

His  indefatigable  zeal  in  the  dis- 
charge of  his  duty  has  been  long  wit- 
nessed by  the  world ;  but,  as  mankind  are 


JOHN  WESLEY 


113 


not  always  inclined  to  put  a  generous  con- 
struction on  the  exertions  of  singular  tal- 
ents, his  motives  were  imputed  to  the  love 
of  popularity,  ambition,  and  lucre.  It  now 
appears  that  he  was  actuated  by  a  disin- 
terested regard  to  the  immortal  interests 
of  mankind.  He  laboured,  and  studied, 
and  preached,  and  wrote,  to  propagate 
what  he  believed  to  be  the  gospel  of  Christ. 
The  intervals  of  these  engagements  were 
employed  in  governing  and  regulating  the 
concerns  of  his  numerous  societies ;  assist- 
ing the  necessities,  solving  the  difficulties, 
and  soothing  the  afflictions  of  his  hearers. 
He  observed  so  rigid  a  temperance,  and 
allowed  himself  so  little  repose,  that  he 
seemed  to  be  above  the  infirmities  of  na- 
ture, and  to  act  independent  of  the  earthly 
tenement  he  occupied.  The  recital  of 
the  occurrences  of  every  day  of  his  life 
would  be  the  greatest  encomium.  Had 
he  loved  wealth,  he  might  have  accumu- 
lated it  without  bounds.  Had  he  been 
fond  of  power,  his  influence  would  have 
been  worth  courting  by  any  party.  I  do 
not  say  he  was  without  ambition ;  he  had 
that  which  Christianity  need  not  blush  at, 
and  which  virtue  is  proud  to  confess.  I 
do  not  mean  that  which  is  gratified  by 
splendour  and  large  possessions ;  but  that 
which  commands  the  hearts  and  affections, 
the  homage  and  gratitude  of  thousands. 
For  him  they  felt  sentiments  of  venera- 
tion, only  inferior  to  those  which  they 
paid  to  Heaven:  to  him  they  looked  as 
their  father,  their  benefactor,  their  guide 
to  glory,  and  immortality :  for  him  they 
fell  prostrate  before  God,  with  prayers 
and  tears,  to  spare  his  doom,  and  pro- 
long his  stay.  Such  a  recompense  as  this 
is  sufficient  to  repay  the  toils  of  the  long- 
est life.  Short  of  this,  greatness  is  con- 
temptible impotence.  Before  this,  lofty 
prelates  bow,  and  princes  hide  their  dis- 
tinguished heads. — Woodfall,  William, 
1791,  Diary,  June  17. 

Mr.  Wesley  had  most  exquisite  talents 
to  make  himself  agreeable  in  company, 
and  having  been  much  accustomed  to 
society  the  rules  of  good  breeding  were 
habitual  to  him.  .  .  .  '  He  never  trav- 
elled alone ;  and  the  person  who  attended 
him  had  the  charge  of  his  letters  and 
papers,  which,  of  course,  lay  open  to  his 
inspection.  The  preachers,  likewise,  who 
were  occasionally  with  him,  had  access  to 
his  letters  and  papers,  especially  if  he 

8C 


had  confidence  in  their  sincerity  and  zeal 
in  religion,  which  it  was  not  very  difficult 
to  obtain.  It  was  easy  for  these  persons 
to  see  the  motive  that  influenced  him, 
and  the  end  he  had  in  view  in  every  action 
of  his  life,  however  remote  from  public 
observation;  and  he  took  no  pains  to 
conceal  them,  but  seemed  rather  to  court 
the  discovery. — Whitehead,  John,  1793- 
96,  Life  of  the  Rev.  John  Wesley,  Sometime 
Fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 

Oh  I  have  seen  (nor  hope  perhaps  in  vain, 
Ere  life  go  down,  to  see  such  sights  again) 
A  veteran  warrior  in  the  Christian  field, 
Who  never  saw  the  sword  he  could  not  wield ; 
Grave  without    dulness,  learned  without 
pride, 

Exact,  yet  not  precise,  though  meek,  keen- 
eyed; 

A  man  that  would  have  foil'd  at  their  own 
play 

A  dozen  would-bes  of  the  modern  day. 
Who,  when  occasion  justified  its  use. 
Had  wit  as  bright  as  ready  to  produce. 
Could  fetch  from  records  of  an  earlier  age, 
Or  from  philosophy's  enlighten 'd  page, 
His  rich  materials,  and  regale  your  ear 
With  strains  it  was  a  privilege  to  hear ; 
Yet  above  all  his  luxury  supreme, 
And  his  chief  glory  was  the  gospel  theme ; 
There  he  was  copious  as  old  Greece  or  Rome, 
His  happy  eloquence  seem'd  there  at  home. 
Ambitious  not  to  shine  or  to  excel, 
But  to  treat  justly  what  he  loved  so  well. 
— CowPER,  William,  c1798,  Conversation, 

During  his  last  illness  he  said :  "Let  me 
be  buried  in  nothing  but  what  is  woollen; 
and  let  my  corpse  be  carried  in  my 
coffin  into  the  chapel."  ...  In  his 
will  he  directed  that  six  poor  men  should 
have  20  shillings  each  for  carrying  his 
body  to  the  grave;  ''for  I  particularly 
desire,"  said  he,  "that  there  may  be 
no  hearse,  no  coach,  no  escutcheon,  no 
pomp,  except  the  tears  of  them  that  love 
me,  and  are  following  me  to  Abraham's 
bosom."  .  .  .  AVesley's  body  lay  in 
the  chapel  in  a  kind  of  state  becoming  the 
person,  dressed  in  his  clerical  habit,  with 
gown,  cassock,  and  band,  the  old  clerical 
cap  on  his  head,  a  Bible  in  one  hand,  and 
a  white  handkerchief  in  the  other.  .  .  . 
The  crowds  who  flocked  to  see  him  were 
so  great  that  it  was  thought  prudent,  for 
fear  of  accident,  to  accelerate  the  funeral, 
and  perform  it  between  five  and  six  in 
the  morning.  The  intelligence,  however, 
could  not  be  kept  entirely  secret,  and 
several  hundred  persons  attended  at  that 


114 


JOHN  WESLEY 


unusual  hour. — Southey,  Robert,  1820, 
The  Life  of  Wesley  and  the  Rise  and  Prog- 
ress of  Methodism. 

In  dress,  he  was  a  pattern  of  neatness 
and  simplicity.  A  narrow  plaited  stock, 
a  coat  with  a  small  upright  collar,  no 
buckles  at  his  knees,  no  silk  or  velvet  in 
any  part  of  his  apparel,  and  his  thin  silver 
locks  gave  to  his  whole  person  an  air  of 
something  primitive  and  apostolic.  The 
same  neatness  and  simplicity  was  manifest 
in  every  circumstance  of  his  life.  In  his 
chamber  and  study,  during  his  winter 
months  of  residence  in  London  I  never 
observed  that  a  book  was  misplaced,  or 
even  a  scrap  of  paper  left  unheeded.  He 
could  enjoy  every  convenience  of  life; 
and  yet,  he  acted  in  the  smallest  things 
like  a  man  who  was  not  to  continue  an 
hour  in  one  place.  He  seemed  at  home  in 
every  place,  settled,  satisfied,  and  happy : 
and  yet  was  ready  every  hour  to  take  a 
journey  of  a  thousand  miles.  His  con- 
versation was  always  pleasing,  and  fre- 
quently interesting  and  instructive  in  the 
highest  degree.  By  reading,  traveling, 
and  continual  observation,  he  had  acquired 
a  fund  of  knowledge,  which  he  dispensed 
with  a  propriety  and  perspicuity  that  has 
been  rarely  equalled.  The  Greek  and 
Latin  classics  were  as  familiar  to  him  as 
the  most  common  English  authors;  and 
also  many  of  the  best  French  writers. 
Yet  though  so  richly  furnished,  we  believe 
those  of  the  most  improved  taste  have 
never  observed  in  him  the  affectation  of 
learning.  He  joined  in  every  kind  of 
discourse  that  was  innocent. — Moore, 
Henry,  1824,  The  Life  of  the  Rev.  John 
Wesley,  vol.  ii,  p.  358. 

He  is  spoken  of  as  credulous,  as  hoping 
good  of  men  naturally,  and  able  to  hope 
it  again  from  those  that  had  deceived  him. 
This  last  is  weakness  unless  allied  with 
wise  decision  and  force,  generosity  when 
it  is  thus  tempered.  To  the  character  of 
John  Wesley  it  imparted  a  persuasive 
nobleness,  and  hallowed  his  earnestness 
with  mercy.  He  had  in  a  striking  degree 
another  of  those  balances  between  oppo- 
site forces  which  mark  the  great  man. 
He  kept  himself  open  to  new  inspirations, 
was  bold  in  apprehending  and  quick  in  car- 
rying them  out.  Yet  with  a  resolve  once 
taken  he  showed  a  steadiness  of  purpose 
beyond  what  the  timid  scholars  of  tradi- 
tion can  conceive. —  OssoLi,  Margaret 


Fuller,  1850  ?-59,  Papers  on  Literature 
and  Art,  ed.  Fuller,  p.  350. 

As  I  was  walking  home  one  day  from 
my  father's  bank,  I  observed  a  great 
crowd  of  people  streaming  into  a  chapel 
in  the  City  Road.  I  followed  them ;  and 
saw  laid  out  upon  a  table  the  dead  body 
of  a  clergyman  in  full  canonicals.  It  was 
the  corpse  of  John  Wesley ;  and  the  crowd 
moved  slowly  and  silently  round  and  round 
the  table  to  take  a  last  look  at  that  most 
venerable  man. — Rogers,  Samuel,  1855? 
TaUe-Talk,  p.  120. 

Taking  him  altogether,  Wesley  is  a  man 
sui generis.  He  stands  alone  ;  he  has  had  no 
successor ;  no  one  like  him  went  before ; 
no  contemporary  was  a  coequal.  There 
was  a  wholeness  about  the  man,  such  as 
is  rarely  seen.  His  physique,  his  genius, 
his  wit,  his  penetration,  his  judgment,  his 
memory,  his  beneficence,  his  religion,  his 
diligence,  his  conversation,  his  courteous- 
ness,  his  manners,  and  his  dress, — made 
him  as  perfect  as  we  ever  expect  man  to 
be  on  this  side  heaven. — Tyerman,  L., 
1866,  The  Life  and  Times  of  the  Rev.  John 
Wesley,  vol.  iii,  p.  660. 

It  was  indeed  evident  to  the  most  cur- 
sory reader  that  the  ''enthusiasm" 
charged  against  him  was  that  inner  well- 
spring  of  power  without  which  he  could 
never  have  accomplished  his  great  work ; 
and  that  the"'love  of  authority"  is  that 
quality  which  is  actually  necessary  to  a 
great  leader  of  men.  That  W^esley  was 
too  apt  to  credit  all  that  people  told  him 
may  be  true ;  himself  sincere  by  nature, 
he  gave  too  much  credit  for  sincerity  to 
all  others.  His  nature,  although  calm 
and  tranquil,  was  of  the  believing  rather 
than  of  the  doubting  order ;  and  this  can- 
not be  better  illustrated  than  by  the  fact 
that  while  discussing  some  modern  mira- 
cles, stated  to  have  been  wrought  at  the 
tomb  of  a  French  Abbe,  he  remarked  that 
to  doubt  would  be  to  unsettle  all  founda- 
tions based  on  human  testimony.  So 
slight  defects  as  these  could  detract  little 
from  the  intellectual  and  the  moral  stature 
of  one  of  the  very  ablest  and  best  men 
of  modern  times.  —  Urlin,  R.  Denny, 
1869,  John  Wesley's  Place  in  Church  His- 
tory, p.  136. 

Wesley,  when  a  young  man,  was  distin- 
guished for  his  long  flowing  hair,  which 
he  wore  to  save  the  expense  of  a  periwig, 
that  he  might  give  the  money  to  the  poor. 


JOHN  WESLEY 


115 


—Forsyth,  William,  1871,  The  Novels 
and  Novelists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century y 
p.  67. 

Wesley  was  a  scholar,  an  Oxford  stu- 
dent, and  he  believed  in  the  devil ;  he 
attributes  to  him  sickness,  nightmare, 
storms,  earthquakes.  His  family  heard 
supernatural  noises ;  his  father  had  been 
thrice  pushed  by  a  ghost ;  he  himself  saw 
the  hand  of  God  in  the  commonest  events 
of  life.  One  day  at  Birmingham,  over- 
taken by  a  hailstorm,  he  felt  that  he  re- 
ceived this  warning,  because  at  table  he 
had  not  sufficiently  exhorted  the  people 
who  dined  with  him ;  when  he  had  to  de- 
termine on  anything,  he  looked  out  by 
chance  for  a  text  of  Scripture,  in  order 
to  decide.  ...  He  lived  the  life  of 
an  apostle,  giving  away  all  that  he  earned, 
travelling  and  preaching  all  the  year,  and 
every  year,  till  the  age  of  eighty-eight ; 
it  has  been  reckoned  that  he  gave  away 
thirty  thousand  pounds,  travelled  about  a 
hundred  thousand  miles,  and  preached 
forty  thousand  sermons. — Taine,  H.  A., 
1871,  History  of  English  Literature,  tr. 
Van  Laun^  vol.  ii,  bk.  iii,  ch.  iii,  p.  58. 

In  power  as  a  preacher  he  stood  next 
to  Whitefield;  as  a  hymn -writer  he  stood 
second  to  his  brother  Charles.  But  while 
combining  in  some  degree  the  excellences 
of  either,  he  possessed  qualitites  in  which 
both  were  utterly  deficient ;  an  indefatiga- 
ble industry,  a  cool  judgment,  a  command 
over  others,  a  faculty  of  organization,  a 
singular  union  of  patience  and  moderation 
with  an  imperious  ambition,  which  marked 
him  as  a  ruler  of  men.  He  had,  besides, 
a  learning  and  skill  in  writing  which  no 
other  of  the  Methodists  possessed ;  he  was 
older  than  any  of  his  colleagues  at  the 
start  of  the  movement,  and  he  outlived 
them  all.  His  life,  indeed,  from  1703  to 
1791,  almost  covers  the  century,  and  the 
Methodist  body  had  passed  through  every 
phase  of  its  history  before -he  sank  into 
the  grave  at  the  age  of  eighty-eight.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  for  Wesley  to 
have  wielded  the  power  he  did,  had  he  not 
shared  the  follies  and  extravagance  as 
well  as  the  enthusiasm  of  his  disciples. 
Throughout  his  life  his  asceticism  was 
that  of  a  monk.  At  times  he  lived  on 
bread  only,  and  often  slept  on  the  bare 
boards.  He  lived  in  a  world  of  wonders 
and  divine  interpositions.  It  was  a  mir- 
acle if  the  rain  stopped  and  allowed  him 


to  set  forward  on  a  journey.  It  was  a 
judgment  of  Heaven  if  a  hailstorm  burst 
over  a  town  which  had  been  deaf  to  his 
preaching.  One  day,  he  tells  us,  when 
he  was  tired  and  his  horse  fell  lame,  **I 
thought — can  not  God  heal  either  man  or 
beast  by  any  means  or  without  any  ?  Im- 
mediately my  headache  ceased  and  my 
horse's  lameness  in  the  same  instant." 
With  a  still  more  childish  fanaticism  he 
guided  his  conduct,  whether  in  ordinary 
events  or  in  the  great  crises  of  his  life,  by 
drawing  lots  or  watching  the  particular 
texts  at  which  his  Bible  opened.  But  with 
all  this  extravagance  and  superstition, 
Wesley's  mind  was  essentially  practical, 
orderly,  and  conservative.  No  man  ever 
stood  at  the  head  of  a  great  revolution 
whose  temper  was  so  anti-revolutionary. 
—Green,  John  Richard,  1874,  A  Short 
History  of  the  English  People,  p.  709. 

He  belonged  to  an  unbroken  ancestral 
succession  of  English  gentlemen,  of  whom 
at  least  his  three  immediate  predecessors 
were  scholars  and  divines.  ...  No 
fibre  of  hereditary  connection  between 
himself  and  the  artisan  classes,  or  the 
peasantry  of  England,  can  be  traced  in  all 
his  long  pedigree ;  and  yet  this  was  the 
man  whose  words  were  to  take  hold  of 
colliers  and  weavers,  of  tinners  and  istone- 
masons,  and  hardhanded  workers  gener- 
ally, as  no  man's  words  had  done  before 
for  centuries,  if  ever,  or  have  done  since. 
— RiGG,  James  Harrison,  1875,  The  Liv- 
ing Wesley. 

He  was  a  man  who  had  made  religion 
the  single  aim  and  object  of  his  life,  who 
was  prepared  to  encounter  for  it  every 
form  of  danger,  discomfort,  and  obloquy ; 
who  devoted  exclusively  to  it  an  energy 
of  will  and  power  of  intellect  that  in 
worldly  professions  might  have  raised  him 
to  the  highest  positions  of  honour  and 
wealth.  Of  his  sincerity,  of  his  self- 
renunciation,  of  his  deep  and  fervent 
piety,  of  his  almost  boundless  activity, 
there  can  be  no  question.  Yet  with  all 
these  qualities  he  was  not  an  amiable 
man.  He  was  hard,  punctilious,  domi- 
neering, and  in  a  certain  sense  even  selfish. 
— Lecky,  William  Edward  Hartpole, 
1878,  History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  602. 

There  must  be  many  a  field  in  Great 
Britain  thick-sown  with  stones  which 
have  been  thrown  at  John  Wesley  and  his 


116 


JOHN  WESLEY 


proto-Methodists.  Traveling  from  four 
to  five  thousand  miles  every  year,  and 
preaching  from  two  to  four  times  nearly 
every  day  to  audiences  of  thousands; 
often  disturbed  by  mobs  of  men  more 
savage  than  wild  beasts ;  keeping  an  eye 
on  all  his  preachers,  and  receiving  their 
reports ;  starting  a  publishing  house,  and 
carrying  it  on,  that  his  people  everywhere 
might  have  wholesome  intellectual  fare 
within  their  scanty  means;  taking  no 
money  but  just  what  would  suffice  for  his 
bare  expenses ;  stopping  for  no  storms  or 
floods,  fires  or  frosts ;  reading  and  study- 
ing on  horseback,  and  answering  innumer- 
able assaults  through  the  press,  from 
bishops,  archbishops,  and  ecclesiastical 
foes  of  all  ranks ;  compiling  grammars  in 
Greek,  and  Hebrew,  and  French,  and 
Latin,  for  his  students ;  editing,  writing, 
translating,  or  abridging  not  less  than 
two  hundred  difl^erent  publications ;  eager 
only,  in  it  all,  to  save  men  and  to  extend 
the  kingdom  of  God.  Half  a  million  souls 
were  to  be  numbered  as  his  adherents  at 
the  close  of  that  fifty  years ;  and  outside 
of  this,  a  vast  multitude  that  no  man  can 
number,  morally  and  spiritually  benefited 
by  his  movement.  He  is,  I  think,  the 
finest  illustrationof  consecrated,  unselfish, 
wholehearted  devotion,  for  fifty  solid 
years  of  this  world's  dark  history,  that 
the  Church  of  Christ  has  ever  offered  to 
the  vision  of  men,  perhaps  to  that  of  the 
angels. — Herrick,  S.  E.,  1884,  Some 
Heretics  of  Yesterday,  p.  313. 

The  illustrious  personage  now  known  in 
history  under  the  modest  title  of  the 
Rev.  John  Wesley,  without  any  of  the 
more  ambitious  affixes  or  prefaces  of  the 
present  day,  would  have  been  reverenced 
as  a  great  man  in  any  age  or  country. 
.  .  .  Wesley  was  always  a  very  con- 
scientious man.  He  was  ambitious,  also, 
but  not  for  place.  His  ambition  was 
for  work,  for  enterprise,  for  doing  some- 
thing useful, —  something  which  could 
not,  or  would  not,  be  done  by  any  other 
person.  The  very  fact  that  nobody  else 
would  undertake  a  good  thing  was  to  him 
its  best  recommendation.  The  more 
strange,  unusual,  difficult,  the  scheme  for 
doing  good,  the  more  his  adventurous 
spirit  was  likely  to  be  devoted  to  it.  To 
such  a  mind,  the  regular,  common-place, 
monotonous  glory  of  living  at  his  ease,  as 
the  acknowledged  primate  of  the  British 


world,  would  have  presented  no  attrac- 
tions. He  preferred  some  impossible  job, 
some  Herculean  labour,  something  to  do 
where  the  most  resolute  would  scarcely 
dare  to  go ;  and  it  is  equally  certain  that 
his  keen,  sensitive,  commanding  conscious- 
ness, his  imperial  characteristic,  pushed 
him  in  the  same  direction. — Tepft,  Ben- 
jamin F.,  1885,  Evolution  and  Chris- 
tianity, pp.  266,  268. 

A  life  which  was  all  but  commensurate- 
with  the  eighteenth  century,  and  which 
was  certainly  the  busiest,  and  in  some  re- 
spects the  most  important  life  in  that 
century — a  life  about  which  the  most 
divers  views  have  been  taken,  and  in 
which  the  interest,  so  far  from  having 
slackened  through  lapse  of  time,  is  as 
keen  if  not  keener  than  ever  it  was. — 
Overton,  J.  H.,  1891,  John  Wesley  (Eng- 
lish Leaders  of  Religion),  p.  v. 

Between  the  founder  of  the  Society  of 
Jesus  and  the  creator  of  Wesleyan  Meth- 
odism there  is  a  parallel  much  closer  than 
many  good  Methodists  care  to  admit. 
Loyola  was  a  Spaniard  and  a  soldier. 
Wesley  an  Englishman  and  a  parson,  but 
after  allowing  for  that  initial  difference 
there  is  much  resemblance  between  the 
man  who  saved  the  Papacy  in  the  sixteenth 
century  and  the  man  who  saved  Protes- 
tantism in  the  eighteenth.  Loyola  is,  no 
doubt,  a  much  more  picturesque  and  a 
more  heroic  figure.  The  brilliant  cavalier 
whose  leg  was  smashed  by  a  cannon  ball 
at  the  siege  of  Pampeluna,  set  about  the 
task  of  rallying  the  forces  of  Catholic 
Christendom  in  a  manner  more  worthy  of 
a  countryman  of  the  Cid  and  of  Cervantes 
than  did  the  trim  little  ^man  who  w^as 
reared  in  EpWDrth  parsonage.  But  both 
had  the  same  central  idea  at  heart,  both 
were  inflamed  with  a  passion  for  souls, 
and  both  sought  to  save  souls  by  organiz- 
ing a  Religious  Order.  The  English 
Church  in  those  days,  being  a  distinctly 
non-spiritual  and  Erastian  institution, 
drove  out  the  man  whose  labors  might 
have  reared  an  invulnerable  rampart  for 
Anglicanism  throughout  the  world.  The 
Roman  church  being  wiser  in  its  day  and 
generation,  has  garrisoned  its  outposts 
with  the  followers  of  Loyola.  The  story 
is  old  and  trite,  but  those  who  care  to 
pursue  the  subject  will  find  the  parallel 
between  Loyola  and  Wesley  and  Gen.  Booth 
much  closer  than  fervent  Protestants 


JOHN  WESLEY 


117 


generally  recognize. — ^Stead,  William  T., 
1891,  St.  John  of  England,  Review  of  Re- 
views, vol.  3,  p.  250. 

Although  the  world  and  the  Church 
have  learned  to  be  comparatively  generous 
to  Wesley  now  that  a  hundred  years  have 
sped  away,  and  though  the  roar  of  con- 
temporary scandal  has  long  since  ceased, 
I  doubt  whether  even  now  he  is  at  all  ade- 
quately appreciated.  I  doubt  whether 
many  are  aware  of  the  extent  to  which  to 
this  day  the  impulse  to  every  great  work 
of  philanthropy  and  social  reformation  has 
been  due  to  his  energy  and  insight.  .  .  . 
The  bust  placed  in  Westminster  Abbey  to 
the  memory  of  John  Wesley,  more  than 
twenty  years  ago,  was  a  very  tardy  recog- 
nition of  the  vast  debt  of  gratitude  which 
England  ow^es  to  him.  It  stands  hard  by 
the  cenotaph  of  that  other  illustrious 
Nonconformist,  Isaac  Watts,  and  gives 
the  beautiful  presentment  of  the  aged 
face  of  the  evangelist  and  the  fine  fea- 
tures of  Charles,  his  poet-brother.  In  the 
solemn  aisle  thousands  of  visitors  to  our 
great  Temple  of  Silence  and  Reconciliation 
may  read  three  of  his  great  sayings — one, 
so  full  of  holy  energy,  "I  look  on  all  the 
world  as  my  parish;"  another,  so  full  of 
bright  and  holy  confidence,  *'God  buries 
his  workmen,  but  continues  his  work;" 
the  third,  when,  on  his  death-bed,  uplift- 
ing victoriously  his  feeble  and  emaciated 
arm,  he  said:  ''The  best  of  all  is,  God 
is  with  us. "  ' '  Yes !' '  he  exclaimed  again, 
in  a  tone  of  victorious  rapture,''  the  best 
of  all  is,  God  is  with  us."  — Farrar,  F. 
W.,  1896,  The  Prophets  of  the  Christian 
Faith,  pp.  139,  144. 

In  1899,  when  the  map  of  England 
looks  like  a  gridiron  of  railways,  none  but 
the  sturdiest  of  pedestrians,  the  most  de- 
termined of  cyclists  can  retrace  the  steps 
of  Wesley  and  his  horse  and  stand  by  the 
rocks  and  the  natural  ampitheatres  in 
Cornwall  and  Northumberland,  in  Lanca- 
shire and  Berkshire,  where  he  preached 
his  gospel  to  the  heathen.  Exertion  so 
prolonged,  enthusiasm  so  sustained,  argues 
a  remarkable  man,  while  the  organization 
he  created,  the  system  he  founded,  the 
view  of  life  he  promulgated,  is  still  a 
great  fact  among  us.  No  other  name 
than  Wesley's  lies  embalmed  as  his  does. 
Yet  he  is  not  a  popular  figure.  Our 
standard  historians  have  dismissed  him 
curtly.    The  fact  is,  Wesley  puts  your 


ordinary  historian  out  of  conceit  with 
himself.  How  much  easier  to  weave  into 
your  page  the  gossip  of  Horace  Walpole, 
to  enliven  it  with  a  heartless  jest  of 
George  Selwyn's,  to  make  it  blush  with 
sad  stories  of  the  extravagance  of  Fox, 
to  embroider  it  with  the  rhetoric  of  P.urke, 
to  humanize  it  with  the  talk  of  Johnson, 
to  discuss  the  rise  and  fall  of  administra- 
tions, the  growth  and  decay  of  the  consti- 
tution, than  to  follow  John  Wesley  into  the 
streets  of  Bristol,  or  on  to  the  bleak 
moors  near  Burslem,  when  he  met,  face 
to  face  in  all  their  violence,  all  their 
ignorance,  and  all  their  generosity,  the 
living  men,  women,  and  children  who 
made  up  the  nation. — Birrell,  Augus- 
tine, 1899,  John  Wesley,  Scrihnefs  Maga- 
zine, vol.  26,  p.  756. 

No  new  facts  about  John  Wesley  are 
likely  to  be  brought  to  light.  He  left 
abundant  materials  for  his  biographers  , 
in  his  journals,  and  his  volumes  of  ser- 
mons are  sufficiently  exhaustive  and  clear 
as  to  the  substance  of  his  religious  opin- 
ions. One  of  Wesley's  great  merits  was 
his  lucidity  in  thought,  speech,  and  style, 
so  that  he  is  not  a  man  whose  obscurity  in 
expression  might  generate  mistakes  about 
him.  Moreover,  he  admitted  the  world 
into  the  secrets  of  the  inner  motions  of 
his  soul  and  mind  as  far  as  he  was  able. 
In  a  word,  there  is  no  new  thing,  in  the 
literal  sense,  to  be  learned  about  Wesley. 
.  .  .  Wesley  was  a  man  of  limitations, 
but  without  those  limitations  of  mind  and 
character  he  would  not  have  accomplished 
the  work  he  did.  To  dominate  the  seri- 
ous middle-class  intelligence  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  he  was  admirably  adapted. 
The  proof  of  his  adaptation  is  in  his 
achievement.  He  was,  I  take  it,  in  a 
specially  manifest  way,  an  instrument  of 
Providence ;  and  this  is  further  shown  by 
the  fact  that  so  many  of  the  earnest  men 
who  have  been  prominent  in  the  great 
religious  revival  of  the  nineteenth  century 
are  the  lineal  descendants  of  those  who  in 
the  eighteenth  were  identified  with  the  • 
general  Methodist  movement.  Wesley 
helped  materially  in  the  gradual  lifting 
of  Anglo-Saxondom  out  of  the  Paganism 
in  which  it  was  wallowing  part  of  the 
way  on  the  road  back  towards  a  perfect 
Christianity.  He  is  plainly  a  man  of 
whom  every  educated  person  should  have 
some  knowledge;  and  I  hope  I  have 


118 


JOHN  WESLEY 


succeeded  in  telling  his  story,  in  compara- 
tively few  words,  fairly,  squarely,  and 
readably. — Banfield,  Frank,  1900,  John 
Wesley,  pp.  vii,  x. 

Wesley  was  a  glorious  being.  His  zeal 
was  matchless;  and  he  accomplished,  by 
prodigies  of  mental  and  physical  effort,  a 
vast  and  necessary  work.  The  physic 
may  have  been  nasty, — those  fits,  espe- 
cially,— but  Methodism  arrested  national 
decay  and  infused  new  life  into  Christian- 
ity. In  the  political  sphere,  though  Wes- 
ley's direct  intervention  was  not  happily 
conceived,  it  is  in  every  way  probable 
that  the  influence  of  that  high  Tory  over 
the  masses  did  much  to  prevent  an  Eng- 
lish analogue  of  the  French  Revolution  by 
absorbing  into  the  ranks  of  Methodism 
those  who  would  naturally  have  been  its 
leaders.  The  emancipation  of  the  slaves, 
and,  after  that,  other  emancipations  were 
the  reflexion  and  the  fruit  of  that  inward 
emanciaption  of  which  Wesley  was  the 
preacher.  The  Evangelical  movement, 
and  the  Oxford  movement,  in  the  Church 
of  England,  were  both  founded  on  the 
principle  that  religion  was  something 
other,  something  higher,  than  an  aspect 
of  civil  life.  This  principle,  which  in  the 
eighteenth  century  had  been  fairly  lost, 
Wesley  and  his  companions  were  bold 
enough  to  reassert.  For  this  all  English- 
speaking  men,  irrespective  of  creed,  have 
cause  to  be  thankful.  To  take  a  single 
illustration — may  we  not  trace  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  duel  in  England  to  Wesley's 
influence  ?  In  every  other  European  coun- 
try the  obligations  of  honour  prescribe 
this  reckless  mode  of  settling  certain 
disputes.  Why  is  England  exempt  ?  The 
episode  of  the  fashionable  tailor  is  not  an 
adequate  explanation.  The  true  reason 
is  that  the  English  conscience,  as  remod- 
elled by  Wesley,  will  not  tolerate  the 
making  of  widows  and  orphans  on  a  friv- 
olous pretext.  However,  Wesley  was  not 
precisely  a  saint.  He  was  too  active,  too 
full  of  fight,  to  merit  that  description. 
But  he  was,  pre-eminently  a  man. — Snell, 
F.  J.,  1900,  Wesley  and  Methodism,  p.  242. 

In  his  eighty -fifth  year  he  acknowledges 
that  he  is  not  so  agile  as  formerly,  that 
he  has  occasional  twinges  of  rheumatism 
and  suffers  slight  dimness  of  sight,  his 
other  senses  remaining  unimpaired. 
"However,  blessed  be  God,"  he  says,  *'I 
do  not  slack  from  my  labour,  and  can 


preach  and  write  still."  From  being  one 
of  the  worst  hated  he  became  one  of  the 
best  loved  men  in  the  Kingdom.  At 
Cork,  where  he  had  been  mobbed  and 
burned  in  effigy,  he  was  met  by  a  cor- 
tege of  mounted  horsemen.  At  Falmouth, 
where  he  had  been  taken  prisoner  by  an 
immense  mob,  "roaring  like  lions,"  high 
and  low  lined  the  street  from  one  end  of 
the  town  to  the  other,  "out  of  love  and 
kindness,  gaping  and  staring  as  if  the 
king  were  going  by."  At  Burslem  the 
people  gathered  so  early  in  the  morning 
that  he  began  to  preach  at  half-past  four. 
At  Newgate  he  preached  to  forty-seven 
men  under  sentence  of  death,  "the  clink 
of  whose  chains  was  very  awful."  He 
now  ceased  recording  his  receipts  and  ex- 
penditures in  his  account-book.  His  last 
entry  is  a  remarkable  one :  ' '  For  upwards 
of  eighty  years  I  have  kept  my  accounts 
exactly ;  I  will  not  attempt  it  any  longer, 
being  satisfied  with  the  continual  convic- 
tion that  I  save  all  I  can,  and  give  all  I 
can — that  is,  all  I  have. "  It  is  estimated 
that  he  gave  away  over  thirty  thousand 
pounds  which  he  had  earned  with  his  pen. 
His  was  a  serene  and  sunny  old  age  which 
mellowed  as  the  years  passed  by.  His 
early  asceticism  had  long  disappeared. 
One  of  his  pious  helpers  complained  that 
by  Wesley's  witty  proverbs  he  was  tempted 
to  levity.  To  a  blustering  fellow  who 
attempted  to  throw  him  down,  saying, 
"Sir,  I  never  make  way  for  a  fool,"  Wes- 
ley replied  "I  always  do,"  and  politely 
stepped  aside.— WiTHROW,  W.  H.,  1901, 
The  Wesleys  and  the  New  PortraitSy  The 
Outlook,  vol  69,  p,  318. 

MARRIAGE 

February  19. — Rev.  Mr.  John  Wesley, 
to  Mrs.  Vazel,  of  Threadneedle  Street,  a 
widow  lady  of  large  fortune. — London 
Magazine,  1751,  Marriages. 

The  connection  was  unfortunate. 
There  never  was  a  more  preposterous 
union.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  no  loves 
lighted  their  torches  on  this  occasion ;  and 
it  is  as  much  to  be  presumed,  that  neither 
did  Plutus  preside  at  the  solemnity.  Mrs. 
Wesley's  property  was  too  inconsiderable 
to  warrant  the  supposition  that  it  was  a 
match  of  interest.  Besides,  had  she  been 
ever  so  rich,  it  was  nothing  to  him ;  for 
every  shilling  of  her  fortune  remained  at 
her  own  disposal ;  and  neither  the  years, 
nor  the  temper  of  the  parties,  could  give 


JOHN  WESLEY 


119 


any  reason  to  suppose  them  violently 
enamoured.  That  this  lady  accepted  his 
proposals,  seems  much  less  surprising 
than  that  he  should  have  made  them.  It 
is  probable,  his  situation  at  the  head  of  a 
sect,  and  the  authority  it  conferred,  was 
not  without  its  charms  in  the  eyes  of  an 
ambitious  female.  But  we  much  wonder, 
that  Mr.  Wesley  should  have  appeared  so 
little  acquainted  with  himself  and  with 
human  nature.  He  certainly  did  not 
possess  the  conjugal  virtues.  He  had  no 
taste  for  the  tranquility  of  domestic  re- 
tirement :  while  his  situation,  as  an  itin- 
erant, left  him  little  leisure  for  those 
attentions  which  are  absolutely  necessary' 
to  the  comfort  of  married  life. — Hamp- 
SON,  John,  1791,  Life  of  John  Wesley y 
vol.  II,  p.  124. 

Mr.  Wesley's  constant  habit  of  travel- 
ing. .  .  .  the  number  of  persons  who 
came  to  visit  him  wherever  he  was,  and 
his  extensive  correspondence  with  the 
members  of  the  society  were  circumstances 
unfavourable  to  that  social  intercourse, 
mutual  openness  and  confidence,  which 
form  the  basis  of  happiness  in  the  married 
state.  These  circumstances,  indeed,  would 
not  have  been  so  very  unfavourable,  had 
he  married  a  woman  who  could  have  en- 
tered into  his  views,  and  have  accommo- 
dated herself  to  his  situation.  But  this 
was  not  the  case.  Had  he  searched  the 
whole  kingdom  on  purpose  he  would  hardly 
have  found  a  woman  more  unsuitable  in 
these  respects,  than  she  whom  he  married. 
—Whitehead,  John,  1793-96,  The  Life 
of  the  Rev.  John  Wesley y  Some  Time  Fellow 
of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 

She  seemed  truly  pious,  and  was  very 
agreeable  in  her  person  and  manners. 
She  conformed  to  every  company,  whether 
of  the  rich  or  the  poor ;  and  she  had 
a  remarkable  facility  and  propriety  in 
addressing  them  concerning  their  true  in- 
terests.—Moore,  Henry,  1824,  The  Life 
of  Rev.  John  Wesley,  vol.  ii,  p.  144. 

Neither  in  understanding  nor  in  educa- 
tion was  she  worthy  of  the  eminent  man 
to  whom  she  was  united ;  and  her  temper 
was  intolerably  bad.  During  the  lifetime 
of  her  first  husband,  she  appears  to  have 
enjoyed  every  indulgence;  and,  judging 
from  some  of  his  letters  to  her,  which 
have  been  preserved,  he  paid  an  entire 
deference  to  her  will.  Her  habits  and 
spirit  were  ill  adapted  to  the  privations 


and  inconveniences  which  were  incident  to 
her  new  mode  of  life,  as  the  traveling 
companion  of  Mr.  John  Wesley. — Jack- 
son, Thomas,  1841,  Life  of  Charles  Wesley. 

His  wife  traveled  with  him  for  some 
time,  but  soon  very  naturally  grew  dissat- 
isfied with  a  life  so  restless  and  so  incom- 
patible with  the  taste  and  convenience  of 
her  sex.  Unwilling  to  travel  herself,  she 
became  equally  dissatisfied  with  her  hus- 
band's habitual  absence.  Her  discontent 
took  at  last  the  form  of  a  monomaniacal 
jealousy.  During  twenty  years  she  per- 
secuted him  with  unfounded  suspicions 
and  intolerable  annoyances,  and  it  is 
among  the  most  admirable  proofs  of  the 
genuine  greatness  of  his  character  that 
his  public  career  never  wavered,  never 
lost  one  jot  of  its  energy  or  success,  dur- 
ing this  protracted  domestic  wretched- 
ness. She  repeatedly  deserted  him,  but 
returned  at  his  own  earnest  instance.  She 
opened,  interpolated,  and  then  exposed  to 
his  enemies  his  correspondence,  and  some- 
times traveled  a  hundred  miles  to  see, 
from  a  window,  who  accompanied  him  in 
his  carriage.  At  last,  taking  with  her 
portions  of  his  journals  and  papers,  which 
she  never  restored,  she  left  him  with  the 
assurance  that  she  would  never  return. 
His  allusion  to  the  fact  in  his  journal  is 
characteristically  laconic.  He  knew  not, 
he  says,  the  immediate  cause  of  her  deter- 
mination, and  adds,  ''Non  earn  reliqui, 
non  iimissi,  non  revocabo'' — I  did  not  for- 
sake her,  I  did  not  dismiss  her,  I  will  not 
recall  her.  She  lived  about  ten  years 
after  leaving  him.  Her  tombstone  com- 
memorated her  virtues  as  a  parent  and  a 
friend,  but  not  as  a  wife. — Stevens, 
Abel,  1866,  The  Women  of  Methodism, 
p.  128. 

His  marriage  was  ill  advised  as  well  as 
ill  assorted.  On  both  sides,  it  was,  to  a 
culpable  extent,  hasty,  and  was  contractej 
without  proper  and  sufficient  thought. 
Young  people  entering  into  hurried  mar- 
riages deserve  and  incur  censure ;  and  if 
so,  what  shall  be  said  of  Wesley  and  his 
wife?  They  married  in  haste  and  had 
leisure  to  repent.  Their  act  was,  in  a  high 
degree,  an  act  of  folly;  and,  properly 
enough,  to  the  end  of  life,  both  of  them 
were  made  to  sufl^er  a  serious  penalty.  It 
is  far  from  pleasant  to  pursue  the  subject ; 
but, perhaps  it  is  needful.  In  a  world  of 
danger  like  this,  we  must  look  at  beacons 


120 


JOHN  WESLEY 


as  well  as  beauties.— Tyerman,  L.,  1869, 
The  Life  and  Times  of  the  Rev.  John  Wes- 
ley, vol.  II,  p.  106. 

Her  first  marriage  had  been  full  of  hap- 
piness from  the  simple  cause  that  it  was 
a  union  of  two  loving,  sympathetic  hearts, 
whereas  there  is  abundant  evidence  to 
show  that  her  subsequent  wedding  was 
the  outcome  of  motives  which,  under  the 
circumstances  and  peculiar  conditions  in 
which  they  both  lived,  could  hardly  have 
resulted  otherwise  than  it  did.  .  .  . 
Absorbed  by  the  work  he  had  in  hand,  he 
failed  to  offer  to  his  second  love  those 
demonstrations  of  affection  to  which  she 
had  been  accustomed,  and  which  alone 
make  matrimony  desirable.  She,  on  the 
other  hand,  a  highly-educated  and  sensi- 
tive lady,  endowed  with  a  considerable 
fortune,  accustomed,  as  she  had  been,  to 
the  most  devoted  attentions  of  an  affec- 
tionate husband,  feeling  the  neglect  of  his 
successor  (whether  that  neglect  was  un- 
avoidable or  not),  and  witnessing  the 
honor  and  warm  expressions  of  friendship 
lavished  upon  him  by  his  admirers  of  both 
sexes,  often  riding  with  him  in  the  car- 
riage purchased  with  her  money  while  she 
was  left  alone,  could  hardly  fail  to  feel 
neglected  by  him  who  had  vowed  to  ''love 
and  comfort,  to  honor  and  keep  her  in 
sickness  and  in  health."  One  does  not 
wonder  that  marriage  under  such  circum- 
stances should  turn  out  unhappily.  What 
I  wish  to  point  out  to  your  readers  is  that 
the  fault  was  not  solely  on  tjie  side  of  the 
lady,  as  has  been  and  still  is,  I  fear,  the 
fashion  to  affirm  in  this  case — at  any  rate, 
the  letter  which  you  have  published  does 
not  evidence  much  of  that  "softness" 
which  Mr.  Wesley  says  is  the  only  influence 
by  which  "Love  can  be  won."  I  am  not 
aware  that  man's  greatness  tends  to  de- 
velop marital  affection.  Perhaps  John 
Wesley  was  too  great  a  man  to  cultivate 
such  insignificant  qualifications!  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  marriage  turned 
out  unfortunately ;  in  fact,  it  was  an  in- 
stance of  "marrying  in  haste  and  repent- 
ing at  leisure."  Further,  there  is  much 
better  ground  for  believing  that  Mr.  Wes- 
ley's estrangement  from  his  brother 
Charles  was  due  rather  to  the  intended 
marriage  with  his  first  love  than  his  con- 
summated union  with  Mrs.  Vazeille. — 
Stocks,  Edward  Vazeille,  1885,  To  the 
Editor  of  the  London  Evening  Mail. 


No  doubt  it  was  not  an  easy  thing  to 
be  the  wife  of  such  a  tireless  enthusiast 
as  John  Wesley,  especially  when  he  was 
a  second  husband,  when  the  marriage  was 
barren  of  children.  But  no  apology  can 
excuse  and  no  stretch  of  charity  can  con- 
done the  conduct  of  Mrs.  Wesley.  She 
was  emphatically  unworthy  of  the  supreme 
position  to  which  she  was  called. — Stead, 
William  T.,  1891,  St.  John  of  England, 
Review  of  Reviews,  vol.  3,  p.  257. 

From  the  time  of  this  wedding  John 
Wesley  seems  to  have  experienced  a  kind 
of  unrest.  He  had  been  used  to  take  a 
severely  ascetic  view  of  marriage.  At 
twenty-seven,  he  tells  us,  he  held  it  unlaw- 
ful for  a  priest  to  marry ;  and,  at  a  later 
period,  he  could  not  disassociate  a  sus- 
picion of  impurity  from  the  marriage  bed. 
Whether  he  was  still  affected  by  this  pre- 
judice when  he  was  wooing  Miss  Sophy, 
or  thought  it  better  to  take  her,  impurity 
and  all,  rather  than  go  without  her  agree- 
able society,  is  an  enigma,  and  a  difficult 
one.  Anyhow,  at  forty-six,  he  had  van- 
quished this  scruple,  and  to  wed  or  not  to 
wed  had  come  to  be  a  question,  not  of 
lawfulness,  but  of  expediency.  By  ex- 
pediency must  not  be  understood  worldly 
prudence.  Wesley,  disregarding  scriptural 
advice,  hardly  ever  sat  down  to  count 
the  cost.  But  he  saw  no  reason  why  he 
should  not  do  as  other  men,  and  it  was 
reasonable  to  conclude  that  he  would 
make  a  much  better  husband,  father,  cit- 
izen, and  friend  than  the  vast  majority  of 
those  who  assumed  marital  responsibili- 
ties from  worldly  or  carnal  motives. 
Tyerman  maintains  that,  if  the  woman  he 
married  had  been  worthy  of  him,  he  would 
have  been  one  of  the  most  loving  husbands 
that  ever  lived.  Perhaps  so.  No  doubt 
he  was,  in  his  awkward  way,  affectionate. 
But  sentiment,  though  too  much  dispar- 
aged by  professional  match-makers,  is  no 
adequate  basis  for  marriage.  To  do  him 
justice,  Wesley  never  supposed  that  it 
was,  but  other  considerations  presented 
themselves  when  he  w^as  morally  or  actu- 
ally committed  to  a  choice  recommended 
by  sentiment  alone. — Snell,  F.  J.,  1900, 
Wesley  and  Methodism,  p.  188. 

AS  A  PREACHER 

My  health  advances  faster  than  my 
amusement.  However,  I  have  been  at  one 
opera,  Mr.  Wesley's.  They  have  boys 
and  girls  with  charming  voices,  that  sing 


JOHN  WESLEY 


121 


hymns,  in  parts,  to  Scotch  ballad  tunes; 
but  indeed  so  long,  that  one  would  think 
they  were  already  in  eternity,  and  knew 
how  much  time  they  had  before  them. 
The  chapel  is  very  neat,  with  true  Gothic 
windows ;  (yet  I  am  not  converted) ;  but  I 
was  glad  to  see  that  luxury  is  creeping  in 
upon  them  before  persecution.  .  .  . 
He  spoke  his  sermon,  but  so  fast,  and  with 
so  little  accent,  that  I  am  sure  he  has 
often  uttered  it,  for  it  was  like  a  lesson. 
There  were  parts  and  eloquence  in  it ;  but 
towards  the  end  he  exalted  his  voice,  and 
acted  very  ugly  enthusiasm.  .  .  .  Ex- 
cept a  few  from  curiosity,  and  some  honor- 
able women,  the  congregation  was  very 
mean. — Walpole,  Horace,  1766,  To  John 
Chute,  Oct.  10;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham, 
vol.  V,  p.  16. 

I  felt  great  satisfaction  last  week  in 
hearing  that  veteran  in  the  service  of 
God,  the  Rev.  John  Wesley.  At  another 
time,  and  not  knowing  the  man,  I  should 
almost  have  ridiculed  his  figure.  Far 
from  it  now.  I  looked  upon  him  with 
a  respect  bordering  upon  enthusiasm. 
After  the  people  had  sung  one  verse  of 
a  hymn,  he  arose  and  said :  ''It  gives  me 
a  great  pleasure  to  find  that  you  have  not 
lost  your  singing ;  neither  men  nor  women. 
You  have  not  forgotten  a  single  note. 
And  I  hope,  by  the  assistance  of  God, 
which  enables  you  to  sing  well,  you  may 
do  all  other  things  well."  A  universal 
''Amen"  followed.  At  the  end  of  every 
head  or  division  of  his  discourse,  he  fin- 
ished by  a  kind  of  prayer,  a  momentary 
wish  as  it  were,  not  consisting  of  more 
than  three  or  four  words,  which  was 
always  followed  by  a  universal  buzz.  His 
discourse  was  short.  The  text  I  could 
not  hear.  After  the  last  prayer,  he  rose 
up  and  addressed  the  people  on  liberality  of 
sentiment,  and  spoke  much  against  refus- 
ing to  join  with  any  congregation  on  ac- 
count of  difference  in  opinion. — Robin- 
son, Henry  Crabb,  1790,  Letter,  Oct.  18 ; 
Diary,  Reminiscences  and  Correspondence, 
vol.  I.  p.  20. 

The  travels  of  Mr.  Wesley  in  the  work 
of  the  ministry,  for  fifty  years  together, 
are  I  apprehend  without  precedent.  Dur- 
ing this  period  he  traveled  about  four 
thousand  five  hundred  miles  every  year, 
one  year  with  another.  ...  It  had 
been  impossible  for  him  to  perform  this 
almost  incredible  degree  of  labor  without 


great  punctuality  and  care  in  the  manage- 
ment of  his  time.  He  had  stated  hours 
for  every  purpose,  and  his  only  relaxation 
was  a  change  of  employment.  .  .  . 
For  fifty-two  years  or  upward,  he  gener- 
ally delivered  two,  frequently  three  or 
four,  sermons  in  a  day.  Hut  calculating 
at  two  sermons  a  day,  and  allowing  as  a 
writer  of  his  life  has  done,  fifty  annually 
for  extraordinary  occasions,  the  whole 
number  of  sermons  he  preached  during 
this  period  will  be  forty  thousand  five 
hundred  and  sixty.  To  these  may  be 
added  an  infinite  number  of  exhortations 
to  the  societies  after  preaching,  and  in 
other  occasional  meetings,  at  which  he 
assisted. — Whitehead,  John,  1793-96, 
Life  of  the  Rev.  John  Wesley,  Some  Time 
Fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 

Wesley  you  alone  can  touch ;  but  will 
you  not  have  the  hive  about  you  ?  When 
I  was  about  twelve  years  old,  I  heard  him 
preach  more  than  once,  standing  on  a 
chair,  in  Kelso  churchyard.  He  was  a 
most  venerable  figure,  but  his  sermons 
were  vastly  too  colloquial  for  the  taste  of 
Saunders.  He  told  many  excellent  stories. 
—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1815,  Letter  to 
Robert  Southey,  April  4 ;  Life  by  Lockhart. 

Wesley's  own  temperament  was  rather 
cold,  and  he  had  probably  from  that  cold 
and  calm  nature,  and  the  great  self-con- 
trol and  presence  of  mind  which  he  pos- 
sessed, the  power  to  awe,  subdue,  and 
thrill  an  audience.  While  Whitefield  on 
many  occasions  preached  dissolved  in  tears, 
and  so  moved  vast  numbers,  the  strong 
and  determined  will  of  Wesley  was  almost 
electrical  in  its  influence  and  even  fright- 
ful in  its  effects  on  the  assemblages  he 
preached  before.  Frequently,  when  he 
had  concluded  his  discourse,  the  whole  of 
his  congregation  appeared  to  be  riveted 
to  the  ground,  and  not  a  person  moved  till 
he  had  retired. — Ellis,  G.  A.,  1871,  John 
Wesley,  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  27,  p.  330. 

Wesley  was  not  a  pictorial  or  dramatic 
preacher  like  his  great  preaching  contem- 
porary, Whitefield;  but  whereas  White- 
field,  powerful  preacher  as  he  was,  was 
yet  more  popular  than  powerful ;  Wesley, 
popular  preacher  as  he  was,  was  yet  more 
powerful,  in  comparison  with  his  fellows, 
than  he  was  popular.— Rigg,  James  Har- 
rison, 1875,  The  Living  Wesley. 

He  always  preached  in  gown  and  cas- 
sock.   He  lacked  the  pathetic  tone  and 


122 


JOHN  WESLEY 


the  dramatic  delivery  of  Whitefield.  He 
had  an  essentially  calm  and  logical  mind. 
His  speech,  like  Cobden's,  was  conspicu- 
ously ''unadorned."  He  preached  the 
Gospel  with  the  least  possible  admixture 
of  individual  colouring.  His  very  lan- 
guage was  unusually  Biblical,  and  he  con- 
stantly used  the  ipsissima  verba  of  Scrip- 
ture. On  the  other  hand,  he  had  a  sweet 
and  penetrating  voice,  which  could  be 
distinctly  heard  at  a  measured  distance  of 
one  hundred  and  forty  yards.  He  had  an 
ample  command  of  the  plainest,  purest, 
and  most  powerful  English.  Beneath  his 
calm  exterior  slept  a  very  volcano  of  de- 
votion to  God  and  love  to  man.  And  his 
appeal  was  always  directly  and  unmistak- 
ably to  the  human  conscience. — Hughes, 
Hugh  Price,  1891,  John  Wesley,  The 
Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  29,  p.  486. 

When  the  storm  passed  over,  the  *'Sym- 
monds"  cast  anchor  in  the  Savannah 
River,  near  Coxpur  Island,  and  one  or 
two  days  aftewards  the  voyagers  reached 
the  town  in  safety,  on  February  5,  1736. 
On  the  seventh  of  March  following  John 
Wesley  preached  the  first  Methodist  ser- 
mon every  preached  on  this  continent,  not 
far  from  the  site  of  the  present  Christ 
Church,  Savannah,  of  which  he  subse- 
quently was  the  third  rector.  It  was  ad- 
dressed to  a  mixed  assemblage.  His  con- 
gregation hardly  exceeded  four  hundred 
persons,  including  children  and  adults, 
reenforced,  however,  by  one  hundred  or 
more  of  the  neighboring  Indians.  Wes- 
ley was  then  in  the  prime  of  his  stalwart 
manhood.  He  was  not  robust  in  his  phy- 
sique, but  shapely  in  his  figure,  measuring 
five  feet  ten  inches  in  stature,  and  with  a 
Roman  physiognomy  and  a  bearing  not 
unbefitting  a  Roman  Senator.  He  was,  at 
this  time,  about  thirty-four  years  old, 
and  as  he  stood  before  his  strange  con- 
gregation he  was  an  impressive  figure. 
He  discussed  in  a  most  eloquent  manner 
the  principles  of  Christian  charity  as  ar- 
gued by  Saint  Paul  in  the  thirteenth 
chapter  of  First  Corinthians.  Dr.  Nunes, 
a  Spanish  physician  and  a  Jew,  was  an  in- 
terested listener  to  the  sermon.  He  was 
frequently  known  in  after  life  to  say  that 
this  chapter  of  Saint  Paul's  as  expounded 
by  Mr.  Wesley,  deserved  to  be  written  in 
letters  of  gold.— Scott,  W.  J.,  1897, 
When  John  Wesley  Preached  in  Georgia, 
The  Ladies^  Home  Journal,  vol.  14,  June. 


Wesley's  fame  as  a  preacher  was  some- 
what obscured  by  the  extraordinary  power 
of  Whitefield,  whose  dramatic  eloquence 
attracted  all  classes.  Yet  the  severity 
and  overwhelming  religious  power  of 
Wesley  was  such  that  men  who  would 
not  submit  to  the  claims  of  God  as  ex- 
pounded by  him  did  not  dare  ta  hear  him. 
He  attracted  even  larger  congregations 
than  Whitefield,  and  produced  a  more 
powerful  and  permanent  impression.  .  .  . 
No  preacher  since  the  days  when  Paul 
reasoned  of  righteousness,  temperance, 
and  judgment  to  come,  equaled  him,  on 
extraordinary  occasions,  in  moral  power, 
of  which  many  instances  are  given  by 
Southey. — Buckley,  James  M.,  1897,  A 
History  of  Methodism  in  the  United  States, 
vol.  I,  p.  329. 

WESLEYISM 
My  brothers  are  now  become  so  notori- 
ous, that  the  world  will  be  curious  to 
know  when  and  where  they  were  born, 
what  schools  bred  at,  what  colleges  of  in 
Oxford,  and  when  matriculated,  what  de- 
grees they  took,  and  where,  when,  and  by 
whom  ordained.  I  wish  they  may  spare 
so  much  time  as  to  vouchsafe  a  little  of 
their  story.  For  my  own  part,  I  had 
much  rather  have  them  picking  straws 
within  the  walls,  than  preaching  in  the 
area  of  Moorfields.  It  was  with  exceed- 
ing concern  and  grief,  I  heard  you  had 
countenanced  a  spreading  delusion,  so  far 
as  to  be  one  of  Jack's  congregation.  Is 
it  not  enough  that  I  am  bereft  of  both  my 
brothers,  but  must  my  mother  follow  too  ? 
I  earnestly  beseech  the  Almighty  to  pre- 
serve you  from  joining  a  schism  at  the 
close  of  your  life,  as  you  were  unfortu- 
nately engaged  in  one  at  the  beginning  of 
it.  It  will  cost  you  many  a  protest, 
should  you  retain  your  integrity,  as  I  hope 
to  God  you  will.  They  boast  of  you  al- 
ready as  a  disciple.  They  design  separa- 
tion. They  are  aready  forbidden  all  the 
pulpits  in  London ;  and  to  preach  in  that 
diocese  is  actual  schism.  In  all  likelihood, 
it  will  come  to  the  same  all  over  England, 
if  the  bishops  have  courage  enough.  They 
leave  off  the  liturgy  in  the  fields;  and 
though  Mr.  Whitefield  expresses  his  value 
for  it,  he  never  once  read  it  to  his  tatter- 
demalions on  a  common.  Their  societies 
are  sufficient  to  dissolve  all  other  socie- 
ties but  their  own.  ...  As  I  told 
Jack,  I  am  not  afraid  the  Church  should 


r 


JOHN  WESLEY 


128 


excommunicate  him  (discipline  is  at  too 
low  an  ebb),  but,  that  he  should  excom- 
municate the  Church.  It  is  pretty  near 
ii;.— Wesley,  Samuel,  1739,  Letter  to 
Susannah  Wesley. 

A  man  of  great  views,  great  energy, 
and  great  virtues.  That  he  awakened  a 
zealous  spidt,  not  only  in  his  own  commu- 
nity, but  in  a  Church  which  needed  some- 
thing to  quicken  it,  is  acknowledged  by 
the  members  of  that  Church  itself ;  that 
he  encouraged  enthusiasm  and  extrava- 
gance, lent  a  ready  ear  to  false  and  im- 
possible relations,  and  spread  superstition 
as  well  as  piety,  would  hardly  be  denied 
by  the  candid  and  judicious  among  his  own 
people.  In  its  immediate  effects  the 
powerful  principle  of  religion,  which  he 
and  his  preachers  diffused,  has  reclaimed 
many  from  a  course  of  sin,  has  supported 
many  in  poverty,  sickness,  and  affliction, 
and  has  imparted  to  many  a  triumphant 
joy  in  death. — Southey,  Robert,  1820, 
The  Life  of  Wesley  and  the  Rise  and  Prog- 
ress of  Methodism,  p.  589. 

Wesley's  object  was  to  revive  the  spirit 
of  religion  in  the  Church  of  England.  To 
this  he  thought  himself  called ;  for  this 
he  commenced  and  continued  his  labours. 
— Watson,  Richard,  1820,  Observations 
of  Southey' s  Life  of  Wesley,  p.  125. 

My  present  theme  is  Southey's  **Life  of 
Wesley" — a  theme  much  more  copious, 
and  one  which  interests  me  a  good  deal. 
How  I  shall  succeed  in  it  I  do  not  yet 
know ;  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  give  Wes- 
ley his  due  praise,  at  the  same  time  that 
I  am  to  distinguish  all  that  was  blamable 
in  his  conduct  and  doctrines ;  and  it  is  a 
very  difficult  matter  indeed  to  write  on 
such  a  subject  at  all  without  offending 
one  or  both  of  the  two  fiercest  and  fool- 
ishest  parties  that  ever  divided  a  Church — 
the  High  Churchmen  and  the  Evangelicals. 
— Heber,  Reginald,  1820,  Letter  to  R. 
J.  Wilmot  Horton,  May  26 ;  Bishop  Heber, 
ed.  Smith,  p.  98. 

Metastasio:  Strange  stories  are  re- 
ported of  one  Wesley,  who  is  permitted 
by  the  authorities  to  preach  in  the  open 
fields. 

Alfieri.  Were  not  those  whom  you 
most  venerate  permitted  by  the  Pagan 
authorities  to  preach  both  in  the  fields 
and  in  the  cities?  Wesley  gave  out  no 
new  Commandments:  he   opened  before 


the  eyes  of  the  assembled  thousands  the 
small  volume  which  contains  them,  and 
cried  aloud,  "Read!  Readr  I  know  an 
Italian  who  would  have  spoken  to  them 
words  of  far  different  import  in  their  own 
vernacular,  and  have  said,  ''If  you  dare  to 
read,  go  and  be  damned.''  I  am  not  highly 
fanatical,  but  I  do  bear  veneration  toward 
this  saintly  man,  commanding  by  meekness 
and  humility.  He  found  the  members  of 
the  Anglican  Church  putrescent,  as  Luther 
found  the  Papal ;  he  used  no' knife  of  cau- 
tery.—Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1828, 
Alfieri  and  Metastasio,  Imaginary  Con- 
versations, Third  Series,  vol.  v,  p.  132. 

The  first  of  theological  statesman. — 
Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  1857,  History 
of  Civilization  in  England,  vol.  I,  p.  421. 

No  wonder  that  the  clergy  were  corrupt 
and  indifferent  amid  this  indifference  and 
corruption.  No  wonder  that  skeptics 
multiplied  and  morals  degenerated,  so  far 
as  they  depended  on  the  influence  of  such 
a  king.  No  wonder  that  Whitfield  cried 
out  in  the  wilderness, — that  Wesley  quit- 
ted the  insulted  temple  to  pray  on  the 
hill-side.  I  look  with  reverence  on  those 
men  at  that  time.  Which  is  the  sublimer 
spectacle, — the  good  John  Wesley,  sur- 
rounded by  his  congregation  of  miners  at 
the  pit's  mouth,  or  the  queen's  chaplains 
mumbling  through  their  morning  office  in 
their  ante-room,  under  the  picture  of  her 
great  Venus,  with  the  door  opened  into 
the  adjoining  chamber,  where  the  queen 
is  dressing,  talking  scandal  to  Lord  Her- 
vey,  or  uttering  sneers  at  Lady  Suffolk, 
who  is  kneeling  with  the  basin  at  her  mis- 
tress's side  ?  — Thackeray,  William 
Makepeace,  1861,  The  Four  Georges. 

Wesley  died  at  the  head  of  a  thoroughly 
organized  host  of  550  itinerant  preachers, 
and  140,000  members  of  his  societies,  in 
the  United  Kingdom,  British  North  Amer- 
ica, in  the  United  States,  and  West  Indies. 
—Stevens,  Abel,  1861,  History  of  Meth- 
odism, vol.  III. 

Wesley,  nursed  in  the  most  exclusive 
church  principles,  kindled  the  flame  of  his 
piety  by  the  devout  reading  of  mystic 
books,  when  our  university  was  marked 
by  the  half-heartedness  of  the  time ;  and 
afterwards,  when  instructed  by  the  Pie- 
tists of  Germany,  devoted  a  long  life  to 
wander  over  the  country,  despised,  ill- 
treated,  but  still  untired;  teaching  with 
indefatigable  energy  the  faith  which  he 


124 


JOHN  WESLEY 


loved,  and  introducing  those  irregular 
agencies  of  usefulness  which  are  now  so 
largely  adopted  even  in  the  church.  He 
too  was  an  accomplished  scholar,  and  pos- 
sessed great  gifts  of  administration ;  but 
whatever  good  he  effected,  in  kindling  the 
spiritual  Christianity  which  checked  the 
spread  of  infidelity,  was  not  so  much  by 
argument  as  by  stating  the  omnipotent 
doctrine  of  the  Cross,  Christ  set  forth  as 
the  propitiation  for  sin  through  faith  in 
his  blood. — Farrar,  Adam  Storey,  1862, 
A  Critical  History  of  Free  Thought^  Lec- 
ture iv,  J).  161. 

John  Wesley,  the  founder  of  Methodism, 
with  all  his  eccentricities  and  puerilities, 
was  a  man  in  whom  there  was  much  that 
was  great  and  noble.  He  cannot,  indeed, 
be  ranked  with  some  of  those  apostles  of 
Christianity  whose  single  object  was  to  do 
good.  He  loved  excitement,  power,  and 
praise.  He  allowed  himself  to  think  that 
he  was  the  constant  subject  of  miraculous 
interpositions,  and  that  when  his  horse 
fell  lame,  or  his  head  ached,  a  special  in- 
terposition was  wrought  in  his  favour. 
He  believed  that  people  could  be  converted 
in  dreams,  or  by  visions  to  their  waking 
senses,  and  that  erring  and  fallible  mor- 
tals could  attain  sinless  perfection  in  this 
life.  He  seemed  to  suppose  himself  to 
have  the  power  of  healing  diseases  by 
faith  and  prayer;  and  though  St.  Paul 
w^as  obliged  to  see  Epaphroditus  ''sick 
nigh  unto  death,"  yet  that  the  health  of 
his  friends  was  a  matter  he  could  boldly 
claim  of  God.  He  allowed  himself  to  fall 
into  the  foolish  and  reprehensible  practice 
of  divination  and  sortilege,  and  to  enter- 
tain the  absurd  notion  that  every  sort  of 
diversion  was  sinful.  He  was  inconsistent 
in  his  teaching,  holding  at  one  time  that 
men  were  justified  by  faith,  ''including 
no  good  work;"  and  at  another,  that  "re- 
pentance and  works  meet  for  repentance" 
must  go  before  faith.  But  though  incon- 
sistencies may  be  found  in  his  teaching, 
and  littlenesses  and  follies  in  his  conduct, 
yet  Wesley  was  essentially  an  honest  man, 
who  laboured  almost  beyond  example  for 
the  good  of  his  fellow-creatures.  For 
fifty  years  he  continued  his  unabating, 
ungrudging  toil,  and  the  results  were 
enormous.  At  his  death,  the  members  of 
his  flock  in  England  exceeded  71,000,  in 
America  48,000,  and  he  had  500  traveling 
preachers  under  his  control.  —  Perry, 


George  G.,  1864,  The  History  of  the 
Church  of  England,  vol.  iii,  p.  457. 

There  are  probably  few  names  familiar 
to  all  Englishmen  which  have  gathered 
round  them  associations  so  misleading  as 
those  which  surround  John  Wesley.  For 
those  who  take  their  impressions  from 
hearsay,  it  is  no  more  than  a  symbol  for 
the  religion  of  the  illiterate.  Others,  to 
whom  it  is  familiar  through  cursory  men- 
tions in  the  literature  of  the  day,  recall, 
on  hearing  a  name  coupled  with  Richelieu 
by  Lord  Macaulay,  and  with  Luther  by 
Mr.  Buckle,  vague  notions  of  able  eccle- 
siastical origination  and  controversial  zeal. 
Neither  view  (if  the  following  delineation 
be  correct)  can  be  accepted  without  large 
modification.  Wesley  reached  the  age  of 
thirty-six  without  any  exclusive  devotion 
to  the  religious  teaching  of  a  particular 
class;  his  organizing  power,  great  as  it 
was,  does  not  exhibit  his  character  on  its 
strongest  side,  while  his  advocacy  of  par- 
ticular doctrines  brings  forward  his  weak- 
est. Perhaps  the  founder  of  a  sect  is 
especially  liable  to  misconception.  The 
true  representatives  of  a  reformer  are 
never  those  who  call  themselves  by  his 
name :  what  is  remarkable  in  him  is  that 
he  breaks  through  conventional  barriers, 
what  is  remarkable  in  them  is  that  they 
take  the  beaten  track ;  and  it  is  necessary, 
in  order  to  understand  him,  to  connect 
him  with  his  cotemporaries  rather  than 
with  his  followers. — Wedgwood,  Julia, 
1870,  John  Wesley,  p.  1. 

He  was  not  exactly  a  man  of  genius  or  a 
great  writer  ;  and  in  his  younger  days  he 
would  have  seemed  chiefly  remarkable  to 
the  common  observer  for  a  certain  degree 
of  eccentricity  and  want  of  sense.  Even 
good  men  would  have  remarked  of  him 
that  he  was  always  pushing  his  opinion  to 
extremes.  And  his  opinions  were  chang- 
ing, for  in  the  course  of  life  he  seems  to 
have  passed  almost  from  one  pole  of  the- 
ology to  the  other.  Yet  this  was  the  man 
who  has  a  greater  present  influence  on 
the  religion  of  the  Christian  world  than 
any  apostle  or  saint  or  prophet  since  the 
Reformation,  perhaps  it  may  be  said  with 
truth  since  St.  Paul  himself. — Jowett, 
Benjamin,  1881,  Sermons  Biographical 
and  Miscellaneous,  ed.  Fremantle,  p.  112. 

It  is  remarkable  that  Wesleyanism  has 
found  so  little  favour  in  its  founder's  own 
family.    With  the  exception  of  some  of 


JOHN  WESLEY 


125 


their  sisters,  who  became  connected  with 
the  Society,  John  and  Charles  stood  alone 
during  their  lifetime,  so  far  as  their  rel- 
atives were  concerned,  and  the  majority 
of  those  who  have  since  borne  their  name 
have  adhered  staunchly  to  the  Church  of 
England.  This  is  as  John  himself  would 
have  had  it,  for  he  was  no  Separatist, 
though  he  could  not  stop  the  movement  of 
which  he  was  the  mainspring ;  nor  did  he 
wish  to  do  so,  but  he  did  not  see  that 
it  would  necessarily  lead  to  secession. 
Blood,  however,  will  tell,  and  a  vast 
amount  of  talent  and  energy  are  still 
manifested  in  all  the  descendants  of  the 
Epworth  family.  Impetuous  and  quick- 
witted, and,  perhaps,  not  overmuch  given 
to  take  thought  for  the  morrow,  they 
must  all  be  up  and  doing,  and  in  these 
characteristics  they  vindicate  their  lin- 
eage, and  the  vigour  of  that  original 
strain  which  is  still  so  far  from  being 
worn  out. — Clarke,  Eliza,  1886,  Susanna 
Wesley  {Eminent  Women  Series),  p.  238. 

His  wise  catholicity  and  broad  and  lib- 
eral sympathies  are  exemplified  in  the  ad- 
miration which,  at  a  time  when  the  name 
excited  detestation  and  disgust,  Wesley 
expressed  for  Ignatius  Loyola.  Yet  Wes- 
ley may,  in  some  respects,  be  called  the 
Loyola  of  the  eighteenth  century.  .  .  . 
Like  Loyola,  Wesley  was  inflamed  by  an 
ardent  zeal  for  religion ;  like  him  again 
he  saw  keenly  the  evils  of  the  time  and 
framed  a  remedy  that  could  never  be  a 
panecea.  His  systematic  mind  was  gifted 
with  a  peculiar  power  of  giving  permanent 
form  to  the  excitement  or  enthusiasm  of 
the  moment.  He  began  his  career  with 
no  other  project  than  that  of  raising  up 
"a,  holy  people;"  but  as  his  work  grew 
beneath  his  hand,  his  intellect  proved 
comprehensive  enough  to  conceive  a 
gigantic  plan,  and  yet  sufficiently  minute 
to  grasp  the  smallest  details.  And  his 
organizing  capacity  was  not  greater  than 
his  administrative  power.  The  structure 
of  his  Society  was  admirable,  and  his 
management  of  the  machine  in  all  the 
earlier  years  of  his  life  showed  a  happy 
union  of  tact,  firmness,  and  flexibility. 
He  was  not  a  dogmatic  theologian,  and  he 
took  no  pleasure  in  philosophical  specula- 
tion.— Prothero,  R.  E.,  1891,  John 
Wesley,  Good  Words,  vol  32,  p.  195. 

Of  that  work,  it  has  been  well  said,  Meth- 
odism itself  is  one  the  of  least  significant 


results.  True,  at  his  death  in  1791, 
his  followers  were  counted  by  the  thou- 
sand, and  to-day  are  counted  by  the  mil- 
lion. But  even  they  were  the  least  result 
of  the  Methodist  revival.  For  its  effects 
were  felt  far  and  wide  in  other  directions. 
The  Church  of  England  awoke  once  more 
from  its  apathy  and  sloth,  and  its  clergy 
roused  themselves  from  lifelessness  and 
contempt  to  a  practical  religious  energy 
of  which  we  still  feel  the  force.  And  in 
the  nation  at  large  appeared  a  new  moral 
enthusiasm  which,  rigid  and  pedantic 
though  it  often  seemed,  was  still  healthy 
in  social  tone,  and  whose  power  was  seen 
in  the  partial  disappearance  of  the  open 
profligacy  which  disgraced  the  early 
Georgian  era.  Philanthropy,  and  social 
reform  generally,  received  a  fresh  stimu- 
lus among  the  mass  of  the  nation,  a  stim- 
ulus whose  effects  were  afterwards  seen  in 
an  amelioration  of  our  penal  code,  more 
humanity  in  our  prison  life,  and  a  feeling 
of  indignation  against  negro  slavery. 
Wesley  helped  also,  we  believe,  very 
largely  the  growth  of  the  national  con- 
sciousness of  the  English  people,  by  giv- 
ing men  something  more  to  think  about 
than  their  own  individual  aims  and  their 
own  individual  life.  Especially  was  this 
the  case  among  the  poorer  people,  and  it 
is  curious  to  note  how  many  leaders  of  the 
working  classes  have  sprung  from  the 
ranks  of  Methodism.— Gibbins,  H.  de  B., 
1892,  English  Social  Reformers,  p.  92. 

If  Whitefield  was  the  most  persuasive 
and  eloquent  preacher  of  the  early  Meth- 
odists, John  Wesley  was  incomparably  the 
greatest  man.  He  w^as  a  trained  scholar, 
as  well  as  an  efl^ective  preacher,  and  he 
was  an  organizer,  in  this  respect  on  a 
level  with  the  most  renowned  leaders  of 
the  mediaeval  monastic  orders. — Fisher, 
George  Park,  1896,  History  of  Christian 
Doctrine,  p.  390. 

He  came  to  see  that  the  Spirit  of  God 
was  not  merely  in  the  Bible,  but  in  the 
souls  of  living  men,  giving  light  and  life 
to  the  men  of  the  eighteenth  century  as 
to  those  of  the  first.  If  this  was  fanati- 
cism, it  was  fanaticism  that  for  more  than 
fifty  years  bore  the  strain  of  one  of  the 
most  strenuous  and  perfectly  organised 
lives  ever  lived. — Brown,  J.,  1896,  Social 
England,  ed.  Traill,  vol.  v,  p.  237. 

The  Oxford  methodists  were  assiduous 
in  study  (in  1731  John  and  Charles  Wesley 


126 


JOHN  WESLEY 


began  a  lifelong  practice  of  conversing 
with  each  other  in  Latin) ;  every  night 
they  met  for  consultation  before  supper ; 
they  relieved  the  poor,  and  looked  after 
the  clothing  and  training  of  school  chil- 
dren ;  they  daily  visited  the  prisoners  in 
the  castle,  read  prayers  there  on  Wednes- 
days and  Fridays,  preached  there  on  Sun- 
days, and  administered  the  communion 
once  a  month.  Their  religion  was  formed 
on  the  prayer-book ;  next  to  the  bible  in 
point  of  doctrine  they  valued  the  books  of 
homilies.  Nor  did  they  deny  themselves 
recreation ;  it  would  be  unjust  to  charge 
'  their  temper  as  morbid ;  their  philanthropy 
kept  them  in  touch  with  real  life ;  Wes- 
ley's strong  sense,  his  cheerfulness  (he 
did  not  disdain  a  game  of  cards,  as  his 
private  accounts  show),  and  his  knowledge 
of  human  nature,  gave  a  manly  tone  to 
their  zeal.  The  marked  divergence  of 
their  subsequent  careers,  while  showing 
reaction  in  some  cases  from  an  ideal  over- 
strained, proves  also  that  the  discipline  of 
strictness  was  not  ruinous  to  the  inde- 
pendence of  individual  minds.  Wesley 
himself  was  little  of  an  ascetic;  to  be 
methodical  and  exact  was  with  him  an  es- 
sential part  of  happiness.  He  rose  at  four 
to  cure  himself  of  lying  awake  at  night. 
At  five,  morning  and  evening,  he  spent  an 
hour  in  private  prayer.  His  diary  and 
accounts  were  kept  with  constant  pre- 
cision. One  day  a  week  he  allowed  for 
friendly  correspondence. — Gordon,  Alex- 
ander, 1899,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  LX,  p.  304. 

Few  men  have  more  genuine  claims  to 
greatness  than  John  Wesley,  a  many  sided 
man,  but  in  all  things  the  reformer.  That 
really  was  his  great  work,  although  usu- 
ally he  is  thought  of  only  as  the  leader  of 
an  evangelistic  movement,  the  preacher 
and  crusader  who  founded  the  Methodist 
church.  As  a  preacher,  a  critic,  a  teacher, 
and  an  organizer,  Wesley  was  truly  re- 
markable. Measured  by  what  he  accom- 
plished, he  was  colossal.  He  was  true  to 
his  own  ideals,  and  his  capacity  for  work 
is  not  to  be  measured  by  ordinary  stand- 
ards. Wesley  earned  two  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  by  his  writings,  which  is  the 
smallest  part  of  what  he  did  in  his  long 
life.  He  gave  avv^ay  every  penny  of  this. 
Spurgeon  said  of  him:  *'When  John 
Wesley  died  he  left  behind  him  two  silver 
spoons  in  London,  two  in  Bristol,  a  teapot, 


and  the  great  Methodist  church. "  This 
church,  with  its  seven  million  members- 
nine  tenths  of  them  in  America — and  its 
mission  work  extending  throughout  the 
world,  is  the  magnificent  monument  of  the 
great  man  who  founded  it. — Johnson,  J. 
Wesley,  1900,  The  Last  of  the  Great  Re- 
formers, Munsey's  Magazine,  vol,  23,  p.  Ibl, 
GENERAL 

He  never  wrote  merely  to  please,  or  to 
get  money.  His  object  constantly  was,  to 
inform  the  understanding,  and  mend  the 
heart:  to  discourage  vice,  and  promote 
virtue.  He  never  published  anything  with 
a  view  to  promote  a  party-spirit.  A  great 
degree  of  candor  and  liberality  runs 
through  all  his  publications ;  and  in  mat- 
ters of  mere  speculation,  he  endeavored  to 
show  the  necessity  of  christian  love,  and 
mutual  forbearance  among  those  who  differ 
in  opinion.  In  his  controversies,  he  com- 
bated opinions,  not  men.  And  this  he 
did,  in  general,  with  great  moderation. 
He  maintained,  that  even  right  opinions, 
make  but  a  small  part  of  religion :  that,  a 
man  may  hold  the  truth  in  unrighteous- 
ness, and  therefore  perish  with  the  greater 
condemnation.  But,  a  man  whose  heart, 
from  a  living  faith  in  Christ  operating  as 
a  practical  principle,  is  influenced  to  the 
love  of  God  and  man,  and  whose  life  is 
correspondent  to  it,  cannot  err  danger- 
ously, though  he  may  hold  some  erroneous 
opinions.  And  he  thought,  that  we  ought 
to  contend  for  this  christian  temper  and 
practice,  much  more  earnestly,  than  for 
any  speculative  notions,  not  essentially 
necessary  to  obtain  them.  This  made 
him  earnest  to  contend  for  practical  truth ; 
and  had  a  happy  influence  on  all  his  writ- 
ings. .  .  .  Mr.  Wesley's  treatise  on 
''Original  Sin,"  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
labored  performance  that  he  published. 
He  knew,  and  respected  the  abilities  and 
character  of  Dr.  Taylor,  his  opponent. 
He  bestowed  much  time  and  attention  in 
a  careful  investigation  of  the  subject; 
but  avoided  entering  into  minute  metaphys- 
ical disquisitions.  He  knew  that  nothing 
could  be  aflirmed  in  this  way  of  reasoning, 
however  true,  but  what  another  might 
deny  with  some  degree  of  plausibility. 
His  treatise  therefore  is,  an  animated  de- 
fence of  the  orthodox  doctrine,  in  a 
deduction  from  the  actual  state  of  moral- 
ity in  all  ages,  and  under  every  kind  of 
restraint  from  evil  that  has  been  imposed 


JOHN  WESLEY 


127 


on  mankind;  or,  as  he  expresses  it,  "from 
Scripture,  reason,  and  experience."  — 
Whitehead,  John,  1793-96,  The  Life  of 
the  Rev.  John  Wesley,  Some  Time  Fellow 
of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford. 

As  a  logician  he  piqued  himself,  as  we 
have  seen,  on  his  skill ;  and  it  must  be 
allowed  that  his  writings  in  general  are 
distinguished  by  a  remarkable  force, 
acuteness,  and  vivacity  of  conception  and 
expression.  Yet,  it  is  also  remarkable 
that  the  doctrines  which  he  most  anxiously 
insisted  on  through  life,  w^ere  not  only 
incapable  of  being  moulded  into  any  con- 
sistent system,  but  were,  many  of  them, 
in  direct  opposition  to  each  other.  His 
tenet  of  assurance  was  decidedly  Calvinis- 
tic;  and  one  which  could  not,  without 
great  violence  to  common  sense,  be  sep- 
arated from  the  notion  of  absolute  elec- 
tion. His  doctrine  of  Christian  perfection 
had  as  direct  a  tendency  to  make  men 
Mystics  or  Antinomians ;  for  what  can  be 
the  use  of  ordinances  to  him  who  needs 
no  further  grace ;  and  what  is  law  to  him 
who  cannot  sin?  Yet  Wesley  was  too 
good  a  logician  to  be  a  Calvinist ;  he  was 
too  pure  and  holy  to  fall  into  the  Antino- 
mian  errors,  and  he  had  too  cool  a  head 
to  remain  long  a  Mystic.  How  strange 
that  he  did  not  perceive  that  his  eclectic 
divinity  could  not  stand  by  itself,  and 
that  if  he  went  thus  far  he  must  go 
farther !  Nor  is  it  easy  to  apprehend  how 
his  powerful  mind,  while  it  honestly 
lamented  the  disorders  and  vices,  the 
pride,  envy,  and  slander  which  prevailed 
in  his  societies,  should  not  have  perceived 
that  the  details  of  his  discipline  were  of 
themselves  calculated  to  generate  such  a 
spirit,  and  to  undo,  in  a  great  measure,  in 
the  minds  of  his  followers,  the  good  which 
his  preaching  and  example  had  produced 
in  them.  —  Heber,  Reginald,  1820, 
Southey's  Life  of  Wesley,  Quarterly  Re- 
view, vol.  24,  p.  53. 

Mr.  Wesley  was  a  voluminous  writer; 
and  as  he  was  one  of  the  great  instru- 
ments in  reviving  the  spirit  of  religion  in 
these  lands,  so  he  led  the  way  in  those 
praiseworthy  attempts  which  have  been 
made  to  diffuse  useful  information  of 
every  kind,  and  to  smooth  the  path  of 
knowledge  to  the  middle  and  lower  ranks 
of  society.— Watson,  Richard,  1831, 
The  Life  of  the  Rev.  John  Wesley. 

Wesley   ['Mournal"],  you  will  find 


pleasant  to  dip  into,  I  think:  of  course, 
there  is  much  sameness ;  and  I  think  you 
will  allow  some  absurdity  among  so  much 
wise  and  good. — P^itzgerald,  Edward, 
1868,  Letters,  vol.  I,  j).  317. 

Whether  men  like  Methodist  doctrine 
or  not,  I  think  they  must  honestly  concede 
that  the  old  Fellow  of  Lincoln  was  a 
scholar  and  a  sensible  man.  The  world, 
which  always  sneers  at  evangelical  relig- 
ion, may  please  itself  by  saying  that  the 
men  who  shook  England  a  hundred  years 
ago  were  weak-minded,  hot-headed  enthu- 
siasts, and  unlearned  and  ignorant  men. 
The  Jews  said  the  same  of  the  apostles  in 
early  days.  But  the  world  cannot  get 
over  facts.  The  founder  of  Methodism 
was  a  man  of  no  mean  reputation  in  Ox- 
ford, and  his  writings  show  him  to  have 
been  a  well-read,  logical-minded,  and  in- 
telligent man.— Ryle,  J.  C,  1869,  Tke 
Christian  Leaders  of  the  Last  Century, 
p.  104. 

His  own  poetical  powers  were  consid- 
erable ;  his  verses  are  sometimes  melodi- 
ous, and  often  vigorous;  but  far  above 
the  trammels  of  art  is  their  bold  and 
grand  sincerity.  Music  and  poetry  were 
to  him  only  the  means  of  expressing  the 
joys  and  triumphs  of  faith. — Lawrence, 
Eugene,  1872,  John  Wesley  and  His 
Times,  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  45,  p.  119. 

When  one  looks  at  his  travelling,  he 
may  well  wonder  how  Wesley  found  time 
to  write ;  when  one  looks  at  his  writings, 
the  marvel  is  how  he  found  time  to  do 
anything  else. — Guernsey,  Alfred  H., 
1874,  John  Wesley,  Galaxy,  vol.  17,  p.  212. 

Wesley's  was  a  singular  blending  of 
strength  and  weakness.  His  strength  lies 
almost  entirely  in  the  sphere  of  practice. 
He  shows  remarkable  literary  power  ;  but 
we  feel  that  his  writings  are  means  to  a 
direct  practical  end,  rather  than  valuable 
in  themselves,  either  in  form  or  sub- 
stance. It  would  be  difficult  to  find  any 
letters  more  direct,  forcible,  and  pithy  in 
expression.  He  goes  straight  to  the  mark 
without  one  superfluous  flourish.  He 
writes  as  a  man  confined  within  the  nar- 
rowest limits  of  time  and  space,  whose 
thoughts  are  so  well  in  hand  that  he  can 
say  everything  needful  within  those  limits. 
The  compression  gives  emphasis  and  never 
causes  confusion.  The  letters,  in  other 
words,  are  the  work  of  one  who  for  more 


128 


JOHN  WESLEY 


than  half  a  century  was  accustomed  to 
turn  to  account  every  minute  of  his  eight- 
een working  hours. — Stephen,  Leslie, 
1876,  Histo7'y  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  409. 

The  poetical  works  of  John  and  Charles 
Wesley  extend  through  ten  volumes,  edited 
lately  with  scrupulous  care  by  Dr. 
G.  Osborn.  Such  a  demand  as  he  thus 
imposed  on  his  own  poetical  pow.ers  was 
too  extensive  even  for  a  great  poet  to 
have  met;  but  in  his  case  the  difficulty 
was  aggravated  partly  by  the  nature  of 
the  subject,  partly  by  his  own  deficiencies. 
.  .  .  Nevertheless  there  are  two  sources 
of  inspiration  from  which  hymn-writers 
in  general  and  John  Wesley  in  particular 
have  derived  a  fire  which  makes  it  impos- 
sible to  overlook  the  claims  of  the  Wes- 
leyan  hymnology  to  be  ranked  as  part  of 
our  national  literature.  First,  however 
prosaic  might  be  the  soul  of  John  Wesley 
himself,  he  had  sufficient  appreciation  of 
the  grandeur  of  the  gift  in  others  to  ap- 
propriate it  in  some  degree  for  his  pur- 
poses. Such  are  some  beautiful  pas- 
sages adopted  or  adapted  from  Gambold 
the  Moravian  and  from  George  Herbert. 
— Stanley,  Arthur  Penrhyn,1880,  Eng- 
lish Poets,  ed.  Ward,  vol.  m,  pp.  255,  258. 

As  a  poet,  John  Wesley,  though  correct 
and  classical,  does  not  compare  with  his 
brother  Charles.  While  in  college,  he  in- 
dulged in  versification  as  a  recreation,  but 
confined  himself  almost  exclusively  to 
translations  from  other  languages. — Hat- 
field, Edwin  F.,  1884,  The  Poets  of  the 
Church,  p.  663. 

The  very  last  thing  of  which  John  Wes- 
ley was  ambitious  was  literary  fame.  In 
nothing  does  the  intensely  practical  char- 
acter of  his  mind  come  out  more  strongly 
than  in  his  writings.  Whether  it  is  long 
treatise  or  short  tract,  whether  it  is  prose 
or  poetry,  whether  it  is  original  composi- 
tion or  the  reprinting  or  abridging  of  the 
works  of  others,  whether  it  is  a  simple 
school-book  or  one  on  controversial  divin- 
ity, whether  it  is  a  sermon  or  a  commen- 
tary or  a  journal,  it  is  all  the  same ;  he 
has  always  some  immediate  practical  end 
in  view ;  and  in  almost  every  case  we  can 
trace  the  reason  of  his  writing  what  he 
did  write  in  the  particular  circumstances 
which  were  at  that  particular  time  before 
him.  ...  It  would,  of  course,  be 
absurd  to  contend  that  anything  which 


John  Wesley  wrote  is  of  the  same  calibre 
as  the  great  works  of  his  contemporaries, 
such  as  Butler  or  Waterland;  but  if  we 
are  content  to  ignore  his  writings  as 
obsolete  works  out  of  which  all  the  virtue 
is  gone,  we  are  ignoring  a  very  vivid  and 
complete  picture  of  the  times,  as  well  as 
a  very  life-like  portrait  of  one  of  the  most 
interesting  and  influential  men  of  those 
times.  So  that  merely  from  the  historical, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  religious,  point 
of  view,  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to 
be  satisfied  with  regarding  Wesley  as  he 
appears  when  filtered  through  the  mind  of 
any  critic  or  biographer,  however  able, 
without  contemplating  him  as  he  appears 
in  his  own  pages. — Overton,  J.  H.,  1891, 
John  Wesley  (English  Leaders  of  Religion), 
pp.  169,  170. 

His  mind  was  not  without  something  of 
the  mysticism  that  dominated  Law;  it 
has  a  strain  of  melancholy  which  does  not 
lessen  our  interest,  and  he  presents  the 
rare  spectacle  of  a  scholar  who  dreaded 
lest  his  own  scholarship  might  interfere 
with  the  popular  work  which  was  the 
supreme  aim  of  his  life.  There  was  a 
certain  Puritanism  in  the  conscious  sim- 
plicity of  his  style ;  but  he  could  not 
divorce  himself  altogether  from  that  lit- 
erary sympathy  that  linked  him  to  his  age, 
and  that  made  him  the  friend  of  one  with 
whom  he  stands  in  many  respects  so  much 
in  contrast  as  Johnson. — Craik,  Henry, 
1895,  ed.,  English  Prose,  Introduction,  vol. 
IV,  p.  5. 

There  is  a  peculiar  interest  attached  to 
this  hymn.  ("Thou  Hidden  Love  of  God"). 
John  Wesley  is  said  to  have  translated  it 
in  Savannah,  in  the  United  States,  where 
he  suffered  much  and  was  grievously  tor- 
mented by  his  ill-starred  passion  for  a 
certain  Miss  Sophy.  It  was  with  special 
reference  to  the  continually  obtruding 
thoughts  of  this  Miss  Sophy  that  the  Rev. 
John  composed  the  verse  **Is  there  a 
thing  beneath  the  sun?"  It  seems  to  have 
been  efficacious,  and  the  lovelorn  poet 
came  home  to  meet  a  worse  fate  at  the 
hands  of  her  whom,  for  his  Karma,  he 
was  allowed  to  make  Mrs.  Wesley.  The 
Hymn  has  helped  thousands  who  never 
knew  of  Wesley  and  his  ill-fated  loves  to 
acts  of  consecration  and  self-sacrifice  from 
which  they  would  otherwise  have  shrunk. 
—Stead,  W.  T.,  1897,  Hymns  that  Have 
Helped,  p.  191. 


WESLEY— BLA  CKLOCK 


129 


Where  the  reader  of  the  journal  will  be 
shocked  is  when  his  attention  is  called  to 
the  public  side  of  the  country — to  the 
state  of  the  jails — to  Newgate,  to  Beth- 
lehem, to  the  criminal  code — to  the  bru- 
tality of  so  many  of  the  judges,  and  the 
harshness  of  the  magistrates,  to  the 
supineness  of  the  bishops,  to  the  ex- 
tinction in  high  places  of  the  mission- 
ary spirit.  ...  No  man  lived  nearer 
the  centre  than  John  Wesley.  Neither 
Clive  nor  Pitt,  neither  Mansfield  nor  John- 
son. You  cannot  cut  him  out  of  our 
national  life.    No  single  figure  influenced 


so  many  minds,  no  single  voice  touched 
so  many  hearts.  No  other  man  did  such  a 
life's  work  for  England.  As  a  writer  he 
has  not  achieved  distinction,  he  was  no 
Athanasius,  no  Augustine,  he  was  ever  a 
preacher  and  an  organizer,  a  laborer  in 
the  service  of  humanity;  but  happily  for 
us  his  journals  remain,  and  from  them 
we  can  learn  better  than  from  anywhere 
else  whxit  manner  of  man  he  was,  and  the 
character  of  the  times  during  which  he 
lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being. — BiR- 
RELL,  Augustine,  1899,  John  Wesley, 
Scribnefs  Magazine,  vol.  26,  p.  761. 


Thomas  Blacklock 

1721-1791 

Thomas  Blacklock,  D.  D.,  the  blind  poet,  was  born  of  humble  parentage  at  Annan, 
and  lost  his  sight  through  small-pox  before  he  was  six  months  old.  Educated  at 
Edinburgh,  he  was  minister  of  Kirkcudbright  (1762-64),  and  then  took  pupils  to  board 
with  him  in  Edinburgh  till  his  death.  It  was  a  letter  of  his  that  arrested  Burns  on 
the  eve  of  his  departure  for  the  West  Indies.  The  first  volume  of  his  own  poor  poems 
appeared  in  1746;  and  a  collected  edition  in  1793. — Patrick  and  GroOxME,  erfs., 
1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  102. 


PERSONAL 

He  soon  appeared  what  I  have  ever 
since  found  him,  a  very  elegant  Genius, 
of  a  most  affectionate  grateful  disposi- 
tion, a  modest  backward  temper,  accom- 
panied with  that  delicate  Pride,  which  so 
naturally  attends  Virtue  in  Distress.  His 
great  Moderation  and  Frugality,  along 
with  the  Generosity  of  a  few  persons,  par- 
ticularly Dr.  Stevenson  and  Provost  Alex- 
ander, had  hitherto  enabled  him  to  sub- 
sist. All  his  good  qualities  are  dimin- 
ished, or  rather  perhaps  embellished  by  a 
great  want  of  Knowledge  of  the  World. — ■ 
Hume,  David,  1754,  Letter  to  Joseph 
Spence,  Oct.  15;  Spence's  Anecdotes,  ed. 
Singer,  p.  851. 

He  never  could  dictate  till  he  stood  up ; 
and  as  his  blindness  made  walking  about 
without  assistance  inconvenient  or  danger- 
ous to  him,  he  fell  insensibly  into  a  vibra- 
tory sort  of  motion  with  his  body,  which 
increased  as  he  warmed  with  his  subject 
and  was  pleased  with  the  conception  of 
his  mind.— Spence,  Joseph,  1754,  Life  of 
Blacklock. 

Doctor  Blacklock  belonged  to  a  set  of 
critics,  for  whose  applause  I  had  not  dared 
Burns,  Robert,  1786,  Letters. 

All  those  who  ever  acted  as  his  aman- 
uenses agree  in  this  rapidity  and  ardour 

90 


of  composition  which  Mr.  Jameson  as- 
cribes to  him. — Mackenzie,  Henry,  1793, 
Life  of  Thomas  Blacklock. 

Through  the  genial  society  of  Edin- 
burgh, with  its  vigorous  speaking  and 
drinking,  its  stalwart  race  of  men  of  let- 
ters, law,  and  fashion,  flits  the  somewhat 
pathetic  figure  of  the  gentle  and  helpless 
Dr.  Blacklock.  He  was  to  be  seen  led 
along  the  crowded  High  Street,  every 
one  making  way  respectfully  for  the  blind 
man,  and  led  carefully  up  the  slippery 
staircases,  whose  dirt  and  darkness  could 
not  vex  his  sight,  though  the  odours 
might  afflict  his  acuter  sense  of  smell. 
In  the  best  company  he  was  welcomed, 
and  all  forgot  the  plainness  of  that  pock- 
pitted  face  in  the  amiable  expression  that 
gave  it  charm.  In  the  Meadows  friends 
would  find  him  in  the  forenoon,  leaning  on 
the  arm  of  Robert  Heron,  the  discarded 
assistant  to  Dr.  Blair — a  versatile  liter- 
ary hack,  a  threadbare  taper,  who,  after 
an  evening's  debauch  on  a  meagre  supply 
of  potatoes  and  green  peas,  with  large 
potations  of  whiskey,  had  risen  from  his 
garret  bed  to  take  his  venerated  friend 
out  for  a  stroll.  Blacklock's  reputation 
was  considerable  for  genius  and  for  fine 
literary  judgment.  To-day  we  must  deny 
him  genius,  but  may  allow  him  taste. 


130 


THOMAS  BLACKLOCK 


.  .  .  To  everybody  Blacklock  endeared 
himself;  for  he  was  a  very  good  man, 
though  a  very  poor  poet.  Young  men  he 
drew  from  obscurity,  educated,  and  started 
in  life,  who  never  forgot  the  unhumorous, 
guileless  man,  who  knew  nothing  of  the 
world  except  its  goodness.  With  a  tem- 
per which  nothing  could  ruffle,  he  worked 
with  his  boarders  over  Greek  and  Latin, 
and  entered  into  all  their  entertainments 
with  childlike  pleasure,  while  the  keen- 
est pleasure  of  his  boarders  was  to  do 
kindly  services  for  him.  In  his  placid 
home  there  would  meet  at  breakfast  or  in 
the  evening  all  who  had  any  pretence  to 
wit  and  culture.  There  were  heard  the 
chatter  of  Mrs.  Cockburn,  the  lively 
tongue  of  the  Duchess  of  Gordon,  with 
the  voices  of  Adam  Ferguson,  Lord  Mon- 
boddo,  Dr.  Robertson,  as  they  sat  at  tea ; 
while  the  boarders  handed  scones  and 
cookies  to  the  company,  and  listened 
eagerly  as  great  men  and  bright  women 
discussed  and  jested,  making  the  little 
room  noisy  with  their  talk  and  merry  with 
their  laughter. — Graham,  Henry  Grey, 
1901,  Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  pp.  139,  145, 

GENERAL 

The  104th  Psalm  is  esteemed  one  of  the 
most  sublime  in  the  whole  book,  [A  New 
Version  of  the  Psalms  of  David].  .  .  . 
There  have  not  been  less  than  forty  differ- 
ent Versions,  and  Paraphrases  of  this 
Psalm,  by  poets  of  very  considerable 
eminence,  who  seem  to  have  vied  with 
one  another  for  the  superiority.  Of  all 
these  attempts,  if  we  may  trust  our  own 
judgment,  none  have  succeeded  so  happily 
as  Mr.  Blacklock,  a  young  gentleman  now 
resident  at  Dumfries  in  Scotland.  This 
Paraphrase  is  the  more  extraordinary,  as 
the  author  of  it  has  been  blind  from  his 
cradle,  and  now  labours  under  that  calam- 
ity ;  it  carries  in  it  such  elevated  strains 
of  poetry,  such  picturesque  descriptions, 
and  such  a  mellifluent  flow  of  numbers, 
that  we  are  persuaded  the  reader  cannot 
be  displeased  at  finding  it  inserted  here. 
—Gibber,  Theophilus,  1753,  Lives  of 
the  Poets,  vol.  iv,  p.  63. 

Few  men  blessed  with  the  most  perfect 
sight  can  describe  visual  objects  with 
more  spirit  and  justness  than  this  blind 
man.— Burke,  Edmund,  1757,  A  Phil- 
osophical Enquiry  into  the  Origin  of  our 
Ideas  of  the  Sublime  and  the  Beautiful. 


He  [Dr.  Johnson]  talked  of  Mr.  Black- 
lock's  poetry,  so  far  as  it  was  descriptive 
of  visible  objects;  and  observed  that,  *'as 
its  authour  had  the  misfortune  to  be  blind, 
we  may  be  absolutely  sure  that  such  pas- 
sages are  combinations  of  what  he  has  re- 
membered of  the  works  of  other  writers 
who  could  see.  That  foolish  fellow, Spence, 
has  laboured  to  explain  philosophically 
how  Blacklock  may  have  done,  by  means 
of  his  own  faculties,  what  it  is  impossi- 
ble he  should  do.  The  solution,  as  I  have 
given  it,  is  plain.  Suppose,  I  know  a  man 
to  be  so  lame  that  he  is  absolutely  in- 
capable to  move  himself,  and  I  find  him  in  a 
different  room  from  that  in  which  I  left 
him ;  shall  I  puzzle  myself  with  idle  con- 
jectures, that  perhaps  his  nerves  have  by 
some  unknown  change  all  at  once  become 
effective  ?  No,  Sir,  it  is  clear  how  he  got 
into  a  different  room  :  he  was  carried.'" — 
Johnson,  Samuel,  1763,  Life  by  Boswell, 
ed.  Hill,  vol.  I,  p.  539. 

As  an  author,  under  disadvantages 
which  seem  unsurmountable  to  nature, 
Blacklock  has  eminently  distinguished 
himself.  Though  blind  from  his  infancy, 
the  impulse  of  curiosity  and  the  vigorous 
exertion  of  his  talents  conducted  him 
to  uncommon  knowledge.  He  acquired 
tongues  and  arts  by  the  ear,  in  many  of 
which  he  excelled.  There  was  no  science 
with  which  he  was  not  acquainted ;  he  was 
familiar  with  the  learned  languages,  and 
he  knew  with  accuracy  those  of  modern 
Europe  that  are  the  most  cultivated. 
Among  philosophers  he  has  attained  a 
conspicuous  rank.  .  .  .  As  a  poet, 
though  not  of  the  highest  rank,  he  is  en- 
titled to  a  rank  not  inferior  to  Addison, 
Parnell,  and  Shenstone.— Anderson,  Rob- 
ert, 1799,  The  Works  of  the  British  Poets, 
vol.  XI. 

His  verses  are  extraordinary  for  a  man 
blind  from  his  infancy;  but  Mr.  Henry 
Mackenzie,  in  his  elegant  biographical  ac- 
count of  him,  has  certainly  over-rated  his 
genius ;  and  when  Mr.  Spence,  of  Oxford, 
submitted  Blacklock's  descriptive  powers 
as  a  problem  for  metaphysicians  to  resolve, 
he  attributed  to  his  writings  a  degree  of 
descriptive  strength  which  they  do  not 
possess.  Denina  carried  exaggeration  to 
the  utmost  when  he  declared  that  Black- 
lock  would  seem  a  fable  to  posterity,  as 
he  had  been  a  prodigy  to  his  contempo- 
raries.   It  is  no  doubt  curious  that  his 


BLACKLOCK—HOPKINSON 


1.31 


memory  should  have  retained  so  many 
forms  of  expression  for  things  which  he 
had  never  seen ;  but  those  who  have  con- 
versed with  intelligent  persons  who  have 
been  blind  from  their  infancy,  must  have 
often  remarked  in  them  a  familiarity  of 
language  respecting  the  objects  of  vision 
which,  though  not  easy  to  be  accounted 
for,  will  be  found  sufficiently  common  to 
make  the  rhymes  of  Blacklock  appear  far 
short  of  marvelous.  Blacklock  on  more 
than  one  occasion,  betrays  something  like 
marks  of  blindness. — Campbell,  Thomas, 
1819,  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets. 

The  series  of  conjectures  by  which  Mr. 
Spence  has  endeavoured  to  account  for 
this  poet's  capability  of  producing  ani- 
mated descriptions  of  external  nature, 
can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  altogether 
satisfactory ;  when  such  a  faculty  is  dis- 
played by  a  poet  blind  from  his  infancy, 
it  is  chiefly  to  be  referred  to  his  accurate 
recollection  of  the  descriptive  language 
employed  by  other  poets ;  but  what  notions 
he  himself  attaches  to  words  expressive 
of  the  visible  qualities  of  objects,  it  might 
be  extremely  difficult  for  a  blind  poet  to 
explain.— Irving,  David,  1861,  The  His- 
tory of  Scotish  Poetry,  ed.  Carlyle,  p.  189. 

We  read  all  concerning  him  with  strong 
interest  except  his  poetry,  for  this  is  gener- 
ally tame,  languid,  and  commonplace. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of 
English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 


In  the  short  memoir  which  we  have  of 
him,  written  by  Mackenzie,  there  are  a 
great  many  special  quotations  made,  and 
lines  selected,  to  show  that,  notwithstand- 
ing his  blindness,  he  was  capable  of  de- 
scribing nature.  This,  of  course,  must 
have  been  simply  in  imitation  of  the  lavish 
colours,  the  purple  evenings  and  rosy 
mornings  of  the  poets:  but  there  is  a 
pathetic  correctness  in  his  enumeration  of 
the  yellow  crocuses  and  purple  hyacinths, 
which  touches  the  heart. —  Oliphaxt, 
Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History 
of  England  in  the  End  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century  and  Beginning  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  vol.  i,  p.  149. 

Blacklock's  poems  are  mere  echoes  of 
the  poetical  language  of  his  time,  and 
show  little  more  than  a  facility  for  string- 
ing together  rhymes.  He  would,  we  are 
told,  dictate  thirty  or  forty  verses  as  fast 
as  they  could  be  written  down.  Whilst  do- 
ing so  he  acquired  a  trick  of  nervous  vibra- 
tion of  his  body  which  became  habitual. 
By  Hume's  advice  Blacklock  abandoned  a 
project  of  lecturing  on  oratory,  and  studied 
divinity. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1886,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  v,  p.  128. 

He  has  in  truth  little  claim  to  remem- 
brance except  such  as  can  be  founded 
upon  a  pathetic  story  and  an  amiable  and 
virtuous  character.  — Walker,  Hugh, 
1893,  Three  Centuries  of  Scottish  Litera- 
ture, vol.  II,  p.  101. 


Francis  Hopkinson 

1737-1791 

Few  pens  of  the  day  effected  more  than  Hopkinson's  in  educating  the  American 
people  for  political  independence.  The  brevity,  wit,  and  vivacity  of  his  pieces  gave 
them  portai3ility,  currency,  and  popular  favour.  Of  this  class — the  most  important 
— of  his  writings  we  may  specify  "The  Pretty  Story,"  1774;  ''The  Prophecy,"  1776; 
"The  Political  Catechism,"  1777.  But  the  collector  of  American  History  (a  large 
class  these  collectors  have  now  become!)  must  secure  for  his  shelves,  if  he  can, 
(which  is  more  tjjan  doubtful),  "The  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occasional  Writings 
of  Francis  Hopkinson,"  Philadelphia,  pub.  by  Dobson,  1792,  3  vol.  8vo. — Alli- 
BONE,  S.  Austin,  1854-58,  A  Critical  Dictionary  of  English  Literature,  vol.  i,  p.  886. 


PERSONAL 

At  this  shop  I  met  Mr.  Francis  Hopkinson, 
late  a  mandamus  councillor  of  New  Jersey, 
now  a  member  of  the  Continental  Con- 
gress, who,  it  seems,  is  a  native  of  Phila- 
delphia, .  .  .  was  liberally  educated, 
and  is  a  painter  and  a  poet.  I  have  a 
curiosity  to  penetrate  a  little  deeper  into 
the  bosom  of  this  curious  gentleman,  and 


may  possibly  give  you  some  more  particu- 
lars concerning  him.  He  is  one  of  your 
pretty,  little,  curious,  ingenious  men. 
His  head  is  not  bigger  than  a  large  apple, 
less  than  our  friend  Pemberton,  or  Doctor 
Simon  Tufts.  I  have  not  met  with  any- 
thing in  natural  history  more  amusing 
and  entertaining  than  his  personal  appear- 
ance,— yet  he  is  genteel  and  well  bred, 


132 


THOMAS  HOPKINSON 


and  is  very  social.— Adams,  John,  1776, 
Letters  Addressed  to  His  Wife,  August. 

Sir: — I  have  the  pleasure  to  inclose  to 
you  a  commission  as  judge  of  the  United 
States  for  the  District  of  Pennsylvania, 
to  which  office  I  have  nominated,  and,  by 
and  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the 
Senate,  have  appointed  you.  In  my  nom- 
ination of  Persons  to  fill  offices  in  the 
Judicial  Department,  I  have  been  guided 
by  the  importance  of  the  object — con- 
sidering it  as  of  the  first  magnitude,  and 
as  the  Pillar  upon  which  our  political 
fabric  must  rest.  I  have  endeavoured  to 
bring  into  the  high  offices  of  its  adminis- 
tration such  characters  as  will  give  sta- 
bility and  dignity  to  our  National  Govern- 
ment,— and  I  persuade  myself  they  will 
discover  a  due  desire  to  promote  the  hap- 
piness of  our  Country  by  a  ready  accept- 
ance of  their  several  appointments.  The 
laws  which  have  passed,  relative  to  your 
office,  accompany  the  commission.  I  am, 
Sir,  with  very  great  esteem.  Your  most 
obedient  Servant.— Washington,  George, 
1789,  Letter  to  Francis  Hopkinson,  Sept.  30. 

He  was  the  author  of  several  fugitive 
pieces,  which  were  very  popular  in  their 
day.  His  well  known  ballad,  called  "The 
Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  gives  evidence  of  a 
rich  and  exhaustless  fund  of  humor,  and 
will  probably  last  the  wear  of  centuries. 
He  excelled  in  music,  and  had  some 
knowledge  of  painting.  His  library  was 
extensive,  and  his  stock  of  knowledge 
constantly  accumulating.  In  stature, 
Mr.  Hopkinson  was  below  the  common 
size.  His  countenance  was  animated,  his 
speech  fluent ;  and  motions  were  unusually 
rapid.  Few  men  were  kinder  in  their  dis- 
positions, or  more  benevolent  in  their 
lives. — Lincoln,  Robert  W.,  1833,  Lives 
of  the  Presidents  of  the  United  States  with 
Biographical  Notices  of  the  Signers  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  p.  383. 

Even  in  these  days,  Francis  Hopkinson 
would  have  been  regarded  as  a  man  of 
quite  unusual  cultivation,  having  in  real- 
ity many  solid  as  well  as  shining  accom- 
plishments. He  was  a  distinguished  prac- 
titioner of  the  law;  he  became  an  emi- 
nent judge ;  he  was  a  statesman  trained 
by  much  study  and  experience ;  he  was  a 
mathematician,  a  chemist,  a  physicist,  a 
mechanician,  an  inventor,  a  musician  and 
a  composer  of  music,  a  man  of  literary 
knowledge  and  practice,  a  writer  of  airy 


and  dainty  songs,  a  clever  artist  with 
pencil  and  brush,  and  a  humorist  of  un- 
mistakable power.  For  us  Americans, 
the  name  of  Francis  Hopkinson  lives — if 
indeed  it  does  live — chiefly  on  account  of 
its  presence  in  the  august  roll-call  of  the 
signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence ;  and  through  all  the  strenuous  years 
which  preceded  and  followed  that  great 
avowal,  this  man  served  the  cause  therein 
set  forth,  not  only  as  a  patriot  of  austere 
principle,  as  a  statesman  of  genuine 
sagacity,  as  a  citizen  of  high  civic  cour- 
age, but  as  a  wit  and  a  satirist, — the  edge 
of  his  sarcasm  cutting  into  the  enemy  as 
keenly  as  any  sword,  and  the  ruddy  glow 
of  his  mirth  kindling  good  cheer  over  all 
the  land  on  many  a  grim  day  when  good 
cheer  was  a  hard  thing  to  be  had  on  his 
side  of  the  fight. — Tyler,  Moses  Coit, 
1897,  The  Literary  History  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution,  1763-1783,  vol.  i,  p.  163. 

GENERAL 

A  poet,  a  wit,  a  patriot,  a  chemist,  a 
mathematician,  and  a  judge  of  the  admi- 
rality ;  his  character  was  composed  of  a 
happy  union  of  qualities  and  endowments 
commonly  supposed  to  be  discordant ; 
and,  with  the  humour  of  Swift  and  Rabe- 
lais, he  was  always  found  on  the  side  of 
virtue  and  social  order.  — Wharton, 
Thomas  I.,  1825,  Notes  on  the  Provincial 
Literature  of  Pennsylvania. 

Great  as  Judge  Hopkinson's  reputation 
was  as  an  advocate  while  at  the  bar,  and 
distinguished  as  he  was  for  learning, 
judgment,  and  integrity  when  upon  the 
bench,  he  was,  perhaps,  more  celebrated 
as  a  man  of  letters,  of  general  knowledge, 
of  fine  taste,  but,  above  all,  for  his  then 
unrivaled  powers  of  wit  and  satire.  Dr. 
Rush,  after  speaking  of  his  varied  attain- 
ments, says : — ''But  his  forte  was  humour 
and  satire,  in  both  of  which  he  was  not 
surpassed  by  Lucian,  Swift,  or  Rabelais. 
These  extraordinary  powers  were  conse- 
crated to  the  advancement  of  the  inter- 
ests of  patriotism,  virtue,  and  science." 
This  praise  may  be  too  strong ;  and  yet  we 
hardly  know  where  to  find  papers  of  more 
exquisite  humour  than  among  the  writings 
of  Francis  Hopkinson.  His  paper  on  the 
''Ambiguity  of  the  English  Language," 
to  show  the  ridiculous  mistakes  that  often 
occur  from  words  of  similar  sounds,  used 
the  one  for  the  other:  on  "White-Wash- 
ing" oij  "A  Typographical  Method  of 


HOPKINSON—MA  CA  ULA  Y 


133 


Conducting  a  Quarrel,"  which  made 
friends  of  two  fierce  newspaper  combat- 
ants; ''The  New  Roof,"  an  allegory  in 
favor  of  the  Federal  Constitution;  the 
''Specimen  of  a  Collegiate  Examination," 
to  turn  certain  branches,  and  the  modes 
of  studying  them,  into  ridicule ;  and  "The 
Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  are  all  pieces  which, 
while  they  are  fully  equal  to  any  of 
Swift's  writings  for  wit,  have  nothing  at 
all  in  them  of  Swift's  vulgarity. — Cleve- 
land, Charles  D.,  1859,  A  Compendium 
of  American  Literature,  p.  60. 

His  pen  was  not  distinguished  for  depth, 
but  there  was  a  genuine  humor  in  his  pro- 
ductions, which  made  him  widely  popular. 
A  majority  of  his  poetical  effusions  were 
of  an  ephemeral  nature,  and  were  forgot- 
ten, in  a  degree,  with  the  occasion  which 
called  them  forth ;  yet  a  few  have  been 
preserved,  among  which  may  be  men- 
tioned "The  Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  a  bal- 
lad, or  sort  of  epic,  of  inimitable  humor. 
— LossiNG,  Benson  J.,  1870,  Lives  of  the 
Signers  of  the  Declaration  of  American  In- 
dependence, p.  86,  note. 

All  through  the  war  Hopkinson's  fer- 
tile brain  was  busy  devising  arguments  in 
prose  and  verse  to  strengthen  and  cheer 
the  hearts  of  his  countrymen,  and  by  the 
able  discharge  of  his  duties  in  the  admin- 
istration of  naval  affairs  and  as  treasurer 
of  loans  he  rendered  special  service  to  the 
good  cause.— Hildeburn,  Charles  R., 
1878,  Francis  Hopkinson,  The  Pennsylvania 
Magazine,  vol.  n,  p.  320. 

Francis  Hopkinson  was  another  of  the 
writers  who  served  the  popular  cause  by 


seizing  every  occasion  to  make  the  British 
pretensions  to  rule  ridiculous  as  well  as 
hateful.  His  "Battle  of  the  Kegs"  prob- 
ably laughed  a  thousand  men  into  the 
Republican  ranks.  —  Whipple,  Edwlx 
Percy,  1886,  American  Literature  and 
Other  Papers,  ed.  Whittier,  p.  28. 

Hopkinson  has  some  title  to  rank  as 
one  of  the  earliest  American  humorists. 
Without  the  keen  wit  of  "McFingal"  some 
of  his  "Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occa- 
sional Writings"  published  in  1792.  have 
more  geniality  and  heartiness  than  Trum- 
bull's satire.  His  "Letter  on  White- 
washing" is  a  bit  of  domestic  humor  that 
foretokens  the  Danbury  News  man,  and 
his  "Modern  Learning,"  1784,  a  burlesque 
on  college  examinations,  in  which  a  salt- 
box  is  described  from  the  point  of  view 
of  metaphysics,  logic,  natural  philosophy, 
mathematics,  anatomy,  surgery  and  chem- 
istry, long  kept  its  place  in  school  readers 
and  other  collections. — Beers,  Henry 
A.,  1887,  An  Outline  Sketch  of  American 
Literature,  p.  74. 

The  ballad  was  immensely  popular; 
perhaps  more  so  than  any  ballad  of  Rev- 
olutionary times ;  and  1  can  well  remem- 
ber how  (after  the  first  quarter  of  this 
century  had  passed)  patriotic  schoolboys 
used  to  love  to  reel  off,  in  brilliant  reci- 
tation, that  story  of  the  trick  of  the  Yan- 
kees upon  the  obtuse  Britishers.  But 
Hopkinson  wrote  much  better  things ;  he 
was  master  of  a  quiet  satire  and  of  a  dry 
humor. — Mitchell,  DOxXALD  G.,  1897, 
American  Lands  and  Letters,  The  May- 
flower to  Rip-Van-Winkle,  p.  121. 


Catherine  Macaulay 

(Nee  Graham) 

1731-1791 

Mrs.  Catherine  Macaulay,  1733-1791,  was  a  writer  of  some  notoriety.  She  wrote 
on  historical,  moral,  and  political  subjects,  and  was  an  avowed  republican.  She  was 
so  much  of  a  partisan  that  her  historical  writings  are  regarded  as  of  doubtful  credit. 
She  wrote  "A  History  of  England  from  the  Accession  of  James  II.  to  that  of  the 
Brunswick  Line,"  8  vols.,  4to;  "A  History  of  England  from  the  Revolution  to  the 
Present  Time,"  only  one  volume  finished;  "Moral  Truth,"  8vo. ;  "Letters  on  Edu- 
cation," 4to. ;  several  political  pamphlets. — Hart,  John  S.,  1872,  A  Manual  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  p.  343. 

PERSONAL  town,  a  great  republican.    One  day  when 

I  would  behave  to  a  nobleman  as  I  I  was  at  her  house,  I  put  on  a  very  grave 

should  expect  he  would  behave  to  me,  countenance,  and  said  to  her,  "Madam,  I 

were  I  a  nobleman  and  he  Sam.  Johnson,  am  now  become  a  convert  to  your  way  of 

Sir,  there  is  one  Mrs.  Macaulay  in  this  thinking.   I  am  convinced  that  all  mankind 


134 


CATHERINE  MACAULAY 


are  upon  an  equal  footing;  and  to  give 
you  an  unquestionable  proof.  Madam, 
that  I  am  in  earnest,  here  is  a  very  sen- 
sible, civil,  well-behaved  fellow-citizen, 
your  footman;  I  desire  that  he  may  be 
allowed  to  sit  down  and  dine  with  us."  I 
thus,  Sir,  shewed  her  the  absurdity  of  the 
leveling  doctrine.  She  has  never  liked  me 
since. — Johnson,  Samuel,  1763,  Life  by 
Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  i,  p.  518. 

Was  much  pleased  with  her  good  sense 
and  liberal  turn  of  mind.— Quincy,  Jr., 
JosiAH,  1774,  Memoirs,  p.  243. 

HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND 

To  Mrs.  Macaulay  I  did  give  a  letter, 
but  am  ashamed  of  it,  as  she  ought  to  be 
of  her  foolish  and  absurd  "Summary," 
which  is  a  wretched  compilation  from 
magazines,  full  of  gross  mistakes,  and 
confounding  all  characters,  leveling  all 
for  no  end  or  purpose,  but  to  support  so 
silly  an  hypothesis,  as  that  no  king  can  be 
a  good  king,  because  he  is  a  king.  She 
defends  James  II.  for  the  nonsensical 
pleasure  of  abusing  King  William,  and 
has  no  more  idea  of  general  merit  than 
Sir  John  Dalrymple.  In  short,  whom 
does  she  approve  but  herself  and  her  idol- 
ater— that  dirty  disappointed  hunter  of 
a  mitre.  Dr.  Wilson,  and  Alderman  Heath- 
cote,  a  paltry  worthless  Jacobite,  whom 
I  remember,  and  her  own  grandfather 
Sawbridge,  who,  she  has  been  told,  was  a 
mighty  worthy  man  though  dipped  in  the 
infamous  job  of  the  South  Sea?  In  short 
I  ran  through  the  book,  had  forgotten  it, 
and  only  recollect  it  now  to  answer  your 
question.— Walpole,  Horace,  1778,  To 
Rev.  William  Mason,  March  16 ;  Letters, 
ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vii,  p.  42. 

The  very  word  respect  brings  Mrs. 
Macaulay  to  my  remembrance.  The 
woman  of  the  greatest  abilities,  undoubt- 
edly, that  this  country  has  ever  produced. 
— And  yet  this  woman  has  been  suffered 
to  die  without  sufficient  respect  being 
paid  to  her  memory.  Posterity,  however, 
will  be  more  just;  and  remember  that 
Catherine  Macaulay  was  an  example  of 
intellectual  acquirements  supposed  to  be 
incompatible  with  the  weakness  of  her 
sex.  In  her  style  of  writing,  indeed,  no 
sex  appears,  for  it  is  like  the  sense  it  con- 
veys, strong  and  clear.  I  will  not  call 
her's  a  masculine  understanding,  because 
1  admit  not  of  such  an  arrogant  assump- 


tion of  reason ;  but  I  contend  that  it  was 
a  sound  one,  and  that  her  judgment,  the 
matured  fruit  of  profound  thinking,  was  a 
proof  that  a  woman  can  acquire  judgment, 
in  the  full  extent  of  the  word.  Possess- 
ing more  penetration  than  sagacity,  more 
understanding  than  fancy,  she  writes  with 
sober  energy  and  argumentative  close- 
ness ;  yet  sympathy  and  benevolence  give 
an  interest  to  her  sentiments,  and  that 
vital  heat  to  arguments,  which  forces  the 
reader  to  weigh  them. — Wollstonecraft, 
Mary  (nee  Godwin),  1792,  A  Vindication 
of  the  Rights  of  Woman,  p.  235. 

Combining  Roman  admiration  with  Eng- 
lish faction,  she  violated  truth  in  her 
English  characters,  and  exaggerated  ro- 
mance in  her  Roman. — Disraeli,  Isaac, 
1795,  On  the  Literary  Character. 

Strafford's  Letters  .  .  .  furnished 
materials  to  Harris  and  Macaulay;  but 
the  first  is  little  read  at  present,  and  the 
second  not  at  all. — Hallam,  Henry, 
1827-46,  The  Constitutional  History  of 
England. 

When  any  doubt  is  entertained  of  the 
character  of  Charles,  Mrs.  Macaulay  may 
be  referred  to ;  and  a  charge  against  him, 
if  it  can  possibly  be  made  out,  will  as- 
suredly be  found,  and  supported  with  all 
the  references  that  the  most  animated  dil- 
igence can  supply.— Smyth,  William, 
1840,  Lectures  on  Modern  History,  Lec- 
ture xvi. 

Catherine,  though  now  forgotten  by  an 
ungrateful  public,  made  quite  as  much 
noise  in  her  day  as  Thomas  does  in  ours. 
— Croker,  J.  Wilson,  1849,  Mr.  Macau- 
lay^ s  History  of  England,  Quarterly  Review, 
vol  84,  p.  561. 

Mrs.  Macaulay,  as  an  historian,  is 
placed  by  Horace  Walpole,  very  nearly 
on  a  level  with  Robertson,  and  far  beyond 
the  partial  and  unreliable  Hume.  She 
was  certainly  a  woman  of  remarkable  in- 
telligence ;  enthusiastic,  well  read,  labori- 
ous, and  sincere  in  her  passion  for  free- 
dom. In  her  own  age  she  found  many 
admirers.  .  .  .  Her  numerous  works 
show  the  ardor  with  which  she  pursued 
her  literary  labors.  She  wrote  a  History 
of  England  from  the  reign  of  James  I.  to 
the  Accession,  in  which  she  supports  her 
liberal  views  by  a  violent  attack  upon  the 
Stuarts.  With  no  delicacy  of  taste  or 
novelty  of  manner,  this  work  could  only 


MA  CA  ULA  Y— PRICE 


135 


have  gained  reputation  as  a  severe  and 
unreliable  partisan  history.  It  is  evi- 
dently, however,  the  production  of  a  per- 
son of  considerable  reflection,  of  great 
ardor  and  sincerity,  and  of  a  warm  and 
enthusiastic  temperament.  Mrs.  Macau- 
lay's  mind  seemed  to  turn  resolutely 
towards  politics,  as  if  assured  that  there 
was  its  natural  bent.  ...  In  all 
these  writings  Mrs.  Macaulay  showed 


unusual  ability,  without  ever  rising  to  the 
excellence  of  a  fine  writer.  And  the  name 
of  the  author  is  hardly  remembered,  ex- 
cept among  historical  inquirers. — Law- 
rence, Eugene,  1855,  The  Lives  of  the 
British  Historians,  vol.  ii,  pp.  280,  281. 

The  ablest  writer  of  the  New  Radical 
School.— Lecky,  William  Edward  Hart- 
pole,  1882,  A  History  of  England  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century^  vol.  ill,  p.  224. 


Richard  Price 

1723-1791 

Richard  Price  (1723-91)  carries  forward  the  intellectualist  tradition  in  morals.  Of 
the  earlier  English  moralists,  he  most  resembles  Cudworth.  He  was  an  intimate 
friend  of  Priestley ;  but  in  a  correspondence  between  them,  published  in  1778,  Price 
appears  as  the  champion  of  ,  free-will  and  of  the  unity  and  immateriality  of  the  human 
soul.  Among  his  friends  was  Franklin,  to  whom  he  addressed  some  observations  on 
statistical  questions  published  in  the  "Philosophical  Transactions,"  1769.  His  Ap- 
peal to  the  People  on  the  Subject  of  the  National  Debt"  (1771)  is  supposed  to  have 
influenced  Pitt  in  re-establishing  the  sinking  fund  created  by  Walpole  in  1716 
and  abolished  in  1733.  In  his  ethical  treatise  entitled  "Review  of  the  Principal 
Questions  in  Morals"  (1757),  he  maintains  against  Hutcheson  that  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong  are  perceived  by  the  reason,  or  understanding,  and  not  by  a  "sense." — Whit- 
taker,  T.,  1896,  Social  England,  vol.  v,  p.  245. 


PERSONAL 
The  Corporation  of  London — then,  as  in 
so  many  parts  of  its  previous  history,  a 
really  popular  body,  representative  of  the 
best  Liberal  feeling  of  the  time — pre- 
sented him  with  the  freedom  of  the  city 
in  a  gold  box,  in  "testimony  of  their  ap- 
probation of  his  principles  and  of  the  high 
sense  they  entertained  of  the  excellence 
of  his  observations  on  the  justice  and 
policy  of  the  war  with  America."  Fame 
brought  its  inconveniences  together  with 
its  pleasures.  Anonymous  letters  were 
sent  threatening  his  life,  and  he  was 
obliged  to  decline  correspondence  with 
Dr.  Franklin  on  the  ground  that  he  had 
become  so  marked  and  obnoxious  that 
prudence  required  him  to  be  extremely 
cautious.  The  populace,  however,  loved 
and  reverenced  the  courageous  advocate 
of  popular  rights.  As  he  rode  in  the 
streets  of  London,  on  his  old  white  horse 
blind  in  one  eye,  clothed,  as  Rogers  re- 
membered him,  "in  a  great  coat  and  black 
spatter  dashes,"  Rogers  says  that,  like 
Demosthenes,  he  was  often  diverted  by 
hearing  the  carmen  and  orange-women 
say,  "There  goes  Dr.  Price!"  "Make 
way  for  Dr.  Price !"  The  seriousness  and 
gentle  mildness  of  his  character  surprised 


those  who  only  knew  him  from  his  works. 
When  the  Duchess  of  Bedford  met  him,  at 
her  own  request,  at  Shelburne  House,  his 
quiet  aspect  and  unassuming  manners 
caused  her  great  astonishment.  "I  ex- 
pected to  meet  a  Colossus,"  she  after- 
wards said,  "with  an  eye  like  Mars,  to 
threaten  and  command."  Gibbon  is  re- 
ported to  have  expressed  similar  surprise 
when  he  met  him  in  Mr.  CadelPs  shop. 
The  services  he  had  rendered  to  freedom 
were  acknowledged  in  France  and  the 
United  States,  and  in  most  unexpected 
quarters  at  home.  Congress  passed  a 
resolution  inviting  him  to  become  a  citi- 
zen of  the  United  States,  and  to  assist 
them  in  the  regulation  of  their  finances. 
In  later  years  Turgot  corresponded  with 
him,  Pitt  repeatedly  consulted  him  on 
great  questions  of  national  finance,  and  a 
speech  of  his  in  proposing  the  toast  of 
union  between  England  and  France  was 
read  twice  in  the  National  Assembly,  the 
members  standing.  He  was  one  day  at 
the  Bar  of  the  House  of  Lords,  when  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland  came  up  and  told  him 
he  had  read  his  "Essay  on  Civil  Liberty" 
till  he  was  blind.  "It  is  remarkable," 
replied  Lord  Ashburton,  who  was  stand- 
ing near,  "that   your  royal  highness 


136 


RICHARD  PRICE 


should  have  been  blinded  by  a  book  which 
has  opened  the  eyes  of  all  mankind.'' — 
Clayden,  p.  W.,  1887,  The  Early  Life  of 
Samuel  Rogers,  p.  30. 

If  a  man  could  be  judged  by  his  friends, 
Price's  deserts  would  be  high.  He  was 
intimate  with  Benjamin  Franklin  and  John 
Howard  ;  he  corresponded  with  Hume  and 
Turgot.  He  was  visited  by  Lyttelton, 
Shelbourne,  and  Mrs.  Montague.  The 
now  nearly-forgotten  Mrs.  Chapone  has 
written  high  praise  of  him  in  the  char- 
acter of  *'Simplicius"  ("Miscellanies," 
Essay  I.);  Simplicius  is  modest,  learned 
and  candid.  Nevertheless  he  has  not  left 
a  name  worthy  to  be  called  great  in  our 
literature.  He  was  a  man  of  vigorous, 
independent  judgment,  who  did  good  pub- 
lic service  in  his  generation.  He  stimu- 
lated discussion  on  philosophical,  theo- 
logical, and  political  questions,  and  showed 
taste  and  sobriety  in  dealing  with  oppo- 
nents. He  had  the  moral  courage  to  ad- 
vocate unpopular  causes. — Bonar,  James, 
1895,  English  Prose, ed.  Craik,  vol.  iv,  p.  293. 

GENERAL 

He  investigated  with  acuteness  and  abil- 
ity many  important  questions  relative  to 
morals,  and  controverted  the  doctrine  of 
a  Moral  Sense,  as  irreconcilable  with  the 
unalterable  character  of  fundamental 
moral  conceptions,  which,  as  well  as  those 
of  Substance  and  Cause,  he  maintained  to 
be  eternal  and  original  principles  of  the 
intellect  itself,  independent  of  the  Divine 
Will.  He  has  admirably  illustrated  the 
dilTerences  existing  between  Morality  and 
Sensation,  Virtue  and  Happiness;  at  the 
same  time  that  he  points  out  the  intimate 
connection  existing  between  the  two  last. 
— Tennemann,  William  Gottleib,  1812- 
52,  A  Manual  of  the  History  of  Philosophy^ 
tr.  Johnson,  ed.  Morrell,  p.  376. 

Dr.  Price  was  not  a  Socinian,  but  an 
Arian;  he  wrote  professedly  in  confuta- 
tion of  Socinianism ;  and  though  I  disap- 
prove of  his  religious  principles,  I  feel  no 
hesitation  in  affirming,  in  spite  of  the 
frantic  and  unprincipled  abuse  of  Burke, 
that  a  more  ardent  and  enlightened  friend 
of  his  country  never  lived  than  that  ven- 
erable patriarch  of  freedom. —  Hall, 
Robert,  1822,  Reply  to  the  Review  of  the 
Apology  for  the  Freedom  of  the  Press. 

If  in  England  you  only  look  at  London  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  you  will  doubtless 
there  see  little  else  than  sensualism. 


But  even  at  London,  you  would  find,  by 
the  side  of  Priestley,  Price,  that  ardent 
friend  of  liberty,  that  ingenious  and  pro- 
found economist,  who  renewed  and  bril- 
liantly sustained  the  Platonic  idealism  of 
Cudworth.  I  know  that  Price  is  an  iso- 
lated phenomenon  at  London;  but  the 
whole  Scotch  school  is  more  or  less  spir- 
itualistic.— Cousin,  Victor,  1828-29,  His- 
tory of  Modern  Philosophy,  tr.  Wight. 

Almost  the  only  writer  of  this  [the 
rationalistic]  school  whose  works  are 
likely  to  form  a  part  of  our  standard  phi- 
losophy, is  Dr.  Richard  Price.  ...  In  his 
controversy  with  Priestley,  particularly, 
he  showed  how  strongly  he  viewed  the  phil- 
osophical aberration  of  the  age,  and  how 
earnestly  he  desired  to  place  moral  and 
metaphysical  truth  upon  its  deeper  and 
truer  foundation. — Morell,  J.  D.,  1846, 
Speculative  Philosophy  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century. 

His  style  displays  in  no  eminent  degree 
either  of  the  cardinal  virtues  of  a  philo- 
sophical work ;  he  is  not  remarkably  per- 
spicuous, and  he  is  far  from  being  remark- 
ably precise.  His  numerous  political  and 
economical  pamphlets  are  written  with 
considerable  energy,  ''not  unfitly  typified 
by  the  unusual  muscular  and  nervous 
activity  of  his  slender  person." — Minto, 
William,  1872-80,  Manual  of  English 
Prose  Literature,  p.  473. 

It  is  comparatively  plausible  to  say 
that  the  intellect  is  the  sole  agent  in 
framing  the  criterion.  His  language 
upon  this  subject  may  sometimes  remind 
us  of  Kant's  ''Categorical  Imperative;" 
and  he  seems  to  have  been  blundering 
round  the  same  truths  or  errors  from 
which  the  great  German  elaborated  a 
moral  theory  far  more  ingenious,  though 
involving  the  same  fundamental  fallacy. — 
Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History  of  English 
Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii, 
p.  12. 

A  veteran  who  had  nearly  reached  his 
sixtieth  year  when  our  period  commences, 
chiefly  belongs  to  literature  as  an  antag- 
onist of  Burke,  as  does  Priestley,  whose 
writing  was  very  extensive,  but  who  was 
as  much  more  a  "natural  philosopher" 
than  a  man  of  letters  as  Price  was  much 
less  a  man  of  letters  than  a  moralist  and 
a  statistician.  —  Saintsbury,  George, 
1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  26. 


OF  THfc 

UNIVERSITY  of  iUmO\Sv 


PlilCE— REYNOLDS 


137 


Price's  reputation  at  the  present  time 
rests  mainly  upon  the  position  which  he  oc- 
cupies in  the  history  of  moral  philosophy. 
His  ethical  theories  are  mostly  contained 
in  Review  of  the  Principal  Questions 
in  Morals,"  of  which  the  first  edition  was 
published  in  1757,  and  the  third,  express- 
ing ''the  author's  latest  and  maturest 
thoughts,"  in  1787.  .  .  .  The  Eng- 
lish moralist  with  whom  Price  has  most 
affinity  is  Cudworth.  The  main  point  of 
difference  is  that,  while  Cudworth  regards 
the  ideas  of  right  and  wrong  as  vorjfxara 
or  modifications  of  the  intellect  itself, 
existing  first  in  germ,  and  afterwards 


developed  by  circumstances.  Price  seems 
rather  to  regard  them  as  acquired  from 
the  contemplation  of  actions,  though  ac- 
quired necessarily,  immediately,  and  intui- 
tively. The  interest  of  his  position,  how- 
ever, in  the  history  of  moral  philosophy, 
turns  mainly  on  the  many  points  of  re- 
semblance, both  in  fundamental  ideas  and 
in  modes  of  expression,  which  exist  be- 
tween his  writings  and  those  of  Kant, 
whose  ethical  works  are  posterior  to  those 
of  Price  by  nearly  thirty  years. — T.F.  (The 
Reverend  President  of  Corpus  Christi 
College  Oxford),  1896,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  XLVi,  p.  336. 


Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 

1723-1792 

Born  at  Plympton  Earl,  Devonshire,  July  16,  1723:  Died  at  London,  Feb.  23, 
1792.  A  celebrated  English  portrait-painter.  He  was  educated  by  his  father,  a 
schoolmaster  and  clergyman.  In  Oct.,  1741,  he  went  to  London  and  studied  under 
Thomas  Hudson.  In  1746  he  established  himself  as  a  portrait-painter  in  London. 
By  invitation  of  his  friend.  Commodore  (afterward  Admiral)  Keppel,"  he  sailed  for 
Italy  on  the  Centurion,  arriving  in  Rome  at  the  close  of  1749.  Owing  to  a  cold  which 
he  took  there,  he  became  deaf  and  never  recovered  his  hearing.  After  two  years  in 
Rome  he  visited  Parma,  Florence,  Venice,  and  other  Italian  cities.  He  returned  to 
London  in  1752,  and  was  intimately  associated  with  Johnson,  Burke,  Goldsmith,  Gar- 
rick,  and  others.  The  "Literary  Club"  was  established  at  his  suggestion  in  1764. 
In  1768  The  Royal  Academy  was  founded,  with  Reynolds  as  its  first  president.  His 
annual  addresses  form  its  well-known  "Discourses."  In  1784,  on  the  death  of  Allan 
Ramsay,  he  was  made  painter  to  the  king.  Reynolds  wrote  three  essays  in  the  "Idler" 
(1759-60).  His  most  famous  works  are  his  portraits  of  Johnson,  Garrick,  Sterne, 
Goldsmith,  the  little  Lady  Penelope  Boothby,  Mrs.  Siddons  as  the  "Tragic Muse,"  the 
"Infant  Hercules,"  the  "Strawberry  Girl,"  "Garrick  between  Tragedy  and  Comedy," 
etc. — Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  ^  Names,  p.  852. 


PERSONAL 

Of  Reynolds  all  good  should  be  said,  and  no 
harm ; 

Though  the  heart  is  too  frigid,  the  pencil  too 
warm ; 

Yet  each  fault  from  his  converse  we  still 

must  disclaim, 
As  his  temper  'tis  peaceful,  and  pure  as  his 

fame. 

Nothing  in  it  o'erflows,  nothing  ever  is 
w^anting, 

It  nor  chills  like  his  kindness,  nor  glows  like 

his  painting. 
When  Jolmson  by  strength  overpowers  our 

mind, 

When  Montagu  dazzles,  and  Burke  strikes 
us  blind ; 

To  Reynolds  well  pleased  for  relief  we  must 
run, 

Rejoice  in  his  shadow,  and  shrink  from  the 
sun. 

— Piozzi,  Hester  Lynch,  1773?  The 
Streatham  Portraits,  Autobiography,  ed. 
Hayward,  p.  254. 


Here  Reynolds  is  laid,  and  to  tell  you  my 
mind, 

He  has  not  left  a  wiser  or  better  behind ; 
His  pencil  was  striking,  resistless  and  grand; 
His  manners  were  gentle,  complying,  and 
bland ; 

Still  bom  to  improve  us  in  every  part, 
His  pencil  our  faces,  his  manners  our  heart: 
To  coxcombs  averse,  yet  most  civilly  steer- 
ing, 

When  they  judg'd  without  skill,  he  was  still 

hard  of  hearing ; 
When  they  talk'd  of  their  Raphaels,  Corre- 

gios,  and  stuff, 
He  shifted  his  trumpet,  and  only  took  snuff. 

—Goldsmith,  Oliver,  1174,  The  Retali- 
ation. 

I  heard  yesterday  of  your  late  disorder, 
and  should  think  ill  of  myself  if  I  had 
heard  of  it  without  alarm.  I  heard  like- 
wise of  your  recovery,  which  I  sincerely 
wish  to  be  complete  and  permanent. 
Your  country  has  been  in  danger  of 


138 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


losing  one  of  its  brightest  ornaments,  and 
I  of  losing  one  of  my  oldest  and  kindest 
friends ;  but  I  hope  you  will  still  live  long, 
for  the  honour  of  the  nation:  and  that 
more  enjoyment  of  your  elegance,  your 
intelligence,  and  your  benevolence  is  still 
reserved  for,  dear  Sir,  your  most  affec- 
tionate, &c.— Johnson,  Samuel,  1782, 
Letter  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  Nov.  14. 

His  native  humility,  modesty,  and  can- 
dour never  forsook  him,  even  on  surprise 
or  provocation ;  nor  was  the  least  degree 
of  arrogance  or  assumption  visible  to  the 
most  scrutinizing  eye  in  any  part  of  his 
conduct  or  discourse.  His  talents  of 
every  kind,  powerful  from  nature,  and 
not  meanly  cultivated  by  letters,  his  social 
virtues  in  all  the  relations  and  all  the 
habitudes  of  life,  rendered  him  the  cen- 
tre of  a  very  great  and  unparalleled  vari- 
ety of  agreeable  societies,  which  will  be 
dissipated  by  his  death.  He  had  too 
much  merit  not  to  excite  some  jealousy, 
too  much  innocence  to  provoke  any  en- 
mity. ...  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was 
on  very  many  accounts  one  of  the  most 
memorable  men  of  his  time.  ...  He 
was  the  first  Englishman  who  added  the 
praise  of  the  elegant  arts  to  the  other 
glories  of  his  country.  In  taste,  in 
grace,  in  facility,  in  happy  invention,  and 
in  the  richness  and  harmony  of  colouring, 
he  was  equal  to  the  great  masters  of  the 
renowned  ages.  In  portrait  he  went 
beyond  them ;  for  he  communicated  to 
that  description  of  the  art  in  which  Eng- 
lish artists  are  the  most  engaged,  a  vari- 
ety, a  fancy,  and  a  dignity  derived  from 
the  higher  branches,  which  even  those 
who  professed  them  in  a  superior  manner 
did  not  always  preserve  when  they  delin- 
eated individual  nature.  His  portraits 
remind  the  spectator  of  the  invention  of 
history  and  of  the  amenity  of  landscape. 
In  painting  portraits,  he  appeared  not  to 
be  raised  upon  that  platform,  but  to  de- 
scend to  it  from  a  higher  sphere.  .  .  . 
Pew  individuals  have  proved  themselves 
so  capable  of  illustrating  the  theory  of 
the  science  they  professed,  by  their  prac- 
tice and  their  discourses.  .  .  .  To  be 
such  a  painter,  he  was  a  profound  and 
penetrating  philosopher.  .  .  .  The 
loss  of  no  man  of  his  time  can  be  felt 
with  more  sincere,  general,  and  unmixed 
sorrow. — Burke,  Edmund,  1791,  London 
Gentleman^ s  Magazine,  vol.  I,  p.  190. 


Poor  Sir  Joshua !  How  good  —  how 
kind — how  truly  amiable  and  respectable ! 
The  best  of  men — whose  talents,  though 
an  honour  to  his  country,  were  the  least 
of  his  qualifications ! — Charlemont,Lord, 
1792,  Letter  to  Edmond  Malone,  March 
1 ;  Malone's  Life  by  Prior,  p.  189. 

I  became  first  acquainted  with  him  in 
1778,  and  for  these  twelve  years  past  we 
have  lived  in  the  greatest  intimacy.  .  .  . 
He  was  blessed  with  such  complacency 
and  equality  of  temper,  was  so  easy,  so 
uniformly  cheerful,  so  willing  to  please 
and  be  pleased,  so  fond  of  the  company 
of  literary  men,  so  well  read  in  mankind, 
so  curious  an  observer  of  character,  and 
so  replete  with  various  knowledge  and 
entertaining  anecdotes,  that  not  to  have 
loved  as  well  as  admired  him  would  have 
shown  great  want  of  taste  and  sensibility. 
He  had  long  enjoyed  such  constant  health, 
looked  so  young,  and  was  so  active,  that 
I  thought,  though  he  was  sixty-nine  years 
old,  he  was  as  likely  to  live  eight  or  ten 
years  longer  as  any  of  his  younger  friends. 
.  .  .  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  we 
should  not  have  lost  this  most  amiable 
man  for  some  years,  had  there  not  been 
want  of  exertion,  combined  with  some 
want  of  skill  in  his  physicians.  .  .  . 
On  his  body  being  opened,  his  liver  which 
ought  to  have  weighed  about  five  pounds, 
had  attained  the  great  weight  of  eleven 
pounds.  It  was  also  somewhat  scirrhus. 
The  optic  nerve  of  the  left  eye  was  quite 
shrunk,  and  more  flimsy  than  it  ought  to 
have  been.  The  other,  which  he  was  so 
apprehensive  of  losing,  was  not  affected. 
In  his  brain  was  found  more  water  than 
is  usual  in  men  of  his  age. — Malone, 
Edmond,  1792,  Life  by  Prior,  pp.  190, 
191,  192. 

He  had  none  of  those  eccentric  bursts 
of  action,  those  fiery  impetuosities,  which 
are  supposed  by  the  vulgar  to  characterize 
genius,  and  which  frequently  are  found  to 
accompany  a  secondary  rank  of  talent, 
but  are  never  conjoined  with  the  first.  His 
incessant  industry  was  never  wearied  into 
despondency  by  miscarriage,  nor  elated 
into  negligence  by  success.  All  nature 
and  all  art  combined  to  form  his  academy. 
.  .  .  In  conversation  he  preserved  an 
equable  flow  of  spirits,  which  had  rendered 
him  at  all  times  a  most  desirable  com- 
panion,— ever  ready  to  be  amused,  and 
to  contribute  to  the  amusement  of  others. 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


139 


He  practised  the  minute  elegancies,  and, 
though  latterly  a  deft  companion,  was 
never  troublesome.— Northcote,  James, 
1813,  Memoirs  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

In  his  stature,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was 
rather  under  the  middle  size.  He  was  in 
height  nearly  five  feet  six  inches,  of  a 
florid  complexion,  roundish,  blunt  fea- 
tures, and  a  lively,  pleasing  aspect;  not 
corpulent,  though  somewhat  inclined  to 
it,  but  extremely  active.  With  manners 
highly  polished  and  agreeable,  he  pos- 
sessed an  uncommon  flow  of  spirits,  but 
always  under  the  strictest  regulation, 
which  rendered  him,  at  all  times,  a  most 
pleasing  and  desirable  companion.  Such 
was  the  undeviating  propriety  of  his  de- 
portment, that  wherever  he  appeared,  he 
invariably,  by  his  example,  gave  a  tone  of 
decorum  to  the  society.  With  a  carriage 
the  most  unassuming,  he  always  com- 
manded that  personal  respect  which  was 
shown  him  on  all  occasions.  No  man  was 
more  fitted  for  the  seat  of  authority. 
When  acting  in  a  public  capacity,  he 
united  dignity  with  ease ;  in  private  society 
he  was  ever  ready  to  be  amused,  and  to 
contribute  to  the  amusement  of  others; 
and  was  always  attentive  to  receive  infor- 
mation on  every  subject  that  presented 
itself ;  and  by  the  aid  of  an  ear-trumpet 
he  was  enabled  to  partake  of  the  conver- 
sation of  his  friends  with  great  facility 
and  convenience. — Farington,  Joseph, 
1819,  Memoirs  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  had  no  real  or 
affected  peculiarities,  which  distinguished 
him  from  the  plain  English  gentleman: 
He  was  subject  to  no  fits  of  hysteric  en- 
thusiasm, asserted  no  undue  pretensions, 
and  thought  nothing  beneath  his  consid- 
eration which  the  rank  that  he  held  in 
society  appeared  to  require  at  his  hands. 
The  history  of  his  life  will  afford  but  lit- 
tle scope  to  those  who  look  for  romance 
as  inseparable  from  genius,  and  think  it 
unbecoming,  in  men  of  lofty  minds,  to 
climb  to  fame  by  a  path  which  might  be 
trodden  by  others. — Beechey,  Henry 
William,  1835-55,  The  Literary  Works  of 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  Memoir,  vol.  i,  p.  32. 

The  good-humour  of  Reynolds  was  a 
different  thing  from  that  of  Hogarth.  It 
had  no  antagonism  about  it.  Ill-humour 
with  any  other  part  of  the  world  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  It  was  gracious 
and  diffused ;  singling  out  some,  it  might 


be,  for  special  warmth,  but  smiling  blandly 
upon  all.  He  was  eminently  the  gentle- 
man of  his  time ;  and  if  there  is  a  hidden 
charm  in  his  portraits,  it  is  that.  His 
own  nature  pervades  them,  and  shines  out 
from  them  still. — Forster,  John,  1848- 
71,  The  Life  and  Times  of  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, vol.  I,  p.  306. 

I  am  afraid  Sir  Joshua,  though  a  bach- 
elor, is  not  very  particular  about  his 
studio  being  kept  neat;  for  I  observe, 
evidently  left  from  yesterday's  campaign, 
a  great  ring  of  brown  dust,  which  I  believe 
to  be  the  Famous  Hardham's  37,  the  snuff 
from  37,  Fleet  Street,  that  Garrick  uses 
and  puffs.  There  it  is  all  round  the  easel, 
dropped  in  lavish  slovenliness — a  trail  of 
it  marking  the  artist's  walk  between  the 
easel  and  the  throne.  It  is  rather  a 
weakness  of  Sir  Joshua's,  and,  in  fact,  he 
sometimes  sets  his  wits  and  beauties 
sneezing,  so  that  they  lose  their  expres- 
sion and  spoil  their  attitudes.  The  six 
sitters  of  to-day  will  not  like  it.  I  know 
he,  Sir  Joshewa,  is  so  bland  and  courteous, 
they  will  not  like  to  say  anything,  remem- 
bering the  story  at  Blenheim,  of  how  he 
refused  to  let  the  servant  the  duchess 
sent  sweep  up  the  snuff  till  he  had  fin- 
ished painting,  observing  that  his  picture 
would  suffer  more  injury  by  the  dust  than 
the  carpet  could  possibly  do  with  the  snuff. 
— Thornrury,  Walter,  1860,  British 
Artists  from  Hogarth  to  Turner,  vol.  I, 
p.  199. 

I  declare,  I  think,  of  all  the  polite  men 
of  the  age,  Joshua  Reynolds  was  the  finest 
gentleman. — Thackeray,  William  Make- 
peace, 1861,  Geoi^ge  HI,  The  Four  Georges. 

Sir  Joshua,  in  Miss  Burney's  "Diary," 
appears  bland,  amiable,  sensible,  unaf- 
fected, and  essentially  kindly.  In  this 
the  ''Diary"  is  borne  out  by  all  the  reliable 
contemporary  evidence  to  character.  The 
conception  of  him  as  a  cold,  calculating, 
politic,  selfish  being,  a  smoulderer  instead 
of  a  blazer,  is  a  figment  of  later  biographers 
and  critics.  Its  best  foundation  is  an  oc- 
casional splenetic  remark  of  Northcote's, 
made  when  he  was  old,  ailing,  and  queru- 
lous, but  contradicted  by  the  general  tenor 
of  Northcote's  own  account  of  the  painter 
he  reverenced,  and  whom  he  was  always 
holding  up  as  a  pattern  to  young  men. — 
Leslie,  Charles  Robert,  and  Taylor, 
Tom,  1865,  Life  and  Times  of  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  vol.  ii,  p.  205. 


140 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


It  was  while  studying  Raphael's  frescos 
in  the  Vatican  that  Reynolds  caught  the 
cold  which  resulted  in  his  deafness ;  and 
thereafter  the  ear-trumpet  of  Sir  Joshua 
was  as  characteristic  a  part  of  himself  as 
was  the  wooden  leg  a  part  of  the  redoubt- 
able Governor  Peter  Stuyvesant.  He 
even  painted  his  own  portrait  with  his 
trumpet  held  to  his  ear;  though,  when 
about  the  same  time  he  painted  Dr.  John- 
son holding  a  book  very  close  to  his  eyes, 
the  great  man  did  not  relish  this  vivid 
evidence  of  his  extreme  near-sighted- 
ness, but  said  to  Boswell :  ''Sir,  he  may 
paint  himself  as  deaf  as  he  chooses,  but  I 
will  not  go  down  to  posterity  as  'Blinking 
Sam.'" — Keppel,  Frederick,  1894,  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  Scrihnefs  Magazine,  vol. 
15,  p.  98. 

His  personal  life  is  indicative  of  the 
spirit  that  influenced  his  art.  There  was 
nothing  erratic,  venturesome,  or  impul- 
sive about  either.  It  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  the  man  at  any  time,  either  in  life  or 
in  art,  possessed  such  things  as  fire,  pas- 
sion, romance.  He  was  too  calm  for 
either  love  or  hatred,  too  conservative 
for  brilliancy,  too  philosophical  for  enthu- 
siasm. In  art  he  placed  less  reliance 
upon  inspiration  than  upon  intelligent 
knowledge,  believed  the  gospel  of  genius 
to  be  work,  and  thought  originality  a  new 
way  of  saying  old  truths.  Such  ideas  as 
these  form  the  chief  counts  in  his  dis- 
courses to  the  students  of  the  Royal 
Academy.— Van  Dyke,  John  C,  1897, 
Old  English  Masters,  The  Century,  vol,  54, 
p.  817. 

The  beauty  of  his  disposition  and  the 
nobility  of  his  character  were  equal  to  his 
talents.  Without  any  physical  advan- 
tages— for  he  was  neither  tall  nor  hand- 
some, and  had  the  great  social  drawback 
of  deafness — he  secured  without  seeking, 
and  maintained  without  effort,  a  position 
in  society  which  is  almost  unrivalled. 
Treating  all  men  on  the  plain  level  of  com- 
mon human  nature  and  unactuated  by  any 
prejudice,  he  mixed,  as  by  natural  charter, 
with  all  classes.  His  principal  passports 
were  kindliness,  sincerity,  and  tolerance ; 
but  these  were  aided  by  a  ready  sympa- 
thy, of  a  well-informed  mind,  gentle  man- 
ners, and  invariable  tact  and  common- 
sense.  The  charm  of  his  presence  and 
conversation  was  all  the  more  irresistible 
because  it  was  unforced  and  unfeigned. 


He  was  a  born  diplomatist,  and  avoided 
friction  by  natural  instinct ;  a  philosopher 
who  early  learnt  and  consistently  acted 
on  the  principle  not  to  concern  himself 
about  matters  of  small  importance. — 
Monkhouse,  Cosmo,  1896,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  XLViii,  p.  66. 

ART 

One  of  the  most  interesting  exhibitions 
of  this  season  is  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds' 
pictures,  which  have  been  sent  from  all 
parts  of  the  kingdom  by  the  owners,  and 
which  are  remarkable,  not  only  for  the 
genius  of  the  master,  but  as  a  gallery  of 
all  the  beauties,  wits,  and  heroes  of  the 
last  sixty  years,  who  have  almost  all  been 
painted  by  Sir  Joshua. — Mackintosh,  Sir 
James,  1813,  Letters  to  his  Daughters, 
May  11 ;  Life,  ed.  Mackintosh,  vol.  ii,  ch.  iv. 

Having  emptiness  for  breadth,  plaster- 
ing for  surface,  and  portrait  individuality 
for  general  nature.  Reynold's  tone  is 
too  much  toned.  Raffaele  is  pure  and  in- 
artificial in  comparison.  Reynolds  is  a 
man  of  strong  feeling,  labouring  to  speak 
in  a  language  he  does  not  know,  and  giv- 
ing a  hint  of  his  idea  by  a  dazzling  combi- 
nation of  images — Raffaele  a  master  of 
polished  diction  who  conveys  in  exquisite 
phraseology  certain  perceptions  of  truth. 
.  .  .  It  may  take  its  place  triumph- 
•  antly  by  any  borreggio  on  earth.  It  is 
very  lovely.  The  whole  series  are  un- 
equaled  by  an  English  master. — Haydon, 
Benjamin  Robert,  1821,  On  the  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  Sale. 

If  I  was  to  compare  him  with  Vandyke 
and  Titian,  I  should  say  that  Vandyke's 
portraits  are  like  pictures  (very  perfect 
ones  no  doubt).  Sir  Joshua's  like  the  re- 
flection in  a  looking-glass,  and  Titian's 
like  the  real  people.  There  is  an  atmos- 
phere of  light  and  shade  about  Sir 
Joshua's  which  neither  of  the  others  have 
in  the  same  degree,  together  with  a  vague- 
ness that  gives  them  a  visionary  and  ro- 
mantic character,  and  makes  them  seem 
like  dreams  or  vivid  recollections  of  per- 
sons we  have  seen.  I  never  could  mis- 
take Vandyke's  for  anything  but  pictures, 
and  I  go  up  to  them  as  such ;  when  I  see 
a  fine  Sir  Joshua,  I  can  neither  suppose  it 
to  be  a  mere  picture  nor  a  man,  and  I  al- 
most involuntarily  turn  back  to  ascertain 
if  it  is  not  some  one  behind  me  reflected 
in  the  glass;  when  I  see  a  Titian  I  am 
riveted  to  it,  and  I  can  no  more  take  my 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


141 


eye  off  from  it  than  if  it  were  the  very 
individual  in  the  room. —  Northcote, 
James,  1826-27,  Conversations,  ed.  Haz- 
litU  V>  257. 

The  influence  of  Reynolds  on  the  taste 
and  elegance  of  the  island  was  great,  and 
will  be  lasting.  The  grace  and  ease  of 
his  compositions  were  a  lesson  for  the  liv- 
ing to  study,  while  the  simplicity  of  his 
dresses  admonished  the  giddy  and  the  gay 
against  the  hideousness  of  fashion.  He 
sought  to  restore  nature  in  the  looks  of 
his  sitters,  and  he  waged  a  thirty  years' 
war  against  the  fopperies  of  dress.  His 
works  diffused  a  love  of  elegance,  and 
united  with  poetry  in  softening  the  asper- 
ities of  nature,  in  extending  our  views, 
and  in  connecting  us  with  the  spirits  of 
the  time.  His  cold  stateliness  of  charac- 
ter, and  his  honourable  pride  of  art,  gave 
dignity  to  his  profession :  the  rich  and 
the  far-descended  were  pleased  to  be 
painted  by  a  gentleman  as  well  as  a  gen- 
ius.— Cunningham,  Allan,  1830-33,  The 
Lives  of  the  Most  Eminent  British  Painters 
and  Sculptors,  vol.  i,  p.  279. 

The  colouring  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
in  his  best  works  combines  the  highest 
qualities  of  Correggio  and  Titian  with  the 
brilliancy  and  luxuriance  of  the  Dutch 
and  the  Flemish  schools,  deprived  of  their 
tumidities.  The  common  error  that  his 
colours  all  fail,  ought  by  this  time  to  be 
entirely  effaced.  It  is  too  true  that  this 
is  the  case  with  the  colouring  of  many 
pictures  painted  by  him  during  a  short 
period  of  his  life ;  he  thought  that  he  had 
discovered  a  mode  of  rendering  colouring 
more  vivid,  and  employed  it  without  duly 
considering  the  chemical  qualities  of  his 
materials.  But  he  was  soon  made  ac- 
quainted with  the  mistake  he  had  com- 
mitted, reassumed  his  durable  system 
with  increased  beauty  and  vigour,  and 
continued  to  employ  it  till  the  termina- 
tion of  his  valuable  labours. — Phillips, 
Thomas,  1833,  Lectoes  on  Painting,  p.  372. 

That  the  portraits  of  Reynolds  were  the 
best  of  all  likenesses  1  have  no  manner 
of  doubt.  I  know  several  of  his  pictures 
of  children,  the  originals  of  whom  I  have 
seen  in  middle  and  old  age,  and  in  every 
instance  I  could  discover  much  likeness. 
—Leslie,  Charles,  1855,  Hand-Book  for 
Young  Painters. 

But  there  is  likewise  a  window,  lament- 
able to  look  at,  which  was  painted  by  Sir 


Joshua  Reynolds,  and  exhibits  strikingly 
the  difference  between  the  work  of  a  man 
who  performed  it  merely  as  a  matter  of 
taste  and  business,  and  what  was  done 
religiously  and  with  the  whole  heart ;  at 
least,  it  shows  that  the  artists  and  public 
of  the  last  age  had  no  sympathy  with 
Gothic  art.  In  the  chancel  of  this  church 
there  are  more  painted  windows,  which 
I  take  to  be  modern,  too,  though  they  are 
in  much  better  taste,  and  have  an  infin- 
itely better  effect,  than  Sir  Joshua"s. — 
Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  1856,  Oxford^ 
English  Note  Books,  Aug.  31. 

Considered  as  a  painter  of  individuality 
in  the  human  form  and  mind,  I  think  him 
even  as  it  is,  the  prince  of  portrait  paint- 
ers. Titian  paints  nobler  pictures  and 
Vandyck  has  nobler  subjects,  but  neither 
of  them  enter  so  subtly  as  Joshua  did*into 
the  minor  varieties  of  human  heart  and 
temper.— Ruskin,  John,  1859,  The  Two 
Paths,  Lecture,  ii. 

With  Reynolds  the  assurance  of  the 
master  never  bordered  on  impertinence. 
He  was  searching  always  and  to  the  end, 
and  even  those  melancholy  experiments 
with  pigments  and  colours  which  have 
served  to  hasten  the  ruin  of  many  of  his 
pictures,  are  but  the  outward  sign  of  a 
higher  intellectual  curiosity  which  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  his  genius.  To  the  close 
of  his  long  career  his  painting  preserved 
the  interesting  characteristics  that  in  the 
work  of  other  men  belong  only  to  the 
season  of  youth  and  progress :  he  is  little 
of  a  mannerist,  because  he  has  none  of 
the  settled  confidence  of  style  which  be- 
gets mannerism :  with  each  new  subject 
he  is  moved  to  new  effort  and  experiment : 
and  though  the  measure  of  his  success  is 
not  always  the  same,  even  his  failures 
are  not  the  failures  of  audacity  or  self- 
assurance. — Carr,  J.  CoMYNS,  1884,  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  English  Illustrated  Maga- 
zine, vol.  I,  p.  342. 

The  individual  portrait  was  the  portrait 
of  Sir  Joshua.  In  him  the  gift  of  paint- 
ing men  and  women  was  supreme.  Not 
only  did  he  paint  them  in  their  habit  as 
they  lived,  but  with  such  masterly  sug- 
gestion of  character  as  was  practically 
unknown  amongst  the  men  of  his  genera- 
tion. ...  A  singularly  calm  and  genial 
temper  was  joined  to  an  astonishing  alert- 
ness of  observation,  and  these  gifts  were 
trained  by  constant  and  varied  practice. 


142 


SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS 


Always  on  the  watch  for  the  turn  of  the 
head,  the  uplifting  of  the  hand,  the  bend- 
ing or  stiffness  of  the  figure,  he  never 
seems  to  have  failed  to  recognise  the 
really  differential  note  of  character.  And 
he  indicated  these  things  with  extraordi- 
nary subtlety.  In  particular,  he  divined 
the  character  of  children  with  unfailing 
accuracy  and  sympathy.  As  has  been 
very  perfectly  said,  Reynolds  has  the 
secret  of  all  the  characteristic  graces  of 
women  and  children. — Hughes,  R.,  1896, 
Social  England,  ed.  Traill,  vol.  v,  p.  283. 

The  name  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  holds 
a  place  of  honor  among  the  world's  great 
portrait  painters.  To  appreciate  fully 
his  originative  power  one  must  understand 
the  disadvantages  under  which  he  worked. 
His  technical  training  was  of  the  meagrest 
kindy.  and  all  his  life  he  was  hampered  by 
ignorance  of  anatomy.  But  on  the  other 
hand  he  combined  all  those  peculiar  qual- 
ities of  the  artist  without  which  no 
amount  of  technical  skill  can  produce 
great  portrait  work.  He  had,  in  the  first 
place,  that  indefinable  quality  of  taste, 
which  means  so  much  in  portraiture.  His 
was  an  unerring  instinct  for  poise,  dra- 
pery, color,  and  composition.  Each  of  his 
figures  seems  to  assume  naturally  an  at- 
titude of  perfect  grace ;  the  draperies  fall 
of  their  own  accord  in  beautiful  lines. 
Reynolds  knew,  too,  the  secret  of  impart- 
ing an  air  of  distinction  to  his  sitters. 
The  meanest  subject  was  elevated  by  his 
art  to  a  position  of  dignity.  His  magic 
touch  made  every  child  charming,  every 
woman  graceful,  and  every  man  dignified. 
Finally,  he  possessed  in  no  small  degree, 
though  curiously  enough  entirely  dis- 
claiming the  quality,  the  gift  of  present- 
ing the  essential  personality  of  the  sitter, 
that  which  a  critic  has  called  the  power 
of  * 'realizing  an  individuality."  This  is 
seen  most  clearly  in  his  portraits  of  men, 
and  naturally  in  the  portraits  of  the  men 
he  knew  best,  as  Johnson. — Hurll,  Es- 
TELLE  M.,  1900,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  p.  7. 

GENERAL 

I  cannot  think  that  the  theory  here  [in 
his  Discourses"]  laid  down  is  clear  and 
satisfactory,  that  it  is  consistent  with 
itself,  that  it  accounts  for  the  various 
excellences  of  art  from  a  few  simple  prin- 
ciples, or  that  the  method  which  Sir 
Joshua  has  pursued  in  treating  the  sub- 
ject is,  as  he  himself  expresses  it,  ''a 


plain  and  honest  method."  It  is,  I  fear, 
more  calculated  to  baffle  and  perplex  the 
student  in  his  progress,  than  to  give  him 
clear  lights  as  to  the  object  he  should 
have  in  view,  or  to  furnish  him  with 
strong  motives  of  emulation  to  attain  it. 
— Hazlitt,  William,  1824-43-44,  Criti- 
cism on  Art,  Second  Series,  p.  84. 

Then,  as  to  Sir  Joshua's  writings,  their 
spirit  is  all  in  delightful  keeping  with  his 
pictures.  One  of  the  few  painters  he 
— such  as  Leonardo  Da  Vinci,  Michael 
Angelo,  and  so  on — our  own  Barry,  Opie, 
Filseli,  and  so  on — who  could  express  by 
the  pen  the  principles  which  guide  the 
pencil.  'Tis  the  only  work  on  art  which, 
to  men  not  artistis,  is  entirely  intelligible. 
— Wilson,  John,  1829,  Noctes  Amhrosi- 
ance,  April. 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  who  has  the  good 
fortune  to  be  remembered  alike  by  his 
pencil  and  his  pen,  and  whose  discourses 
still  remain  the  most  sensible  and  judi- 
cious work  on  the  principles  of  painting, 
in  our  language.  —  Hillard,  George 
Stillman,1853,  Six  Months  in  Raly,  p.  78. 

A  word  as  to  his  style.  There  is  a 
clearness  and  perspicuity  about  it  which 
enables  us  at  once  to  perceive  the  drift  of 
his  remarks ;  he  does  not  conceal  himself  in 
a  dense  mass  of  verbiage,  nor  does  he  write 
ambiguously,  hinting  at  this  and  suggest- 
ing that,  but  arrow-like  goes  straight  to 
his  point.  Withal,  there  is  no  baldness ; 
every  sentence  is  carefully  constructed,  and 
there  are  everywhere  marks  of  the  labor 
limce ;  perhaps  here  and  there  it  savours 
somewhat  too  much  of  elaboration.  Still, 
it  is  a  very  graceful  style ;  just  what  we 
should  expect  from  a  cultured,  well-tem- 
pered mind, — scholarly  without  pedantry, 
easy  without  vulgarity. — Pulling,  F.  S., 
1880,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  p.  100. 

The  earliest  art-criticisms  of  any  value 
published  in  this  country  were  contained 
in  the  annual  and  biennial  "Discourses" 
which  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  F.  R.  A.,  de- 
livered from  January  1759  to  his  retire- 
ment in  December  1790.  They  were  issued 
year  by  year,  and  collected  after  his  death. 
.  .  .  It  was,  doubtless,  through  his  life- 
long companionship  with  Johnson,  Burke, 
and  Goldsmith  that  Reynolds  learned  to 
write  in  the  English  language  only  a  little 
less  brilliantly  than  they. —GossE,  Edmund, 
1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century 
Literature,  pp.  308,  309. 


RE  YNOLDS—HORNE 


143 


Nothing  is  more  remarkable  in  the  great 
career  of  our  master  than  the  genuine  lit- 
erary ability  which  he  developed  by  de- 
grees, side  by  side  with,  yet  quite  inde- 
pendently of,  his  artistic  capacity.  And 
we  must  wonder  the  more  when  we  re- 
member that  he  received  not  more  than 
the  education  of  the  average  school -boy 
of  his  time,  and  in  the  course  of  his  well- 
filled  and  practically  uninterrupted  career 
was  unable  to  supplement  early  deficien- 
cies by  any  sustained  course  of  reading  or 
study. —  Phillips,  Claude,  1894,  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  p.  389. 

The  personal  charm  and  strength  of 
character,  which  doubtless  assisted  the 
universal  recognition  of  his  genius,  may 
account  in  part  for  the  great  influence  of 
his  writings.  His  style,  though  somewhat 
formal,  was  graceful,  simple,  and  urbane. 
He  had  been  trained  in  the  classical  school 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  qualified  him  to 
think  justly,"  but  fortunately  his  admira- 
tion of  the  master  did  not  tempt  him  to 
forget,  in  composition,  the  true  principles 
of  imitation  which  he  expounded  in 
the  ''Discourses."— Johnson,  Reginald 
Brimley,  1895,  English  Prose,  ed.  Craik, 
vol.  IV,  p.  301. 

The  fame  of  Sir  Joshua's  Discourses  is 
at  first  sight  a  little  difficult  to  understand. 
For  a  hundred  years  it  has  been  the  fash- 
ion to  treat  them  as  models  of  literature 
and  monuments  of  critical  profundity. 
Their  style  has  been  thought  so  much  too 
good  for  their  putative  author,  that  the 
great  shades  of  Burke  and  Johnson  have 
been  descried  at  Sir  Joshua's  elbow,  con- 
trolling his  expression  and  even  suggest- 
ing his  ideas.  Again,  their  reasoning  on 
the  foundations  of  art  has  been  so  far  ac- 
cepted by  those  who  ought  to  know,  that 


they  have  been  put,  as  a  text-book,  into 
the  hands  of  some  twenty  generations  of 
students.  And  yet  Sir  Joshua's  style  isgood 
only  through  its  sincerity ;  and  his  teach- 
ing sound  only  if  meant  to  be  superficial. 
.  .  .  To  us  who  have  the  advantage 
of  a  distant  perspective,  it  seems  extraor- 
dinary that  any  one  should  ascribe  the  emi- 
nently human,  but  somewhat  invertebrate 
periods  of  Sir  Joshua  first  to  Johnson  and 
afterwards  to  Burke.  As  a  writer  Rey- 
nolds was,  of  course,  an  amateur.  He  had 
never  been  drilled  in  the  use  of  language, 
or  compelled  to  notice  how  the  practised 
writer  avoids  those  involutions  and  cacoph- 
onies which  spring  from  the  unguarded 
expression  of  complex  ideas.  He  piles 
relative  on  relative  and  participle  on  par- 
ticiple, until  his  sentences  become  so  long 
drawn  out  that  we  have  to  read  them 
twice  to  grasp  their  meaning.  As  inter- 
preted by  a  good  speaker,  they  would,  no 
doubt,  be  clear  enough.  Vocal  modula- 
tions would  bring  out  the  sense.  But 
Reynolds,  we  are  told,  had  a  very  bad  de- 
livery, and  so  it  is  not  surprising  that  his 
colleagues  paid  him  the  compliment  of  a 
request  to  print  his  sermons !  .  .  .  In 
reading  Sir  Joshua,  we  feel  that  he  is  in- 
side his  subject,  groping  his  way  out. 
His  guesses  are  often  unhappy,  and  lead 
him  to  conclusions  w^hich  are  little  else 
than  absurd.  But  there  he  is,  neverthe- 
less, inside,  and  doing  his  best  to  under- 
stand his  milieu,  and  to  get  a  right  con- 
ception of  the  w^hole  matter.  His  methods 
of  expression  are  imperfect,  and  leave  us 
with  the  idea  that  his  conceptions  are  too 
complicated  to  be  rendered  in  such  words  as 
he  can  command. — Armstrong,  Sir  Wal- 
TER,ldOO,  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  First  Presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Academy,  pp.  175, 177, 179. 


G-eorge  Home 

1730-1792 

George  Home  was  born  (November  1,  1730)  at  Otham,  near  Maidstone,  in  Kent. 
At  the  age  of  13,  he  was  sent  to  school  at  Maidstone ;  and  at  15,  entered  University 
College,  Oxford.  He  graduated  B.  A.  in  1749,  was  afterwards  elected  a  fellow  of 
Magdalen  College,  graduated  M.  A.  in  1752,  became  B.  D.  in  1759,  and  D.  D.  in 
1764,  and  in  1768  was  appointed  principal  of  Magdalen.  Pious,  of  thoughtful  disposi- 
tion ;  contented  in  mind,  and  devoted  to  learning ;  Dr.  Horne  resided  year  after  year 
in  his  college,  happy  in  his  family  circle,  and  devoting  himself,  chiefly,  to  the  study 
of  Hebrew  and  sacred  literature,  and  engaging  in  Biblical  works,  especially  the  prep- 
aration of  his  ''Commentary  on  the  Book  of  Psalms,"  which  he  had  commenced  in 
1758.  It  appeared  in  two  volumes,  in  1776,  and  has  been  frequently  reprinted.  Its 
value  is  thought,  by  some,  to  be  lessened,  through  the  influence  the  author  allowed  to 


144 


GEORGE  HORNE 


be  exercised  over  him,  in  its  preparation,  by  those  erroneous  philological  and  philo- 
sophical principles  of  Hutchinson,  which  have  long  since  been  exploded.  In  the  year 
of  the  publication  of  this  work,  he  was  appointed  Vice-Chancellor  of  his  University ; 
in  1781,  Dean  of  Canterbury;  and,  in  1791,  Bishop  of  Norwich.  But  he  did  not  long 
enjoy  his  episcopal  honour.  He  died  January  17,  1792,  in  his  sixty-second  year. — 
Miller,  Josiah,  1866-69,  Singers  and  Songs  of  the  Church,  p.  250. 


PERSONAL 

Bishop  Home,  whose  literary  feelings 
were  of  the  most  delicate  and  lively  kind, 
has  beautifully  recorded  them  in  his  prog- 
ress through  a  favourite  and  lengthened 
work — his  "Commentary  on  the  Psalms." 
He  alludes  to  himself  in  the  third  person ; 
yet  who  but  the  self-painter  could  have 
caught  those  delicious  emotions  which  are 
so  evanescent  in  the  deep  occupation  of 
pleasant  studies  ?— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1796- 
1818,  Enthusiasm  of  Genius,  The  Literary 
Character. 

Like  many  earnest  men  of  the  day. 
Home  fell  under  the  imputation  of  meth- 
odism.  He  adopted  the  views  of  John 
Hutchinson  (1674 — 1737),  and  wrote  his 
defence,  although  he  disagreed  with  his 
fanciful  interpretations  of  Hebrew  etymol- 
ogy. Hutchinsonianism  had  some  points 
in  common  with  methodism,  notably  its 
intense  appreciation  of  holy  scripture,  and 
its  insistence  upon  spiritual  religion. 
But  Home  was  distinctly  what  would  now 
be  called  a  high  churchman,  and  he  pub- 
licly protested  from  the  university  pulpit 
against  those  who  took  their  theology 
from  the  Tabernacle  and  the  Foundry 
(Whitefield's  and  Wesley's  headquarters) 
instead  of  from  the  great  divines  of  the 
church.  Nevertheless,  apart  from  his 
position  as  a  Hutchinsonian,  Horne  per- 
sonally showed  a  sympathy  with  the  meth- 
odists.  He  strongly  disapproved  of  the 
expulsion  of  the  six  methodist  students 
from  St.  Edmund  Hall,  Oxford.  He  would 
not  have  John  Wesley,  "an  ordained  min- 
ister of  the  Church  of  England,"  forbid- 
den to  preach  in  his  diocese,  and  John 
Wesley  thoroughly  appreciated  Home's 
action. — Overton,  J.  H.,  1891,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  xxvii,  p.  356. 

COMMENTARY  ON  THE  PSALMS 

1771 

A  delightful  amplification  of  the  music 
of  Zion,  wherein  every  phrase  is  spirit- 
ualized, every  prophetic  and  recondite 
meaning  pointed  out. — Grant,  Johnson, 
1811-25,  A  Summary  of  the  History  of  the 
English  Church. 


It  is  a  truly  evangelical  and  i^ost  valua- 
ble work,  generally  commended  and  ad- 
mired for  the  vein  of  spirituality  and 
devotion  which  runs  through  it,  as  well  as 
for  the  elegant  taste  displayed  in  the  illus- 
tration of  difficult  passages.  The  author ' s 
design  is  to  illustrate  the  historical  sense 
of  the  Psalms  as  they  relate  to  King 
David  and  the  people  of  Israel ;  and  to 
point  out  their  application  to  the  Messiah, 
to  the  Church,  and  to  individuals  as  mem- 
bers of  the  Church. — Lowndes,  William 
Thomas,  1839,  British  Librarian. 

His ''Commentary  on  the  Psalms"  is  his 
capital  performance,  and  the  one  by  which 
he  will  be  known  so  long  as  piety  and  ele- 
gant learning  are  loved  in  England.  It 
is  altogether  a  beautiful  work.  The  pref- 
ace is  a  masterpiece  of  composition  and 
good  sense.  The  exposition  implies  more 
learning  and  research  than  it  displays; 
and  the  views  of  Christian  doctrine  con- 
tained in  it  are  generally  very  correct. 
Perhaps  he  carries  his  applications  to  the 
Messiah  and  his  Church  occasionally 
rather  far ;  but  this  is  less  hurtful  than 
the  opposite  extreme,  which  has  more 
generally  been  adopted. — Orme,  William, 
1824,  Bibliotheca  Biblica. 

GENERAL 

Mr.  Warburton  has  seen  a  thing  against 
the  Newtonian  philosophy  in  favour  of 
Hutchinson  by  one  Horne,  of  Oxford,  and 
thinks  it  would  be  a  good  employment  for 
some  Cambridge  Soph  to  answer  it. — 
HuRD,  Richard,  1753,  Letter  to  Rev.  Mr, 
Balguy,  Memoirs,  ed.  Kilvert,  p.  48. 

This  writer  seems  to  have  had  as  much 
devotion  and  regard  for  the  grand  prin- 
ciples of  Christianity  as  command  respect ; 
but  few  evangelical  preachers,  notwith- 
standing, would  like  to  take  him  for  a 
pattern.— Williams,  Edward,  1800,  The 
Christian  Preacher. 

Bishop  Home's  views  of  preaching,  not 
always  (alas !  such  is  our  common  infirm- 
ity !)  fully  illustrated  by  his  own  sermons, 
are  instructive.  .  .  .  His  sermons  are 
polished,  and  have  many  beautiful  and 


HORNE—DALR  YMPLE 


145 


excellent  thoughts ;  but  they  are  wanting 
in  the  full  declaration  of  justification  by 
faith,  and  therefore  meet  not  adequately 
the  distresses  of  an  awakened  conscience. 
.  .  .  His  sermons  are  devotional  and 
elegant.  He  and  others  of  his  school 
have  brought  some  important  truths  be- 
fore men  who  would  not  have  listened  to 
those  writing  more  in  the  spirit  of  the 
Reformers. — Bickersteth,  Edward,  1844, 
The  Christian  Student. 

George  Home  was  very  soon  described 
as  ''without  exception  the  best  preacher  in 
England, ' '  a  judgment  which  his  sermons 


which  remain  to  us  go  far  to  justify. 
By  these  and  his  other  writings,  especially 
his  devotional  work  on  the  Psalms,  Home 
may  be  regarded  as  the  founder  of  the 
Scriptural  school,  which  towards  the  end 
of  the  century  received  so  great  a  devel- 
opment. .  .  .  The  praise  of  attempt- 
ing to  overthrow  this  lifeless  and  unedify- 
ing  treatment  of  Scripture  is  due  to 
Home,  and  the  great  success  which  his 
truly  Christian  writings  obtained,  was  of 
the  highest  service  to  the  cause  of  religion. 
— Perry,  George  G.,  1864,  The  History  of 
the  Church  of  England,  vol.  iii,  py.  382,383. 


Sir  David  Dalrymple 

Lord  Hailes 
1726-1792 

Sir  David  Dalrymple,  Lord  Hailes,  historical  antiquary,  born  at  Edinburgh,  28th 
October  1726,  was  the  great  grandson  of  the  first  Lord  Stair.  He  was  called  to  the 
Scottish  bar  in  1748,  and  in  1766  became  a  judge  of  the  Court  of  Session  as  Lord 
Hailes,  in  1776  a  justiciary  lord.  At  his  country-seat  of  New  Hailes,  near  Edin- 
burgh, he  gave  his  leisure  to  uninterrupted  literary  activity.  He  died  29  November 
1792.  Among  his  books  are  "A  Discourse  on  the  Gowrie  Conspiracy"  (1757); 
"Memorials  relating  to  the  Reigns  of  James  L  and  Charles  I."  (1762-66);  and 
"Annals  of  Scotland,  1057-1371"  (1776-79).  He  wrote  besides  on  legal  antiquities 
and  ancient  church  history,  edited  old  Scotch  poems,  &c. — Patrick  and  Groome, 
eds.y  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  450. 


PERSONAL 

The  indefatigable  Sir  David  is  translat- 
ing Minutius  Felix,  and  writing  notes. 
Of  the  last,  I  have  a  large  farrago  in  my 
hands,  and  am  to  keep  them,  I  suppose, 
till  his  Arch-Critic  arrives.  This  Sir 
David  is  a  good,  well-intentioned  man, 
has  learning  and  sense,  but  is  withal  im- 
moderately vain;  which  I  conclude,  not 
from  his  writings  so  much  (for  then  how 
should  another  friend  of  yours  escape  ?) 
but  from  his  teasing  his  friends  so  immod- 
erately with  his  MSS.  However,  with  all 
his  imperfections  upon  his  head,  give  me 
a  writer — an  animal  that  is  now  become  a 
rara  avis,  and  much  to  be  stared  at,  even 
in  our  learned  universities. — Hurd,  Rich- 
ard, 1780,  Letter  to  Dr.  Balguy,  Dec.  14, 
Memoirs,  ed.  Kilvert,  p.  140. 

He  was  called  to  the  bar  at  Edinburgh, 
February  23d,  1748,  and  was  much  admired 
for  the  elegant  propriety  of  the  Cases  he 
drew.  Though  he  had  not  attained  to  the 
highest  rank  as  a  practising  lawyer,  his 
character  for  sound  knowledge  and  prob- 
ity in  the  profession  was  so  great  that  he 
was  appointed  one  of  the  Judges  of  the 

IOC 


Court  of  Session,  in  the  room  of  Lord 
Nesbit,  March  6th,  1766,  and  in  May, 
1776,  one  of  the  Lord  Commissioners  of 
Justiciary,  in  the  room  of  Lord  Coalston, 
who  resigned.  He  died  on  the  29th  of 
November.— Savage,  James,  1808,  The 
Librarian,  vol.  I,  p.  85. 

As  an  oral  pleader  he  was  not  success- 
ful. A  defect  in  articulation  prevented 
him  from  speaking  fluently,  and  he  was 
naturally  an  impartial  critic  rather  than 
a  jealous  advocate.  Much  of  the  business 
of  litigation  in  Scotland  at  this  time  was 
conducted,  however,  by  writing  pleadings, 
and  he  gained  a  solid  reputation  as  a 
learned  and  accurate  lawyer.  There  is  no 
better  specimen  of  such  pleadings  than  the 
case  for  the  Countess  of  Southerland  in 
her  claim  for  the  peerage  in  the  House  of 
the  Lords,  which  was  drawn  by  Hailes  as 
her  guardian  after  he  became  judge.  It 
won  the  cause,  and  is  still  appealed  to  by 
peerage  lawyers  for  the  demonstration  of 
the  descent  of  the  older  Scottish  titles 
to  and  through  females.  .  .  .  The 
solemnity  of  his  manner  in  administering 
oaths  and  pronouncing  sentences  specially 


146 


SIR  DAVID  DALRYMPLE 


struck  his  contemporaries.  As  a  judge  in 
the  civil  court  he  was  admired  for  dili- 
gence and  patience,  keeping  under  re- 
straint his  power  of  sarcasm.  In  knowl- 
edge of  the  history  of  law  he  was  sur- 
passed by  none  of  his  brethren,  though 
among  them  were  Elchies,  Kaimes,  and 
Monboddo.— Mackay,  .Eneas,  1888,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  xiii, 
pp.  403,  404. 

An  estimable  man  was  this  scholar ;  but 
a  little  less  self-consciousness  would  have 
improved  his  lordship,  who  kept  aloof 
from  the  genial  society  of  Edinburgh  lest 
it  might  impair  his  flawless  dignity.  Dis- 
tant in  manner,  he  was  seldom  met  with 
even  in  the  company  of  Ferguson  and  Blair 
and  Adam  Smith,  for  such  friendly  com- 
radeship would  jar  on  his  prim  punctil- 
iousness, and  vex  his  due  regard  for  what 
was  "becoming." — Graham,  Henry  Grey, 
1901,  Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  p.  201. 

GENERAL 

''Lord  Hailes's  'Annals  of  Scotland' 
have  not  that  painted  form  which  is  the 
taste  of  this  age ;  but  it  is  a  book  which 
will  always  sell,  it  has  such  a  stability  of 
dates,  such  a  certainty  of  facts,  and  such 
a  punctuality  of  citation.  I  never  before 
read  Scotch  history  with  certainty." — ■ 
Johnson,  Samuel,  1776,  Life  by  Boswell, 
ed.  Hilly  vol.  ni,  p.  67. 

His  "Annals  of  Scotland"  is  a  masterly 
performance;  in  which,  and  in  some  de- 
tached pieces  of  historical  research,  he 
was  the  first  to  elucidate  properly  the  early 
part  of  the  history  of  our  country,  and  it 
is  only  to  be  regretted  that  he  has  not 
brought  his  work  down  to  a  later  period, 
as  it  stops  at  a  time  when  the  history  was 
becoming  more  and  more  interesting,  and 
his  materials  more  copious.  "The  Case 
of  the  Sutherland-peerage, ' '  although  orig- 
inally a  law-paper,  written  professionally 
when  he  was  at  the  bar,  at  the  time  when 
the  title  of  the  young  Countess,  to  the 
honours  of  her  ancestors,  was  called  in 
question,  is  one  of  the  most  profound  dis- 
quisitions on  the  ancient  peerages  of  Scot- 
land anywhere  to  be  met  with. — Forbes, 
Sir  William,  1806-7,  An  Account  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  James  Beattie,  vol. 
II,  p.  10,  note. 

The  erudition  of  Lord  Hailes  was  not  of 
a  dry  and  scholastic  nature :  he  felt  the 


beauties  of  the  composition  of  the  an- 
cients ;  he  entered  with  taste  and  discern- 
ment into  the  merits  of  the  Latin  poet», 
and  that  peculiar  vein  of  delicate  and  in- 
genious thought  which  characterizes  the 
Greek  epigrammatists ;  and  a  few  speci- 
mens which  he  has  left  of  his  own  compo- 
sition in  that  style,  evince  the  hand  of  a 
master.  .  .  .  Lord  Hailes  was  a  man 
of  wit,  and  possessed  a  strong  feeling  of 
the  absurd  and  ridiculous  in  human  con- 
duct and  character,  which  gave  a  keen 
edge  of  irony  both  to  his  conversation  and 
writings.  To  his  praise,  however,  it  must 
be  added,  that  that  irony,  if  not  always 
untinctured  with  prejudice,  was  never 
prompted  by  malignity,  and  was  generally 
exerted  in  the  cause  of  virtue  and  good 
morals.  How  much  he  excelled  in  paint- 
ing the  lighter  weaknesses  and  absurdities 
of  mankind,  may  be  seen  from  the  papers 
of  his  composition  in  the  World  and  the 
Mirror.  His  private  character  was  every- 
thing that  is  praiseworthy  and  respectable. 
In  a  word,  he  was  an  honour  to  the  station 
which  he  filled,  and  to  the  age  in  which 
he  lived.— Tytler,  Alexander  Fraser, 
1806-14,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Writ- 
ings of  Henry  Home  of  Karnes,  vol.  i,  pp. 
251,  252,  note. 

These  works  by  Lord  Hailes  ["Remains 
of  Christian  Antiquity"]  are  among  the 
most  elegant  specimens  of  translation,  and 
discover  a  profound  acquaintance  with  the 
most  minute  circumstances  of  early  Chris- 
tian antiquity.  ...  He  was  one  of 
the  most  formidable  antagonists  of  Gibbon. 
His  "Inquiry  into  the  Secondary  Causes" 
is  a  most  triumphant  exposure  of  the 
sophistry  and  misrepresentations  of  that 
artful  writer.  The  preceding  works  are 
now  become  scarce;  but  I  know  not  a 
higher  treat  which  can  be  enjoyed  by  a 
cultivated  and  curious  mind  than  that 
which  they  afford.— Orme,  William,  1824, 
Bihliotheca  Biblica. 

The  "Annals"  of  Hailes,  written  with 
the  accuracy  of  a  judge,  which  far  ex- 
ceeds the  accuracy  of  the  historian,  has 
been  the  text-book  of  all  subsequent  writ- 
ers on  the  period  of  Scottish  history  it 
covers.  The  earlier  Celtic  sources  had 
not  in  his  time  been  explored,  except  by 
Father  Innes,  and  were  imperfectly  under- 
stood. Nor  could  he  have  carried  on  his 
work  much  further  without  encountering 
political  and  religious  controversies.  He 


DALR  YMPLE—  WHITE 


147 


was  thus  enabled  to  maintain  throughout 
his  whole  work  a  conspicuous  impartiality. 
— Mack  AY,  ^Eneas,  1888,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  xiii,  p.  405. 

Many  a  venerable  [in  his  ''Annals"] 
story  and  cherished  tradition  were  demol- 
ished or  banished  to  mythland.  Hitherto 
the  field  had  been  the  preserve  of  uncon- 
scionable pedants  like  Ruddiman,  who 
warred  with  party  animosity,  and  in  tem- 
per as  atrocious  as  their  style,  over 
charters  and  ''claims"  and  pedigrees.  Now 
this  "restorer  of  Scottish  History,"  as  Sir 
Walter  Scott  has  called  him,  fifted  re- 
search into  the  domain  of  history.  The 
"Annals"  are  dry,  deplorably  dry ;  but  in- 
valuable still  for  facts— a  quarry  in  which 


later  writers  have  dug  for  material  out  of 
which  to  build  more  artistic  works.  In 
the  fine  library  at  New  Hailes  the  judge 
was  busy  editing  and  compiling;  compos- 
ing careful  pieces  of  elegance  for  the 
World ;  translating  Church  Fathers,  with 
erudite  disquisitions  dedicated  to  Anglican 
bishops;  writing  a  learned  answer  to  Gib- 
bon's famous  Fourteenth  Chapter  of  his 
"Decline  and  Fall,"  with  a  learning  and 
ability  which  are  more  than  respectable. 
The  fastidious  accuracy  of  mind  which 
spoiled  Hailes  as  a  lawyer  and  made  him 
tedious  as  a  judge  suited  him  well  as  an 
antiquary.— Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901, 
Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  p.  201. 


Gilbert  White 

1720-1793 
* 

Born,  at  Selborne,  Hants,  18  July,  1720.  Early  education  at  a  school  at  Basing- 
stoke. Matric.  Oriel  Coll.,  Oxford,  17  Dec,  1739;  B.  A.,  1743;  Fellow  Oriel  Coll., 
1744-93;  M.  A.,  1746;  Proctor,  1752-53.  Ordained  Deacon,  1747 ;' Priest,  1749. 
Curate  at  Swarraton,  1747-51 ;  at  Selborne,  1751-52 ;  at  Durley,  1753-55.  Returned 
to  Selborne,  1755.  Vicar  of  Moreton-Pinknev,  Northamptonshire  (sinecure), 
1757-93.  Curate  at  Faringdon,  1762-84;  at  Selborne,  1784.  Died,  at  Selborne, 
26  June,  1793.  Works:  "The  Natural  History  and  Antiquities  of  Selborne"  (anon.), 
1789.  Posthumous:  "A  Naturalist's  Calendar,"  1795;  "Extracts  from  the  unpub- 
lished MSS.  of  Mr.  White,"  in  the  second  series  of  E.  Jesse's  "Gleanings  in  Natural 
History,"  1834.  Collected  Works :  in  2  vols.,  ed.  by  J.  Aikin,  1802.— Sharp,  R. 
Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  299. 


PERSONAL 

Your  work,  upon  the  whole,  will  immor- 
talize your  place  of  abode  as  well  as  your- 
self.—MuLSO,  John,  1776,  Letter  to  Gil- 
bert White,  July  16 ;  Life  and  Letters,  ed. 
Holt-White,  vol.  i,  p.  324. 

And  lastly  to  close  all  I  do  desire  that 
I  may  be  buried  in  the  churchyard  belong- 
ing to  the  parish  Church  of  Selborne  afore- 
said in  as  plain  and  private  a  way  as  pos- 
sible without  any  pall  bearers  or  parade 
and  that  six  honest  day  labouring  men 
respect  being  had  to  such  as  have  bred  up 
large  families  may  bear  me  to  my  grave 
to  whom  I  appoint  the  sum  of  ten  shillings 
each  for  their  trouble. — White,  Gilbert, 
1793,  Will. 

IN  THE  FIFTH  GRAVE  FROM  THIS  WALL  ARE 
BURIED  THE  REMAINS  OF 

THE  REV.  GILBERT  WHITE,  M.  A., 

FIFTY  YEARS  FELLOW  OF  ORIEL  COLLEGE, 

IN  OXFORD, 
AND  HISTORIAN  OF  THIS  HIS  NATIVE  PARISH. 
HE  WAS  ELDEST  SON  OF  JOHN  WHITE, 


ESQUIRE,  BARRISTER-AT-LAW, 
AND  ANNE,  HIS  WIFE,  ONLY  CHILD  OF 
THOMAS  HOLT,  RECTOR  OF  STREATHAM, 

IN  SURREY, 
WHICH  SAID  JOHN  W^HITE  WAS  THE  ONLY 
SON  OF  GILBERT  WHITE, 
FORMERLY  VICAR  OF  THIS  PARISH. 
HE  WAS  KIND  AND  BENEFICIENT  TO  HIS 
RELATIONS, 
BENEVOLENT  TO  THE  POOR, 
AND  DESERVEDLY  RESPECTED  BY  ALL  HIS 
FRIENDS  AND  NEIGHBOURS. 
HE  WAS  BORN  JULY  18tH,  1720,  0.  S., 
AND  DIED  JUNE  26tH,  1793. 
NEC  BONO  QUICQUAM  MALI  EVENIRE  POTEST, 
NEC  VIVO,  NEC  MORTUO. 

—Inscription  on  Monument,  Selborne 
Churchyard. 

He  was  widely  known  as  a  philosopher, 
in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  but  he 
was  so  known  only  to  the  world  without. 
His  own  village  could  not  understand  him, 
and  little  did  its  inhabitants  suppose  that 
their  insignificant  little  Selborne  should 


148 


GILBERT  WHITE 


become  a  world-known  name  by  means  of 
him,  whose  peaceful  life  was  spent  in  re- 
tirement, and  whose  only  eulogy,  from  a 
surviving  fellow-parishioner,  was,  '*That 
he  was  a  still,  quiet  body,  and  there  wasn't 
a  bit  of  harm  in  him,  there  wasn't  indeed." 
—Wood,  J.  G.,  1853,  ed.,  The  Natural 
History  of  Selborne,  Biography,  p.  vii. 

There  are  few,  perhaps,  who  have  so 
extensively  and  so  pleasantly  occupied  the 
mind  of  contemporaries  and  of  posterity, 
and  yet  have  left  such  scanty  materials 
for  a  biography  of  corresponding  interest, 
as  the  estimable  and  accomplished  author 
of  the  "Natural  History  and  Antiquities 
of  Selborne."— Bell,  Thomas,  1877,  ed., 
The  Natural  History  of  Selborne. 

Most  men  must  have  marvelled  at  White's 
always  remaining  a  bachelor  in  spite  of 
being  endowed  with  exceptionally  domes- 
tic tastes.  And  perhaps  some  have  sur- 
mised that  a  disappointment  in  love  had 
caused  his  single  life.  We  learn  from  Mr. 
Bell  that  this  was  the  case.  White  had 
in  early  life  been  attached  to  no  less  a 
person  than  Mrs.  Chapone.  .  .  .  Her 
maiden  name  was  Hester  Mulso.  She  pre- 
ferred a  barrister  to  our  naturalist ;  and 
although  she  was  left  a  widow  ten  months 
after  marriage,  and  continued  to  corre- 
spond with  White  on  the  most  friendly 
terms,  they  never  married.  It  is  amusing 
to  see  White's  anger  at  any  calumny  on  her 
fair  fame  after  fourteen  years  of  widow- 
hood. ...  A  sensitive  nature  like 
White's,  capable  of  strong  attachment  and 
yet  somewhat  diffident  as  becomes  a  re- 
cluse and  scholar,  seldom  gets  the  better 
of  such  a  love-sorrow. — W ATKINS,  M.  G., 
1879,  White  of  Selborne,  Frasefs  Magazine, 
vol  99,  p.  338. 

To  visit  Selborne  had  been  sweet 

No  matter  what  the  rest  might  be ; 
But  some  good  genius  led  my  feet 

Thither  in  such  fit  company, 
As  trebled  all  its  charms  for  me. 
With  them  to  seek  his  headstone  grey, 

The  lover  true  of  birds  and  trees, 
Added  strange  sunshine  to  the  day. 

My  eye  a  scene  familiar  sees. 
And  Home!   is  whispered  by  the  breeze. 
My  English  blood  its  right  reclaims ; 

In  vain  the  sea  its  barrier  rears ; 
Our  pride  is  fed  by  England's  fame. 

Ours  is  her  glorious  length  of  years ; 
Ours,  too,  her  triumphs  and  her  tears. 

— Lowell,  James  Russell,  1880,  On 
Gilbert  White. 


Ghosts  of  great  men  in  London  town 

Confuse  the  brains  of  such  as  dream, 
But  here  betwixt  this  hanging  down 
And  this  great  moorland,  waste  and  brown ^ 

One  only  reigns  supreme. 
In  Wolmer  Forest,  old  and  wide, 

Along  each  sandy  pine-girt  glade 
And  lonesome  heather-bordered  ride, 
A  gentle  presence  haunts  your  side, 

A  gracious  reverend  shade. 
And  as  you  pass  by  Blackmoor  grim, 

And  stand  at  gaze  on  Temple  height, 
Methinks  the  fancy  grows  less  dim : 
Methinks  you  really  talk  with  him 

Who  once  was  Gilbert  White. 


We  know  it  all !  Familiar,  too, 

Seems  this  quaint  hamlet  'neath  the  steeps — 
House,  "Pleystor,"  church,  and  churchyard 
yew, 

And  the  plain  headstone,  hid  from  view. 

Where  their  historian  sleeps. 
— Plarr,  Victor,  1893,  In  the  Country 
of  Gilbert  White,  The  Speaker,  June  17. 

Our  country  has  changed;  old  institu- 
tions have  passed  away;  the  railway 
and  electric  telegraph  have  transformed 
society.  Yet  in  Selborne,  whatever  change 
there  may  be,  is  almost  imperceptible. 
We  are  told  that  White  preached  a  favour- 
ite sermon  of  his  no  less  than  fifty  times, 
and  that  his  text  bore  on  the  duty  of  love 
to  man.  Were  he  with  us  again  he  would 
be  gratified  to  find  that  the  passage  of 
time  had  left  unchanged  the  natural  objects 
he  so  dearly  loved;  that  the  general  as- 
pect of  his  beloved  village,  as  affected  by 
the  hand  of  man,  was  as  he  knew  it ;  and 
that  any  changes  in  social  and  domestic 
life  were  such  as  are  based  on  the  duty  of 
loving  others  and  trying  to  improve  the 
condition  of  mankind. — Palmer,  H.  P., 
1896,  Selborne  and  Gilbert  White,  Temple 
Bar,  vol  109,  p.  117. 

At  the  top  of  the  Plestor,  in  cheerful 
proximity  to  the  living,  lies  the  ancient 
church-yard  about  the  quaint  Norman 
church  where  Gilbert  White  addressed  his 
ordinary  parishioners,  in  distinction  from 
those  winged  and  singing  ones,  the  four- 
footed  ones,  and  those  even  who  modestly 
crawled,  who  all  filled  up  his  calm  life. 
The  church  is  a  good  deal  renovated,  of 
necessity;  but,  with  Norman  traditions, 
it  is  not  quite  at  its  ease  in  the  presence 
of  nineteenth-century  pews  and  a  nine- 
teenth-century organ.  Human  beings, 
however,  are  pretty  much  the  same,  and 
the  little  boys  ar(^  m  t  ched  out  just  before 


GILBERT  WHITE 


149 


the  sermon  with  the  same  subdued  yet 
hilarious  clatter  as  in  the  days  when  those 
were  Wv'mg  and  young  who  now  lie  in  the 
church-yard  under  the  moss-grown  head- 
stones from  which  the  centuries  have 
softly  wiped  out  the  dates.  Even  the  five 
bell -ropes  hanging  under  the  belfry  of  the 
church  are  pulled  as  they  were  centuries 
ago;  for  as  soon  as  the  vicar  has  pro- 
nounced the  benediction,  five  Selborne 
men  grasp  the  ropes  and  pull  with  a  will, 
and  the  chimes  ring  into  the  peaceful  land- 
scape. Beside  the  weather-beaten  church- 
tower  stands  the  venerable  tenant  of  the 
cemetery,  a  yew-tree  so  old  that  it  is  re- 
spectfully mentioned  in  the  Domesday 
Book.  Tradition  gives  it  twelve  hundred 
years ;  and  amazingly  young  and  vigorous 
it  looks,  and  its  mighty  branches  make  a 
grateful  shade  on  a  summer's  day ;  and, 
sitting  on  the  bench  about  its  gnarled 
trunk,  somehow  one  feels  that  to  lie  under 
a  lichen-grown  stone,  with  the  summer 
sun  beating  the  waving  grass  on  the  gentle 
slope  towards  the  Lythe,  within  the  sound 
of  a  bird  singing  joyously  in  the  old  chest- 
nut-tree and  the  passing  patter  of  a  child's 
little  feet,  might  not  be  the  saddest  of 
fates.  On  the  north  side  of  the  church 
lie,s  Gilbert  White  under  a  moss-grown 
head-stone,  the  long  grass  swaying  lightly, 
just  as  he  would  have  wished,  with  no 
futile  word  to  praise  him.  Some  one  has 
suggested  a  nice  new  monument  for  the 
old  naturalist — think  of  it !  So  far,  thank 
Heaven!  his  grave  has  mercifully  been 
spared  that  fatal  honor. — Lane,  Mrs. 
John,  1899,  The  Home  of  Gilbert  White  of 
Selborne^  Lippincotfs  Magazine,  vol.  64, 
p.  593. 

On  the  26th  an  express  messenger  was 
sent  to  Salisbury  for  Dr.  John  White.  He 
posted  to  Selborne  at  once,  but  can  hardly 
have  found  his  uncle  alive ;  since  on  the 
latter  day  the  White  family  lost  its  amia- 
ble head;  Selborne  a  highly  respected 
neighbour;  and  the  world  a  singularly 
observant  and  original  naturalist.  What 
is  the  happy  life  ?  It  is  a  true,  if  trite, 
saying  that  few  men  attain  their  ideal  of 
a  career  in  life;  or,  having  attained  it, 
realise  that  it  is  the  ideal  career.  But 
the  man  who  lay  dead  at  Selborne,  fasci- 
nated from  boyhood  by  the  study  of  Na- 
ture, had  longed  for  life  and  leisure  in 
his  wild,  woodland,  native  country — not 
from  any  merely  indolent  wish  to  shirk  the 


responsibilities  of  life,  to  cope  with  which 
he  was  by  character  and  attainments  amply 
equipped — of  him  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  he  had  realised  his  ideal,  and  as  much 
as  any  man  had  lived  a  happy  life. — 
Holt-White,  Kashleigh,  1901,  The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Gilbert  White  of  Selborne, 
vol.  11,  p.  271. 

THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  AND  AN- 
TIQUITIES OF  SELBORNE 
1781) 

The  I  Natural  History  |  and  |  Antiqui- 
ties I  of  I  Selborne,  |  in  the  |  County  of 
Southampton :  |  with  |  Engravings,  and  an 
Appendix.  London :  |  printed  by  T.  Bens- 
ley  ;  I  for  B.  White  and  Son,  at  Horace's 
Head,  Fleet  Street.  |  M.  DCC,  LXXXIX. 
— Title  Page  to  First  Edition. 

If  this  author  should  be  thought  by  any 
to  have  been  too  minute  in  his  researches, 
be  it  remembered  that  his  studies  have 
been  in  the  great  book  of  nature.  It 
must  be  confessed,  that  the  economy  of 
the  several  kinds  of  crickets,  and  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  stock-dove  and  the 
ring-dove,  are  humble  pursuits,  and  will 
be  esteemed  trivial  by  many ;  perhaps  by 
some  to  be  objects  of  ridicule.  However, 
before  we  condemn  any  pursuits  which 
contribute  so  much  to  health  by  calling  us 
abroad,  let  us  consider  how  the  studious 
have  employed  themselves  in  their  closets. 
In  a  former  century,  the  minds  of  the 
learned  were  engaged  in  determining 
whether  the  name  of  the  Roman  poet  should 
be  spelt  V ergilius  or  Virgilius ;  and  the 
number  of  letters  in  the  name  of  Shakes- 
pear  still  remains  a  matter  of  much  solic- 
itude and  criticism.  Nor  can  we  but 
think  that  the  conjectures  about  the  mi- 
gration of  Hirundines  are  fully  as  inter- 
esting as  the  Chattertonian  controversy. — 
Wpiite,  Thomas,  1789,  Gentleman's  Mag- 
azine. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  books  in  the 
English  language !  —  Knight,  Charles, 
1847-48,  Half-Hours  with  the  best  Authors. 

No  lover  of  the  country  or  of  country- 
things  can  pass  him  by  without  cordial 
recognition  and  genial  praise.  There  is 
not  so  much  of  incident  or  of  adventure  in 
his  little  book  as  would  suffice  to  pepper 
the  romances  of  one  issue  of  a  weekly 
paper  in  our  day.  The  literary  mecha- 
nicians would  find  in  him  no  artful  contriv- 
ance of  parts  and  no  rhetorical  jangle  of 


150 


GILBERT  WHITE 


language.  It  is  only  good  Parson  White, 
who,  wandering  about  the  fields  and  the 
brook-sides  of  Selborne,  scrutinizes  with 
rare  clearness  and  patience  a  thousand 
miracles  of  God's  providence,  in  trees,  in 
flowers,  in  stones,  in  birds, — and  jots 
down  the  story  of  his  scrutiny  with  such 
simplicity,  such  reverent  trust  in  His 
power  and  goodness,  such  loving  fondness 
for  almost  every  created  thing,  that  the 
reading  of  it  charms  like  Walton's  story 
of  the  fishes.  We  Americans,  indeed,  do 
not  altogether  recognize  his  chaffinches 
and  his  titlarks ;  his  daws  and  his  fern-owl 
are  strange  to  us ;  and  his  robin-redbreast, 
though  undoubtedly  the  same  which  in 
our  nursery-days  flitted  around  the  dead 
Children  in  the  Wood"  .  .  .  Not- 
withstanding, however,  the  dissimilarity 
of  species,  the  studies  of  this  old  natural- 
ist are  directed  with  a  nice  particularity, 
and  are  colored  with  an  unaffected  homeli- 
ness, which  are  very  charming;  and  I 
never  hear  the  first  whisk  of  a  swallow's 
wing  in  summer  but  I  feel  an  inclination 
to  take  down  the  booklet  of  the  good  old 
Parson,  drop  into  my  library-chair,  and 
follow  up  at  my  leisure  all  the  gyrations 
and  flutterings  and  incubations  of  all  the 
hirundines  of  Selborne.  Every  country- 
liver  should  own  the  book,  and  be  taught 
from  it — nicety  of  observation. — Mitch- 
ell, Donald  G.,  1864,  Wet  Days  at 
Edgewood,  pp.  262,  263. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  books  in  my 
father's  library  was  White's  "Natural  His- 
tory of  Selborne. ' '  For  me  it  has  rather 
gained  in  charm  with  years.  1  used  to 
read  it  without  knowing  the  secret  of  the 
pleasure  I  found  in  it,  but  as  I  grow  older 
I  begin  to  detect  some  of  the  simple  ex- 
pedients of  this  natural  magic.  Open  the 
book  where  you  will,  it  takes  you  out  of 
doors.  In  our  broiling  July  weather  one 
can  walk  out  with  this  genially  garrulous 
Fellow  of  Oriel  and  find  refreshment  in- 
stead of  fatigue.  You  have  no  trouble  in 
keeping  abreast  of  him  as  he  ambles  along 
on  his  hobby-horse,  now  pointing  to  a 
pretty  view,  now  stopping  to  watch  the 
motions  of  a  bird  or  an  insect,  or  to  bag 
a  specimen  for  the  Honourable  Daines 
Barrington  or  Mr.  Pennant.  In  simplicity 
of  taste  and  natural  refinement  he  reminds 
one  of  Walton  ;  in  tenderness  toward  what 
he  would  have  called  the  brute  creation, 
of  Cowper.    I  do  not  know  whether  his 


descriptions  of  scenery  are  good  or  not, 
but  they  have  made  me  familiar  with  his 
neighborhood.  Since  I  first  read  him, 
I  have  w^alked  over  some  of  his  favorite 
haunts,  but  I  still  see  them  through  his 
eyes  rather  than  by  any  recollection  of 
actual  and  personal  vision.  The  book  has 
also  the  delightfulness  of  absolute  leisure. 
Mr.  White  seems  never  to  have  had  any 
harder  work  to  do  than  to  study  the  habits 
of  his  feathered  fellow-townsfolk,  or  to 
watch  the  ripening  of  his  peaches  on  the 
wall.  No  doubt  he  looked  after  the  souls 
of  his  parishioners  with  official  and  even 
friendly  interest,  but,  I  cannot  help  sus- 
pecting, with  a  less  personal  so-licitude. 
— ^Lowell,  James  Russell,  1869-90,  My 
Garden  Acquaintance,  Prose  Works,  River- 
side ed.,  vol.  Ill,  p.  192. 

The  work  of  the  Selborne  naturalist  be- 
longs to  the  class  of  books  that  one  must 
discover  for  himself :  their  quality  is  not 
patent ;  he  that  runs  may  not  read  them. 
Like  certain  fruits  they  leave  a  lingering 
flavor  in  the  mouth  that  is  much  better 
than  the  first  taste  promised.  In  some 
congenial  mood  or  lucky  moment  you  find 
them  out.  .  .  .  There  was  no  other 
book  of  any  merit  like  it  for  nearly  a  hun- 
dred years.  It  contains  a  great  deal  of 
good  natural  history  and  acute  observa- 
tions upon  various  rural  subjects,  put  up 
in  a  cheap  and  portable  form.  The  con- 
temporary works  of  Pennant  are  volumi- 
nous and  costly,  — heavy  sailing-craft  that 
come  to  port  only  in  the  great  libraries, 
while  this  is  a  nimble  light-draught  vessel 
that  has  found  a  harbor  on  nearly  every 
man's  book-shelf.  Hence  we  say  that 
while  it  is  not  one  of  the  great  books,  it 
is  one  of  the  very  real  books,  one  of  the 
very  live  books,  and  has  met  and  supplied 
a  tangible  want  in  the  English  reading 
world.  It  does  not  appeal  to  a  large  class 
of  readers,  and  yet  no  library  is  complete 
without  it.  It  is  valuable  as  a  storehouse 
of  facts,  it  is  valuable  as  a  treatise  on  the 
art  of  observing  things,  and  it  is  valuable 
for  its  sweetness  and  charm  of  style. 
— Burroughs,  John,  1889,  Gilbert  White's 
Book,  Indoor  Studies,  pp.  162,  164. 

White's  book  has  taken  possession  of 
the  English  mind  as  securely  as  the 
Complete  Angler,"  or  even  as ''Robin- 
son Crusoe."  At  the  distance  of  a  century 
one  may  well  ask  why  this  is  so,  and  what 
has  given  the  book  its  enduring  quality. 


GILBERT  WHITE 


151 


.  .  .  He  was  White  of  Selborne, 
not  White  of  Oxford.  If  natural  history 
has  lost  anything  by  his  want  of  adven- 
ture, it  has  after  all  gained  more;  for 
the  unique  value  of  his  book  is  mainly 
due  to  the  persistence  with  which  he 
followed  his  own  instinct,  and  to  the 
complete  ease  and  isolation  in  which  his 
acute  mind  worked  at  home.  .  .  . 
Though  his  records  are  confined  to  his  own 
district,  White's  conception  of  the  work 
of  the  naturalist  was  as  broad  and  rational 
as  that  of  Aristotle.  He  took  mankind 
into  his  view,  and  nothing  escaped  him 
that  was  worth  recording  of  the  economy, 
the  superstitions,  the  language,  of  the 
people  who  lived  around  him. — Fowler, 
W.  Warde,  1893,  Gilbert  White  of  Sel- 
borne, Macmillan's  Magazine,  vol.  68,  pp. 
183,  184,  187. 

To  the  majority  of  those  who  do  not 
know  him  personally,  a  perusal  of  the  vol- 
ume, it  is  not  improbable,  would  prove 
somewhat  of  a  disappointment.  For  de- 
spite the  praise  it  has  received  and  justly 
merits,  it  is  a  book  unlikely  to  please  the 
average  reader, — the  less  so  if  he  is  not 
an  ardent  orinthologist  or  zoologist. 
Embracing  mineralogy,  zoology,  meteorol- 
ogy, orinthology,  etomology,  and  botany, 
with  constant  reference  to  aetiology,  it 
may  be  termed  a  cyclopaedia  of  English 
natural  history,  presented  in  epistolary 
form.  ...  Strictly  speaking,  Gil- 
bert White  was  not  a  poet  or  an  idyllist, 
but  rather  an  observer  and  investigator, 
with  a  strong  trend  toward  science  in  its 
less  arid  and  technical  forms.  And  yet 
he  possesses  an  unquestionable  charm  of 
his  own,  apart  from  that  of  a  mere  scien- 
tific recorder, — if  the  reader  be  but  sym- 
pathetic and  responsive  to  the  spell.  .  .  . 
Yet  although  he  may  not  be  termed  an 
idyllist,  his  book  deserves  to  be  classed 
among  country  idyls,  if  only  for  its  reflex 
character  in  having  fostered  a  closer  ac- 
quaintanceship with  outward  Nature, — a 
work  that  has  paved  the  way  to  Jesse, 
Kingsley,  Thoreau,  Jefferies,  Burroughs, 
and  Gibson,  and  the  choir  that  has  hailed 
the  sun  upon  the  upland  lawn.  It  has 
taught  when  and  how  to  observe,  and 
made  us  more  responsive  to  a  life  that 
enters  into  intimate  relationship  with  our 
own.  It  is  as  such  that  White  deserves 
lasting  recognition,  apart  from  his  valua- 
ble labours  as  a  naturalist  during  his  own 


generation.  .  .  .  Re-reading  ''Sel- 
borne," one  comes  to  appreciate  it  the 
more,  and  to  perceive  in  the  letters  of 
the  learned  Hampshire  parson  those  qual- 
ities that  one  must  ever  cherish  in  fond 
regard.  Its  fresh  and  simple  style,  its 
modest,  unassuming  grace  cling  to  and 
permeate  its  leaves  like  the  fragrance  of 
the  ferny  lanes  and  shade  of  the  beech- 
woods  it  leads  to.  To  remember  it  is  to 
enter  a  region  of  rest  and  quietude,  with 
nothing  more  important  than  to  watch  the 
churn-owl's  flight  and  hearken  to  the 
cricket's  cry.  And  if  read  in  the  right 
mood,  it  will,  after  all,  seem  eminently 
deserving  of  being  classed  among  rustic 
idyllia,  and  returned  to  the  library  shelves 
to  be  enshrined  with  Theocritus  and  ''The 
Georgics."— Ellwanger,  George  H., 
1895,  Idyllists  of  the  Country-Side,  pp. 
48,  52,  54,  80. 

His  seeing  eye  and  gentle  heart  are 
imaged  in  his  fresh  and  happy  style. — 
Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  1896,  English 
Literature,  p.  200. 

That  White's  "Selborne"  is  the  only 
work  on  natural  history  which  has  attained 
the  rank  of  an  English  classic  is  admitted 
by  general  acclamation,  as  well  as  by 
competent  critics,  and  numerous  have 
been  the  attempts  to  discover  the  secret 
of  its  ever-growing  reputation.  Scarcely 
two  of  them  agree,  and  no  explanation 
whatever  offered  of  the  charm  which  in- 
vests it  can  be  accepted  as  in  itself  satis- 
factory. If  we  grant  what  is  partially 
true,  and  that  it  was  the  first  book  of  its 
kind  to  appear  in  this  country,  and  there- 
fore had  no  rivals  to  encounter  before  its 
reputation  was  established,  we  find  that 
alone  insufficient  to  account  for  the  way 
in  which  it  is  still  welcomed  by  thousands 
of  readers,  to  many  of  whom — and  this 
especially  applies  to  its  American  admir- 
ers—scarcely a  plant  or  an  animal  men- 
tioned in  it  is  familiar,  or  even  known 
but  by  name.  White  was  a  prince  among 
observers,  nearly  always  observing  the 
right  thing  in  the  right  way,  and  placing 
before  us  in  a  few  words  the  living  being 
he  observed.  Of  the  hundreds  of  state- 
ments recorded  by  White,  the  number 
which  are  undoubtedly  mistaken  may  be 
counted  almost  on  the  fingers  of  one 
hand.  ...  In  addition  White  was 
"a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,"  and  a  phi- 
losopher of  no  mean  depth.    But  it  seems 


152 


GILBERT  WHITE 


as  though  the  combination  of  all  these 
qualities  would  not  necessarily  give  him 
the  unquestioned  superiority  over  all  other 
writers  in  the  same  field.  The  secret  of 
the  charm  must  be  sought  elsewhere  ;  but 
it  has  been  sought  in  vain.  Some  have 
ascribed  it  to  his  way  of  identifying  him- 
self in  feeling  with  the  animal  kingdom, 
though  to  this  sympathy  there  were  nota- 
ble exceptions.  Some,  like  Lowell,  set 
down  the  "natural  magic"  of  White  to 
the  fact  that,  "open  the  book  where  you 
wall,  it  takes  you  out  of  doors,"  but  the 
same  is  to  be  said  of  other  writers  who 
yet  remain  comparatively  undistinguished. 
White's  style,  a  certain  stiffness  charac- 
teristic of  the  period  being  admitted,  is 
eminently  unaffected,  even  when  he  is  "di- 
dactic,"  as  he  more  than  once  apologises 
for  becoming,  and  the  same  simplicity  is 
observable  in  his  letters  to  members  of 
his  family,  which  could  never  have  been 
penned  with  the  view  of  publication,  and 
have  never  been  retouched.  Then,  too, 
there  is  the  complete  absence  of  self- 
importance  or  self-consciousness.  The 
observation  or  the  remark  stands  on  its 
own  merit,  and  gains  nothing  because  he 
happens  to  be  the  maker  of  it,  except  it 
be  in  the  tinge  of  humour  that  often  deli- 
cately pervades  it.  The  beauties  of  the 
work,  apart  from  the  way  in  which  they 
directly  appeal  to  naturalists,  as  they  did 
to  Darwin,  grow  upon  the  reader  who  is 
not  a  naturalist,  as  Lowell  testifies,  and 
the  more  they  are  studied  the  more  they 
seem  to  detect  analysis. — Newton,  Al- 
fred, 1900,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  LXI,  J).  45. 

I  have  pondered  a  hundred  times  on  the 
wonderful  fact  that  the  world  should  take 
such  a  heart-felt  interest  in  the  work  of 
a  retiring  and  modest  eighteenth-century 
clergyman !  .  .  .  Apart  from  West- 
minster Abbey,  Windsor  Castle,  and  other 
places  of  historical  interest  in  the  British 
Islands,  there  is  probably  no  place,  save 
Stratford-on-Avon,  to  which  the  pilgrims 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  render  more  re- 
spectful tribute  than  to  the  lowly  head- 
stone which  marks  the  grave  of  Gilbert 
White  of  Selborne.  The  occupant  of  that 
simple  grass-grown  grave  would  probably 
have  been  the  most  astonished  of  all 
people  in  the  world  could  he  have  realized 
that  his  celebrity  as  an  Englishman  would 
have  come  near  to  equalling  that  of 


Shakespeare ;  ar  there  exists  at  the 
present  date  a,'  ich  affection,  among 
naturalists  at  Ibaot,  for  the  sayings  and 
doings  of  Gilbert  White  as  is  felt  for  the 
records  of  Shakespeare  and  his  time. — 
Sharpe,  R.  Bowdler,  1901,  ed.,  The  Nat- 
ural History  and  Antiquities  of  Selborne. 

GENERAL 

A  I  Naturalist's  Calendar,  |  with  |  Ob- 
servations in  various  branches  |  of  | 
Natural  History;  |  extracted  from  the 
papers  |  of  the  late  |  Rev.  Gilbert  White, 
M.  A.  I  of  Selborne,  Hampshire,  |  Senior 
Fellow  of  Oriel  College,  Oxford.  |  Never 
before  published.  |  London :  |  printed  for 
B.  and  J.  White,  Horace's  Head,  |  Fleet 
Street.  |  1795.— Title  Page  to  First 
Edition. 

His  Diaries  were  kept  with  unremitting 
diligence ;  and  in  his  annual  migrations  to 
Oriel  College,  and  other  places,  his  man 
Thomas,  who  seems  to  have  been  well 
qualified  for  the  office,  recorded  the 
weather  journal.  The  state  of  the  ther- 
mometer, barometer,  and  the  variations 
of  the  wind  are  noted  as  well  as  the  quan- 
tity of  rain  which  fell.  We  have  daily 
accounts  of  the  weather,  whether  hot  or 
cold,  sunny  or  cloudy :  we  have,  also  in- 
formation of  the  first  tree  in  leaf,  and 
even  of  the  appearance  of  the  first  fungi, 
and  of  the  plants  first  in  blossom.  We 
are  told  when  mosses  vegetate,  and  when 
insects  first  appear  and  disappear.  There 
are  also  remarks  with  regard  to  fish  and 
other  animals ;  with  miscellaneous  obser- 
vations and  memoranda  on  various  sub- 
jects. For  instance,  we  are  told  that  on 
the  21st  of  June,  house-martins,  which 
had  laid  their  eggs  in  an  old  nest,  had 
hatched  them,  and  that  when  this  is  the 
case  they  get  the  start  of  those  that  build 
new  ones  by  ten  days  or  a  fortnight.  He 
speaks  with  some  degree  of  triumph  to 
having  ricked  his  meadow  hay  in  delicate 
order,  and  that  Thomas  had  seen  a  pole- 
cat run  across  his  garden.  He  records 
the  circumstance  of  boys  playing  at  taw 
on  the  Plestor ;  and  that  he  had  set  Gun- 
nery, one  of  his  bantam  hens,  on  nine  of 
her  own  eggs.  He  complains  that  dogs 
come  in  to  his  garden  at  night  and  eat  his 
goose-berries,  and  gives  a  useful  hint  to 
farmers  and  others,  when  he  says  that 
rooks  and  crows  destroy  an  immense  num- 
ber of  chaffers,  and  that  were  it  not  for 
these  birds  the  chaffers  would  destroy 


GILBERT  WHITE 


153 


everything.  .  .  .  Insignificant  as 
these  little  details  may  appear,  they  were 
not  thought  to  be  so  by  a  man  whose 
mind  was  evidently  stored  with  considera- 
ble learning,  who  possessed  a  cultivated 
and  elegant  taste  for  what  is  beautiful  in 
nature,  and  who  has  left  behind  him  one 
of  the  most  delightful  works  in  the  Eng- 
lish language, — a  work  which  will  be  read 
as  long  as  that  language  lasts,  and  which 
is  equally  remarkable  for  its  extreme  ac- 
curacy, its  pleasing  style,  and  the  agreea- 
ble and  varied  information  it  contains. — 
Jesse,  Edward,  1849,  ed..  The  Natural 
History  of  Selborne,  Biography,  pp.  xv,  xvii. 

He  had  a  wide  range  of  knowledge,  he  was 
the  master  of  a  good  Latin  style,  and  he 
knew  the  literature  of  his  country  well,  hav- 
ing an  extensive  acquaintance  with  it,  and 
a  keen  perception  of  its  spirit.  It  is  very 
pleasant  when  the  old  naturalist  stops  to 
point  a  reflection  with  a  line  from  the 
Latin  or  the  British  poets. — Nadel,  E. 
S.,  1877,  White  of  Selborne,  Scrihnefs 
Monthly,  vol.  xiii,  p.  506. 

Who  that  lives  in  this  busy,  noisy  age 
has  not  envied  the  lot  of  Gilbert  White, 
watching  with  keen,  quiet  eyes  the  little 
world  of  Selborne  for  more  than  fifty  un- 
eventful years?  To  a  mind  so  tranquil 
and  a  spirit  so  serene  the  comings  and 
goings  of  the  old  domesticated  turtle  in 
the  garden  were  more  important  than  the 
debates  in  Parliament.  The  pulse  of  the 
world  beat  slowly  in  the  secluded  hamlet, 
and  the  roar  of  change  and  revolution, 
beyond  the  Channel  were  only  faintly 
echoed  across  the  peaceful  hills.  The 
methodical  observer  had  as  much  leisure 
as  Nature  herself,  and  could  wait  patiently 
on  the  moods  of  the  seasons  for  those 
confidences  which  he  always  invited,  but 
which  he  never  forced ;  and  there  grew 
up  a  somewhat  platonic  but  very  loyal 
friendship  between  him  and  the  beautiful 
rural  world  about  him.  How  many  days 
of  happy  observation  were  his,  and  with 
what  a  sense  of  leisure  his  discoveries 
were  set  down  in  English  as  devoid  of 
artifice  or  strain  or  the  fever  of  haste  as 
the  calm  movements  of  the  seasons  regis- 
tered there  !  There  was  room  for  enjoy- 
ment in  a  life  so  quietly  ordered ;  time 
for  meditation  and  for  getting  acquainted 
with  one's  self.  —  Mabie,  Hamilton 
Wright,  1894,  My  Study  Fire,  Second 
Series,  p.  23. 


White  may  be  regarded  as  the  founder 
of  a  new  branch  of  English  literature,  and 
few  of  those  who  have  followed  him  have 
had  so  much  to  tell,  or  have  succeeded  in 
conveying  so  much  in  so  short  a  space. 
In  the  narration  of  the  features  of  events 
so  as  to  give  a  clear  idea  of  the  details, 
as  well  as  of  the  whole,  White,  in  the 
natural  world,  shows  skill  comparable  to 
that  of  Cowper  in  the  description  of  his 
domestic  circle  and  its  incidents.  The 
letters  of  White  are  less  numerous  and 
briefer  than  those  of  Cowper,  and  of 
somewhat  less  literary  power,  but  they 
have  the  same  kind  of  merit,  and  while 
making  clear  what  the  writer  saw,  uncon- 
sciously furnish  a  portrait  of  his  own 
mind.— Moore,  Norman,  1895,  English 
Prose,  ed.  Craik,  vol.  iv,  p.  247. 

Gilbert  White  strikes  us  at  first  only 
by  his  homeliness  and  simplicity,  by  his 
lucid  and  unpretentious  narrative,  by  the 
sincerity  and  piety  of  his  unwearied  study 
of  nature.  But  in  truth  the  scholar 
never  forgets  his  books.  The  simplicity 
is  the  effect  of  the  highest  art ;  his  nar- 
rative impresses  us  because  it  is  arranged 
with  the  skill  of  a  trained  thinker,  who 
never  allows  his  induction  to  be  slovenly 
or  inexact,  who  knows  exactly  how  to 
buttress  a  theory  with  an  unassuming  an- 
ecdote, and  who  can  bring  a  scientific 
reminiscence,  or  a  recondite  classification, 
into  the  midst  of  the  homely  story  of  some 
everyday  incident.— Craik,  Henry,  1895, 
English  Prose,  Introduction,  vol.  iv,  p.  8. 

Books  he  shall  read  in  hill  and  tree ; 
The  flowers  his  weather  shall  portend. 

The  birds  his  moralists  shall  be, 
And  everything  his  friend. 
— COURTHOPE,  W.  J.,  1900,  Gilbert  While. 

Not  an  aspect  or  a  mood  of  Nature 
passed  him  unnoted,  and  each,  marked 
by  a  feature  of  importance,  was  stamped 
with  minute  particularity  upon  his  reten- 
tive memory.  There  was  an  incessant 
gathering  of  incessant  facts  which  had 
not  before  been  reported  for  the  benefit 
of  science  at  large.  The  gentle  curate 
had  no  means  of  measuring  the  value  of 
his  investigations.  He  was  following  the 
bent  of  his  inclinations  in  single-hearted- 
ness and  purity  of  aim.  Love  set  him  on 
to  the  work,  and  the  honesty  of  his  mind 
kept  him  true  to  the  performance  of  it. — 
Hubbard,  Sara  A.,  1901,  Gilbert  White 
ofSelhorne,  The  Dial,  vol.  30,  p.  304. 


154 


William  Robertson 

1721-1793 

Born,  at  Borthwick,  Midlothian,  19  Sept.,  1721.  Early  education  at  Borthwick  par- 
ish school  and  at  Dalkeith  Grammar  School.  To  Edinburgh  Univ.,  1733.  Licensed 
by  Presbytery  as  preacher,  June,  1741.  Minister  of  Gladsmuir,  1743.  Served  in 
volunteers  against  Pretender's  army,  1745.  Mem.  of  General  Assembly,  1746.  Mar- 
ried Mary  Nisbet,  1751.  Part  ed.  of  "Edinburgh  Rev.,"  1755.  Visit  to  London, 
1758.  Minister  of  Lady  Tester's  Chapel,  Edinburgh,  June  1758  to  April  1761. 
Created  D.  D.,  Edinburgh,  1758.  Chaplain  of  Stiring  Castle,  1759.  Minister  of  Old 
Greyfriars,  Edinburgh,  April,  176L  Chaplain  to  the  King,  Aug.  1761.  Principal 
of  Edinburgh  Univ.,  1762-92.  Moderator  of  General  Assembly,  1763-80.  Mem.  of 
Royal  Acad,  of  History,  Madrid,  Aug.  1777.  Mem.  of  Acad,  of  Science,  Padua,  178L 
Mem.  of  Imperial  Acad.,  St.  Petersburg,  1783.  Historiographer  for  Scotland,  6  Aug. 
1783.  Died  at  Grange  House,  near  Edinburgh,  11  June,  1793.  Works:  "The 
Situation  of  the  World  at  the  time  of  Christ's  Appearance,"  1755;  "History  of  Scot- 
land" (2  vols.),  1759;  "History  of  the  Reign  of  the  Emperor  Charles  V."  (3  vols.), 
1769;  "History  of  America"  (2  vols.),  1777 ;  "Historical  Disquisition  concerning  the 
Knowledge  which  the  Ancients  had  of  India,"  1791.  Collected  Works:  in  12  vols., 
ed.  by  Dugald  Stewart,  with  memoir,  1817;  in  11  vols.,  ed.  by  R.  A.  Davenport,  with 
memoir,  1824.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  2A0. 


PERSONAL 

His  speeches  in  church  courts  were  ad- 
mired by  those  whom  they  did  not  con- 
vince, and  acquired  and  preserved  him  an 
influence  over  a  majority  in  them,  which 
none  before  him  enjoyed:  though  his 
measures  were  sometimes  new,  and 
warmly,  and  with  great  strength  of  argu- 
ment opposed,  both  from  the  press,  and  in 
the  general  assembly.  To  this  influence 
many  causes  contributed :  his  firm  adher- 
ence to  the  general  principles  of  church 
policy,  which  he  early  adopted ;  his  sagac- 
ity in  forming  plans;  his  steadiness  in 
executing  them ;  his  quick  discernment  of 
whatever  might  hinder  or  promote  his 
designs;  his  boldness  in  encountering 
difliculties;  his  presence  of  mind  in  im- 
proving every  occasional  advantage ;  the 
address  with  which,  when  he  saw  it  nec- 
essary, he  could  make  an  honorable  re- 
treat ;  and  his  skill  in  stating  a  vote,  and 
seizing  the  favorable  moment  for  ending 
a  debate,  and  urging  a  decision.  He 
guided  and  governed  others,  without 
seeming  to  assume  any  superiority  over 
them.  .  .  .  Deliberate  in  forming 
his  judgment,  but,  when  formed,  not 
easily  moved  to  renounce  it,  he  sometimes 
viewed  the  altered  plans  of  others  with 
too  suspicious  an  eye.  Hence,  there  were 
able  and  worthy  men,  of  whom  he  ex- 
pressed himself  less  favorably,  and  whose 
latter  appearances  in  church  judicatories, 
he  censured  as  inconsistent  with  princi- 
ples which  they  had  formerly  professed ; 


while  they  maintained,  that  the  system  of 
managing  church  affairs  was  changed,  not 
their  opinions  or  conduct.  Still,  how- 
ever, keen  and  determined  opposition  to 
his  schemes  of  ecclesiastical  policy, 
neither  extinguished  his  esteem,  nor  for- 
feited his  friendly  offices,  when  he  saw 
opposition  carried  on  without  rancor,  and 
when  he  believed  that  it  originated  from 
conscience  and  principle,  not  from  per- 
sonal animosity,  or  envy,  or  ambition. — 
Erskine,  John,  1793,  Funeral  Sermon, 
Discourses,  p.  271. 

He  delighted  in  good-natured,  charac- 
teristical  anecdotes  of  his  acquaintance, 
and  added  powerfully  to  their  effect  by 
his  own  enjoyment  in  relating  them.  He 
was,  in  a  remarkable  degree,  susceptible 
of  the  ludicrous ;  but,  on  no  occasion  did 
he  forget  the  dignity  of  his  character,  or 
the  decorum  of  his  profession ;  nor  did  he 
even  lose  sight  of  that  classical  taste 
which  adorned  his  compositions.  His  turn 
of  expression  was  correct  and  pure ;  some- 
times, perhaps,  inclining  more  than  is  ex- 
pected in  the  carelessness  of  a  social  hour, 
to  formal  and  artificial  periods;  but  it 
was  stamped  with  his  own  manner  no  less 
than  his  premediated  style :  it  was  always 
the  language  of  a  superior  and  a  cultivated 
mind,  and  it  embellished  every  subject  on 
which  he  spoke.  In  the  company  of 
strangers,  he  increased  his  exertions  to 
amuse  and  to  inform ;  and  the  splendid 
variety  of  his  conversation  was  commonly 
the  chief  circumstance  on  which  they 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON. 


155 


dwelt  in  enumerating  his  talents ;  and  yet, 
I  must  acknowledge,  for  my  own  part, 
that,  much  as  I  always  admired  his  powers 
when  they  were  thus  called  forth,  I  en- 
joyed his  society  less,  than  when  I  saw  him 
in  the  circle  of  his  intimates,  or  in  the 
bosom  of  his  family.  ...  In  point 
of  stature  Dr.  Robertson  was  rather  above 
the  middle  size ;  and  his  form  though  it 
did  not  convey  the  idea  of  much  activity, 
announced  vigor  of  body  and  a  healthful 
constitution.  His  features  were  regular 
and  manly;  and  his  eye  spoke  at  once 
good  sense  and  good  humor.  He  appeared 
to  greatest  advantage  in  his  complete 
clerical  dress ;  and  was  more  remarkable 
for  gravity  and  dignity  in  discharging  the 
functions  of  his  public  stations,  than  for 
ease  or  grace  in  private  society. — Stew- 
art, DuGALD,  1796-1801,  Account  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  William  Robertson. 

The  history  of  the  author  is  the  history 
of  the  individual,  excepting  as  regards 
his  private  life  and  his  personal  habits: 
these  were  in  the  most  perfect  degree 
dignified  and  pure.  Without  anything  of 
harshness  or  fanaticism,  he  was  rationally 
pious  and  blamelessly  moral.  His  con- 
duct, both  as  a  christian  minister,  as  a 
member  of  society,  as  a  relation,  and  as 
a  friend,  was  wholly  without  a  stain.  His 
affections  were  warm ;  they  were  ever 
under  control,  and  therefore  equal  and 
steady.  .  .  .  His  conversation  was 
cheerfiil,  and  it  was  varied.  Vast  in- 
formation, copious  anecdote,  perfect  ap- 
positeness  of  illustration, — narration  or 
description  wholly  free  from  pedantry  or 
stiffness,  but  as  felicitous  and  as  striking 
as  might  be  expected  from  such  a  master, 
— great  liveliness,  and  often  wit,  and  often 
humour,  with  a  full  disposition  to  enjoy 
the  merriment  of  the  hour,  but  the  most 
scrupulous  absence  of  every  thing  like 
coarseness  of  any  description, — these 
formed  the  staples  of  his  talk.  .  .  . 
His  very  decided  opinions  on  all  subjects 
of  public  interest,  civil  and  religious, 
never  interrupted  his  friendly  and  famil- 
iar intercourse  with  those  who  held  dif- 
ferent principles.  .  .  .  His  manner 
was  not  graceful  in  little  matters,  though 
his  demeanour  was  dignified  on  the  whole. 
— Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1845-6,  Lives 
of  Men  of  Letters  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

Dr.  Robertson  was  a  Christian  in  char- 
acter, and  therefore  a  gentleman  in  his 


manners ;  he  did  not  think  himself  bound 
to  treat  an  unbeliever,  who  never  insulted 
his  faith,  as  a  profane  and  graceless 
enemy  of  man.  Though  he  was  firm,  or 
perhaps  we  should  say  because  he  was  firm, 
in  his  own  conviction,  he  could  look  upon 
one  whose  opinions  were  different  without 
the  least  feeling  of  hatred  and  revenge ; 
in  which  respects  he  had  the  advantage  of 
some  over-zealous  Christians,  both  in  the 
peace  and  happiness  of  his  own  temper, 
and  in  the  influence  he  exerted  to  bring 
unbelieving  wanderers  home. — Peabody, 
W.  B.  0.,  1845,  Brougham's  Lives  of  Men 
of  Letters  and  Science,  North  American 
Review,  vol.  61,  p.  405. 

Principal  Robertson  and  his  family  were 
very  intimate  with  the  family  of  my 
father.  ...  He  was  a  pleasant- 
looking  old  man;  with  an  eye  of  great 
vivacity  and  intelligence,  a  large,  pro- 
jecting chin,  a  small  hearing-trumpet 
fastened  by  a  black  ribbon  to  a  button- 
hole of  his  coat,  and  a  rather  large  wig, 
powdered  and  curled.  He  struck  us  boys, 
even  from  the  side-table,  as  being  evi- 
dently fond  of  a  good  dinner,  at  which  he 
sat  with  his  chin  near  his  plate,  intent 
upon  the  real  business  of  the  occasion. 
This  appearance,  however,  must  have  been 
produced  partly  by  his  deafness ;  because, 
when  his  eye  told  him  that  there  was 
something  interesting,  it  was  delightful 
to  observe  the  animation  with  which  he 
instantly  applied  his  trumpet,  when,  hav- 
ing caught  the  scent,  he  followed  it  up, 
and  was  the  leader  of  the  pack. — Cock- 
burn,  Henry  Lord,  1854-56,  Memorials 
of  his  Time,  ch.  i 

On  26  May  1763  he  was  elected  mod- 
erator of  the  general  assembly,  the  ad- 
ministration of  which  he  continued  to 
direct  with  a  firm  hand  for  upwards  of 
sixteen  years.  As  a  manager  of  the 
business  of  the  general  assembly,  he  ac- 
quired an  influence  greater  than  any  mod- 
erator since  Andrew  Melville.  By  him 
were  laid  the  foundations  of  that  sys- 
tem of  polity — the  independence  of  the 
church  as  opposed  to  a  fluctuating  depend- 
ence upon  the  supposed  views  of  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  day,  the  exaction  of  obedi- 
ence by  the  inferior  judicatories,  and  the 
enforcement  of  the  law  of  patronage,  ex- 
cept in  flagrant  cases  of  erroneous  doctrine 
or  immoral  conduct — by  means  of  which 
peace  and  unity  were  preserved  in  the 


156 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


Scottish  church  until  a  new  principle  was 
established  by  the  assembly  of  1834. 
Despite  a  zealous  and  able  opposition, 
Robertson's  statemanship,  skill  as  a  de- 
bater, and  high  character  gave  him  para- 
mount influence  over  "the  moderates,"  and 
rendered  his  power  over  all  parties  irre- 
sistible. ...  In  Robertson's  as  in 
Gibbons  domestic  life,  pomposity  was  but 
skin  deep.  ...  He  was  very  fond  of 
claret.— Seccombe,  Thomas,  1896,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  XLVIII, 
pp.  427,  429. 

Dr.  Robertson  lived  till  he  became 
Principal  in  a  house  at  the  head  of  the 
Cowgate,  now  the  most  squalid  of  Edin- 
burgh squalid  districts.  There  he  kept 
boarders,  like  most  city  ministers  and  pro- 
fessors in  those  impecunious  days,  for 
English  noblemen  were  in  the  habit  of 
sending  their  sons  to  Edinburgh  for  the 
efficient  and  sedate  college  training  they 
could  not  get  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge. 
In  society  he  was  prominent,  as  befitted 
his  position  of  importance.  Courteous 
and  pleasing,  with  his  bland  and  intelli- 
gent face  and  keen  eyes,  his  presence  gave 
an  air  of  propriety  to  any  company,  as  he 
sat  in  his  well-fitting  garments,  his  prim 
clerical  bands,  his  legs  crossed,  displaying 
the  neatest  of  silver-buckled  shoes.  His 
talk,  agreeable  but  rather  too  instructive, 
came  forth  in  strong  Scots  tongue,  with 
a  fluency  which  at  times  was  too  flowing 
for  those  who  wished  to  speak  as  well  as 
he.  Friends  rather  resented  his  propen- 
sity, which  increased  with  years,  to  lead 
the  talk,  and  they  murmured  that  when- 
ever the  cloth  was  removed  after  dinner 
and  the  wine  appeared  on  the  shining 
mahogany,  the  doctor  would  settle  him- 
self with  deliberation  in  his  chair,  intro- 
duce some  topic,  and  discourse  thereon 
till  general  talk  ceased.  He  would  take 
the  opinions  and  thoughts  that  his  friends 
uttered  yesterday  and  present  them  in 
elegant  paraphrase — "the  greatest  pla- 
giary in  conversation  that  I  ever  knew," 
says  "Jupiter"  Carlyle.  His  admiring 
biographer,  Dugald  Stewart,  hints  deli- 
cately at  such  colloquial  defects,  speak- 
ing of  "his  formal  and  artificial  periods, 
the  language  of  a  strong  and  superior 
mind,  which  embellished  every  subject." 
—Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  92.' 


THE  SITUATION  OF  THE  WORLD  AT 
THE  TIME  OF  CHRIST'S 
APPEARANCE 

1755 

This  sermon,  the  only  one  he  ever  pub- 
lished, has  been  long  ranked,  in  both 
parts  of  the  Island,  among  the  best  models 
of  pulpit  eloquence  in  our  language.  It 
has  undergone  five  editions ,  and  is  well 
known,  in  some  parts  of  the  continent,  in 
the  German  translation  of  Mr.  Ebeling. — 
Stewart,  Dugald,  1796-1801,  Account 
of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  William  Rob- 
ertson. 

This  view  of  the  question  may  derive 
confirmation,  or  at  least  illustration,  from 
comparing  Gibbon's  two  chapters  with 
Dr.  Robertson's  "Sermon  on  the  state  of 
the  world  at  the  time  of  the  appearance 
of  Christ."  The  sound  and  rational  ob- 
servations of  the  reverend  historian  on 
certain  facilities  afforded  to  the  diffusion- 
of  the  gospel  by  the  previous  state  of  the 
public  mind,  and  of  public  affairs,  in  the 
hands  of  Gibbon,  or  of  any  other  author 
more  disposed  to  sneer  than  to  argue  can- 
didly on  such  subjects,  would  admit  of  a 
perversion  nearly  similar  to  that  given  to 
the  accidental  causes  which  he  has  enu- 
merated; while  several  of  Gibbon's  nat- 
ural causes,  changing  the  offensive  lan- 
guage in  which  they  are  conveyed,  might 
fairly  have  been  expounded,  as  perfectly 
true  and  efficient,  from  any  pulpit. — 
Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  1805,  Journal, 
April  25 ;  Life,  ed.  Mackintosh,  vol.  i,  ch. 
V,  note. 

The  subject  of  the  sermon  is  one  pecul- 
iarly suited  to  his  habits  of  inquiry. 
.  .  .  The  merits  of  this  piece,  as  a 
sermon,  are  very  great ;  and  it  is  admira- 
ble as  an  historical  composition,  in  that 
department  which  Voltaire  first  extended 
to  all  the  records  of  past  times.  It  was 
written  and  published  before  the  appear- 
ance of  the  *'Essai  sur  les  Moeurs," 
though  as  has  been  already  said,  detached 
portions  of  that  work  had  appeared  in  a 
Paris  periodical  work.— Brougham,Henry 
Lord,  1845-6,  Lives  of  Men  of  Letters  of 
the  Time  of  George  III. 

HISTORY  OF  SCOTLAND 

1759 

David  Hume  so  far  indulged  my  patience 
as  to  allow  me  to  carry  to  the  country 
during  the  holidays  the  loose  sheets  which 
he  happened  to  have  by  him.    In  that 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


157 


condition  I  read  it  quite  through  with  the 
greatest  satisfaction,  and  in  much  less 
time  than  I  ever  employed  on  any  portion 
of  history  of  the  same  length.  .  .  . 
Your  work  will  certainly  be  ranked  in  the 
highest  historical  class ;  and,  for  my  own 
part,  I  think  it,  besides,  a  composition  of 
uncommon  genius  and  eloquence. — Elliot, 
Gilbert,  1759,  Letter  to  Dr.  Robertson, 
Jan.  20th. 

I  have  not  heard  of  one  who  does  not 
praise  it  warmly.  .  .  .  Must  fatigue 
your  ears,  as  much  as  ours  are  in  this 
place  [London]  by  endless  and  repeated 
and  noisy  praises  of  the  "History  of  Scot- 
land." .  .  .  Mallet  told  me  that 
Lord  Mansfield  is  at  a  loss  whether  he 
shall  most  esteem  the  matter  or  the  style. 
Elliot  told  me,  that  being  in  company 
with  George  Grenville,  that  gentleman  was 
speaking  loud  in  the  same  key.  .  .  . 
Lord  Lyttelton  seems  to  think  that  since 
the  time  of  St.  Paul  there  scarce  has  been 
a  better  writer  than  Dr.  Robertson.  Mr. 
Walpole  triumphs  in  the  success  of  his 
favourites  the  Scotch. — Hume,  David, 
1759,  Letter  to  Robertson. 

Having  finished  the  first  volume,  and 
made  a  little  progress  in  the  second,  I 
cannot  stay  till  I  have  finished  the  latter 
to  tell  you  how  exceedingly  I  admire  the 
work.  ...  In  short.  Sir,  I  don't 
know  where  or  what  history  is  written 
with  more  excellences;  and  when  I  say 
this,  you  may  be  sure  I  do  not  forget  your 
impartiality. — Walpole,  Horace,  1759, 
To  Dr.  Robertson;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  Ill,  p.  202. 

Upon  my  word,  1  was  never  more  enter- 
tained in  all  my  life ;  and,  though  I  read 
it  aloud  to  a  friend  and  Mrs.  Garrick,  I 
finished  the  three  first  books  at  two  sit- 
tings. I  could  not  help  writing  to  Millar 
and  congratulating  him  upon  this  great 
acquisition  to  his  literary  treasures. — 
Garrick,  David,  1759,  Letter  to  Dr. 
Robertson. 

I  have  received  and  read  with  great 
pleasure  the  new  ''History  of  Scotland," 
and  will  not  wait  for  the  judgment  of  the 
public  to  pronounce  it  a  very  excellent 
work.  From  the  author's  apparent  love 
of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  I  suppose, 
that  were  it  not  for  fear  of  offence  (which 
every  wise  man  in  his  situation  would  fear 
to  give)  he  would  have  spoken  with  much 


more  freedom  of  the  hierarchical  princi- 
ples of  the  infant  church  of  Scotland. — 
Warburton,  William,  1759,  Letter  to 
Mr.  Millar. 

I  am  very  proud  of  being  instrumental 
in  contributing  to  the  translation  [by 
J.  B.  Suard],  of  the  valuable  work  you  are 
going  to  publish.  The  excellent  work  you 
have  published  already  is  a  sure  sign  of 
th  e  reception  your ' '  History  of  Charles  V. ' ' 
will  meet  with  in  the  continent. — D'HoL- 
BACH,  Baron,  1768,  Letter  to  Dr.  Robert- 
son, May  30. 

The  fourteenth  edition  of  your  ''Scot- 
land" will  be  published  in  the  course  of 
the  winter,  during  which  it  is  our  inten- 
tion to  advertise  all  your  works  strongly 
in  all  the  papers.  And  we  have  the  satis- 
faction of  informing  you  that,  if  w^e  may 
judge  by  the  sale  of  your  writings,  your 
literary  reputation  is  daily  increasing. — 
Strahan,  Andrew,  1792,  To  Dr.  Robert- 
son, Nov.  19. 

I  think  the  merit  of  Robertson  consists 
in  a  certain  even  and  well-supported  tenour 
of  good  sense  and  elegance.  There  is  a 
formality  and  demureness  in  his  manner, 
his  elegance  has  a  primness,  and  his  dig- 
nity a  stiffness,  which  remind  one  of  the 
politeness  of  an  old  maid  of  quality  stand- 
ing on  all  her  punctilios  of  propriety  and 
prudery.  These  peculiarities  are  most 
conspicuous  in  his  introductory  book.  As 
we  advance,  his  singular  power  of  inter- 
esting narrative  prevails  over  every  defect. 
His  reflections  are  not  uncommon;  his 
views  of  character  and  society  imply  only 
sound  sense.  .  .  .  During  the  trial 
of  Dustergool,  my  mind  was  full  of  Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots,  in  whose  history  I  had  just 
read,  for  the  thousandth  time,  efforts 
more  successful  than  those  of  the  Arme- 
nian Mary,  by  a  vicious  and  beautiful  wife, 
to  murder  a  bad  husband.  As  soon  as 
Mary  gets  into  England,  Robertson  is 
tempted,  by  the  interest  of  his  story, 
into  constant  partiality  to  her.  Her  abil- 
ities are  exaggerated  to  make  her  story 
more  romantic :  she  w^as  a  weak  girl  of 
elegant  accomplishments.  — Mackintosh, 
Sir  James,  1811,  Journal,  July  13  and 
16,  Life,  vol.  II,  ch.  ii. 

His  "History  of  Scotland"  is  doubtless, 
by  far,  the  most  popular  history  extant. 
— DiBDiN,  Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The 
Library  Companion,  note,  p.  271. 


158 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


The  History  of  Scotland,"  the  only  one 
of  his  works  which  approaches  the  per- 
fect plan  of  a  history,  is  the  best  of  his 
productions,  the  most  interesting,  and  the 
most  naturally  written.  Although  he 
asserts  that  he  was  ten  years  engaged  on 
it,  the  size  of  the  work  would  hardly 
seem  to  require  so  much  labor.  It  hardly 
exceeds  nine  hundred  pages  octavo,  and 
in  order  to  swell  it  to  two  volumes  he  was 
obliged  to  add,  afterwards,  by  a  few 
months'  labor,  a  large  body  of  notes.  He 
was  always  fond  of  referring  to  many 
authorities,  and  was  careful  in  his  re- 
searches; yet  he  seldom  discovered  any 
new  facts  and  does  little  more  than  relate 
gracefully  the  more  interesting  portions 
of  a  well-known  narrative. — Lawrence, 
Eugene,  1855,  The  Lives  of  the  British 
Historians,  vol.  I,  p.  360. 

In  the  following  year,  the  reading  pub- 
lic— especially  the  literary  men  of  Lon- 
don— were  electrified  by  the  appearance 
of  "A  History  of  Scotland"  from  this  un- 
known minister's  pen.  Dealing  with  the 
reigns  of  Mary  Stuart  and  her  son,  down 
to  the  accession  of  the  latter  to  the  Eng- 
lish throne,  he  described,  in  pure,  pathetic, 
and  dignified  language,  the  sorrows  of  that 
wretched  Scotchwoman  with  a  French  soul, 
who  saw  so  little  of  Holyrood  and  so  much 
of  English  jails.  He  stands  midway  be- 
tween those  who  believe  her  to  have  been  a 
beautiful  martyr,  and  those  who  brand  her 
as  a  beautiful  criminal.  Agreeing  with  all 
writers  as  to  the  great  loveliness  of  this 
beheaded  Scottish  queen,  he  considers 
that  the  intensity  and  long  continuance  of 
the  sorrows,  darkening  over  her  whole 
life  until  the  bloody  catastrophe  of  Foth- 
eringay,  have  blinded  us  to  her  faults,  and 
that  we  therefore  approve  of  our  tears, 
as  if  they  were  shed  for  a  person  who  had 
attained  much  nearer  to  pure  virtue." — 
Collier,  William  Francis,  1861,  A  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  p.  330. 

Notwithstanding  the  immense  mate- 
rials which  have  been  brought  to  light 
since  the  time  of  Robertson,  his  ''History 
of  Scotland"  is  still  vauable;  because  he 
possessed  a  grasp  of  mind  which  enabled 
him  to  embrace  general  views,  that  escape 
ordinary  compilers,  however  industrious 
they  may  be. — Buckle,  Henry  Thomas, 
1862-66,  History  of  Civilization  in  Eng- 
land, vol.  Ill,  ch.  I,  note. 

Hume  criticised  some  peculiarities  of 


Robertson's  vocabulary.  But,  after  all 
deductions,  the  purity  of  Robertson's 
English  cannot  be  seriously  impugned. 
He  modelled  his  style  upon  Swift,  after 
exhaustively  studying  that  of  Livy  and 
Tactius.  By  way  of  practice  in  the  writ- 
ing of  English  he  had,  long  before  the 
appearance  of  his  ''History,"  prepared 
a  translation  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  the 
manuscript  of  which  belonged  to  Lord 
Brougham.  Later  and  more  exhaustive 
methods  of  research  have  deprived  Robert- 
son's "History"  of  most  of  its  historical 
value.  But  its  sobriety,  fairness,  and  liter- 
ary character  give  it  a  permanent  interest 
to  a  student  of  the  evolution  of  historical 
composition. — Seccombe,  Thomas,  1896, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol. 
XLvni,  p.  426. 

CHARLES  V. 

1769 

I  got  yesterday  from  Strahan  about 
thirty  sheets  of  your  history  to  be  sent 
over  to  Suard.  ...  To  say  only  that 
they  are  very  well  written  is  by  far  too 
faint  an  expression,  and  much  inferior  to 
the  sentiments  I  feel :  they  are  composed 
with  nobleness,  with  dignity,  with  ele- 
gance, and  with  judgment  to  which  there 
are  few  equals.  They  even  excel,  and,  I 
think,  in  a  sensible  degree,  your  "History 
of  Scotland."  I  propose  to  myself  great 
pleasure  in  being  the  only  man  in  England 
during  some  months  who  will  be  in  the 
situation  of  doing  you  justice,  after 
which  you  may  certainly  expect  that  my 
voice  will  be  drowned  in  that  of  the  pub- 
lic—Hume,  David,  1769,  Letter  to  Dr, 
Robertson. 

I  think  that  the  historian  of  Mary, 
Queen  of  Scots,  cannot  fail  to  do  justice 
to  any  great  subject.  ...  Go  on, 
dear  sir,  to  enrich  the  English  language 
with  more  traits  of  modern  history. — 
Lyttelton,  Lord,  1769,  Letter  to  Dr. 
Robertson. 

Robertson  is  your  Livy;  his  "Charles 
V."  is  written  with  truth. — Voltaire, 
Franqois  Marie  Arouet,  1778?  Martin 
Sherlock's  Letters  from  an  English  Traveller. 

Finished  the  1st  vol.  of  Robertson's 
"Charles  the  Fifth,"  obeying  the  refer- 
ences to  proofs  and  illustrations.  I  am 
confounded  at  the  immense  researches 
which  furnished  material  for  this  prelim- 
inary volume. — Green,  Thomas,  1779- 
1810,  Diary  of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


159 


Robertson,  if  he  had  applied  to  Mon- 
sieur Gerard  of  Brussels,  keeper  of  the 
archives,  and  many  other  persons  in  the 
Austrian  Netherlands,  might  have  pro- 
cured documents  and  information  which 
would  have  rendered  the  "History  of 
Italy"  something  more  than  a  bare  splen- 
did relation  of  facts  already  known  to 
every  common  historical  reader. — Thick- 
NESSE,  Philip,  1792?  Journey  through  the 
Austrian  Netherlands,  vol.  ill,  p.  53. 

In  no  part  of  Dr.  Robertson's  works  has 
he  displayed  more  remarkably  than  in 
this  introductory  volume,  his  patience  in 
research ;  his  penetration  and  good  sense 
in  selecting  his  information ;  or  that  com- 
prehension of  mind,  which,  without  being 
misled  by  system,  can  combine  with  dis- 
tinctness and  taste  the  dry  and  scattered 
details  of  ancient  monuments.  In  truth, 
this  dissertation,  under  the  unassuming 
title  of  an  Introduction  to  the  "History 
of  Charles  V."  may  be  regarded  as  an  in- 
troduction to  the  History  of  Modern 
Europe.  It  is  invaluable,  in  this  respect, 
to  the  historical  student ;  and  it  suggests, 
in  every  page,  matter  of  speculation  to 
the  politician  and  the  philosopher. — 
Stewart,  Dugald,  1796-1801,  Account 
of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  William  Rob- 
ertson. 

The  subject  of  private  warfare  is  treated 
so  exactly  and  perspicuously  by  Robert- 
son, that  I  should  only  waste  the  reader's 
*  time  by  dwelling  so  long  upon  it  as  its 
extent  and  importance  would  otherwise 
demand.  Few  leading  passages  in  the 
monuments  of  the  middle  ages,  relative 
to  this  subject,  have  escaped  the  penetra- 
ting eye  of  that  historian ;  and  they  are 
arranged  so  well  as  to  form  a  compre- 
hensive treatise  in  small  compass. — Hal- 
lam,  Henry,  1818-48,  View  of  the  State 
of  Europe  During  the  Middle  Ages,  ch.  ii, 
pt.  II,  note. 

Robertson's  State  of  Europe  in  his 
''Charles  the  Fifth"  is  another  of  my 
great  favourites ;  it  contains  an  epitome 
of  information.  Such  works  .  .  .  are 
the  railroads  to  learning. — Byron,  Lord, 
1823-34,  Countess  of  Blessington's  Conver- 
sations with  Byron. 

Robertson  received  four  thousand  and 
five  hundred  pounds  for  the  "History  of 
Charles  V. ;"  and  it  is  no  disrespect  to 
the  memory  of  Robertson  to  say  that  the 


" History  of  Charles  V."  is  both  a  less  val- 
uable and  a  less  amusing  book  than  the 
"Lives  of  the  Poets."  —  Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1843,  Samuel  John- 
son, Critical  and  Historical  Essays. 

The  first  volume  of  his  "Charles  V." 
may  justly  be  regarded  as  the  greatest 
step  which  the  human  mind  had  yet  made 
in  the  philosophy  of  history.  Extending 
his  views  beyond  the  admirable  survey 
which  Montesquieu  had  given  of  the  rise 
and  decline  of  the  Roman  Empire,  he 
aimed  at  giving  a  view  of  the  progress  of 
society  in  modern  times. — Alison,  Sir 
Archibald,  1844,  Guizot,  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  vol.  56,  p.  790. 

For  the  "History  of  Charles  V."  Rob- 
ertson received  £4500,  then  supposed  to 
be  the  largest  sum  ever  paid  for  the  copy- 
right of  asingle  work.— Curwen,  Henry, 
1873,  A  History  of  Booksellers,  p.  66. 

*'A  View  of  the  Progress  of  Society  in 
Europe,  from  the  Subversion  of  the  Roman 
Empire  to  the  Beginning  of  the  Sixteenth 
Century."  8vo.,  Edinburgh,  1818.  This 
volume  is  properly  an  introduction  to  the 
author's  "History  of  the  Reign  of  the 
Emperor  Charles  V.,"  and  is  usually  to 
be  found  in  the  various  editions  of  that 
work.  This  was  perhaps  the  first  really 
philosophical  view  of  the  Middle  Ages 
ever  written.  In  calmness  of  judgment, 
in  breadth  of  scholarship,  and  in  compre- 
hensiveness of  treatment  it  still  has  no 
superior  among  the  shorter  treatises  on 
the  Middle  Ages.  .  .  .  The  "proofs 
and  illustrations"  form  nearly  half  of  the 
whole  volume,  and  are  not  the  least  im- 
portant and  interesting  portion  of  the 
work.  They  abound  in  facts  of  the  ut- 
most interest  and  importance.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  discriminate  against  any  portion 
of  this  excellent  piece  of  historical  writ- 
ing; but  the  first  and  the  third  section 
will  be  found  by  most  students  more  in- 
teresting, if  not  more  valuable  than  the 
third. — Adams,  Charles  Kendall,  1882, 
A  Manual  of  Historical  Literature,  pp. 
156,  157. 

In  1769  he  issued  the  three  volumes  of 
his  "History  of  the  Reign  of  Charles  V.," 
one  of  the  best  paid  pieces  of  literary 
labour  ever  undertaken  by  a  human  pen, 
and  this  was  followed  by  several  historical 
works  of  minor  importance.  Robertson 
was  not  more  impressed  than  Hume 
with  the  necessity  of  close,  independent, 


160 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


and  impartial  research,  but  he  was  no  less 
graceful  in  style,  and  he  diffused  over  his 
best  work  an  even  milder  radiance  of  phil- 
osophic reflection.  Hume  and  Robertson 
are  strangely  alike  as  historians.  Neither 
descends  the  hill  to  survey  the  country  at 
his  feet,  but  each  has  exceedingly  long 
sight,  and  the  power  of  taking  wide  and 
harmonious  Pisgah-views  from  his  self- 
adopted  eminence.  Robertson,  however, 
is  certainly  superior  to  Hume  in  his  skill 
in  making  general  estimates  of  history. 
It  is  not  the  least  of  Robertson's  claims 
to  our  consideration  that  the  opening 
chapters  of  his  ''Charles  V."  had  the 
effect  of  awakening  a  historic  sense  in 
the  childhood  of  Carlyle,  supplying  him 
with  ''new  worlds  of  knowledge,  vistas  in 
all  directions." — Gosse,  Edmund,  1888, 
A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  304. 

His  "History  of  the  Emperor  Charles 
V.'Ms  written  with  a  general  sagacity  of 
truth  which  is  hardly  affected  by  several 
faulty  details. — Robertson,  J.  Logie, 
1894,  A  History  of  English  Literature, 
p.  239. 

HISTORY  OF  AMERICA 

1777 

I  could  not  go  through  your  work  at 
one  breath  at  that  time,  though  I  have 
done  it  since.  I  am  now  enabled  to  thank 
you,  not  only  for  the  honor  you  have 
done  me,  but  for  the  great  satisfaction, 
and  the  infinite  variety  and  compass  of 
instruction  I  have  received  from  your  in- 
comparable work.  Everything  has  been 
done  which  was  so  naturally  to  be  ex- 
pected from  the  author  of  the  "History 
of  Scotland,"  and  of  the  age  of  Charles 
V.  I  believe  few  books  have  done  more 
than  this,  towards  clearing  up  dark  points, 
correcting  errors,  and  removing  preju- 
dices. You  have  too  the  rare  secret  of 
rekindling  an  interest  on  subjects  that 
had  so  often  been  treated,  and  in  which 
every  thing  which  could  feed  a  vital  flame 
appeared  to  have  been  consumed.  I  am 
sure  I  read  many  parts  of  your  history 
with  that  fresh  concern  and  anxiety 
which  attend  those  who  are  not  previously 
apprised  of  the  event.  You  liave  besides, 
thrown  quite  a  new  light  on  the  present 
state  of  the  Spanish  provinces,  and  fur- 
nished both  materials  and  hints  for  a 
rational  theory  of  what  may  be  expected 
from  them  in  future.    The  part  which  I 


read  with  the  greatest  pleasure  is,  the 
discussion  on  the  manners  and  character 
of  the  inhabitants  of  that  New  World.  1 
have  always  thought  with  you  that  we 
possess  at  this  time  very  great  advan- 
tages towards  the  knowledge  of  human 
nature.  We  need  no  longer  go  to  history 
to  trace  it  in  all  stages  and  periods. — 
Burke,  Edmund,  1777,  Letter  to  Dr. 
Robertson. 

I  have  seen  enough  to  convince  me  that 
the  present  publication  will  support,  and, 
if  possible,  extend  the  fame  of  the  author  ; 
that  the  materials  are  collected  with  care, 
and  arranged  with  skill ;  that  the  progress 
of  discovery  is  displayed  with  learning  and 
perspicuity ;  that  the  dangers,  the  achieve- 
ments, and  the  views  [  ?]  of  the  Spanish 
adventurers,  are  related  with  a  temperate 
spirit ;  and  that  the  most  original,  per- 
haps the  most  curious  portion  of  human 
manners  is  at  length  rescued  from  the 
hands  of  sophists  and  declaimers. — Gib- 
bon, Edward,  1777,  Letter  to  Robertson, 
July  14. 

After  all,  however,  the  principal  charm 
of  this,  as  well  as  of  his  other  histories, 
arises  from  the  graphical  effect  of  his 
narrative,  wherever  his  subject  affords 
him  materials  for  an  interesting  picture. 
What  force  and  beauty  of  painting  in  his 
circumstantial  details  of  the  new  voyage 
of  Columbus;  of  the  first  aspect  of  the 
new  Continent;  and  of  the  interviews  of 
the  natives  with  the  Spanish  adventurers  ! 
With  what  animation  and  fire  does  he  fol- 
low the  steps  of  Cortes  through  the  vary- 
ing fortunes  of  his  vast  and  hazardous 
career ;  yielding,  it  must  be  owned,  some- 
what too  much  to  the  influence  of  the  pas- 
sions which  his  hero  felt ;  but  bestowing, 
at  the  same  time,  the  warm  tribute  of 
admiration  and  sympathy  on  the  virtues 
and  fate  of  those  whom  he  subdued  !  The 
arts,  the  institutions,  and  the  manners  of 
Europe  and  of  America;  but  above  all, 
the  splendid  characters  of  Cortes  and  of 
Guatimozin,  enable  him,  in  this  part  of 
his  work,  to  add  to  its  other  attractions 
that  of  the  finest  contrasts  which  occur 
in  history. — Stewart,  Dugald,  1796- 
1801,  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of 
William  Robertson. 

Robertson.  ...  in  what  he  calls 
his  "History  of  America,"  is  guilty  of 
such  omissions  and  consequent  misrepre- 
sentations as  to  make  it  certain  that  he 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


IGl 


had  not  read  some  of  the  most  important 
documents  to  which  he  refers,  or  that  he 
didnotchuse  to  notice  the  facts  which  are 
to  be  found  there,  because  they  were  not 
in  conformity  to  his  own  preconceived 
opinions.  .  .  .  The  reputation  of  this 
author  must  rest  upon  his  History  of 
Scotland."  ...  if  that  can  support 
it.  His  other  works  are  grievously  de- 
ficient.—Southey,  Robert,  1810,  History 
of  Brazil,  vol.  i,  p.  639. 

Robertson's ''History  of  America,"  ad- 
mirable for  the  sagacity  with  which  it  has 
been  compiled;  but  too  much  abridged 
in  the  part  relating  to  the  Toltecks  and 
Aztecks. -Humboldt,  Friedrich  Heinrich 
Alexander,  1814-34,  Researches  in  Amer- 
ica, vol.  II,  p.  248. 

Robertson's  ''History  of  America," 
published  in  1777,  is  entirely  unequal  to 
the  claims  it  makes.  Simancas  was  closed 
to  him,  and  the  admirable  collection  at 
the  Lonja  of  Seville  was  not  yet  imagined, 
so  that  he  had  not  the  materials  needful 
for  his  task ;  besides  which,  his  plan  was 
not  only  too  vast,  but,  in  its  separate 
parts,  was  ill  proportioned  and  ill  adjusted. 
— DuYCKiNCK,  Evert  A.,  and  George L., 
1855-75,  Cyclopcedia  of  American  Litera- 
ture, ed.  Simons,  vol.  i,  p.  977. 

After  receiving  the  warm  approbation 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  History  at 
Madrid,  was  about  to  be  translated  into 
Spanish,  when  the  Government,  not  wish- 
ing their  American  administration  to  be 
brought  under  discussion,  interfered  with  a 
prohibition.-— Arnold,  Thomas,  1862-87, 
A  Manual  of  English  Literature,  p.  285. 

The  "History  of  America"  is  accurate 
but  dull.  He  has  none  of  the  qualifica- 
tions of  an  excellent  historian.  He  keeps 
up  the  dignity  of  history,  and  never 
descends  from  his  stilts.  His  style  is 
sonorous,  dignified,  and  sometimes  very 
eloquent.— Emery,  Fred  Parker,  1891, 
Notes  on  English  Literature,  p.  74. 

His  "History  of  America"  must  always 
remain  a  classic. — Robertson,  J.  Logie, 
1894,  A  History  of  English  Literature, 
p.  239. 

Its  vivid  descriptions  and  philosophical 
disquisitions  on  aboriginal  society  capti- 
vated the  literary  world,  while  the  out- 
break of  the  American  war  lent  the  book 
pertinent  public  interest  and  rendered  it 


more  popular  than  either  of  its  predeces- 
sors. Keats,  who  read  it  with  enthu- 
siasm many  years  after,  owed  to  it  the 
suggestion  of  his  famous  simile  of 
"Cortez  and  his  men." — Seccombe, 
Thomas,  1896,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  XLViii,  p.  428. 

HISTORY  OF  INDIA 
1791 

Dr.  Robertson's  book  amused  me  pretty 
well,  madam,  though  very  defective  from 
the  hiatuses  in  his  materials.  It  is  a 
genealogy  with  more  than  half  the  middle 
descents  wanting ;  and  thence  his  ingen- 
ious hypothesis  of  Western  invaders  im- 
porting civilization  from  the  East  is  not 
ascertained.  Can  one  be  sure  a  peer  is 
descended  from  a  very  ancient  peer  of 
the  same  name,  though  he  cannot  prove 
who  a  dozen  of  his  grandfathers  were  ? — 
Walpole,  Horace,  1791,  To  the  Countess 
of  Ossory,  Nov.  23 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  IX,  p.  361. 

Nothing  can  be  more  unjust  than  the 
notion  that  this  work  is  so  incorrect, 
or  grounded  on  information  so  imperfect, 
as  to  have  been  superseded  by  more 
full  and  accurate  books  since  published. 
It  is,  from  its  accuracy,  its  knowledge 
of  the  ancient  writings,  its  judicious 
reasoning  and  remarks,  as  well  as  its 
admirable  composition,  quite  worthy  of  a 
place  by  the  author's  former  and  more 
celebrated  writings;  and  it  proves  his 
great  faculties  to  have  continued  in  their 
entire  vigour  to  the  latest  period  of  his 
life.— Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1845-6, 
Lives  of  Men  of  Letters  of  the  Time  of 
George  III. 

GENERAL 

Boswell.  "Will  you  not  admit  the 
superiority  of  Robertson,  in  whose  'His- 
tory' we  find  such  penetration — such 
painting?"  Johnson.  "Sir,  you  must 
consider  how  that  penetration  and  that 
painting  are  employed.  It  is  not  history, 
it  is  imagination.  He  who  describes  what 
he  never  saw,  draws  from  fancy.  Robert- 
son paints  minds  as  Sir  Joshua  paints 
faces  in  a  history-piece :  he  imagines  an 
heroic  countenance.  You  must  look  upon 
Robertson's  work  as  romance,  and  try  it 
by  that  standard.  History  it  is  not.  Be- 
sides, Sir,  it  is  the  great  excellence  of  a 
writer  to  put  into  his  book  as  much  as  his 
book  will  hold.  Goldsmith  has  done  this 
in  his  "History."    Now  Robertson  might 


162 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


have  put  twice  as  much  into  his  book. 
Robertson  is  like  a  man  who  has  packed 
gold  in  wool:  the  w^ool  takes  up  more 
room  than  the  gold.  No,  Sir ;  I  always 
thought  Robertson  would  be  crushed  by 
his  own  weight, — would  be  buried  under 
his  own  ornaments.  Goldsmith  tells  you 
shortly  all  you  want  to  know :  Robertson 
detains  you  a  great  deal  too  long.  No 
man  will  read  Robertson's  cumbrous  de- 
tail a  second  time;  but  Goldsmith's  plain 
narrative  will  please  again  and  again.  I 
would  say  to  Robertson  what  an  old  tutor 
of  a  college  said  to  one  of  his  pupils: 
'Read  over  your  compositions,  and  when- 
ever you  meet  with  a  passage  which  you 
think  is  particularly  fine,  strike  it  out.' 
— Johnson,  Samuel,  1773,  Life  by  Bos- 
well,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  ii,  p.  272. 

A  disciple  of  the  old  school  of  slander — 
a  liar — and  one  for  whom  bedlam  is  no 
bedlam.— Whitaker,  John,  1787,  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  Vindicated. 

Dr.  Robertson  shone  when  he  wrote  the 
History  of  his  own  country,  with  which 
he  was -acquainted.  All  his  other  works 
are  collections  tacked  together  for  the 
purpose ;  but  as  he  has  not  the  genius, 
penetration,  sagacity,  and  art  of  Mr.  Gib- 
bon, he  cannot  melt  his  materials  together, 
and  make  them  elucidate  and  even  im- 
prove and  produce  new  discoveries;  in 
short,  he  cannot,  like  Mr.  Gibbon,  make 
an  original  picture  with  some  bits  of 
Mosaic. — Walpole,  Horace,  1791,  To 
the  Countess  of  Ossory,  Nov.  23;  Letters, 
ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix,  p.  361. 

The  perfect  composition,  the  nervous 
language,  the  well-tuned  periods  of  Dr. 
Robertson,  inflamed  me  to  the  ambitious 
hope  that  I  might  one  day  tread  in  his 
footsteps :  the  calm  philosophy,  the  care- 
less inimitable  beauties  of  his  friend  and 
rival,  often  forced  me  to  close  the  volume 
with  a  mixed  sensation  of  delight  and 
despair.— Gibbon,  Edward,  1793,  Auto- 
biography. 

None  of  Dr.  Robertson's  periods  with 
three  members. — Lamb,  Charles,  1800, 
Letters, -ed.  Ainger,  March  1,  vol.  i,  p.  115. 

The  histories  of  Robertson  abound  in 
the  finest  descriptions,  the  most  pleasing 
delineations  of  character,  the  most  digni- 
fied and  judicious  mixture  of  reflections; 
and  more  especially  they  are  distinguished 
by  a  style  of  narration  at  once  manly. 


copious,  and  easy.  But  all  these  descrip- 
tions, delineations,  reflections,  and  even 
this  narrative  itself,  are  too  general  for 
practical  use  and  application.  The  poli- 
tician and  political  oeconomist  will  search 
these  writings  in  vain  for  the  accurate 
details  of  fact  which  they  have  a  right  to 
expect  from  one  who  investigates  the  sub- 
jects of  particular  men  and  nations. 
.  .  .  In  plain  terms.  Dr.  Robertson 
appears  to  have  studied  grace  and  dignity 
more  than  usefulness.  He  has  chosen 
those  features  of  every  figure  which  he 
could  best  paint,  rather  than  those  which 
were  most  worthy  of  the  pencil.  .  .  . 
The  charms  of  Robertson's  style,  and  the 
full  flow  of  his  narration,  which  is  always 
suflliciently  minute  for  ordinary  readers, 
will  render  his  works  immortal  in  the 
hands  of  the  bulk  of  mankind.  But  the 
scientific  reader  requires  something  more 
than  periods  which  fill  his  ear,  and  gen- 
eral statements  which  gratify  by  amusing ; 
he  even  requires  more  than  a  general  text- 
book,— a  happy  arrangement  of  intricate 
subjects,  which  may  enable  him  to  pursue 
them  in  their  details.  .  .  .  When  we 
repair  to  the  works  of  Robertson  for  the 
purpose  of  finding  facts,  we  are  instantly 
carried  away  by  the  stream  of  his  narra- 
tive, and  forget  the  purpose  of  our  errand 
to  the  fountain.  As  soon  as  we  can  stop 
ourselves,  we  discover  that  our  search  has 
been  vain,  and  that  we  must  apply  to  those 
sources  from  which  he  drew  and  culled 
his  supplies.  —  Brown,  Thomas,  1803, 
Stewart's  Account  of  Dr.  Robertson,  Edin- 
burgh Review,  vol.  2,  pp.  240,  241. 

Robertson's  style  is  most  attractive: 
his  language  select,  and,  though  ornate, 
yet  lucid  and  unaffected.  His  weak  side 
is  that  which  has  regard  to  research  and 
import,  certainly  the  most  important 
of  all  historic  qualities.  It  is  now  uni- 
versally admitted,  even  in  England,  that 
he  is  unreliable,  superficial,  and  often  full 
of  errors  as  to  facts:  yet  his  style  is 
wont  to  be  held  up  as  a  pattern,  owing, 
probably,  to  the  degeneracy  of  taste.  But 
even  his  style  is,  in  my  opinion,  too  ver- 
bose and  antithetical.— ScHLEGEL,  Fred- 
erick, 1815-59,  Lectures  on  the  History 
of  Literature,  Lecture  xiv. 

Do  you  like  Robertson  ?  I  used  to  find 
in  him  a  shrewd,  a  systematic,  but  not  a 
great  understanding;  and  no  more  heart 
than  in  my  boot.    He  was  a  kind  of  deist 


WILLIAM  ROBERTSON 


163 


in  the  guise  of  a  Calvinistic  priest ;  a  por- 
tentous combination. — Carlyle,  Thomas, 
1824,  Early  Letters,  ed.  Norton,  p.  307. 

Robertson,  who  first  threw  over  the 
maze  of  human  events  the  light  of  philo- 
sophic genius,  and  the  spirit  of  enlight- 
ened reflection.— Alison,  Sir  Archibald, 
1833-42,  History  of  Europe  During  The 
French  Revolution,  vol.  xiv,  p.  3. 

Yet  there  was  a  power  of  arrangement 
in  Robertson :  no  one  knew  better  where 
to  begin  a  story  and  where  to  stop.  This 
was  the  greatest  quality  in  him,  that  and 
a  soft  sleek  style.  On  the  whole,  he  was 
merely  a  politician,  open  to  the  common 
objection  to  all  the  three,  that  total  want 
of  belief ;  and  worse  in  Robertson,  a  min- 
ister of  the  Gospel,  preaching,  or  pretend- 
ing to  preach. — Carlyle,  Thomas,  1838, 
Lectures  on  the  History  of  Literature, 
p.  185. 

In  Adam  Smith's  day  all  poetical  criti- 
cism not  contained  in  Dr.  Blair's  Lectures 
or  Lord  Kames's  Elements  would  have 
been  hooted  out  of  reasonable  society; 
now  those  books  themselves,  and  the 
school  which  they  represent,  have  sunk 
into  the  lowest  estimation.  Robertson 
and  Hume  would  of  course  have  been 
Smith's  standards  of  historical  writing; 
now  the  world  can  listen  with  great  com- 
placency to  Charles  Lamb's  assertion  that 
their  books  have  the  same  title  to  the 
character  of  histories  as  the  chess-boards 
which  we  see  inscribed  in  gilt  letters  with 
the  same  honourable  name. — Maurice, 
Frederick  Denison,  1839,  Lectures  on 
National  Education,  p.  115. 

The  pages  of  Dr.  Robertson  have  not 
the  unwearied  splendour  of  Gibbon,  nor 
the  sudden  flashes  of  sagacity  which  so 
charm  us  in  the  historical  writings  of 
Hume;  but  Robertson  is  always  an  his- 
torian, with  all  the  important  merits 
which  belong  to  the  character. — Smyth, 
William,  1840,  Lectures  on  Modern  His- 
tory, Lecture  xxi. 

The  public  has  been  hitherto  indebted 
for  its  knowledge  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Fifth  to  Robertson, — a  writer  who, 
combining  a  truly  philosophical  spirit  with 
an  acute  perception  of  character,  is  rec- 
ommended, moreover,  by  a  classic  ele- 
gance of  style  which  has  justly  given  him 
a  pre-eminence  among  the  historians  of 
the  Great  Emperor. — ^Prescott,  William 


HiCKLiNG,  1855-58,  The  History  of  the 
Reign  of  Philip  II. 

Robertson,  admirable  for  gravity  and 
shrewd  sense.— Morison,  James  Cotter, 
1878,  Gibbon  {English  Men  of  Letters), p.  102. 

He  was  the  Macaulay  of  his  times.  His 
successive  works  were  as  eagerly  antici- 
pated, and  kindled  the  same  enthusiasm. 
The  fame  he  reaped  in  the  field  of  letters 
added  weight  to  his  position  as  a  leader 
in  the  Church.  He  reflected  the  honours 
he  won  on  the  Church  he  served.  As  an 
author  of  high  merit  he  was  brought  into 
contact  with,  and  honoured  by  the  inti- 
macy of  men  of  light  and  leading ;  states- 
men, ministers,  men  of  letters,  and  dig- 
nitaries of  the  Church,  were  counted 
amongst  his  friends.  The  highest  person- 
age of  the  realm  interested  himself  in  his 
persuits,  and  proposals  from  that  quarter 
were  made  to  him  of  the  most  flattering 
kind.  Since  the  days  of  the  Reformation 
he  was  the  first  minister  of  the  Church 
who  in  the  field  of  letters  won  for  himself 
a  European  fame.  He  elevated  the 
Church  from  a  position  of  comparative 
obscurity,  lifted  her  into  the  presence  of 
foremost  men  of  the  world,  and  won  for 
her  history  their  consideration  and 
esteem.— Robertson,  Frederick  Lock- 
hart,  1883,  *S'^.  Giles'  Lectures,  Third 
Series,  Scottish  Divines,  p.  223. 

Robertson's  style  is  essentially  a  made 
one.  .  .  .  Taken  at  his  best,  in  nar- 
rative, Robertson  is  admirable.  His  prose 
flows  easily,  carrying  the  reader  along  by 
the  studied  but  concealed  art  by  which 
one  sentence  is  made  to  seem  the  neces- 
sary sequel  to  its  predecessor.  The  gen- 
eral style  is,  indeed,  too  smooth  for  mod- 
ern taste.  As  Robertson  never  allowed 
himself  to  pass  a  certain  limit  of  fervency 
in  his  sermons,  through  fear  of  being 
dubbed  "Highflyer,"  so  he  always  wrote, 
so  to  speak,  with  the  drag  on.  His  facts 
are  skilfully  marshalled  in  their  proper 
sequence;  his  tone  is  kept  exceptionally 
low.  .  .  .  The  best  quality  of  Rob- 
ertson's style  is  its  easy  motion.  He  con- 
stantly strives  after  grace  and  dignity. 
The  balanced  phrase,  the  period,  the  tau- 
tological adjective  are  perpetually  em- 
ployed.— Wallace,  William,  1895,  Eng- 
lish Prose,  ed.  Craik,  vol.  iv,  p.  276. 

His  style  is,  in  the  merely  correct,  but 
not  merely  jejune,  kind,  singularly  good ; 
his  conception  of  history,  though  not 


164 


ROBER  TSON— HUNTER 


answering  to  that  of  more  modern  times, 
and  tinged  with  the  idiosyncrasies  of  his 
age,  is  philosophical  and  shrewd;  and 
above  all,  he  had,  what  modern  historians, 
with  all  their  pretensions  and  all  their 
equipment,  have  too  often  lacked,  a 
thorough  sense  of  rhetorical  fitness  in  the 
good,  not  the  empty,  sense,  and  could 
make  his  histories  definite  works  of  art 
and  definite  logical  presentments  of  a 
view.  Nor  was  he  by  any  means  careless 
of  research  according  to  his  own  standard, 
which  was  already  a  severer  one  than 
that  of  Hume. — Saintsbury,  George, 


1898,  A  Short  History  of  English  Litera- 
ture, p.  624. 

Posterity,  we  fear,  has  confirmed  John- 
son's verdict,  and  the  history  which 
pleased  the  polite  readers  of  last  century, 
and  appeared  to  them  as  even  more  correct 
and  dignified  than  that  of  Gibbon,  is  not 
likely  to  come  again  into  vogue.  But 
none  the  less  he  performed  a  work  and 
achieved  a  fame  which  added  immensely 
to  the  influence  of  his  Church,  and  en- 
hanced the  position  of  her  clergy. — Craik, 
Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Century  of  Scottish 
History,  vol.  I,  p.  405. 


John  Hunter 

1728-1793 

Physiologist  and  surgeon ;  born  at  Long  Calderwood,  Glasgow,  Scotland,  July  14, 
1728 ;  youngest  of  ten  children  of  whom  one  was  the  afterward  celebrated  William 
Hunter.  John  received  very  imperfect  instruction  at  school ;  was  apprenticed  to  a 
cabinetmaker;  went  in  1748  to  study  anatomy  with  his  brother;  studied  at  Oxford 
1753-54 ;  became  a  surgical  pupil  at  St.  Bartholomew's  1751,  and  St.  George's  1754 ; 
studied  surgery  under  Cheselden  and  Pott ;  lectured  upon  anatomy  1754-59 ;  attained 
great  knowledge  of  human  and  comparative  anatomy ;  served  in  France  and  Portugal 
as  staff-surgeon  1761-63;  began  to  practice  surgery  in  London  1763;  was  made 
F.  R.  S.  1767,  in  consequence  of  the  publication  of  important  papers  containing  new 
discoveries  in  pathology  andphysiology ;  became  surgeon  to  St.  George's  Hospital 
1768;  surgeon  extraordinafyto  the  king  1776;  surgeon -general  of  the  forces  and 
inspector-general  o(^  hospitals  1790  ...  He  was  an  anatomist  of  marvelous  knowl- 
edge, and  OB^  of  th^  fathers  of  zoological  science.  He  was  author  of  "Natural  History 
of  the  Hiiman  Teetli"  (1771-78) ;  On  ''Venereal  Disease"  (1786) ;  Observations  on 
Certahj^'arts  of  the  Animal  Economy"  (1786);  ''On  the  Blood,  Inflammation,  and 
Gun^ot  Wounds"  (1794).  He  was  the  collector  of  the  great  Hunterian  Museum,  chiefly 
of^athological  and  anatomical  specimens,  purchased  by  the  British  Government  and 
Resented  to  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons.  Died  in  London,  Oct.  16,  1793. — Adams, 
Charles  Kendall,  ed.,  1897,  Johnson's  Universal  Eneydopcedia,  vol.  iv,  p,  415. 


PERSONAL 
JOHN  HUNTER,  ESQ.,  F.  R.  S., 
Surgeon-General  to  the  Army,  and 
Inspector-General  of  Hospitals ; 
Surgeon  to  St.  George's  Hospital ; 
Surgeon-Extraordinary  to  the  King ; 
&c.,  &c.,  &c., 

DIED  OCTOBER  16th,  1793, 
On  the  same  day,  and  perhaps  hour, 
that  the  unfortunate  Marie  Antoinette 
Queen  of  France  was  beheaded  in 
Paris. 

— Clift,  William,  1793,  Account-Book. 

It  was  a  truly  interesting  thing  to  hear 
Dr.  Jenner,  in  the  evening  of  his  days, 
descanting  from  all  the  fervour  of  youth- 
ful friendship  and  attachment, on  the  com- 
manding and  engaging  peculiarities  of 
Mr.  Hunter's  mind.  He  generally  called 
him  the  **dear  man,"  and  when  he 


described  the  honesty  and  warmth  of  his 
heart,  and  his  never-ceasing  energy  in 
the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  it  was  impos- 
sible not  to  be  animated  by  the  recital. — 
Baron,  John,  1827,  Life  of  Edward  Jenner, 
p.  10. 

He  was  fond  of  company  and  mixed 
much  in  the  society  of  young  men  of  his 
own  standing,  and  joined  in  that  sort  of 
dissipation  which  men  at  his  age,  and  freed 
from  restraint,  are  but  too  apt  to  indulge 
in.  Nor  was  he  always  very  nice  in  the 
choice  of  his  associates,  but  sometimes 
sought  entertainment  in  the  coarse,  broad 
humour  to  be  found  amid  the  lower  ranks 
of  society.  He  was  employed  by  his 
brother  to  cater  for  the  dissecting-room, 
in  the  course  of  which  employment 
he  became  a  great  favorite  with  that 


JOHN  HUNTER 


165 


certainly  not  too  respectable  class  of  per- 
sons the  resurrection-men  and  one  of  the 
amusements  in  which  he  took  special 
pleasure,  was  to  mingle  with  the  gods  in 
the  shilling  gallery,  for  the  purpose  of 
assisting  to  damn  the  productions  of  un- 
happy authors,  an  office  in  which  he  is 
said  to  have  displayed  peculiar  tact  and 
vigour.— Ottley,  Drewry,  1835,  Life  of 
John  Hunter y  ed.  Palmer. 

"O  Lord,  how  manifold  are  thy  works." 
Beneath 
are  deposited  the  remains 
of 

JOHN  HUNTER, 
Born  at  Long  Calderwood,  Lanarkshire,N.B., 

on  the  13th  of  February,  1728, 
Died  in  London  on  the  16th  of  October,  1793 

His  remains  were  removed 
from  the  Church  of  St.  Martin-in- the -Fields 

to  this  Abbey  on  the  28th  of  March,  1859. 
— Inscription  on  Tablet,  Westminster 
Abbey,  1859. 

John  Hunter's  coffin  was,  I  knew, 
among  this  mass  of  coffins  in  No.  3  vault 
somewhere.  It  was  my  self-imposed  task 
to  find  it ;  and  the  only  way  to  do  this  was 
to  inspect  each  coffin  as  it  was  brought 
out  on  its  way  to  the  catacombs  outside 
the  church.  I  therefore  stationed  myself 
at  the  door  of  the  vault,  and  examined  by 
the  light  of  the  lamp  hung  on  to  the 
door-post,  every  coffin  as  it  came  sliding 
down  the  plank,  occasionally  climbing  on 
to  the  top  of  them,  and  looking  about 
among  them  with  my  policeman's  bull's- 
eye  lamp  to  see  if  I  could  find  the  much- 
wished-for  name  of  John  Hunter  inscribed 
on  any  of  the  brass  coffin-plates.  We 
worked  away  at  this  vault  No.  3  for  eight 
days,  when,  the  Hunterian  oration  being 
so  near,  Mr.  Burstall  decided  to  go  on 
moving  the  coffins  at  another  part  of  the 
vault.  .  .  .  We  worked  on  in  No.  3 
vault  for  seven  days  more,  and,  as  may. 
be  imagined,  I  got  very  nervous  towards 
the  last,  especially  as  I  found  the  engraved 
brass  coffin-plates  loosened  from  the  tops 
of  the  older  coffins,  and  was  very  fearful 
that  John  Hunter's  coffin-plate  might  also 
have  got  loose.  .  .  .  The  total  num- 
ber of  coffins  in  No.  3  vault  w^as  over  two 
hundred.  The  total  number  of  coffins  re- 
moved was  three  thousand  two  hundred 
and  sixty.  This  will  give  some  idea  of 
the  task  that  had  to  be  undertaken.  If 
one  of  these  coffins,  therefore  was  not 
John  Hunter's,  our  labours  would  have 


been  in  vain.  The  workmen  stood  at  the 
head  and  foot  of  the  uppermost  coffin  of 
the  three,  and  slowly  moved  it  away  that 
I  might  see  the  name  upon  that  immedi- 
ately below  it.  As  it  moved  slowly  off  1 
discerned  first  the  letter  J  and  the  0,  and 
at  last  the  whole  word  "John."  My 
anxiety  was  now  at  its  height,  and  I  quickly 
running  to  one  end,  Mr.  Burstall  at  the 
other,  moved  the  coffin  away.  At  last  I 
got  it  completely  off,  and  to  my  intense 
delight  read  upon  the  brass-plate  the  fol- 
lowing inscription : 

John  Hunter 
Esq., 
Died  16th  Octr., 
1793, 
Age  64  Years. 

Though  I  had  worked  hard  to  gain  the 
object  I  desired,  I  was  not  sorry  that  I 
had  taken  the  entire  responsibility,  as 
well  as  the  carrying  out  of  the  task,  upon 
myself ;  for  from  my  discovery  arose  two 
important  events,  viz.  : — 1.  The  reinter- 
ment of  John  Hunter  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  2.  And  then  out  of  this  the 
erection  of  a  marble  statue  to  his  memory 
in  the  Museum,  at  the  College  of  Sur- 
geons.— BucKLAND,  Frank,  1866,  Dis- 
covery of  the  Remains  of  John  Hunter  in 
St.  Martin's  Church,  Leisure  Hour,  vol, 
lb,  pp.566,  567. 

He  allowed  himself  four  hours'  sleep  by 
night,  and  a  short  nap  after  dinner.  He 
rose  early  to  his  dissections,  experiments, 
and  preparation-making,  and  was  so 
busied  for  a  couple  hours,  or  more,  prior 
to  commencing  the  routine  work  of  the 
day  by  the  reception  of  his  patients  at 
half-past  eight.  His  evenings  were  de- 
voted to  recording  the  thoughts  and  ex- 
panding the  brief  notes  of  the  day.  The 
social  obligations  which  Hunter's  high 
position  involved  were  mainly  fulfilled, 
and  admirably  by  his  accomplished  wife, 
whose  words  are  w^edded  to  the  music  of 
the  immortal  canzonets  of  Haydn,  the 
great  composer  of  the  period.  The  four- 
windowed  drawing-room  which  still  looks 
upon  the  renovated  square  was  crowded 
weekly  by  the  beauty,  rank  and  fashion  of 
the  season.  My  father-in-law  described 
to  me  the  scene  he  often  stayed  to  witness 
with  sleep-laden  eyes,  when  the  master 
could  no  longer  dictate,  and  issued  from 
his  study  on  the  ground  floor  to  seek  his 


166 


JOHN  HUNTER 


much  needed  repose,  on  one  of  Mrs.  Hun- 
ter's reception  nights.  With  difficulty 
stemming  the  social  stream  on  the  stair- 
case he  would  stop  to  give  a  kindly  greeting 
to  the  beauty  of  the  year,  had  a  smart  reply 
to  the  passing  joke  of  the  man  of  fashion, 
or  a  more  serious  to  the  question  of  an 
administrator,  all  hurrying  away  to  some 
later  gathering  westward,  while  the  weary 
philosopher  sought  to  lay  his  head  upon 
the  pillow. — Owen,  Richard,  1874,  Hun- 
tefs  Scientific  Character  and  Works,  Lei- 
cester Square  by  Tom  Taylor,  p.  429. 

In  person  Hunter  was  of  middle  height, 
vigorous,  and  robust,  with  high  shoulders 
and  rather  short  neck.  His  features 
were  strongly  marked,  with  prominent 
eyebrows,  pyramidal  forehead,  and  eyes 
of  light  blue  or  gray.  His  hair  in  youth 
was  a  reddish  yellow,  and  in  later  years 
white.  .  .  .  Hunter  often  rose  at 
five  or  six  to  dissect,  breakfasted  at  nine, 
saw  patients  till  twelve,  and  visited  his 
hospital  and  outdoor  patients  till  four. 
He  was  most  punctual  and  orderly  in  his 
visits,  leaving  a  duplicate  of  his  visiting- 
book  at  home,  so  that  he  could  be  found 
at  any  time.  He  dined  at  four.  For 
many  years  he  drank  no  wine,  and  sat  but 
a  short  time  at  table,  except  when  he  had 
company.  He  slept  for  an  hour  after  din- 
ner, then  read  or  prepared  his  lectures, 
made  experiments,  and  dictated  the  results 
of  his  dissections.  He  was  often  left  at 
midnight  with  his  lamp  freshly  trimmed, 
still  at  work.  He  wrote  his  first  thoughts 
and  memorandums  on  odd  scraps  of  paper. 
These  were  copied  and  arranged,  and 
formed  many  folio  volumes  of  manuscript. 
Hunter  would  often  have  his  manuscripts 
rewritten  many  times,  making  during  the 
process  endless  corrections  and  transposi- 
tions. In  manners  Hunter  was  impatient, 
blunt,  and  unceremonious,  often  rude  and 
overbearing,  but  he  was  candid  and  unre- 
served to  a  fault.  He  read  comparatively 
little,  and  could  never  adequately  expound 
the  information  already  accessible  on  any 
subject.  Most  of  what  he  knew  he  had 
acquired  himself,  and  he  attached  perhaps 
undue  importance  to  personal  investiga- 
tion. Few  men  have  ever  done  so  much 
with  so  little  book-learning.  His  detach- 
ment from  books,  combined  with  his  pa- 
tient search  for  facts,  gave  him  a  vital 
grip  of  subjects  most  needing  to  be  stud- 
ied in  the  concrete.    His  opinions  were 


always  in  process  of  improvement,  and  he 
never  clung  to  former  opinions  through 
conservatism. — Bettany,  G.  T.,  1891, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol. 
XXVIII,  ^.  290. 

GENERAL 

His  experiments,  if  they  be  true,  carry 
with  them  no  manner  of  information : — if 
they  be  true,  no  effect  for  the  benefit  of 
man  can  possibly  be  derived  from  them. — 
Foot,  Jesse,  1794,  Life  of  Hunter,  p.  116. 

The  moral  sense  has  often  been  found 
too  weak  to  temper  the  malignancy  of  lit- 
erary jealousy,  and  has  impelled  some 
men  of  genius  to  an  incredible  excess.  A 
memorable  example  offers  in  the  history 
of  the  two  brothers.  Dr.  William  and  John 
Hunter,  both  great  characters  fitted  to 
be  rivals ;  but  Nature,  it  was  imagined  in 
the  tenderness  of  blood,  had  placed  a  bar 
to  rivalry.  John,  without  any  determined 
pursuit  in  his  youth,  was  received  by  his 
brother  at  the  height  of  his  celebrity ;  the 
doctor  initiated  him  into  his  school ;  they 
performed  their  experiments  together ; 
and  William  Hunter  was  the  first  to  an- 
nounce to  the  world  the  great  genius  of 
his  brother.  After  this  close  connexion 
in  all  their  studies  and  discoveries.  Dr. 
William  Hunter  published  his  magnificent 
work — the  proud  favorite  of  his  heart,  the 
assertor  of  his  fame.  Was  it  credible  that 
the  genius  of  the  celebrated  anatomist, 
which  had  been  nursed  under  the  wing  of 
his  brother,  should  turn  on  that  wing  to 
clip  it  ?  John  Hunter  put  in  his  claim  to 
the  chief  discovery;  it  was  answered 
by  his  brother.  The  Royal  Society,  to 
whom  they  appealed,  concealed  the  docu- 
ments of  this  unnatural  feud.  The  blow 
was  felt,  and  the  jealousy  of  literary 
honour  forever  separated  the  brothers — 
the  brothers  of  genius. — ^DiSRAELi,  Isaac, 
1796-1839,  Jealousy  of  Authors,  The  Liter- 
ary Character. 

He  appears  to  me  as  a  new  character  in 
our  profession;  and,  briefly  to  express 
his  peculiar  merit,  I  may  call  him  the  first 
and  great  physionosologist,  or  expositor 
of  the  nature  of  disease. — Abernethy, 
John,  1819,  Hunterian  Oration,  p.  29. 

I  had  the  happiness  of  hearing  the  first 
course  of  lectures  which  John  Hunter  de- 
livered. I  had  been  at  that  time  for  some 
years  in  the  profession,  and  was  tolerably 
well  acquainted  with  the  opinions  held  by 
the  surgeons  most  distinguished  for  their 


JOHN  HUNTER 


167 


talents,  then  residing  in  the  metropolis ; 
but  having  heard  Mr.  Hunter's  lectures 
on  the  subject  of  disease,  1  found  them  so 
far  superior  to  everything  I  had  conceived 
or  heard  before,  that  there  seemed  no 
comparison  between  the  great  mind  of  the 
man  who  delivered  them  and  all  the  indi- 
viduals, whether  ancient  or  modern,  who 
had  gone  before  him. — Cline,  Henry, 
1824,  Hunterian  Oration. 

Those  who  have  traced  the  progress  of 
modern  surgery  to  its  true  source,  will 
not  fail  to  have  discerned,  in  the  princi- 
ples which  Hunter  established,  the  germs 
of  almost  all  the  improvements  which 
have  been  since  introduced. — Palmer, 
James  F.,  1835,  ed.  Huntefs  Works ^  vol. 
I,  p.  vii. 

The  majority  of  Hunter's  contempora- 
ries considered  his  pursuits  to  have  little 
connexion  with  practice,  charged  him 
with  attending  to  physiology  more  than 
surgery,  and  looked  on  him  as  little  bet- 
ter than  an  innovator  and  an  enthusiast. 
— Ottley,  Drewry,  1835,  Life  of  Hunter^ 
Works  of  Hunter,  ed.  Palmer,  p.  126. 

With  many  ideas  to  tell,  and  most  of 
them  new,  had  a  difficulty  of  expressing 
himself.  With  more  need  than  any  man 
before  him  for  additional  facilities  in  this 
way,  he  had  a  restricted  vocabulary: 
again,  in  making  use  of  it,  his-  style  was 
seldom  easy,  often  obscure;  so  that 
things  which,  when  thoroughly  under- 
stood, had  no  feature  more  striking  than 
their  simplicity,  were  often  made  to  ap- 
pear difficult,  and  by  many  readers,  no 
doubt,  had  often  been  left  unexamined. — 
Macilwain,  George,  1853,  Memoirs  of 
John  Abernethy,  p.  364. 

I  have  now  only  one  more  name  to  add 
to  this  splendid  catalogue  of  the  great 
Scotchmen  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
But  it  is  the  name  of  a  man,  who,  for 
comprehensive  and  original  genius,  comes 
immediately  after  Adam  Smith,  and  must 
be  placed  far  above  any  other  philosopher 
whom  Scotland  has  produced.  I  mean,  of 
course,  John  Hunter,  whose  only  fault 
was,  an  occasional  obscurity,  not  merely 
of  language,  but  also  of  thought.  In  this 
respect,  and,  perhaps,  in  this  alone,  Adam 
Smith  had  the  advantage ;  for  his  mind 
was  so  flexible,  and  moved  so  freely,  that 
even  the  vastest  designs  were  unable 
to  oppress  it.    With  Hunter,  on  the 


contrary,  it  sometimes  seemed  as  if  the  un- 
derstanding was  troubled  by  the  grandeur 
of  his  own  conceptions,  and  doubted  what 
path  it  ought  to  take.  He  hesitated ;  the 
utterance  of  his  intellect  was  indistinct. 
Still,  his  powers  were  so  extraordinary, 
that,  among  the  great  masters  of  organic 
science,  he  belongs,  1  apprehend,  to  the 
same  rank  as  Aristotle,  Harvey,  and 
Bichat,  and  is  somewhat  superior  either 
to  Haller  or  Cuvier.  As  to  this  classifi- 
cation, men  will  differ,  according  to  their 
different  ideas  of  the  nature  of  science, 
and,  above  all,  according  to  the  extent  to 
which  they  appreciate  the  importance  of 
philosophic  method.  It  is  from  this  lat- 
ter point  of  view  that  I  have,  at  present, 
to  consider  the  character  of  John  Hunter ; 
and,  in  tracing  the  movements  of  his  most 
remarkable  mind,  we  shall  find,  that,  in 
it,  deduction  and  induction  were  more  in- 
timately united  than  in  any  other  Scotch 
intellect,  either  of  the  seventeenth  or 
eighteenth  century.  The  causes  of  this 
unusual  combination,  I  will  now  endeavour 
to  ascertain.— Buckle,  Henry  Thomas, 
1862-66,  History  of  Civilization  in  Eng- 
land, vol.  Ill,  ch.  V. 

In  1776,  Hunter  delivered  his  first 
course  of  surgical  lectures  at  St.  George's. 
The  sense  of  his  deficiencies  as  a  spvker 
led  him  to  read  his  lectures.  He  seldoso 
looked  up  from  his  book ;  and  his  written 
style  was  not  happy.  His  doctrines  were 
new,  and  their  obscurity  and  difficulty  was 
little  relieved  by  his  exposition.  He  used 
to  compare  the  preparation  of  a  lecture 
to  a  tradesman's  taking  stock.  His  sole 
object  was  truth.  He  was  pitiless  in  de- 
molishing fallacies  or  exposing  errors,  even 
his  own. — Taylor,  Tom,  1874,  Leicester 
Square,  its  Associations  and  its  Worthies, 
p.  396. 

All  intelligent  readers  of  biography  are 
more  or  less  familiar  with  the  labors  and 
writings  of  John  Hunter,  his  marvellous 
genius,  and  his  vast  contributions  to 
science.  In  the  medical  profession  his 
name  is,  and  always  will  be,  a  household 
word  throughout  the  civilized  world  ;  it  is 
spoken  with  respect  and  reverence  in 
every  college  amphitheatre,  and  is  deeply 
ingraved  on  the  mind  of  every  student  of 
surgery.  .  .  .  With  the  exceptions 
of  Hippocrates,  the  father  of  medicine, 
John  Hunter  is  the  grandest  figure  in  the 
history  of  our  profession.    ...  He 


168 


JOHN  HUNTER 


was  not  only  a  great  surgeon,  a  wise  phy- 
sician and  a  great  anatomist  and  physiol- 
ogist, human  and  comparative,  but  above 
all,  he  was  a  philosopher  whose  mental 
grasp  embraced  the  whole  range  of 
nature's  works,  from  the  most  humble 
structure  to  the  most  complex  and  the 
most  lofty.  He  was  emphatically  the 
Newton  of  the  medical  profession,  and 
what  Pope  said  of  that  great  philosopher 
may,  by  pharaphrase,  be  said  with  equal 
force  and  truth  of  Hunter : 
"Nature  and  Nature's  laws  lay  hid  in  night; 
God  said  'Let  Hunter  be,'  andalHvas  light." 
Hunter  is  peerless  in  the  history  of  British 
surgery ;  and  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  a 
century  the  profession  turns  to  his  mem- 
ory with  increased  reverence  for  his 
transcendent  genius,  his  matchless  ability, 
and  his  unequalled  services.  To  say  that 
he  was  simply  the  founder  of  scientific 
surgery  would  fall  far  short  of  his  great 
deserts ;  to  do  him  full  justice  we  must  add 
that  he  was  the  father  also  of  scientific 
zoology  and  of  comparative  physiology. — 
Gross,  S.  D.,  1881,  John  Hunter  and  his 
Pupils,  pp.  9,  10. 

Medical  science  owes  much  to  John  Hun- 
ter, who  by  his  researches  in  animal  and 
vegetable  Physiology,  made  a  vast  num- 
ber of  discoveries,  which,  considered 
singly,  are  curious,  but  which,  collect- 
ively, constitute  an  invaluable  body  of 
new  truths.  His  museum,  at  the  time  of 
his  death,  contained  upwards  of  ten 
thousand  preparations  illustrative  of  the 
phenomena  of  nature.  His  great  object 
was  to  show  that  nature  is  a  vast  and 
united  whole,  that  nothing  is  irregular, 
that  nothing  is  perturbed,  that  in  every 
change  there  is  order,  that  all  things  are 
done  according  to  never-failing  law. — 
Welsh,  Alfred  H.,  1883,  Development 
of  English  Literature  and  Language,  vol. 
II,  p.  187. 

The  genius  of  one  man — John  Hunter — 
created  English  pathology,  and  took  it  at 
once  almost  to  the  highest  position,  for 
he  fortified  it  with  clinical,  anatomical, 
and  experimental  observations  which  are 
unasailable  when  they  are  combined. 
John  Hunter  was  in  some  respects  even 
more  remarkable  than  William,  his  elder 
brother.  He  possessed  greater  singleness 
of  purpose,  and  therefore  greater  concen- 
tration, greater  depth  of  knowledge, 
greater  determination,  and  that  minute 


attention  to  detail  associated  with  the 
power  of  generalisation  which  only  co- 
exist in  the  highest  intellects. — Power, 
D'Arcy,  1896,  Social  England,  ed.  Traill, 
vol.  V,  p.  423. 

It  is  impossible  to  include  in  one  view 
the  multitudinous  forms  of  Hunter's  work ; 
you  cannot  see  the  wood  for  the  trees. 
He  was  anatomist,  biologist,  naturalist, 
physician,  surgeon,  and  pathologist,  all  at 
once,  and  all  in  the  highest.  Nor  is  it 
possible  to  reproduce  the  lights  and 
shadows  of  that  aspect  of  his  life  which 
was  not  turned  toward  science.  .  .  . 
He  is  like  Vesalius;  he  made  his  name 
immortal  by  the  labour  of  his  own  hands 
outside  the  sphere  of  surgery.  Apart 
from  all  his  hospital  and  private  practice, 
and  all  his  writing  and  lecturing,  the  ac- 
tual manual  work  that  he  accomplished  in 
dissections  and  post-mortem  examinations 
is  past  all  telling.  Twelve  years  before  he 
died,  at  Captain  Donellan's  trial,  he  was 
asked,  "You  have  been  long  in  the  habit 
of  dissecting  human  subjects ;  I  presume 
you  have  dissected  more  than  any  man  in 
Europe?"  and  he  answered,  have  dis- 
sected some  thousands  during  these  thirty- 
three  years."  His  dissections  of  animals 
must  also  be  reckoned  in  thousands.  Lit- 
erary work  was  uncongenial  to  him,  and 
against  the  grain ;  he  took  no  pleasure  in 
style  and  no  pains  over  spelling,  submitted 
his  writings  to  the  corrections  of  his 
friends,  adopted  at  their  suggestion  Greek 
words,  and  that  most  foolish  phrase 
''materia  vitge  diffusa."  But  in  anatomy 
and  experiment  he  had  the  strength  and 
patience  of  ten ;  and  Clift  often  saw  him, 
in  his  old  age,  standing  like  a  statue  for 
hours  over  some  delicate  bit  of  dissection. 
The  whole  output  of  his  working  life  is 
fourfold — literary,  surgical,  anatomical, 
physiological  and  experimental;  but  the 
multiplication  together  of  these  factors 
does  not  give  the  whole  result  of  his  work. 
He  brought  surgery  into  closer  touch  with 
science.  Contrast  him  with  Ambroise 
Pare,  a  surgeon  in  some  ways  like  him, 
shrewd,  observant,  ahead  of  his  age ;  the 
achievements  of  Pare,  side  by  side  with 
those  of  Hunter,  are  like  child's  play  in 
comparison  with  the  serious  affairs  of 
men ;  Pare  advanced  the  art  of  surgery, 
but  Hunter  taught  the  science  of  it. — 
Paget,  Stephen,  1897,  John  Hunter 
(Masters  of  Medicine),  pp.  220,  233. 


169 


William  Murray 

Lord  Mansfield 
1705-1793 

William  Murray,  Earl  of  Mansfield,  lord-chief-justice  of  the  king's  bench,  was  the 
fourth  son  of  Andrew,  viscount  Stormont,  and  was  born  at  Perth,  Mar.  2,  1705.  He 
studied  at  Christ-church,  Oxford,  took  the  degree  of  M.  A.  in  1730,  and  was  called 
to  the  bar  in  1731.  He  soon  acquired  an  extensive  practice — mainly,  it  would  seem, 
on  account  of  his  facility  and  force  as  a  speaker,  for  neither  then  nor  at  any  subse- 
quent period  of  his  career  was  he  reckoned  a  very  erudite  lawyer — and  was  often 
employed  on  appeal  cases  before  the  house  of  lords.  In  1743  he  w^as  appointed  by 
the  ministry  solicitor-general,  entered  the  house  of  commons  as  member  for  Borough- 
bridge,  and  at  once  took  a  high  position.  In  1746  he  acted,  ex  officio,  as  counsel  against 
the  rebel  lords,  Lovat,  Balmerino  and  Kilmarnock ;  was  appointed  king's  attorney  in 
1754 ;  and  at  this  time  stood  so  high  that,  had  not  the  keenness  of  his  ambition  been 
mitigated  by  a  well-founded  distrust  of  his  fitness  for  leading  the  house,  he  might  have 
aspired  to  the  highest  political  honors.  He  became  chief-justice  of  the  king's  bench 
in  1756,  and  entered  the  House  of  Lords  under  the  title  of  baron  Mansfield  of  Mans- 
field in  the  county  of  Nottingham.  Still  his  political  role  has  little  interest  for  pos- 
terity. As  his  opinions  were  not  those  of  the  popular  side,  he  was  exposed  to  much 
abuse  and  party  hatred.  Junius,  among  others,  bitterly  attacked  him ;  and  during  the 
Gordon  riots  of  1780,  his  house,  with  all  his  valuable  books  and  manuscripts,  was 
burned.  He  declined,  with  much  dignity,  indemnification  by  parliament.  In  1776 
Murray  was  made  earl  of  Mansfield.  He  worked  hard  as  a  judge  till  1788,  when  age  and 
ill-health  forced  him  to  resign.  He  died  Mar.  20,  1793,  in  the  89th  year  of  his  age. 
— Peck,  Harry  Thurston,  ed.,  1898,  The  International  Cyelopcedia,  vol.  ix,  p.  454. 


PERSONAL 
To  number  five  direct  your  doves, 
There  spread  round  Murray  all  your  bloom- 
ing loves ; 

Noble  and  young,  who  strikes  the  heart 
With  every  sprightly,  every  decent  part ; 
Equal  the  injured  to  defend. 
To  charm  the  mistress,  or  to  fix  the  friend ; 
He,  with  a  hundred  arts  refined, 
Shall  stretch  thy  conquests  over  half  «the 
kind : 

To  him  each  rival  shall  submit, 

Make  but  his  riches  equal  to  his  wit. 

— Pope,  Alexander,  1738,  Imitation  of 

Horace's  Ode  to  Venus. 

Your  fate  depends  upon  your  success 
there  as  a  speaker ;  and,  take  my  word  for 
it,  that  success  turns  much  more  upon  Man- 
ner than  Matter.  Mr.  Pitt,  and  Mr.  Murray 
the  Solicitor-General,  are,  beyond  compari- 
son, the  best  speakers.  Why  ?  Only  be- 
cause they  are  the  best  orators.  They 
alone  can  inflame  or  quiet  the  House; 
they  alone  are  attended  to  in  that  numer- 
ous and  noisy  assembly,  that  you  might 
hear  a  pin  fall  while  either  of  them  is 
speaking.  Is  it  that  their  matter  is  bet- 
ter, or  their  arguments  stronger,  than 
other  people's?  Does  the  House  expect 
extraordinary  information  from  them? 
Not  in  the  least ;  but  the  House  expects 
pleasure  from  them,  and  therefore  attends ; 


finds  it,  and  therefore  approves. — Stan- 
hope, Philip  Dormer  (Earl  Chester- 
field), 1751,  Letters  to  his  Son,  Feb.  11th. 

In  all  debates  of  consequence  Murray, 
the  attorney  general,  had  greatly  the  ad- 
vantage over  Pitt  in  point  of  argument ; 
and,  abuse  only  excepted,  was  not  much 
his  inferior  in  any  part  of  oratory. — 
Waldegrave,  Lord,  1755,  Memoirs,  p.  53. 

As  a  speaker  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
where  was  his  competitor  ?  The  grace  of 
his  action,  and  the  fire  and  vivacity  of 
his  looks,  are  still  present  to  imagination ; 
and  the  harmony  of  his  voice  yet  vibrates 
in  the  ear  of  those  who  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  listen  to  him.  His  Lordship 
possessed  the  strongest  powers  of  discrim- 
ination; his  language  was  elegant  and 
perspicuous,  arranged  with  the  happiest 
method,  and  applied  with  the  utmost  ex- 
tent of  human  ingenuity;  his  images 
were  often  bold,  and  always  just ;  but  the 
character  of  his  eloquence  is  that  of  being 
flowing,  perspicuous,  convincing,  and 
affecting. — Burton,  Edmund,  1763,  Char- 
acter Deduced  from  Classical  Remains. 

This  gentleman  had  raised  himself  to 
great  eminence  at  the  bar  by  the  most 
keen,  intuitive  spirit  of  apprehension, 
that  seemed  to  seize  every  object  at  first 


170 


WILLIAM  MURRAY 


glance ;  an  innate  sagacity,  that  saved  the 
trouble  of  intense  application ;  and  an  ir- 
resistible stream  of  eloquence,  that  flowed 
pure  and  classical,  strong  and  copious, 
reflecting  in  the  most  conspicuous  point 
of  view  the  subject  over  which  it  rolled, 
and  sweeping  before  it  all  the  slime  of 
formal  hesitation  and  all  the  intangling 
weeds  of  chicanery. — Smollet,  Tobias 
George,  1763-65,  History  of  England, 
Reign  of  George  11. 

Our  language  has  no  term  of  reproach, 
the  mind  has  no  idea  of  detestation,  which 
has  not  already  been  applied  to  you,  and 
exhausted.  Ample  justice  has  been  done 
by  abler  pens  than  mine  to  the  separate 
merits  of  your  life  and  character.  Let 
it  be  my  humble  office  to  collect  the  scat- 
tered sweets  until  their  united  virtue  tor- 
tures the  sense.  .  .  .  Yet  you  con- 
tinue to  support  an  Administration  which 
you  know  is  universally  odious,  and  which 
on  some  occasions  you  yourself  speak 
of  with  contempt.  You  would  fain  be 
thought  to  take  no  share  in  government, 
while,  in  reality,  you  are  the  mainspring 
of  the  machine.  Here,  too,  we  trace  the 
little,  prudential  policy  of  a  Scotchman. 
Instead  of  acting  that  open,  generous  part, 
which  becomes  your  rank  and  station,  you 
meanly  skulk  into  the  closet  and  give  your 
Sovereign  such  advice  as  you  have  not 
spirit  to  avow  or  defend.  You  secretly 
engross  the  power  while  you  decline  the 
title  of  minister;  and  though  you  dare 
not  be  Chancellor,  you  know  how  to  secure 
the  emoluments  of  the  office.  Are  the 
seals  to  be  forever  in  commission,  that  you 
may  enjoy  five  thousands  pounds  a  year. 
— Junius,  1770,  Letter  to  Lord  Mansfield, 
Nov.  14. 

At  Lady  Colvill's,  to  whom  I  am  proud 
to  introduce  any  stranger  of  eminence, 
that  he  may  see  what  dignity  and  grace  is 
to  be  found  in  Scotland,  an  officer  ob- 
served, that  he  had  heard  Lord  Mansfield 
was  not  a  great  English  lawyer.  John- 
son. **Why,  Sir,  supposing  Lord  Mans- 
field not  to  have  the  splendid  talents 
which  he  possesses,  he  must  be  a  great 
English  lawyer,  from  having  been  so  long 
at  the  bar,  and  having  passed  through  so 
many  of  the  great  oflices  of  the  law.  Sir, 
you  may  as  well  maintain  that  a  carrier, 
who  has  driven  a  packhorse  between  Edin- 
burgh and  Berwick  for  thirty  years,  does 
not  know  the  road,  as  Lord  Mansfield 


does  not  know  the  law  of  England." — 
BoswELL,  James,  1785,  The  Journal  of  a 
Tour  of  the  Hebrides  with  Samuel  Johnson, 
Nov.  11-20,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  v,  p.  450. 

I  cannot  recollect  the  time,  when,  sit- 
ting at  the  table  with  Lord  Mansfield,  I 
ever  failed  to  remark  that  happy  and  en- 
gaging art,  which  he  possessed,  of  putting 
the  company  present  in  good  humour  with 
themselves ;  1  am  convinced  they  naturally 
liked  him  the  more  for  his  seeming  to-like 
them  so  well :  this  has  not  been  the  gen- 
eral property  of  all  the  witty,  great,  and 
learned  men ;  whom  I  have  looked  up  to  in 
my  course  of  life.  .  .  .  Lord  Mans- 
field would  lend  his  ear  most  condescend- 
ingly to  his  company,  and  cheer  the  least 
attempt  at  humour  with  the  prompt  pay- 
ment of  a  species  of  laugh,  which  cost 
his  muscles  no  exertion,  but  was  merely 
a  subscription  that  he  readily  threw  in 
towards  the  general  hilarity  of  the  table. 
He  would  take  his  share  in  the  small  talk 
of  the  ladies  with  all  imaginable  affability  ; 
he  was  in  fact,  like  most  men,  not  in  the 
least  degree  displeased  at  being  incensed 
by  their  flattery.— Cumberland,  Richard, 
1806,  Memoirs  Written  by  Himself,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  344,  346. 

In  private  Lord  Mansfield  appears  to 
have  been  much  and  justly  beloved.  His 
moral  character  was  blameless.  In  his 
friendships  he  was  warm  and  constant ;  in 
his  charities  judicious  and  discriminating, 
not  bestowing  small  sums  to  relieve  him- 
self from  present  importunities,  but  assist- 
ing in  a  more  substantial  manner  those 
who  were  capable  of  benefiting  by  such 
kindness.  In  society  and  especially  at  his 
own  table,  he  was  remarkable  for  the  live- 
liness and  intelligence  of  his  conversation, 
in  which,  however,  he  never  indulged  to 
the  exclusion  of  others.  One  of  his  most 
distinguishing  characteristics  was  the 
decorum  and  propriety  that  pervaded  not 
only  his  actions  but  his  manners,  his  per- 
sonal appearance  and  even  his  domestic 
establishment,  in  every  department  of 
which  good  sense  and  good  taste  were  seen 
conjoined.  Lord  Mansfield's  features  were 
regular  and  expressive,  and  his  presence 
graceful  and  dignified. — RoscoE,  Henry, 
1830,  Eminent  British  Lawyers,  p.  224. 

In  closeness  of  argument,  in  happiness 
of  illustration,  in  copiousness  and  grace 
of  diction,  the  oratory  of  Murray  was  un- 
surpassed ;  and,  indeed,  in  all  the  qualities 


WILLIAM  MURRA  Y 


171 


which  conspire  to  form  an  able  debater, 
he  is  allowed  to  have  been  Pitt's  superior. 
When  measures  were  attacked,  no  one  was 
better  capable  of  defending  them ;  when 
reasoning  was  the  weapon  employed,  none 
handled  it  with  such  effect ;  but  against 
declamatory  invective  his  very  tempera- 
ment incapacitated  him  from  contending 
with  so  much  advantage.  He  was  like  an 
accomplished  fencer,  invulnerable  to  the 
thrusts  of  a  small  sword,  but  not  equally 
able  to  ward  off  the  downright  stroke  of 
a  bludgeon. — Welsby,  W.  N.,  1846,  Lives 
of  Eminent  Judges  of  the  Seventeenth  and 
Eighteenth  Centuries,  p.  392. 

Even  the  learned  on  the  continent  of 
Europe,  who  had  hitherto  looked  upon 
English  lawyers  as  very  contracted  in 
their  views  of  jurisprudence,  and  had 
never  regarded  the  decisions  of  our  courts 
as  settling  any  international  question, 
acknowledged  that  a  great  jurist  had  at 
last  been  raised  up  among  us,  and  they 
placed  his  bust  by  the  side  of  Grotius  and 
D'Aguesseau.  In  his  own  lifetime,  and  after 
he  had  only  a  few  years  worn  his  ermine, 
he  acquired  the  designation  by  which  he 
was  afterwards  known,  and  by  which  he 
will  be  called  when,  five  hundred  years 
hence,  his  tomb  is  shown  in  Westminster 
Abbey— that  of  ''THE  GREAT  LORD 
MANSFIELD. .  .  .  Lord  Mansfield 
must,  I  think,  be  considered  the  most 
prominent  legal  character,  and  the  bright- 
est ornament  to  the  profession  of  the  law, 
that  appeared  in  England  during  the  last 
century.— Campbell,  John  Lord,  1849, 
Lives  of  the  Chief  Justices  of  England,  vol. 
II,  pp.  397,  562. 

At  the  bar  his  mere  statement  of  a 
case,  by  its  extreme  lucidity,  was  sup- 
posed to  be  worth  the  argument  of  any 
other  man.  As  a  statesman  his  fame  is 
tarnished  by  his  blind  adhesion  to  the 
policy  of  coercing  America,  nor  is  his 
name  associated  with  any  statute  of  first- 
rate  importance.  Macaulay  terms  him, 
however,  "the  father  of  modern  toryism, 
of  toryism  modified  to  suit  an  order  of 
things  in  which  the  House  of  Commons  is 
the  most  powerful  body  in  the  state.'' 
As  a  judge,  by  his  perfect  impartiality, 
inexhaustible  patience,  and  the  strength 
and  acumen  of  his  understanding,  he  ranks 
among  the  greatest  who  have  ever  admin- 
istered justice.  Such  was  his  ascendency 
over  his  colleagues,  that  during  the  first 


twelve  years  of  his  tenure  of  office  they 
invariably,  though  by  no  means  insignifi- 
cant lawyers,  concurred  in  his  judgment., 
— RiGG,  J.  M.,  1894,  TJictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  vol.  xxxix,  p.  414. 

GENERAL 

He  excelled  in  the  statement  of  a  case. 
One  of  the  first  orators  of  the  present 
age  said  of  it  ''that  it  was  of  itself  worth 
the  argument  of  any  other  man."— But- 
ler, Charles,  1804,  Horoe  Juridicce  Sub- 
secivce. 

The  Reports  of  Burrow,  Cowper,  and 
Douglass  contain  the  substance  of  Lord 
Mansfield's  judicial  decisions;  and  they 
are  among  the  most  interesting  reports  in 
the  English  law.  .  .  .  We  should 
have  known  but  very  little  of  the  great 
mind  and  varied  accomplishments  of  Lord 
Mansfield  if  we  had  not  been  possessed  of 
the  faithful  reports  of  his  decisions.  It  is 
there  that  his  title  of  the  character  of 
"founder  of  the  Commercial  Law  of  Eng- 
land" is  verified. — Kent,  James,  1826- 
54,  Commentaries,  vol.  I. 

If  we  possess  hardly  any  remains  of  Lord 
Mansfield's  speeches  at  the  bar  or  in  par- 
liament, we  have  considerable  materials 
from  which  to  form  an  estimate  of  his 
judicial  eloquence.  The  Reports  of  Sir 
James  Burrows  are  carefully  corrected,  to 
all  appearance;  probably  by  the  learned 
Judges  themselves.  Many  of  the  judg- 
ments of  the  Chief  Justice  are  truly  ad- 
mirable in  substance,  as  well  as  composi- 
tion ;  and  upon  some  of  the  greater  ques- 
tions, his  oratory  rises  to  the  full  height 
of  the  occasion.  It  would  be  dif!icult  to 
overrate  the  merit  of  the  celebrated  ad- 
dress to  the  public,  then  in  a  state  of  ex- 
citement almost  unparalleled,  with  which 
he  closed  his  judgment  upon  the  applica- 
tion to  reverse  Wilkes's  outlawry.  Great 
elegance  of  composition,  force  of  diction, 
just  and  strong  but  natural  expression  of 
personal  feelings,  a  commanding  attitude 
of  defiance  to  lawless  threats,  but  so  as- 
sumed and  so  tempered  with  the  dignity 
which  v;as  natural  to  the  man,  and  which 
here  as  on  all  other  occasions,  he  sustained 
throughout,  all  render  this  on^  of  the 
most  striking  productions  on  record. — 
Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1839-43,  His- 
torical Sketches  of  Statesmen  who  Flour- 
ished in  the  Time  of  George  III. 

Though,  besides  the  three  judges  whom 


172 


MURRAY— GIBBON 


he  found  on  the  bench  of  his  court,  there 
were  no  less  than  eight  who  took  their 
places  afterwards  as  his  colleagues,  it  is 
a  strong  evidence  of  the  soundness  of  his 
law  that  during  the  thirty-two  years  of 
his  presidency  there  were  only  two  cases 
in  which  the  whole  bench  were  not  unani- 
mous :  and,  what  is  still  more  extraordi- 
nary, two  only  of  his  judgments  were  re- 
versed on  appeal :  but  some  of  them  were 
not  entirely  approved  by  the  legal  com- 
munity. The  system  on  which  he  acted 
was  censured  as  introducing  too  much  of 
the  Roman  law  into  our  jurisprudence; 
and  he  was  charged  with  overstepping  the 
boundary  between  equity  and  law,  and  of 
allowing  the  principles  of  the  former  to 
operate  too  strongly  in  his  legal  decisions. 
How  far  these  criticisms  were  justified 
still  remains  a  question :  but  recent  leg- 
islation proves  how  little  his  system  de- 
served censure. —Foss,  Edward,  1864, 
The  Judges  of  England,  vol.  viii,  p.  343. 

Lord  Mansfield's  chief  intellectual  merit 
as  a  judge  is,  that  in  a  great  measure,  he 
created  the  law  which  he  pronounced. 
He  made  the  commercial  law  of  England. 
To  him  we  owe  the  settled  form  and  prin- 
ciples of  the  law  of  negotiable  paper  and 
insurance.    He  was  accused  by  some  of  his 


contemporaries  of  confounding  equitable 
with  legal  principles  in  his  administr^ation, 
and  certainly  he  did  brush  away  the  arti- 
ficial and  trivial  notions  of  old  time  with 
an  unsparing  hand.  But  he  cast  the  legal 
future  of  England  in  a  grand  horoscope. 
He  judged  rightly  of  the  necessities  of  a 
more  modern  state  of  society,  and  of  the 
rapidly  growing  grandeur  of  his  country's 
commerce.  He  built  for  the  future  as  well 
as  the  then  present,  and  we  in  our  day 
have  not  out-grown  or  distanced  his  wise 
provisions.  Only  two  of  his  decisons 
were  reversed  during  his  tenure  of  judicial 
office,  and  his  authority  is  higher  to-day  than 
it  was  then.  So  truly  was  he  the  creator 
of  the  law  of  bills  that  it  is  almost  laugh- 
able to  read  of  his  laying  down  for  the 
first  time  principles  which  are  now  as  cer- 
tain and  familiar  "as  those  which  guide 
the  planets  in  their  orbits."  He  also 
adorned  the  law  of  evidence  to  an  unprec- 
edented extent :  as  one  has  said  of  him, 
''he  found  it  brick,  belayed  it  of  marble." 
He  pronounced  against  the  legality  of  em- 
ploying "puffers"  at  an  action.  He  ex- 
ploded the  dogma  of  escheat  in  case  of 
wrecks,  where  no  living  thing  comes 
ashore. —  Browne,  Irving,  1878,  Short 
Studies  of  Great  Lawyers,  p.  17. 


Edward  Gibbon 

1737-1794 

Born,  at  Putney,  27  April,  1737.  To  school  in  Putney ;  afterwards  at  school  at 
Kingston-on-Thames,  Jan.  1746  to  1748  (?).  At  Westminster  School,  Jan.  1748  to 
1750.  To  Bath  for  health  1750.  To  school  at  Esher,  Jan.,  1752.  At  Magdalen 
Coll.,  Oxford,  3  April,  1752  to  June  1753.  To  Lausanne,  as  pupil  of  M.  Pavillard, 
June  1753.  Returned  to  England,  Aug.  1758.  Held  commission  in  Hampshire 
militia,  12  June  1759  to  1770.  In  Paris,  28  Jan.  to  9  May  1763 ;  at  Lausanne,  May 
1763  to  April  1764;  in  Italy,  April,  1764  to  May,  1765.  Returned  to  England;  lived 
with  father  at  Buriton.  After  father's  death  settled  in  London,  1772.  Prof,  of 
Ancient  History  at  Royal  Academy,  1774.  M.  P.  for  Liskeard,  11  Oct.  1774  to  Sept. 
1780.  Lord  Commissioner  of  Trade  and  Plantations,  1779.  M.  P.  for  Lymington, 
June  1781  to  March  1784.  Settled  at  Lausanne,  Sept.  1783.  Visit  to  England, 
1788  and  1793.  Died,  in  London,  16  Jan.  1794.  Buried  at  Fletching,  Sussex. 
Works:  *'Essai  sur  I'etude  de  la  Litterature"  (in  French,  1761  Eng.  trans.,  1764); 
''Memoires  Litteraires  de  la  Grande-Bretagne"  (with  Deyverdun),  2  vols.,  1767-68; 
''Critical  Observations  on  the  Sixth  Book  of  the  ^neid"  (anon.),  1770;  ''History  of 
the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire"  (6  vols.),  1776-88  (2nd  and  3rd  edns. 
in  same  period).  Posthumous:.  "An  Historical  View  of  Christianity"  (with  Boling- 
broke,  Voltaire,  and  others),  1806;  "Antiquities  of  the  House  of  Brunswick,"  ed. 
by  Lord  Sheffield,  1814;  "Memoirs,"  ed.  by  Lord  Sheffield,  1827;  "Life"  (autobiog.), 
ed.  by  H.  H.  Milman,  1839;  "The  Autobiographies  of  Edward  Gibbon,"  ed.  J.  Mur- 
ray, 1896;  "Private  Letters,"  ed.  by  R.  E.  Prothero,  1896.  Collected  Works:  "Mis- 
cellaneous Works,"  in  2  vols.,  1796;  in  5  vols.  1814.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson, 
1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  111. 


OF  THt 

UNIVERSITY  (^ILLINOIS. 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


173 


PERSONAL 

They  have  had  great  doings  here  at  the 
christening  of  Mr.  Gibbon's  son.  .  .  . 
Our  landlady  says  that  his  lady  had  no 
fortune,  but  was  a  young  lady  of  good 
family  and  reputation,  and  that  old  Mr. 
Gibbon  led  her  to  church  and  back  again. 
— Byrom,  John,  1737,  Diary,  May  15. 

Gibbon  is  an  ugly,  affected,  disgusting 
fellow,  and  poisons  our  literary  club  to 
me. — BoswELL,  James,  1779,  Letter  to 
Temple,  May  8. 

Fat  and  ill-constructed,  Mr.  Gibbon  has 
cheeks  of  such  prodigious  chubbiness, 
that  they  envelope  his  nose  so  completely, 
as  to  render  it,  in  profile,  absolutely  in- 
visible. His  look  and  manner  are  placidly 
mild,  but  rather  effeminate;  his  voice, — • 
for  he  was  speaking  to  Sir  Joshua  at  a  lit- 
tle distance, — is  gentle,  but  of  studied 
precision  of  accent.  Yet,  with  these 
Brobdignatious  cheeks,  his  neat  little  feet 
are  of  a  miniature  description ;  and  with 
these,  as  soon  as  I  turned  around,  he  has- 
tily described  a  quaint  sort  of  circle, 
with  small  quick  steps,  and  a  dapper  gait, 
as  if  to  mark  the  alacrity  of  his  approach, 
and  then,  stopping  short  when  full  face  to 
me,  he  made  so  singularly  profound  a  bow, 
that — though  hardly  able  to  keep  my 
gravity — I  felt  myself  blush  deeply  at  its 
undue,  but  palpably  intended  obsequious- 
ness.— D'Arblay,  Madame  (Fanny  Bur- 
ney),  1782,  Letter  to  Samuel  Crisp,  Mem- 
oirs of  Dr.  Burney,  p.  170. 

Mr.  Gibbon,  the  historian,  is  so  exceed- 
ingly indolent  that  he  never  even  pares  his 
nails.  His  servant,  while  Gibbon  is  read- 
ing, takes  up  one  of  his  hands,  and  when 
he  has  performed  the  operation  lays  it 
down  and  then  manages  the  other — the 
patient  in  the  meanwhile  scarcely  knowing 
what  is  going  on,  and  quietly  pursuing  his 
studies.  The  picture  of  him  painted  by 
Sir.  J.  Reynolds,  and  the  prints  made  from 
it,  are  as  like  the  original  as  it  is  possible 
to  be.  When  he  was  introduced  to  a  blind 
French  lady,  the  servant  happening  to 
stretch  out  her  mistress's  hand  to  lay  hold 
of  the  historian's  cheek,  she  thought, 
upon  feeling  its  rounded  contour,  that 
some  trick  was  being  played  upon  her  with 
the  sitting  part  of  a  child,  and  exclaimed, 
' '  Fidonc !"  —  Malone,  Edmond,  1787, 
Maloniana,  ed.  Prior,  p^  382. 

The  publication  of  Gibbon's  Memoirs" 


conveyed  to  the  world  a  faithful  picture 
of  the  most  fervid  industry ;  it  is  in  youth, 
the  foundations  of  such  a  sublime  edifice 
as  his  history  must  be  laid.  The  world 
can  now  trace  how  this  Colossus  of  erudi- 
tion, day  by  day,  and  year  by  year,  pre- 
pared himself  for  some  vast  work.  .  .  . 
Of  all  our  popular  writers  the  most  expe- 
rienced reader  was  Gibbon. — Disraeli, 
Isaac,  1791-1824,  Literary  Composition, 
Curiosities  of  Literature. 

Went  to  the  library  of  Mr.  Gibbon ;  it  still 
remains  here,  though  bought  seven  years 
ago  by  Mr.  Beckford,  of  Fonthill,  for  950/. 
It  consists  of  nearly  10,000  volumes,  and, 
as  far  as  I  could  judge  by  a  cursory  and 
(from  its  present  situation)  a  very  incon- 
venient examination  of  it,  it  is,  of  all  the 
libraries  I  ever  saw,  that  of  which  I  should 
most  covet  the  possession — that  which 
seems  exactly  everything  that  any  gentle- 
man or  gentlewoman  fond  of  letters  could 
wish.  Although  it  is  in  no  particular 
walk  of  literature  a  perfect  collection,  in 
the  classical  part  perhaps  less  than  any 
other,  and  in  the  Greek  less  than  in  the 
Latin  classics,  still  there  are  good  edi- 
tions of  all  the  best  authors  in  both  lan- 
guages. The  books,  though  neither  mag- 
nificent in  their  editions  nor  in  their  bind- 
ings, are  all  in  good  condition,  all  clean, 
all  such  as  one  wishes  to  read,  and  could 
have  no  scruple  in  using.  They  are  under 
the  care  of  Mr.  Scott,  a  physician  of  this 
place,  who  made  the  bargain  for  Mr.  Beck- 
ford  with  Gibbon's  heirs  in  England,  and 
are  placed  in  tw^o  small  and  inconvenient 
rooms  hired  for  the  purpose,  and  filled 
with  rows  of  shelves  so  near  as  scarcely 
to  admit  of  looking  at  the  books  on  the 
back  side  of  them.  Mr.  Beckford,  when 
last  here  in  179 — ,  packed  up  about  2,500 
vols,  of  what  he  considered  as  the  choic- 
est of  them,  in  two  cases,  which  he  then 
proposed  sending  to  England  directly,  but 
which  still  remain  in  their  cases  with  the 
others. — Berry,  Mary,  1803,  Lausanne, 
July  6 ;  Journal,  ed.  Lewis,  p.  260. 

I  enclose  you  a  sprig  of  Gibbon's  acacia 
and  some  rose-leaves  from  his  garden, 
which,  with  part  of  his  house,  I  have  just 
seen.  You  v/ill  find  honourable  mention, 
in  his  Life,  made  of  this  acacia,  when  he 
walked  out  on  the  night  of  concluding  his 
history.  The  garden  and  summer-house, 
where  he  composed,  are  neglected,  and  the 
last  utterly  decayed ;  but  they  still  show 


174 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


it  as  his  "cabinet,"  and  seem  perfectly 
aware  of  his  memory. —  Byron,  Lord, 
1816,  Letter  to  John  Murray,  June  27. 

I  invited  the  four  military  gentlemen, 
our  committee,  and  six  other  persons  the 
best  qualified  I  could  meet  with,  among 
whom  were  my  father.  Lord  Carmarthen, 
and  Mr.  Gibbon,  the  historian,  who  was 
then  at  the  zenith  of  his  fame,  and  who 
certainly  was  not  at  all  backward  in  avail- 
ing himself  of  the  deference  universally 
shown  to  him,  by  taking  both  the  lead, 
and  a  very  ample  share  of  the  conversa- 
tion, in  whatever  company  he  might  hon- 
our with  his  presence.  His  conversation 
was  not,  indeed,  what  Dr.  Johnson  would 
have  called  talk.  There  was  no  interchange 
of  ideas,  for  no  one  had  a  chance  of  reply- 
ing, so  fugitive,  so  variable,  was  his  mode 
of  discoursing,  which  consisted  of  points, 
anecdotes,  and  epigrammatic  thrusts,  all 
more  or  less  to  the  purpose,  and  all  pleas- 
antly said  with  a  French  air  and  manner 
which  gave  them  great  piquancy,  but  which 
were  withal  so  desultory  and  unconnected 
that,  though  each  separately  were  ex- 
tremely amusing,  the  attention  of  his  au- 
ditors sometimes  flagged  before  his  own 
resources  were  exhausted. — BuRGES,  Sir 
James  Bland,  1824?  Letters  and  Corre- 
spondence, p.  54. 

On  the  day  I  first  sat  down  with  John- 
son, in  his  rusty  brown,  and  his  black 
worsteads,  Gibbon  was  placed  opposite  to 
me  in  a  suit  of  flower'd  velvet,  with  a  bag 
and  sword.  .  .  .  The  costume  was 
not  extraordinary  at  this  time  (a  little 
overcharged,  perhaps,  if  his  person  be  con- 
sidered), when  almost  every  gentleman 
came  to  dinner  in  full  dress.  .  .  . 
Each  had  his  measured  phraseology ;  and 
Johnson's  famous  parallel,  between  Dryden 
and  Pope,  might  be  loosely  parodied,  in 
reference  to  himself  and  Gibbon.  John- 
son's style  was  grand,  and  Gibbon's  ele- 
gant ;  the  stateliness  of  the  former  was 
sometimes  pedantick,  and  the  polish  of 
the  latter  was  occasionally  finical.  John- 
son march' d  to  kettle-drums  and  trumpets ; 
Gibbon  moved  to  flutes  and  hautboys; 
Johnson  hew'd  passages  through  the  Alps, 
while  Gibbon  levell'd  walks  through  parks 
and  gardens.  Maul'd  as  I  had  been  by 
Johnson,  Gibbon  pour'd  balm  upon  my 
bruises,  by  condescending,  once  or  twice, 
in  the  course  of  the  evening,  to  talk  with 
me;  the  great  historian  was  light  and 


playful,  suiting  his  matter  to  the  capacity 
of  the  boy; — but  it  was  done  more  sua 
(sic) ;  still  his  mannerism  prevail'd ; — still 
he  tapp'd  his  snuff-box, — still  he  smirk'd, 
and  smiled ;  and  rounded  his  periods  with 
the  same  air  of  good-breeding,  as  if  he 
were  conversing  with  men. — His  mouth, 
mellifluous  as  Plato's,  was  a  Tound  hole, 
nearly  in  the  centre  of  his  visage. — Col- 
man,  George  (The  Younger),  1830,  Ran- 
dom Records,  p.  121. 

The  author  of  the  great  and  superb 
History  of  the  Roman  Empire"  was 
scarcely  four  feet  seven  to  eight  inches  in 
height ;  the  huge  trunk  of  his  body,  with 
a  belly  like  Silenus,  was  set  upon  the  kind 
of  slender  legs  called  drumsticks ;  his  feet, 
so  much  turned  in  that  the  point  of  the  right 
one  could  often  touch  the  point  of  the 
left,  were  long  and  broad  enough  to  serve 
as  a  pedestal  to  a  statue  of  five  feet  six 
inches.  In  the  middle  of  his  face,  not 
larger  than  one's  fist,  the  root  of  his  nose 
receded  into  the  skull  more  deeply  than 
the  nose  of  a  Calmuck,  and  his  very  bright 
but  very  small  eyes  were  lost  in  the  same 
depths.  His  voice,  which  had  only  sharp 
notes,  could  only  reach  the  heart  by  split- 
ting the  ears.  If  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau 
had  met  Gibbon  in  the  Province  of  Vaud, 
it  is  probable  that  he  would  have  made  of 
him  a  companion  portrait  to  his  funny  one 
of  the  Chief  Justice.  M.  Suard,  who  cared 
little  to  look  at,  and  still  less  to  produce, 
caricatures,  often  drew  Gibbon,  and 
always  as  Madam  Brown. — Garat,  M., 
1820,  Dominique  Joseph,  Memoirs,  vol.  ii. 

Gibbon  has  remarked,  that  his  history  is 
much  the  better  for  his  having  been  an 
officer  in  the  militia  and  a  member  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  remark  is  most 
just.  We  have  not  the  smallest  doubt 
that  his  campaign,  though  he  never  saw 
an  enemy,  and  his  parliamentary  attend- 
ance, though  he  never  made  a  speech, 
were  of  far  more  use  to  him  than  years  of 
retirement  and  study  would  have  been. 
If  the  time  that  he  spent  on  parade  and  at 
mess  in  Hamshire,  or  on  the  Treasury- 
bench  and  at  Brookes's  during  the  storms 
which  overthrew  Lord  North  and  Lord 
Shelburne  had  been  passed  in  the  Bodleian 
Library,  he  might  have  avoided  some  inac- 
curacies ;  he  might  have  enriched  his  notes 
with  a  greater  number  of  references ;  but 
he  never  would  have  produced  so  lively  a 
picture  of  the  court,  the  camp,  and  the 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


175 


senate-house.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Bab- 
INGTON,  1834,  Mackintosh's  History,  Edin- 
burgh Review ;  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays. 

Southey,  like  Gibbon,  was  a  miscella- 
neous scholar;  he,  like  Gibbon,  of  vast 
historical  research ;  he,  like  Gibbon,  sig- 
nally industrious,  and  patient,  and  elab- 
orate in  collecting  the  materials  for  his 
historical  works.  Like  Gibbon,  he  had 
dedicated  a  life  of  competent  ease,  in  a 
pecuniary  sense,  to  literature;  like  Gib- 
bon he  had  gathered  to  the  shores  of  a 
beautiful  lake,  remote  from  great  capitals, 
a  large,  or,  at  least  sufficient  library  (in 
each  case  I  believe,  the  library  ranged,  as 
to  numerical  amount,  between  seven  and 
ten  thousand) ;  and,  like  Gibbon,  he  was 
the  most  accomplished  litterateur  amongst 
the  erudite  scholars  of  his  time,  and  the 
most  of  an  erudite  scholar  amongst  the  ac- 
complished litterateurs.  After  all  these 
points  of  agreement  known,  it  remains  as  a 
pure  advantage  on  the  side  of  Southey — a 
mere  lucro  ponatur — that  he  was  a  poet ; 
and  by  all  men's  confession,  a  respectable 
poet,  brilliant  in  his  descriptive  powers, 
and  fascinating  in  his  narration,  however 
much  he  might  want  of 

"The  vision  and  the  faculty  divine." 
It  is  remarkable  amongst  the  series  of 
parallelisms  that  have  been  or  might  be 
pursued  between  two  men,  that  both  had 
the  honour  of  retreating  from  a  parlia- 
mentary life.  —  De  Quincey,  Thomas, 
1839,  The  Lake  Poets;  Southey,  Words- 
worthy  and  Coleridge;  Works,  ed.  Masson, 
vol.  n,  p.  338. 

Thus  converted  firstly  to  the  Romish 
communion  at  Oxford  in  June,  1753,  at 
the  age  of  sixteen  years  and  two  months, 
he  renounced  it  at  Lausanne  in  December 
1754.  at  the  age  of  seventeen  years  and 
eight  months.  This  was  precisely,  within 
a  few  years,  what  Bayle  had  done  •  in  his 
youth.  In  Gibbon's  case  everything  was 
performed  in  his  head  and  within  the  lists 
of  dialectics ;  one  argument  had  carried  it 
off.  He  could  say,  for  his  own  satisfac- 
tion, that  he  owed  both  the  one  change 
and  the  other  to  his  reading  and  his  soli- 
tary meditation  alone.  Later,  when  he 
flattered  himself  with  being  wholly  impar- 
tial and  indifferent  concerning  beliefs,  it 
is  allowable  to  suppose  that,  even  with- 
out avowing  it,  he  cherished  a  secret  and 
cold  spite  against  religious  thought,  as  if 


it  had  been  an  adversary  which  had  one 
day  struck  him  in  the  absence  of  his 
armour  and  had  wounded  him.— Saixte- 
Beuve,  C.  a.,  1853,  English  Portraits, 
p.  124. 

Respecting  Dr.  Franklin's  journey  from 
Nantes  to  Paris,  Cobbett  has  preserved 
from  the  old  newspapers,  an  anecdote  of 
some  point,  and  not  too  improbable  for 
belief.  I  know  not  whether  there  is  any 
truth  in  it.  The  story  is,  that  at  one  of 
the  inns  at  which  he  slept  on  the  road,  he 
was  informed  that  Gibbon  (the  first  vol- 
ume of  whose  History  had  been  published 
in  the  spring  of  that  year)  was  also  stop- 
ping. ''Franklin  sent  his  compliments, 
requesting  the  pleasure  of  spending  the 
evening  with  Mr.  Gibbon.  In  answer  he 
received  a  card,  importing  that,  notwith- 
standing Mr.  Gibbon's  regard  for  the 
character  of  Dr.  Franklin,  as  a  man  and  a 
philosopher,  he  could  not  reconcile  it  with 
his  duty  to  his  king,  to  have  any  conver- 
sation with  a  revolted  subject !  Franklin 
in  reply  wrote  a  note,  declaring,  that 
'though  Mr.  Gibbon's  principles  had  com- 
pelled him  to  withhold  the  pleasure  of  his 
conversation.  Dr.  Franklin  had  still  such 
a  respect  for  the  character  of  Mr.  Gibbon, 
as  a  gentleman  and  a  historian,  that  when, 
in  the  course  of  his  writing  the  history  of 
the  decline  and  fall  of  empires,  the  decline 
and  fall  of  the  British  Empire  should 
come  to  be  his  subject,  as  he  expects 
it  soon  would.  Dr.  Franklin  would  be  happy 
to  furnish  him  with  ample  materials  which 
were  in  his  possession.'" — Parton,  James, 
1864,  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, vol.  II,  p.  209. 

Gibbon's  political  career  is  the  side  of 
his  history  from  which  a  friendly  biogra- 
pher would  most  readily  turn  away.  Not 
that  it  was  exceptionally  ignoble  or  self- 
seeking  if  tried  by  the  standard  of  the 
time,  but  it  was  altogether  comimonplace 
and  unworthy  of  him.  The  fact  that  he 
never  even  once  opened  his  mouth  in  the 
House  is  not  in  itself  blameworthy,  though 
disappointing  in  a  man  of  his  power.  It 
was  indeed  laudable  enough  if  he  had 
nothing  to  say.  But  why  had  he  nothing 
to  say  ?  His  excuse  is  timidity  and  want 
of  readiness.  We  may  reasonably  assume 
that  the  cause  lay  deeper.  With  his  men- 
tal vigour  he  would  soon  have  overcome 
such  obstacles  if  he  had  really  wished  and 
tried  to  overcome  them.    The  fact  is  that 


176 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


he  never  tried  because  he  never  wished. 
It  is  a  singular  thing  to  say  of  such  a  man, 
but  nevertheless  true,  that  he  had  no  taste 
or  capacity  whatever  for  politics. — Mori- 
son,  James  Cotter,  1878,  Gibbon,  (English 
Men  of  Letters),  p.  77. 

The  face  and  figure  of  Gibbon  are  famil- 
iar to  us  from  the  profile  usually  found  at 
the  beginning  of  his  collected  works. 
The  testimony  of  foreigners  as  well  as  of 
Englishmen,  both  sufficiently  prove  its  ac- 
curacy. To  corroborate  it  farther,  there 
is  the  well-known  story  of  the  blind  French 
old  lady,  and  Charles  Fox's  coarse  lines, 
neither  of  which  testimonies  could  be  well 
produced  here.  This  great  man  was  a 
lover — a  lover  when  he  was  old  as  well  as 
when  he  was  young.  The  style  of  his  let- 
ters was  rather  pedantic  and  like  a  page 
of  his  history,  and  the  result  proved  that 
he  was  not  what  is  called  a  successful 
lover. — Fitzgerald,  Percy,  1883,  Kings 
and  Queens  of  an  Hour,  vol.  i,  p.  340. 

To  an  Englishman  at  Lausanne,  Gibbon 
is  still  the  prime  subject  of  local  interest. 
.  .  .  We  were  favoured  with  a  sight 
of  the  portraits :  one  of  the  usual  Kit-cat 
in  pastels — Lausanne  then  containing  sun- 
dry famous  pastellistes — a  cameo-bust  on 
wedge  wood  (much  idealized),  snadsLn  aqua- 
relle of ''The  Historian"  (hideous  exceed- 
ingly), sitting  before  the  facade  of  his 
house  at  Lausanne,  afterwards  removed  to 
make  way  for  the  Hotel  Gibbon.  This, 
by  the  way,  is  a  fraud,  boasting  that  its 
garden  contains  the  identical  chestnut 
tree  under  which  the  last  lines  of  a  twenty- 
years'  work  were  written.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  oft-quoted  passage  describing 
that  event  assigns  it  to  "a  summer- 
house  in  my  garden,"  near  a  berceau, 
or  covered  walk  of  acacias;  all  of  which 
have  long  disappeared  to  make  way  for 
the  Rue  du  Midi.  Upon  the  strength  of 
this  being  "Gibbon  Castle,"  we  are  some- 
what overcharged  and  underfed. — Bur- 
ton, Sir  Richard  F.,  1889,  Letters,  Life  by 
His  Wife,  vol  ii,  p.  371. 

One  of  the  relics  which  will  attract  most 
public  attention,  lent  us  by  General  Mere- 
dith Read,  is  Gibbon's  Bible,  which  is  said 
always  to  have  lain  in  his  bedroom  at 
Lausanne.  Undoubtedly  his  attitute  to 
Christianity  is  the  feature  in  his  great 
work  which  has  done  most  to  dimish  its 
influence,  and  all  educated  men,  to  what- 
ever school  they  belong,  would  now  admit 


with  his  masterly  biographer,  Mr.  Cotter 
Morison,  that  this  is  a  most  serious  blem- 
ish. It  is,  however,  only  fair  to  remem- 
ber that  Christianity,  as  it  presented 
itself  to  Gibbon's  mind,  was  something 
very  different  from  what  we  are  accus- 
tomed to  associate  with  the  name. — Duff, 
Sir  M.  E.  Grant,  1894,  Proceedings  of  the 
Gibbon  Commemoration,  Nov.  15,  p.  15. 

During  these  hundred  years  the  repu- 
tation of  the  historian  has  been  continually 
growing  larger  and  more  firm ;  his  limita- 
tions and  his  errors  have  been  so  amply 
acknowledged  that  they  have  ceased  to 
arouse  the  controversy  and  the  odium 
which  they  naturally  invited  in  former  gen- 
erations ;  and  the  civilised  world,  making 
full  allowance  for  differences  of  party  and 
of  creed,  has  agreed  to  honour  the  histo- 
rian for  his  grand  success,  and  no  longer 
to  censure  that  wherein  he  failed.  But 
hardly  any  Englishman,  with  a  world-wide 
fame,  has  received  so  little  of  public  hon- 
our, or  has  fallen  so  completely  out  of 
the  eye  of  the  world  as  a  personality. 
Our  National  Portrait  Gallery  contains  not 
a  single  likeness  of  any  kind ;  there  is  no 
record  of  him  in  any  public  institution, 
no  tablet,  inscription,  bust,  or  monument ; 
his  name  figures  in  no  public  place ;  and 
the  house  which  he  inhabited  in  London 
bears  no  mark  of  its  most  illustrious  in- 
mate. Though  masses  of  his  original 
manuscripts  exist,  our  British  Museum 
contains  nothing  of  them  but  a  single  let- 
ter; his  memoirs,  his  diaries,  his  notes, 
his  letters,  in  his  own  beautiful  writing, 
are  extant  in  perfect  condition.  But 
they  are  all  in  private  hands,  and  for 
some  generations  they  have  never  been 
examined  or  collated  by  any  student  or 
scholar.  .  .  .  Much  less  will  any  one 
claim  for  Edward  Gibbon  the  character  of 
a  hero,  the  name  of  a  great  man,  the  spirit 
of  a  martyr  or  leader  of  men.  No  one 
will  ever  call  him  ultimus  Romanorum,  or 
the  thunder-god  ;  no  one  pretends  that  he 
is  one  of  the  great  souls  who  inspire  their 
age.  We  do  not  set  him  on  any  moral 
pinnacle,  either  as  man  or  as  teacher; 
nor  do  we  rank  him  with  the  master  spirits 
who  form  the  conscience  of  generations. 
Without  unwisely  exaggerating  his  intel- 
lectual forces,  without  weakly  closing  our 
eyes  upon  his  moral  shortcomings,  we  can 
do  full  justice  to  the  magnificent  literary 
art,  to  the  lovable  nature,  the  indomitable 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


111 


industry,  the  noble  equanimity  of  the 
man.  We  come,  then,  to-day,  neither  to 
praise  nor  to  criticise ;  we  offer  round  his 
tomb  no  idle  encomium,  nor  do  we  pre- 
sume to  weigh  his  ashes  in  our  critical 
scales.  We  come  to  meditate  again  over 
all  that  recalls  the  charm  and  sweet  socia- 
bility of  a  warm  and  generous  friend ;  to 
study  with  rekindled  zest  the  cherished 
remnants  which  friendship  has  preserved 
of  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  his- 
torical research  that  has  ever  adorned  the 
literature  of  Europe.  .  .  .  Edward 
Gibbon  had  his  worries  like  other  men — 
worries  hardly  ever  the  consequence  of 
any  error  of  his  own — but  how  little  of 
repining  or  of  irritation  does  he  display ! 
He  was  bitterly  and  unjustly  attacked  ;  but 
how  little  is  there  of  controversy;  and 
even  in  his  replies  to  Priestley  and  to 
Davies  his  language  is  measured,  dignified, 
and  calm.  No  one  pretends  that  Edward 
Gibbon  had  any  trace  in  his  nature  of 
passionate  impulse  or  of  spiritual  nobility. 
His  warmest  affection  is  cast  into  a  Cice- 
ronian mould ;  and  his  imperturbable  good 
sense  always  remains  his  dominant  note. 
Gibbon  was  neither  a  Burke  nor  a  Shelley, 
still  less  was  he  a  Rousseau  or  a  Carlyle. 
He  was  a  delightful  companion,  a  hearty 
friend,  an  indomitable  student,  and  an  in- 
fallible master  of  that  equanimity  which 
stamps  such  men  as  Hume,  Adam  Smith, 
and  Turgot.  It  is  the  mitis  sapientia 
Lceli  which  breathes  through  every  line  of 
these  elaborate  letters. — Harrison,  Fred- 
eric, 1894,  Gibbon  CommemorationyNov.lb. 

There  is  usually  a  tendency  to  under- 
rate Gibbon's  military  experiences.  .  .  . 
He  was  evidently  an  officer  of  more  than 
ordinary  intelligence,  and  possessed  some 
military  aptitude.  He  v/ent  beyond  the 
requirements  of  an  infantry  captain  by 
closely  studying  the  language  and  science 
of  tactics;  indeed  all  that  pertained  to 
the  serious  side  of  soldiering  he  studied 
with  a  perseverance  which  might  have 
been  expected  of  a  man  that  wrote  his 
memoirs  nine  times  before  he  was  satis- 
fied. While  acquiring  personal  experi- 
ence he  was  studying  the  campaigns  oif  _aJl 
the  great  masters  of  the  art  of  war,  in 
exactly  the  manner  which  Napoleon  half 
a  century  later  laid  down  as  the  only 
means  of  becoming  a  great  captain. — 
HoLDEN,  R.,  1895,  Gibbon  as  a  Soldier, 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  vol.  71,  p.  38. 

12  o 


He  was  one  of  those  happiest  of  mor- 
tals who  do  not  need  the  preponderance 
from  without, "for  whose  guidance  Wil- 
helm  Meister  longed ;  for  him  the  prepon- 
derance within  spoke  clear  enough.  The 
call  to  be  a  scholar  was  in  him  from  the 
first,  the  special  call  to  history  came  later. 
Both  were  promptly,  strenuously,  un- 
wearyingly  obeyed ;  and  to  that  cheerful 
and  long-sustained  obedience  the  historian 
owed  one  of  the  happiest  of  lives,  and  we 
owe  the  greatest  work  of  history  in  a  mod- 
ern language. — Bailey,  J.  C.,  1897,  The 
Man  Gibbon,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  67, 
p.  455. 

Gibbon's  service  in  Parliament  covered 
the  period  of  the  American  Revolution, 
and  during  the  latter  part  of  the  time  he 
was  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Trade. 
The  complete  correspondence  of  these 
years  sets  his  political  career  in  a  much 
better  light  than  did  the  selections  pub- 
lished by  Lord  Shefl[ield.  We  find  that 
Gibbon  made  a  serious  attempt  to  inform 
himself  on  the  American  question,  and 
that  he  really  appreciated  the  importance 
of  the  crisis.  Mr.  Cotter  Morison,  relying 
on  the  fragmentary  letters,  has  depicted 
Gibbon's  parliamentary  career  much  too 
unfavourably. — Bourne,  Edward  Gay- 
lord,  1897,  American  Historical  Review, 
vol.  2,  p.  728. 

He  was  a  little  slow,  a  little  pompous, 
a  little  affected  and  pedantic.  In  the 
general  type  of  his  mind  and  character 
he  bore  much  more  resemblance  to  Hume, 
Adam  Smith,  or  Reynolds,  than  to  John- 
son or  Burke.  A  reserved  scholar,  who 
was  rather  proud  of  being  a  man  of  the 
world ;  a  confirmed  bachelor,  much  wedded 
to  his  comforts  though  caring  nothing 
for  luxury,  he  was  eminently  moderate  in 
his  ambitions,  and  there  was  not  a  trace 
of  passion  or  enthusiasm  in  his  nature. 
Such  a  man  was  not  likely  to  inspire  any 
strong  devotion.  But  his  temper  was  most 
kindly,  equable,  and  contented ;  he  was  a 
steady  friend,  and  he  appears  to  have  been 
always  liked  and  honored  in  the  cultivated 
and  uncontentious  society  in  which  he  de- 
lighted. His  life  was  not  a  great  one,  but 
it  was  in  all  essentials  blameless  and  happy. 
He  found  the  work  which  was  most  con- 
genial to  him.  He  pursued  it  with  admira- 
ble industry  and  with  brilliant  success, 
and  he  left  behind  him  a  book  which  is  not 
likely  to  be  forgotten  while  the  English 


178 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


language  endures.— Lecky,  William  Ed- 
ward Hartpole,  1897,  Library  of  the 
World's  Best  Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol, 
XI,  p.  6278 

MADEMOISELLE  CURCHOD 

The  cooling-off  of  Mr.  Gibbon  has  made 
me  think  meanly  of  him.  1  have  been 
going  over  his  book,  and  he  seems  to  me 
to  be  straining  at  esprit.  He  is  not  the 
man  for  me ;  nor  can  I  think  that  he  will 
be  the  one  for  Mademoiselle  Curchod. 
Any  one  who  does  not  know  her  value  is 
not  worthy  of  her;  but  a  man  who  has 
come  to  that  knowledge  and  then  with- 
draws himself,  is  only  worthy  of  contempt. 
.  .  .  I  would  sooner  a  thousand  times 
that  he  left  her  poor  and  free  among  you 
than  that  he  brought  her  rich  and  miser- 
able away  to  England. — Rousseau,  Jean 
Jacques,  1763,  Letter  to  Moulton. 

I  should  be  ashamed  if  the  warm  season 
of  youth  had  passed  away  without  any 
sense  of  friendship  or  love;  and  in  the 
choice  of  their  objects  I  may  applaud  the 
discernment  of  my  head  or  heart.  .  .  . 
The  beauty  of  Mademoiselle  Curchod,  the 
daughter  of  a  country  clergyman,  was 
adorned  with  science  and  virtue :  she  lis- 
tened to  the  tenderness  which  she  had  in- 
spired ;  but  the  romantic  hopes  of  youth 
and  passion  were  crushed,  on  my  return, 
by  the  prejudice  or  prudence  of  an  Eng- 
lish parent.  I  sighed  as  a  lover,  I  obeyed 
as  a  son ;  my  wound  was  insensibly  healed 
by  time,  absence,  and  the  habits  of  a  new 
life;  and  my  cure  was  accelerated  by  a 
faithful  report  of  the  tranquility  and 
cheerfulness  of  the  Lady  herself.  Her 
equal  behaviour  under  the  tryals  of  indi- 
gence and  prosperity  has  displayed  the 
firmness  of  her  character.  A  citizen  of 
Geneva,  a  rich  banker  of  Paris,  made  him- 
self happy  by  rewarding  her  merit;  the 
genius  of  her  husband  has  raised  him  to  a 
perilous  eminence;  and  Madame  Necker 
now  divides  and  alleviates  the  cares  of  the 
first  minister  of  the  finances  of  France. — 
Gibbon,  Edward,  c1789,  Autobiography, 
Memoir  C,  ed.  Murray,  p.  238. 

The  letter  in  which  Gibbon  communi- 
cated to  Mademoiselle  Curchod  the  oppo- 
sition of  his  father  to  their  marriage  still 
exists  in  manuscript.  The  first  pages  are 
tender  and  melancholy,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected from  an  unhappy  lover ;  the  latter 
becomes  by  degrees  calm  and  reasonable, 


and  the  letter  concludes  with  these  words : 
—  Cest  pourquoi,  Mademoiselle,  fai  Vhon- 
neur  d'etre  votre  tres  humble  et  tres  obeis- 
sant  serviteur,  Edward  Gibbon.  He  truly 
loved  Mademoiselle  Curchod;  but  every 
one  loves  according  to  his  character,  and 
that  of  Gibbon  was  incapable  of  a  despair- 
ing passion. — Suard,  M.,  1828,  Life. 

His  love  affair — his  first  and  only  one — 
was  transient  enough.  .  .  .  She  was,  as 
Gibbon  declares  (and  we  know  it  on  better 
testimony  than  a  lover's  eyes),  beautiful, 
intelligent,  and  accomplished.  Her  charms, 
however,  do  not  seem  to  have  made  any 
indelible  impression  on  our  young  student, 
whose  sensibility,  to  the  truth,  was  never 
very  profound.  On  his  father's  expres- 
sing his  disapprobation,  he  surrendered 
the  object  of  his  affection  with  as  little 
resistance  as  he  had  surrendered  his 
Romanism. — Rogers,  Henry,  1857,  En- 
cyclopcedia  Britannica,  Eighth  edition. 

That  the  passion  which  she  inspired  in 
him  was  tender,  pure,  and  fitted  to  raise 
to  a  higher  level  a  nature  which  in  some 
respects  was  much  in  need  of  such  eleva- 
tion will  be  doubted  by  none  but  the  hope- 
lessly cynical ;  and  probably  there  are  few 
readers  who  can  persue  the  paragraph  in 
which  Gibbon  "approaches  the  delicate 
subject  of  his  ealry  love, "  without  discern- 
ing in  it  a  pathos  much  deeper  than  that 
of  which  the  writer  was  himself  aware. — 
Black,  J.  Sutherland,  1879,  Encyclo- 
pcedia  Britannica,  Ninth  edition. 

It  becomes  a  kind  of  ''Ring  and  the 
Book,"  but  a  Gibbonian  ''Ring  and  the 
Book" — every  voice  is  the  voice  of  Gib- 
bon, and  as  we  turn  the  pages  we  always 
see  the  same  short  fat  figure  explaining 
and  pronouncing,  and  hear  no  echoes  from 
the  market-place,  or  the  law-courts. 
When  the  historian  treats  of  his  early 
love  affair,  it  is  especially  entertaining  to 
have  his  feelings  described  in  many  ways 
and  at  different  periods  of  his  life.  Gib- 
bon's love-story,  told  by  himself,  has  al- 
ways interested  and  amused  his  fellows — it 
is  a  literary  curiosity — a  perennial  joke — 
but  even  here  we  might  welcome  another 
point  of  view.  In  the  original  collection 
edited  by  Gibbon's  friend,  several  letters 
from  his  correspondents  were  inserted— 
all  worth  reading  in  their  way.  But  far 
the  most  interesting  were  a  number  of 
letters  written  by  Mme.  Necker  to  her 
former  lover.    They  extend  over  a  long 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


179 


stretch  of  time,  and  bear  witness  to  an 
extraordinary  loyal  and  faithful  tender- 
ness on  her  part.  Some  of  the  love  for 
him,  which  Gibbon  has  disregarded,  seems 
to  have  always  remained  in  the  bottom  of 
her  heart,  and  while  she  learned  to  realize 
that  his  genius  lay  in  friendship  and  not 
in  courtship,  she  adapted  herself  to  his 
temperament  and  gave  him  to  the  last  day 
of  his  life  an  unswerving  affection. — 
Lyttelton,  Edith,  1897,  The  Sequel  to 
Gibbon's  Love-Story,  National  Review,  vol, 
29,  p.  904. 

The  tone  in  which  Gibbon  generally  re- 
fers to  love  affairs  in  his  history  is  not 
altogether  edifying,  and  hardly  implies 
that  his  passion  had  purified  or  ennobled 
his  mind. — Stephen,  Leslie,  ISdS,  Studies 
of  a  Biographer,  vol.  I,  p.  169. 

DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  ROMAN 
EMPIRE 

1776-88 

You  have,  unexpectedly,  given  the  world 
a  classic  history.  The  fame  it  must  ac- 
quire will  tend  every  day  to  acquit  this 
panegyric  of  flattery. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1776,  To  Edward  Gibbon,  Feb.  U;  Letters, 
ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vi,  p.  308. 

As  I  ran  through  your  volume  of  His- 
tory with  great  avidity  and  impatience, 
I  cannot  forbear  discovering  somewhat  of 
the  same  impatience  in  returning  you 
thanks  for  your  agreeable  present,  and 
expressing  the  satisfaction  which  the  per- 
formance has  given  me.  Whether  I  con- 
sider the  dignity  of  your  style,  the  depth 
of  your  matter,  or  the  extensiveness  of 
your  learning,  I  must  regard  the  work  as 
equally  the  object  of  esteem,  and  I  own 
that,  if  I  had  not  previously  had  the  hap- 
piness of  your  personal  acquaintance,  such 
a  performance  from  an  Englishman  in  our 
age  would  have  given  me  some  surprize. 
— Hume,  David,  1776,  Letter  to  Edward 
Gibbon,  March  18. 

Gibbon  I  detect  a  frequent  poacher  in 
the  Philosophical  Essays''  of  Boling- 
broke:  as  in  his  representation  of  the 
unsocial  character  of  the  Jewish  religion ; 
and  in  his  insinuation  of  the  suspicions 
cast  by  succeeding  miracles,  acknowledged 
to  be  false,  on  prior  ones  contended  to  be 
true.  Indeed  it  seems  not  unlikely  that 
he  caught  the  first  hint  of  his  theological 
chapters  from  this  work.— Green,Thomas, 
1779-1810,  Diary  of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 


Another  d— mn'd  thick,  square  book! 
Always  s<:ribble,  scribble,  scribble!  eh! 
Mr.  Gibbon?— Gloucester,  Duke  of?, 
1781,  On  Presentation  of  the  Second  Vol- 
ume of  the  Decline  and  Fall. 

I  can  recollect  no  historical  work  from 
which  I  ever  received  so  much  instruction, 
and  when  I  consider  in  what  a  barren  field 
you  had  to  glean  and  pick  up  materials  I 
am  truly  astonished  at  the  connected  and 
interesting  story  you  have  formed. — 
Robertson,  William,  1781,  Letter  to  Ed- 
ward Gibbon,  May  12. 

You  will  be  diverted  to  hear  that  Mr. 
Gibbon  has  quarrelled  with  me.  He  lent 
me  his  second  volume  in  the  middle  of 
November.  I  returned  it  with  a  most 
civil  panegyric.  He  came  for  more  in- 
cense ;  I  gave  it,  but  alas !  with  too  much 
sincerity;  I  added,  "Mr.  Gibbon,  I  am 
sorry  you  should  have  pitched  on  so  dis- 
gusting a  subject  as  the  Constantino- 
politan  History.  There  is  so  much  of  the 
Arians  and  Eunomians,  and  semi-Pela- 
gians ;  and  there  is  such  a  strange  con- 
trast between  Roman  and  Gothic  manners, 
and  so  little  harmony  between  a  Consul 
Sabinus  and  a  Ricimer,  Duke  of  the  Pal- 
ace, that  though  you  have  written  the 
story  as  well  as  it  could  be  written,  I  fear 
few  will  have  patience  to  read  it."  He 
coloured :  all  his  round  features  squeezed 
themselves  into  sharp  angles ;  he  screwed 
up  his  button-mouth,  and  rapping  his 
snuff-box,  said,  '*It  had  never  been  put 
together  before" — so  well,  he  meant  to 
add — but  gulped  it.  He  meant  so  well 
certainly,  for  Tillemont,  whom  he  quotes 
in  every  page,  has  done  the  very  thing. 
Well,  from  that  hour  to  this,  I  have 
never  seen  him,  though  he  used  to  call 
once  or  twice  a  week;  nor  has  he  sent 
me  the  third  volume,  as  he  promised. 
I  well  knew  his  vanity,  even  about  his 
ridiculous  face  and  person,  but  thought  he 
had  too  much  sense  to  avow  it  so  palpably. 
—Walpole,  Horace,  1781,  To  Rev.  Wil- 
liam Mason,  Jan.  27 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunnig- 
ham,  vol.  vii,  p.  505. 

If  there  be  any  certain  method  of  dis- 
covering a  man's  real  object,  yours  has 
been  to  discredit  Christianity  in  fact, 
while  in  words  you  represent  yourself  as 
a  friend  to  it ;  a  conduct  which  I  scruple 
not  to  call  highly  unworthy  and  mean; 
an  insult  on  the  common  sense  of  the 
Christian  world.  —  Priestley,  Joseph, 


180 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


1782,  A  Letter  to  Edward  Gibbon  on  the 
Decline  and  Fall. 

I  now  feel  as  if  a  mountain  was  removed 
from  my  breast ;  as  far  as  I  can  judge, 
the  public  unanimously  applauds  my  com- 
pliment to  Lord  North,  and  does  not  ap- 
pear dissatisfied  with  the  conclusion  of 
my  work,  I  look  back  with  amazement  on 
the  road  which  I  have  travelled,  but  which 
I  should  never  have  entered  had  I  been 
previously  apprized  of  its  length. — Gib- 
bon, Edward,  1788,  Private  Letter Sy  vol. 
II,  p.  170. 

I  cannot  express  to  you  the  pleasure  it 
gives  me  to  find,  that,  by  the  universal  as- 
sent of  every  man  of  taste  and  learning 
whom  1  either  know  or  correspond  with, 
it  sets  you  at  the  very  head  of  the  whole 
literary  tribe  at  present  existing  in 
Europe. — Smith,  Adam,  1788,  Letter  to 
Edward  Gibbon,  Dec.  10. 

You  desire  to  know  my  opinion  of  Mr. 
Gibbon.  I  can  say  very  little  about  him, 
for  such  is  the  affectation  of  his  style, 
that  I  could  never  get  through  the  half  of 
one  of  his  volumes.  If  anybody  would 
translate  him  into  good  classical  English, 
(such,  I  mean,  as  Addison,  Swift,  Lord 
Lyttelton,  &c.,  wrote),  I  should  read  him 
with  eagerness ;  for  I  know  there  must  be 
much  curious  matter  in  his  work.  His 
cavils  against  religion,  have,  I  think,  been 
all  confuted ;  he  does  not  seem  to  under- 
stand that  part  of  his  subject :  indeed  I 
have  never  yet  met  with  a  man,  or  with 
an  author,  who  both  understood  Christian- 
ity, and  disbelieved  it. — Beattie,  James, 
1788,  Letter  to  Duchess  of  Gordon,  Novem- 
ber 20th ;  Works,  ed.  Forbes,  vol.  ill,  p.  56. 

It  is  a  most  wonderful  mass  of  informa- 
tion, not  only  on  history,  but  almost  on 
all  the  ingredients  of  history,  as  war, 
government,  commerce,  coin,  and  what 
not.  If  it  has  a  fault,  it  is  in  embracing 
too  much,  and  consequently  in  not  detail- 
ing enough,  and  in  striding  backwards  and 
forwards  from  one  set  of  princes  to  an- 
other, and  from  one  subject  to  another ; 
so  that,  without  much  historic  knowledge, 
and  without  much  memory,  and  much 
method  in  one's  memory,  it  is  almost  im- 
possible not  to  be  sometimes  bewildered : 
nay,  his  own  impatience  to  tell  what  he 
knows,  makes  the  author,  though  com- 
monly so  explicit,  not  perfectly  clear  in 
his  expressions.  The  last  chapter  of  the 
fourth  volume,  I  own,  made  me  recoil, 


and  I  could  scarcely  push  through  it.  So 
far  from  being  Catholic  or  heretic,  I 
wished  Mr.  Gibbon  had  never  heard  of 
Monophysites,  Nestorians,  or  any  such 
fools !  But  the  sixth  volume  made  ample 
amends;  Mahomet  and  the  Popes  were 
gentlemen  and  good  company.  I  abomi- 
nate fractions  of  theology  and  refor- 
mation.—  Walpole,  Horace,  1788,  To 
Thomas  Barrett,  June  5 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cun- 
ningham, vol.  IX,  p.  126. 

His  reflections  are  often  just  and  pro- 
found. He  pleads  eloquently  for  the 
rights  of  mankind,  and  the  duty  of  tolera- 
tion ;  nor  does  his  humanity  ever  slumber 
unless  when  women  are  ravished,  or  the 
Christians  persecuted.  ...  He  often 
makes,  when  he  cannot  readily  find,  an 
occasion  to  insult  our  religion,  which  he 
hates  so  cordially  that  he  might  seem  to 
revenge  some  personal  insult.  Such  is 
his  eagerness  in  the  cause,  that  he  stoops 
to  the  most  despicable  pun,  or  to  the 
most  awkward  perversion  of  language, 
for  the  pleasure  of  turning  the  Scriptures 
into  ribaldry,  or  of  calling  Jesus  an  im- 
postor.— PoRSON,  Richard,  1790,  Letters 
to  Archdeacon  Travis,  Preface. 

I  am  at  a  loss  how  to  describe  the  suc- 
cess of  the  work  without  betraying  the 
vanity  of  the  writer.  The  first  impres- 
sion was  exhausted  in  a  few  days ;  a  sec- 
ond and  third  edition  were  scarcely  ade- 
quate to  the  demand ;  and  the  bookseller's 
property  was  twice  invaded  by  the 
pyrates  of  Dublin.  My  book  was  on  every 
table,  and  almost  on  every  toilette;  the 
historian  was  crowned  by  the  taste  or 
fashion  of  the  day ;  nor  was  the  general 
voice  disturbed  by  the  barking  of  any  pro- 
fane critic.  ...  It  was  on  the  day, 
or  rather,  night  of  the  27th  of  June, 
1787,  between  the  hours  of  eleven  and 
twelve,  that  I  wrote  the  last  lines  of  the 
last  page,  in  a  summerhouse  in  my  gar- 
den. After  laying  down  my  pen,  I  took 
several  turns  in  a  berceau,  or  covered 
walk  of  acacias,  which  commands  a  pros- 
pect of  the  country,  the  Lake,  and  the 
mountains.  The  air  was  temperate,  the 
sky  was  serene,  the  silver  orb  of  the 
moon  was  reflected  from  the  waters,  and 
all  nature  was  silent.  I  will  not  dissem- 
ble the  first  emotions  of  joy  on  the  recov- 
ery of  my  freedom,  and  perhaps  the  es- 
tablishment of  my  fame.  But  my  pride 
was  soon  humbled,  and  a  sober  melancholy 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


181 


was  spread  over  my  mind,  by  the  idea  that 
I  had  taken  an  everlasting  leave  of  an  old 
and  agreeable  companion,  and  that,  what- 
soever might  be  the  future  date  of  my 
history,  the  life  of  the  historian  must  be 
short  and  precarious. — Gibbon,  Edward, 
1793,  Autobiography,  Memoir  E.,  ed.  Mur- 
ray, pp.  311,  333. 

The  work  of  Gibbon  excites  my  utmost 
admiration ;  not  so  much  by  the  immense 
learning  and  industry  which  it  displays, 
as  by  the  commanding  intellect,  the  keen 
sagacity,  apparent  in  almost  every  page. 
The  admiration  of  his  ability  extends  even 
to  his  manner  of  showing  his  hatred  to 
Christianity,  which  is  exquisitely  subtle 
and  acute,  and  adapted  to  do  very  great 
mischief,  even  where  there  is  not  the 
smallest  avowal  of  hostility.  It  is  to  be 
deplored  that  a  great  part  of  the  early 
history  of  the  Christian  Church  was  ex- 
actly such  as  a  man  like  him  could  have 
wished.— Foster,  John,  1805,  Letters, 
ed.  Ryland,  vol.  i,  p.  262. 

The  author  of  the  ''History  of  the  De- 
cline," &c.,  appears  to  have  possessed  a 
considerable  share  of  sense,  ingenuity, 
and  knowledge  of  his  subject,  together 
with  great  industry.  But  these  qualities 
or  talents  are  disgraced,  — by  a  false  taste 
of  composition,  which  prompts  him  contin- 
ually to  employ  a  verbose,  inflated  style, 
in  order  to  obtain  the  praise  of  force  and 
energy, — by  a  perpetual  affectation  of  wit, 
irony,  and  satire,  altogether  unsuited  to 
the  historic  character, — and,  what  is 
worse,  by  a  freethinking,  licentious  spirit, 
which  spares  neither  morals  nor  religion, 
and  must  make  every  honest  man  regard 
him  as  a  bad  citizen  and  pernicious  writer. 
All  these  miscarriages  may  be  traced  up 
to  one  common  source,  an  excessive  vanity. 
— HuRD,  Richard,  1808?  Commonplace 
Book,  ed.  Kilvert,  p.  250. 

The  uncommon  sum  Gibbon  received  for 
copyright,  though  it  excited  the  astonish- 
ment of  the  philosopher  himself,  was  for 
the  continued  labour  of  a  whole  life,  and 
probably  the  library  he  had  purchased  for 
his  work  equalled  at  least  in  cost  the  prod- 
uce of  his  pen;  the  tools  cost  the  work- 
man as  much  as  he  obtained  for  his 
work.  Six  thousand  pounds  gained  on 
these  terms  will  keep  an  author  indigent. 
—Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13,  Laborious 
Authors,  Calamities  of  Authors. 

Gibbon  is  a  writer  full  of  thoughts ;  his 


language  is  in  general  powerful  and  ex- 
quisite, but  it  has,  to  a  great  excess,  the 
faults  of  elaborateness,  pompousness,  and 
monotony.  His  style  is  full  of  Latin  and 
French  words  and  phrases.  .  .  .  The 
work  of  Gibbon,  however  instructive  and 
fascinating  it  may  be,  is  nevertheless  at 
bottom  an  offensive  one,  on  account  of  his 
deficiency  in  feeling,  and  his  propensity 
to  the  infidel  opinions  and  impious  mock- 
eries of  Voltaire.  These  are  things  ex- 
tremely unworthy  of  a  historian,  and  in 
the  periodic  and  somewhat  cumbrous  style 
of  Gibbon  they  appear  set  off  to  far  less 
advantage  than  in  the  light  and  airy  com- 
positions of  his  master.  He  never  seems 
to  be  naturally  a  wit,  but  impresses  us 
with  the  idea  that  he  would  very  fain  be 
one  if  he  could.— Schlegel,  Frederick, 
1815-59,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Liter- 
ature. 

But  the  high  estimation  in  which  Mr. 
Gibbon's  outline  is  held  on  the  continent, 
where  the  Roman  Law  has  for  so  many 
centuries  been  thoroughly  studied,  and 
elaborately  written  on,  will  be  regarded 
as  strong  evidence  of  its  high  merit. — 
Hoffman,  David,  1817,  A  Course  of 
Legal  Study. 

A  work  of  immense  research  and  splen- 
did execution.  .  .  .  Alternately  de- 
lighted and  offended  by  the  gorgeous  col- 
ouring with  which  his  fancy  invests  the 
rude  and  scanty  materials  of  his  narrative ; 
sometimes  fatigued  by  the  learning  of  his 
notes,  occasionally  amused  by  their  liveli- 
ness, frequently  disgusted  by  their  obscen- 
ity, and  admiring  or  deploring  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  skilful  irony — I  toiled  through 
his  massy  tomes  with  exemplary  patience. 
His  style  is  exuberant,  sonorous,  and  epi- 
grammatic to  a  degree  that  is  often  dis- 
pleasing. He  yields  to  Hume  in  ele- 
gance and  distinctness — to  Robertson  in 
talents  for  general  disquisition — but  he 
excels  them  both  in  a  species  of  brief  and 
shrewd  remark  for  which  he  seems  to 
have  taken  Tacitus  as  a  model,  more 
than  any  other  that  I  know  of. — Carlyle, 
Thomas,  ISIS,  Early  Letters,  ed.  Norton, 
pp.  68,  69. 

Arrived  at  Bury  before  tea.  My 
brother  and  sister  were  going  to  hear  an 
astronomical  lecture.  I  stayed  alone  and 
read  a  chapter  in  Gibbon  on  the  early 
history  of  the  Germans.  Having  previ- 
ously read  the  first  two  lectures  of 


182 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


Schlegel,  I  had  the  pleasure  of  compari- 
son, and  I  found  much  in  Gibbon  that  I 
had  thought  original  in  Schlegel. — Rob- 
inson, Henry  Crabb,  1820,  Diary,  ed. 
Sadler,  vol.  i,  p.  430.  . 

Gibbon  was  not,  like  Hume,  a  self-think- 
ing,  deep-fathoming  man,  who  searched 
into  the  nature  of  things,  existence  and 
thought,  but  was  in  these  respects  like 
the  French,  or  like  the  Scotchman 
Brougham,  who  has  also  attained  this 
Franco-Gene vese  capacity,  of  quickly  mak- 
ing other  people's  thoughts  and  investi- 
gations his  own,  and  propounding  them 
in  an  admirable  manner.  Like  the  great 
French  writers,  he  can  take  a  quick  and 
comprehensive  view  of  various  depart- 
ments of  knowledge,  and  we  can  therefore 
learn  most  readily  through  his  instrumen- 
tality the  results  of  the  learned  labours 
of  the  great  collectors  of  materials  upon 
the  theology,  philosophy,  and  jurispru- 
dence of  the  times  of  declining  antiquity, 
and  of  the  rising  middle  ages.  Because 
his  eloquence  and  his  great  skill  in  repre- 
sentation give  a  charm  and  splendour  to 
the  thoughts  which  he  wishes  to  dissem- 
inate, he  has  the  full  right  of  all  men  who 
are  great  in  politics  and  literature  to 
claim,  that  nobody  should  ask,  whether  he 
was  really  in  earnest,  or  how  his  language 
and  his  conduct  harmonized.— Schlosser, 
Friedrich  Christoph,  1823-64,  History 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  tr.  Davison, 
vol.  II,  p.  85. 

I  have  had  occasion,  during  my  labors, 
to  consult  the  writings  of  philosophers, 
who  have  treated  on  the  finances  of  the 
Roman  Empire;  of  scholars,  who  have 
investigated  the  chronology;  of  theolo- 
gians, who  have  searched  the  depths  of 
ecclesiastical  history ;  of  writers  on  law, 
who  have  studied  with  care  the  Roman 
jurisprudence;  of  Orientalists,  who  have 
occupied  themselves  with  the  Arabians  and 
the  Koran;  of  modern  historians,  who 
have  entered  upon  extensive  researches 
touching  the  crusades  and  their  influence ; 
each  of  these  writers  has  remarked  and 
pointed  out,  in  the  ''History  of  the  De- 
cline and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire," 
some  negligences,  some  false  or  imperfect 
views,  some  omissions,  which  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  suppose  voluntary ;  they  have 
rectified  some  facts,  combated  with  ad- 
vantage some  assertions;  but  in  general 
they  have  taken  the  researches  and  the 


ideas  of  Gibbon,  as  points  of  departure, 
or  as  proofs  of  the  researches  or  of  the 
new  opinions  which  they  have  advanced. — ■ 
GuizoT,  Franqois  Pierre  Guillaume, 
1828,  ed.  Gibbon's  Works,  Preface. 

There  is  no  writer  who  exhibits  more 
distinctly  the  full  development  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  modern  history,  with  all  its  vir- 
tues and  defects,  than  Gibbon.  .  .  . 
Gibbon  was  a  more  vivacious  draughtsman 
than  most  writers  of  his  school.  He  was, 
moreover,  deeply  versed  in  geography, 
chronology,  antiquities,  verbal  criticism — 
in  short,  in  all  the  sciences  in  any  way 
subsidiary  to  his  art.  The  extent  of  his 
subject  permitted  him  to  indulge  in  those 
elaborate  disquisitions  so  congenial  to  the 
spirit  of  modern  history  on  the  most 
momentous  and  interesting  topics,  while 
his  early  studies  enabled  him  to  embellish 
the  drier  details  of  his  narrative  with  the 
charms  of  a  liberal  and  elegant  scholarship. 
What,  then,  was  wanting  to  this  accom- 
plished writer  ?  Good  faith.  His  defects 
were  precisely  of  the  class  of  which  we 
have  before  been  speaking,  and  his  most 
elaborate  efforts  exhibit  too  often  the 
perversion  of  learning  and  ingenuity  to 
the  vindication  of  preconceived  hypothe- 
ses. He  cannot,  indeed,  be  convicted  of 
ignorance  or  literal  inaccuracy,  as  he  has 
triumphantly  proved  in  his  discomfiture  of 
the  unfortunate  Davis.  But  his  disingen- 
uous mode  of  conducting  the  argument 
leads  precisely  to  the  same  unfair  result. 
Thus,  in  his  celebrated  chapters  on  the 
"Progress  of  Christianity,''  which  he  tells 
us  were  ''reduced  by  three  successive  re- 
visals  from  a  bulky  volume  to  their  pres- 
ent size,"  he  has  often  slurred  over  in  the 
text  such  particulars  as  might  reflect  most 
credit  on  the  character  of  the  religion,  or 
shuflSed  them  into  a  note  at  the  bottom  of 
the  page,  while  all  that  admits  of  a  doubt- 
ful complexion  in  its  early  propagation  is 
ostentatiously  blazoned,  and  set  in  con- 
trast to  the  most  amiable  features  of 
paganism.  At  the  same  time,  by  a  style 
of  innuendo  that  conveys  "more  than 
meets  the  ear,"  he  has  contrived,  with 
lago-like  duplicity,  to  breathe  a  taint  of 
suspicion  on  the  purity  which  he  dares 
not  openly  assail— Prescott,  William 
HiCKLiNG,  1829,  Irving's  Conquest  of 
Granada,  Biographical  and  Critical  Mis- 
cellanies, pp.  102,  103. 

Gibbon,  the  architect  of  a  bridge  over 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


183 


the  dark  gulf  which  separates  ancient 
from  modern  times,  whose  vivid  genius 
has  tinged  with  brilliant  colours  the  great- 
est historical  work  in  existence. — Alison, 
Sir  Archibald,  1833-42,  History  of 
Europe  During  the  French  Revolution, 
vol.  XIV,  p.  3. 

Gibbon's  style  is  detestable,  but  his 
style  is  not  the  worst  thing  about  him. 
His  history  has  proved  an  effectual  bar 
to  all  real  familiarity  with  the  temper  and 
habits  of  imperial  Rome.  Few  persons 
read  the  original  authorities,  even  those 
which  are  classical ;  and  certainly  no  dis- 
tinct knowledge  of  the  actual  state  of  the 
empire  can  be  obtained  from  Gibbon's 
rhetorical  sketches.  He  takes  notice  of 
nothing  but  what  may  produce  an  effect ; 
he  skips  on  from  eminence  to  eminence, 
without  ever  taking  you  through  the  val- 
leys between:  in  fact,  his  work  is  little 
else  but  a  disguised  collection  of  all  the 
splendid  anecdotes  which  he  could  find  in 
any  book  concerning  any  persons  or 
nations  from  the  Antonines  to  the  capture 
of  Constantinople.  When  I  read  a  chap- 
ter in  Gibbon  I  seem  to  be  looking  through 
a  luminous  haze  or  fog : — figures  come  and 
go,  I  know  not  how  or  why,  all  larger 
than  life,  or  distorted  or  discoloured; 
nothing  is  real,  vivid,  true ;  all  is  scen- 
ical,  and  as  it  were,  exhibited  by  candle- 
light. And  then  to  call  it  a  History  of 
the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire ! 
Was  there  ever  a  greater  misnomer?  I 
protest  I  do  not  remember  a  single  philo- 
sophical attempt  made  throughout  the 
work  to  fathom  the  ultimate  causes  of  the 
decline  or  fall  of  that  empire.  How  mis- 
erably deficient  is  the  narrative  of  the  im- 
portant reign  of  Justinian !  And  that  poor 
scepticism,  which  Gibbon  mistook  for 
Socratic  philosophy,  has  led  him  to  mis- 
state and  mistake  the  character  and  influ- 
ence of  Christianity  in  a  way  which  even 
an  avowed  infidel  or  atheist  would  not  and 
could  not  have  done.  Gibbon  was  a  man 
.of  immense  reading;  but  he  had  no  phi- 
losophy ;  and  he  never  fully  understood 
the  principle  upon  which  the  best  of  the 
old  historians  wrote.  He  attempted  to 
imitate  their  artificial  construction  of  the 
whole  work — their  dramatic  ordonnance 
of  the  parts — without  seeing  that  their 
histories  were  intended  more  as  docu- 
ments illustrative  of  the  truths  of  polit- 
ical philosophy  than  as  mere  chronicles  of 


events.— Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor, 
1833,  Table  Talk,  Aug.  15,  ed.  Ashe,  p.  245. 

We  have  ourselves  followed  the  track 
of  Gibbon  through  many  parts  of  his 
work ;  we  have  read  his  authorities  with 
constant  reference  to  his  pages,  and  we 
must  pronounce  our  deliberate  judgment 
in  terms  of  the  highest  admiration  of  his 
general  accuracy.  Many  of  his  seeming 
errors  are  almost  inevitable  from  the 
close  condensation  of  his  matter.  From 
the  immense  range  of  his  history  it  was 
sometimes  necessary  to  compress  into  a 
single  sentence,  a  whole  vague  and  diffuse 
page  of  a  Byzantine  chronicler.  Perhaps 
something  of  importance  may  thus  escape, 
and  his  expressions  may  not  quite  contain 
the  whole  substance  of  the  quotation. 
His  limits,  at  times,  compel  him  to  sketch ; 
where  that  is  the  case,  it  is  not  fair  to 
expect  the  full  details  of  the  picture.  At 
times  he  can  only  deal  with  important  re- 
sults; and  in  his  account  of  a  war,  it 
sometimes  requires  great  attention  to  dis- 
cover that  the  events,  which  seem  to  be 
comprehended  in  a  single  campaign,  oc- 
cupy several  years.  But  this  admirable 
skill  in  selecting  and  giving  prominence 
to  the  points  which  are  of  real  weight  and 
importance — this  distribution  of  light  and 
shade — though  perhaps  it  may  occasionally 
betray  him  into  vague  and  imperfect  state- 
ments, is  one  of  the  highest  excellencies 
of  Gibbon's  historic  manner.  It  is  the 
more  striking,  when  we  pass  from  the 
works  of  his  chief  authorities,  where, 
after  labouring  through  long,  minute  and 
wearisome  descriptions  of  the  accessary 
and  subordinate  circumstances,  a  single 
unmarked  and  undistinguished  sentence, 
which  we  may  overlook  from  the  inatten- 
tion of  fatigue,  contains  the  great  moral 
and  political  result. — Milman,  Henry 
Hart,  1834,  Guizofs  Edition  of  Gibbon, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  50,  p.  290. 

Perhaps  the  most  masterly  and  elabo- 
rate account  of  the  Civil  Law  which  is 
extant  is  to  be  found  in  the  forty-fourth 
chapter  of  Gibbon's  ''Decline  and  Fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire."  Lord  Mansfield 
characterised  it  as  ''beautiful  and  spir- 
ited."—  Warren,  Samuel,  1835,  Law 
Studies. 

Another  very  celebrated  historian,  we 
mean  Gibbon — not  a  man  of  mere  science 
and  analysis,  like  Hume,  but  with  some 
(though  not  the  truest  or  profoundest) 


184 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


artistic  feeling  of  the  picturesque,  and 
from  whom,  therefore,  rather  more  might 
have  been  expected — has  with  much  pains 
succeeded  in  producing  a  tolerably 
graphic  picture  of  here  and  there  a  bat- 
tle, a  tumult,  or  an  insurrection;  his  book 
is  full  of  movement  and  costume,  .and 
would  make  a  series  of  very  pretty  ballets 
at  the  Opera  house,  and  the  ballets  would 
give  us  fully  as  distinct  an  idea  of  the 
Roman  empire,  and  how  it  declined  and 
fell,  as  the  book  does.  If  we  want  that, 
we  must  look  for  it  anywhere  but  in  Gib- 
bon. One  touch  of  M.  Guizot  removes 
a  portion  of  the  veil  which  hid  from  us 
the  recesses  of  private  life  under  the 
Roman  empire,  lets  in  a  ray  of  light  which 
penetrates  as  far  even  as  the  domestic 
hearth  of  a  subject  of  Rome,  and  shews  us 
the  Government  at  work  making  that  des- 
olate ;  but  no  similar  gleam  of  light  from 
Gibbon's  mind  ever  reaches  the  subject ; 
human  life,  in  the  times  he  wrote  about, 
is  not  what  he  concerned  himself  with. — 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  1837,  The  French 
Revolution,  Early  Essays,  ed.  Gibbs,  p.  276. 

A  greater  historian  than  Robertson,  but 
not  so  great  as  Hume.  With  all  his 
swagger  and  bombast,  no  man  ever  gave 
a  more  futile  account  of  human  things 
than  he  has  done  of  the  decline  and  fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire ;  assigning  no  pro- 
found cause  for  these  phenomena,  nothing 
but  diseased  nerves,  and  all  sorts  of  miser- 
able motives,  to  the  actors  in  them. — 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  1838,  Lectures  on  the 
History  of  Literature,  p.  185. 

The  great  work  of  Gibbon  is  indispen- 
sable to  the  student  of  history.  The  lit- 
erature of  Europe  offers  no  substitute  for 
''The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire." It  has  obtained  undisputed  pos- 
session, as  rightful  occupant,  of  the  vast 
period  which  it  comprehends.  However, 
some  subjects  which  it  embraces  may 
have  undergone  more  complete  investiga- 
tion, on  the  general  view  of  the  whole 
period,  this  history  is  the  sole  undisputed 
authority  to  which  all  defer,  and  from 
which  few  appeal  to  the  original  writers, 
or  to  more  modern  compilers.  The  in- 
herent interest  of  the  subject ;  the  inex- 
haustible labor  employed  upon  it;  the 
immense  condensation  of  matter ;  the 
luminous  arrangement ;  the  general  accu- 
racy; the  style,  which,  however  monoto- 
nous from  its  uniform  stateliness,  and 


sometimes  wearisome  from  its  elaborate 
art,  is  throughout  vigorous,  animated, 
often  picturesque,  always  commands  at- 
tention, always  conveys  its  meaning  with 
emphatic  energy,  describes  with  singular 
breadth  and  fidelity,  and  generalizes  with 
unrivalled  felicity  of  expression ;  all  these 
high  qualifications  have  secured,  and  seem 
likely  to  secure,  its  permanent  place  in 
historic  literature. — Milman,Henry  Hart, 
1838-39,  ed.,  The  History  of  the  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Preface, 

I  read  a  good  deal  of  Gibbon.  He  is 
grossly  partial  to  the  pagan  persecutors ; 
quite  offensively  so.  His  opinion  of  the 
Christian  fathers  is  very  little  removed 
from  mine ;  but  his  excuses  for  the  tyr- 
anny of  their  oppressoi  s  give  to  his  book 
the  character  which  Person  describes. 
He  writes  like  a  man  who  had  received 
some  personal  injury  from  Christianity, 
and  wished  to  be  revenged  on  it  and  all  its 
professors.  —  Macaulay,  Thomas  Bab- 
INGTON,  1838,  Diary,  Dec.  22;  Life  and 
Letters,  ed.  Trevelyan,  vol.  i,  p.  26. 

He  had  three  hobbies  which  he  rode  to 
the  death  (stuffed  puppets  as  they  were), 
and  which  he  kept  in  condition  by  the  con- 
tinual sacrifice  of  all  that  is  valuable  in 
language.  These  hobbies  were  Dignity — 
Modulation — Laconism.  Dignity  is  all 
very  well;  and  history  demands  it  for 
its  general  tone ;  but  the  being  everlast- 
ingly on  stilts  is  not  only  troublesome 
and  awkward,  but  dangerous.  He  who 
falls  en  homme  ordinaire — from  the  mere 
slipping  of  his  feet — is  usually  an  ob- 
ject of  sympathy;  but  all  men  tumble 
now  and  then,  and  this  H;umbling  from 
high  sticks  is  sure  to  provoke  laughter. 
His  modulation,  however,  is  always  ridicu- 
lous ;  for  it  is  so  uniform,  so  continuous, 
and  so  jauntily  kept  up,  that  we  almost 
fancy  the  writer  waltzing  to  his  words. 
With  him,  to  speak  lucidly  was  a  far  less 
merit  than  to  speak  smoothly  and  curtly. 
There  is  a  way  in  which,  through  the 
nature  of  language  itself,  we  may  often, 
save  a  few  words  by  talking  backwards ; 
and  this  is,  therefore,  a  favorite  practice 
with  Gibbon.— PoE,  Edgar  Allan,  1839- 
49,  Marginalia,  Works,  ed.  Woodberry,  vol. 
Yii,  p.  338. 

If  his  work  be  not  always  history,  it  is 
often  something  more  than  history,  and 
above  it :  it  is  philosophy,  it  is  theology, 
it  is  wit  and  eloquence,  it  is  criticism  the 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


185 


most  masterly  upon  every  subject  with 
which  literature  can  be  connected.  If 
the  style  be  so  constantly  elevated  as  to 
be  often  obscure,  to  be  often  monotonous, 
to  be  sometimes  even  ludicrously  dispro- 
portioned  to  the  subject ;  it  must  at  the 
same  time  be  allowed,  that  whenever  an 
opportunity  presents  itself,  it  is  the  strik- 
ing and  adequate  representation  of  com- 
prehensive thought  and  weighty  remark. 
It  may  be  necessary  no  doubt  to  warn  the 
student  against  the  imitation  of  a  mode 
of  writing  so  little  easy  and  natural. 
But  the  very  necessity  of  the  caution 
implies  the  attraction  that  is  to  be  re- 
sisted ;  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
chapters  of  the  ''Decline  and  Fall"  are 
replete  with  paragraphs  of  such  melody 
and  grandeur  as  would  be  the  fittest  to 
convey  to  a  youth  of  genius  the  full  charm 
of  literary  composition;  and  such  as, 
when  once  heard,  however  unattainable  to 
the  immaturity  of  his  own  mind,  he  would 
alone  consent  to  admire,  or  sigh  to  emu- 
late. .  .  .  When  such  is  the  work, 
it  is  placed  beyond  the  justice  or  the  in-, 
justice  of  criticism;  the  Christian  may 
have,  but  too  often,  very  just  reason  to 
complain,  the  moralist  to  reprove,  the 
man  of  taste  to  censure, — even  the  histor- 
ical inquirer  may  be  fatigued  and  irri- 
tated by  the  unseasonable  and  obscure 
splendour  through  which  he  is  to  discover 
the  objects  of  his  research.  But  the 
whole  is,  notwithstanding,  such  an  assem- 
blage of  merits  so  various,  so  interesting, 
and  so  rare,  that  the  "History  of  the  De- 
cline and  Fall"  must  always  be  considered 
as  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  monu- 
ments that  has  appeared  of  the  literary 
powers  of  a  single  mind,  and  its  fame  can 
perish  only  with  the  civilization  of  the 
world.— Smyth,  William,  1840,  Lectures 
on  Modern  History,  vol.  i. 

The  great  merit  of  Gibbon  is  his  extraor- 
dinary industry,  and  the  general  fidelity 
of  his  statements,  as  attested  by  the  con- 
stant references  which  he  makes  to  his 
numerous  and  varied  authorities — refer- 
ences which  enable  the  *'most  faithful  of 
historians"  to  ascertain  clearly  their  ac- 
curacy, that  is,  the  truth  -^f  his  narrative. 
This  is  the  very  first  virtue  of  the  histor- 
ical character ;  and  that  merit,  therefore, 
is  fully  possessed  by  Gibbon.  In  it  he  is 
the  worthy  rival  of  Robertson,  and  in  it 
he  forms  a  remarkable  contrast  to  Hume. 


The  next  great  merit  of  Gibbon  is  the 
judgment  with  which  he  weighs  conflict- 
ing authorities  and  the  freedom  with 
which  he  rejects  improbable  relations. 
His  sagacity  is  remarkable;  and  his  at- 
tention seems  ever  awake.  .  .  .  The 
third  excellence  of  his  work  is  its 
varied  learning,  distributed  in  the  vast 
body  of  notes  which  accompany  the  text, 
and  which  contain  no  small  portion  of 
a  critical  abstract,  serving  for  a  cata- 
logue raisonne,  of  the  works  referred  to 
in  the  page.  ...  It  must,  lastly, 
be  allowed,  that  the  narrative  is  as  lucid 
as  the  confused  nature  of  the  subject  will 
admit;  and  that,  whatever  defects  may 
be  ascribed  to  it,  there  is  nothing  tiring 
or  monotonous,  nothing  to  prevent  the 
reader's  attention  from  being  kept  ever 
awake.  When  the  nature  of  the  subject 
is  considered,  perhaps  there  may  some 
doubt  arise,  if  the  ciiaster  style  of  Livy, 
of  Robertson,  or  even  of  Hume,  could 
have  rendered  this  story  as  attractive  as 
Gibbon's  manner,  singularly  free  from  all 
approach  to  monotony,  though  often  de- 
viating widely  from  simplicity  and  nature. 
— Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1845-6,  Lives 
of  Men  of  Letters  of  the  Time  of  George  IIL 

Every  intelligent  reader  felt  that  only 
a  most  uncommon  sagacity  could  have 
seen  through  the  confusion  of  the  chaotic 
variety  of  his  materials,  estimating  their 
claims  and  merits,  and  their  often  obscure 
relations  with  each  other.  So  far  from 
complaining  of  any  want  of  clearness  in 
the  narrative,  the  wonder  is,  that  he 
should  ever  have  been  able  to  subdue  them 
into  tolerable  harmony  and  order.  He 
seems  never  to  have  been  weary  of  search- 
ing into  the  endless  range  of  subjects 
presented,  balancing  authorities  and  deter- 
mining their  accuracy  with  a  precision  and 
faithfulness  which  few  will  venture  to  im- 
peach.— Peabody,  William  B.  0.,  1846- 
49,  Men  of  Letters  and  Science,  Article  IL, 
Literary  Remains,  ed.  Peabody,  p.  280. 

It  is  acknowledged  that  Gibbon  wTote 
with  a  preconceived,  speculative  object. 
Cold  design  overlays  every  page.  His 
work  is  rather  an  elegant  oration,  pro- 
nounced with  sustained  diction,  than  a  liv- 
ing picture  of  the  past.  The  order  into 
which  he  reduced  an  immense  quantity  of 
chaotic  material  is,  perhaps,  its  most 
striking  charm. — Tuckerman,  Henry  T., 
1849,  Characteristics  of  Literature,  p.  188, 


186 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


Fox  used  to  say  that  Gibbon's  history 
was  immortal,  because  nobody  could  do 
without  it ;  nobody,  without  vast  expense 
of  time  and  labour,  could  get  elsewhere 
the  information  which  it  contains.  1 
think,  and  so  Lord  Grenville  thought,  that 
the  introductory  chapters  are  the  finest 
part  of  that  history :  it  was  certainly  more 
difficult  to  write  them  than  the  rest  of  the 
work. — Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  ra6/e  Talk. 

There  is  no  more  solid  book  in  the  world 
than  Gibbon's  history.  Only  consider  the 
chronology.  It  begins  before  the  year 
one  and  goes  down  to  the  year  1453,  and 
is  a  schedule  or  series  of  schedules  of  im- 
portant events  during  that  time.  Scarcely 
any  fact  deeply  affecting  European  civili- 
sation is  wholly  passed  over,  and  the 
great  majority  of  facts  are  elaborately 
recounted.  Laws,  dynasties,  churches, 
barbarians,  appear  and  disappear.  Every- 
thing changes;  the  old  world — the  clas- 
sical civilisation  of  form  and  definition — 
passes  away,  a  new  world  of  free  spirit 
and  inward  growth  emerges ;  between  the 
two  lies  a  mixed  weltering  interval  of 
trouble  and  confusion,  when  everybody 
hates  everybody,  and  the  historical  student 
leads  a  life  of  skirmishes,  is  oppressed 
with  broils  and  feuds.  All  through  this 
long  period  Gibbon's  history  goes  with 
steady  consistent  pace;  like  a  Roman 
legion  through  a  troubled  country — hceret 
pede  pes;  up  hill  and  down  hill,  through 
marsh  and  thicket,  through  Goth  or  Par- 
thian— the  firm  defined  array  passes  for- 
ward—a type  of  order,  and  an  emblem  of 
civilisation.  Whatever  may  be  the  de- 
fects of  Gibbon's  history,  none  can  deny 
him  a  proud  precision  and  a  style  in 

marching    order  Gibbon's 

reflections  connect  the  events;  they  are 
not  sermons  between  them.  But,  not- 
withstanding, the  manner  of  the  "Decline 
and  Fall"  is  the  last  which  should  be  rec- 
ommended for  strict  imitation.  It  is  not 
a  style  in  which  you  can  tell  the  truth. 
A  monotonous  writer  is  suited  only  to 
monotonous  matter.  Truth  is  of  vari- 
ous kinds — grave,  solemn,  dignified,  petty, 
low,  ordinary ;  and  an  historian  who  has 
to  tell  the  truth  must  be  able  to  tell  what 
is  vulgar  as  well  as  what  is  great,  what  is 
little  as  well  as  what  is  amazing.  Gibbon 
is  at  fault  here. —  Bagehot,  Walter, 
1856,  Edward  Gibbon,  Literary  Studies, 
ed.  Hutton,  vol.  ii,  pp.  35,  36. 


''Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall"  has  now 
been  jealously  scrutinized  by  two  genera- 
tions of  eager  and  unscrupulous  oppo- 
nents ;  and  I  am  only  expressing  the  gen- 
eral opinions  of  competent  judges  when  I 
say  that  by  each  successive  scrutiny  it 
has  gained  fresh  reputation.  Against  his 
celebrated  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  chap- 
ters, all  the  devices  of  controversy  have 
been  exhausted ;  but  the  only  result  has 
been,  that  while  the  fame  of  the  historian 
is  untarnished,  the  attacks  of  his  ene- 
mies are  falling  into  complete  oblivion. 
The  work  of  Gibbon  remains ;  but  who  is 
there  who  feels  any  interest  in  what  was 
written  against  him?— Buckle,  Henry 
Thomas,  1857,  History  of  Civilization  in 
England,  vol.  I,  p.  308,  note. 

Guizot  and  Milman  have  both  subjected 
the  original  authorities,  consulted  by  Gib- 
bon in  his  history  of  the  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  to  the  intensest 
scrutiny,  to  see  if  the  historian  has  per- 
verted, falsified,  or  suppressed  facts. 
Their  judgment  is  in  favor  of  his  honesty 
and  his  conscientious  research.  Yet  this 
by  no  means  proves  that  we  can  obtain 
through  his  history  the  real  truth  of  per- 
sons and  events.  The  whole  immense 
tract  of  history  he  traverses  he  has  thor- 
oughly Gibbonized.  The  qualities  of  his 
character  steal  out  in  every  paragraph; 
the  words  are  instinct  with  Gibbon's 
nature ;  though  the  facts  may  be  obtained 
from  without,  the  relations  in  which  they 
are  disposed  are  communicated  from 
within;  and  the  human  race  for  fifteen 
centuries  is  made  tributary  to  Gibbon's 
thought,  wears  the  colors  and  badges  of 
Gibbon's  nature,  is  denied  the  possession 
of  any  pure  and  exalted  experiences 
which  Gibbon  cannot  verify  by  his  own ; 
and  the  reader,  who  is  magnetized  by  the 
historian's  genius,  rises  from  the  perusal 
of  the  vast  work,  informed  of  nothing  as 
it  was  in  itself,  iDut  everything  as  it  ap- 
peared to  Gibbon,  and  especially  doubting 
two  things, — that  there  is  any  chastity  in 
women,  or  any  divine  truth  in  Christianity. 
— Whipple,  Edwin  P.,  1857,  Character, 
Character  and  Characteristic  Men,  p.  27. 

The  student  must  have  perceived  at 
once  that  this  unbeliever,  however  he 
might  adopt  the  cant  of  the  philosophers, 
was  no  mere  philosophical  historian  in  the 
Hume  and  Voltaire  sense  of  the  word; 
that  he  had  devoted  intense  labour  to  his 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


187 


task ;  that  he  had  succeeded  in  presenting 
a  picture  of  the  past  ages  such  as  had  not 
been  presented  before.  He  might  detect 
many  sophisms  in  the  arguments  of  his 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  chapters.  But 
what  are  all  these  arguments  to  the  ac- 
tual vision  of  the  evils  of  human  society 
under  the  Christian  dispensation?  It  is 
these  that  give  the  special  pleas  for  sec- 
ondary causes  their  weight.  It  is  these 
that  tempt  to  the  notion  that  those  sec- 
ondary causes  were  many  of  them  not 
divine,  but  devilish.  If  that  conviction 
is  traly  followed  out,  Gibbon  himself  will 
be  the  best  of  preachers.  He  will  be  the 
brilliant  and  eloquent  witness  for  a  divine 
power  which  has  been  at  work  in  all  ages 
to  counteract  the  devilish  power ;  which 
has  been  stronger  to  support  a  righteous 
kingdom  on  earth  than  all  evil  influences, 
proceeding  from  those  who  call  them- 
selves divine  ministers,  have  been  to  de- 
stroy it.  But  if  his  reasoning  and  facts 
aro  merely  brought  face  to  face  with 
arguments,  to  prove  that  at  a  certain 
moment  there  was  launched  into  the  world, 
with  miraculous  sanctions,  a  religion  the 
outward  displays  of  which,  through  subse- 
quent ages,  have  been  so  mixed, — which 
has  apparently  prompted  so  many  evil 
deeds — the  result  must  be,  in  a  multitude 
of  cases,  a  negative  indifferent  scepticism, 
in  not  a  few,  a  positive  infidelity. — Mau- 
rice, Frederick  Denison,  1862,  Moral 
and  Metaphysical  Philosophy,  vol.  ii,  p.  600. 

He  did  not  write  expressly  against 
Christianity ;  but  the  subject  came  across 
his  path  in  travelling  over  the  vast  space 
of  time  which  he  embraced  in  his  magni- 
ficent "History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire."  It  is  a  subject  of 
regret  to  be  compelled  to  direct  hostile 
remarks  against  one  who  has  deserved  so 
well  of  the  world.  That  work,  though  in 
the  pageantry  of  its  style  it  in  some  sense 
reflects  the  art  and  taste  of  the  age  in 
which  it  was  written,  yet  in  its  love  of 
solid  information  and  deep  research  is  the 
noblest  work  of  history  in  the  English 
tongue.  Grand  alike  in  its  subject,  its 
composition,  and  its  perspective,  it  has  a 
right  to  a  place  among  the  highest  works 
of  human  conception;  and  sustains  the 
relation  to  history  which  the  works  of 
Michael  Angelo  bear  to  art. — Farrar, 
Adam  Storey,  1863,  A  Critical  History 
of  Free  Thought,  p.  196. 


Gibbon  has  planted  laurels  long  to  bloom 
Above  the  ruins  of  sepulchral  Rome. 
He  sang  no  dirge,  but  mused  upon  the  land 
Where  Freedom  took  his  solitary  stand. 
To  him  Thucydides  and  Livius  bow, 
And  Superstition  veils  her  wrinkled  brow. 
— Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1863,  He- 
roic Idyls,  with  Additional  Poems y  Works y 
vol.  VIII,  p.  351. 

The  famous  XVIth  chapter  of  Gibbon's 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire" 
was  assailed  furiously,  but  in  vain,  each 
assault  exposing  the  weakness  of  the  as- 
sailants ;  and  it  was  only  by  adopting  his 
history,  and  editing  it  with  judicious  notes, 
that  the  church  silenced  the  enemy  it 
could  not  crush.— Frothingham,  Octa- 
vius  Brooks,  1876,  Transcendentalism  in 
New  England,  p.  185. 

I  have  finished  Gibbon,  with  a  great 
deduction  from  the  high  esteem  I  have 
had  of  him  ever  since  the  old  Kirkcaldy 
days,  when  I  first  read  the  twelve  volumes 
of  poor  Irving' s  copy  in  twelve  consecu- 
tive days.  A  man  of  endless  reading  and 
research,  but  of  a  most  disagreeable 
style,  and  a  great  want  of  the  highest 
faculties  (which  indeed  are  very  rare)  of 
what  we  could  call  a  classical  historian, 
compared  with  Herodotus,  for  instance, 
and  his  perfect  clearness  and  simplicity 
in  every  part.  — Carlyle,  Thomas,  1877? 
Letters ;  Life  in  London,  ed.  Froude,  vol. 
II,  p.  395. 

A  man  of  genius ;  not  for  what  he  has 
done  for  history,  but  what  he  has  done 
for  literature,  in  showing  that  no  theme 
is  so  huge  but  that  art  may  proportion  it 
and  adorn  it  till  it  charms, — the  work 
which  lastingly  charms  being  always  and 
alone  the  proof  of  genius.  When  one 
turns  from  other  histories  to  his  mighty 
achievement,  one  feels  that  it  is  really  as 
incomparable  for  its  noble  manner  as  for 
the  grandeur  of  the  story  it  narrates. 
That  story  assumes  at  his  touch  the  majes- 
tic forms,  the  lofty  movement,  of  an  epic ; 
its  advance  is  rhythmical ;  in  the  strong 
pulse  of  its  antitheses  is  the  fire,  the  life 
of  a  poetic  sense ;  its  music,  rich  and  full, 
has  a  martial  vigor,  its  colors  are  the 
blazons  of  shields  and  banners. — Howells, 
WiLLiAxAi  Dean,  1878,  Edward  Gibbon^ 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  41,  p.  100. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  name  any  writer 
in  our  language,  especially  among  the  few 
who  deserve  to  be  compared  with  him, 


188 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


who  is  so  un-English,  not  in  a  bad  sense 
of  the  word,  as  implying  objectionable 
qualities,  but  as  wanting  the  clear  insular 
stamp  and  native  flavour.  If  an  intelli- 
gent Chinese  or  Persian  were  to  read  his 
book  in  a  French  translation,  he  would  not 
readily  guess  that  it  was  written  by  an 
Englishman.  It  really  bears  the  imprint 
of  no  nationality,  and  is  emphatically 
European.  .  .  .  An  indefinable  stamp 
of  weightiness  is  impressed  on  Gibbon's 
writing;  he  has  a  baritone  manliness 
which  banishes  everything  small,  trivial, 
or  weak.  When  he  is  eloquent  (and  it 
should  be  remembered  to  his  credit  that 
he  never  affects  eloquence,  though  he 
occasionally  affects  dignity), he  rises  with- 
out effort  into  real  grandeur.  On  the 
whole  we  may  say  that  his  manner,  with 
certain  manifest  faults,  is  not  unworthy  of 
his  matter,  and  the  praise  is  great. — Mori- 
son,  James  Cotter,  1878,  Gibbon  (Eng- 
lish Men  of  Letters),  pp.  26,  167. 

Gibbon's  ''Decline  and  Fall"  leaves  a 
reader  cold  who  cares  only  to  quicken  his 
own  inmost  being  by  contact  with  what 
is  most  precious  in  man's  spiritual  history ; 
one  chapter  of  Augustine's ' '  Confessions, ' ' 
one  sentence  of  the  "Imitation" — each  a 
live  coal  from  off  the  altar — will  be  of 
more  worth  to  such  an  one  than  all  the 
mass  and  laboured  majesty  of  Gibbon. 
But  one  who  can  gaze  with  a  certain  im- 
personal regard  on  the  spectacle  of  the 
world  will  find  the  "Decline  and  Fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire,"  more  than  almost 
any  other  single  book,  replenish  and  dilate 
the  mind.— DowDEN,  Edward,  1880, 
Southey  {English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  20. 

Though  Gibbon's  history  was  completed 
nearly  a  century  ago,  its  great  impor- 
tance has  not  declined,  and  it  is  probably 
still  entitled  to  be  esteemed  as  the  great- 
est historical  work  ever  written.  .  .  . 
The  minuteness  and  comprehensiveness 
of  Gibbon's  historical  knowledge  are 
somewhat  appalling  to  the  scholarship  of 
the  present  day.  ...  So  thorough 
were  his  methods  that  the  laborious  inves- 
tigations of  German  scholarship,  the  keen 
criticisms  of  theological  zeal,  and  the 
steady  researches  of  a  century  have 
brought  to  light  very  few  important  errors 
in  the  results  of  his  labours.  But  it  is  not 
merely  the  learning  of  the  work,  learned 
as  it  is,  that  gives  it  character  as  a  his- 
tory.   It  is  also  that  ingenious  skill  by 


which  the  vast  erudition,  the  boundless 
range,  the  infinite  variety,  and  the  gor- 
geous magnificence  of  the  details  are  all 
wrought  together  into  a  symmetrical 
whole.  Two  objections  to  Gibbon's  his- 
tory have  often  been  urged.  The  one  is 
to  the  stately  magnificence  of  his  style, 
the  other  to  his  strong  bias  against  Chris- 
tianity. In  both  of  these  objections  there 
is  considerable  reason.  The  majestic 
periods  with  which  the  author  describes 
even  the  least  important  events  are  a 
source  either  of  annoyance  or  of  amuse- 
ment to  nearly  every  modern  reader.  The 
other  characteristic  not  only  leads  the 
author  to  describe  the  origin  and  growth 
of  Christianity  without  sympathy,  but  it 
throws  a  gloomy  hue  over  the  whole,  and 
gives  to  events  as  they  pass  before  the 
reader  something  of  the  melancholy  pomp 
of  a  funeral  procession.  But  whatever 
objections  different  minds  may  raise,  either 
to  the  unbending  stateliness  of  his  style 
or  to  the  stinging  sarcasm  of  his  spirits, 
these  peculiarities  will  prevent  no  gen- 
uine scholar  from  studying  the  work  and 
profiting  by  it. — Adams,  Charles  Ken- 
dall, 1882,  A  Manual  of  Historical  Lit- 
erature, -p.  138. 

No  Christian,  therefore,  but  will  rejoice 
that,  with  its  great  faults  on  this  side,  a 
history  like  that  of  Gibbon  has  been  writ- 
ten ;  and  Christianity  needs  too  much  to 
have  its  infirmities,  as  a  human  product, 
displayed  for  its  own  correction,  to  quar- 
rel even  with  its  severest  censor  who  chal- 
lenges historical  evidence  for  his  accusa- 
tions. In  particular  allegations  Gibbon 
may  have  failed,  but  many  of  his  charges 
hit  some  weak  point,  where  Christianity 
is  the  better  for  the  criticism ;  and  if  his 
general  spirit  be  complained  of,  as,  for 
example,  in  his  sympathy  with  Moham- 
medanism rather  than  with  so  much  higher 
a  faith,  this  teaches  the  Church  of  Christ 
to  remember  its  own  corruption  as  the 
precursor  of  its  defeat,  while  there  is  no 
more  striking  moral  which  Gibbon  has  un- 
consciously helped  to  point  than  the  divine 
vitality,  as  since  tested,  of  the  one  relig- 
ion, while  the  other  has  been  sinking  into 
senility  and  exhaustion.  In  this  point 
of  view,  or  as  a  permanent  measure  of 
the  strength  and  enduring  resource  of 
Christianity,  the  celebrated  inquiry  of 
Gibbon  as  to  Secondary  Causes  of  the 
success  of    Christianity  has  a  special 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


189 


interest.— Cairns,  John,  1881,  Unbelief 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  113. 

If  you  want  to  know  where  the  world 
was,  and  how  it  fared  with  it  during  the 
first  ten  centuries  of  our  era,  read  Gibbon. 
No  other  writer  can  do  for  you  just  what 
he  does.  No  one  else  has  had  the  courage 
to  attempt  his  task  over  again.  The 
laborious  student  of  history  may  go  to  the 
many  and  obscure  sources  from  which 
Gibbon  drew  the  materials  for  his  great 
work,  and  correct  or  supplement  him  here 
and  there,  as  Milman  has  done ;  but  the 
general  reader  wants  the  completed  struc- 
ture, and  not  the  mountain  quarries  from 
which  the  blocks  came ;  and  the  complete 
structure  you  get  in  Gibbon.  To  omit  him 
is  to  leave  a  gap  in  your  knowledge  of  the 
history  of  the  world  which  nothing  else 
can  fill.  As  Carlyle  said  to  Emerson,  he 
"is  the  splendid  bridge  which  connects 
the  old  world  with  the  new;"  very  artifi- 
cial, but  very  real  for  all  that,  and  very 
helpful  to  any  who  have  business  that  way. 
The  case  may  be  even  more  strongly  stated 
than  that.  To  read  Gibbon  is  to  be  pres- 
ent at  the  creation  of  the  world — the 
modern  world.  .  .  .  Ruskin  objects 
to  Gibbon's  style  as  the  "worst  English 
ever  written  by  an  educated  Englishman. ' ' 
It  was  the  style  of  his  age  and  country 
brought  to  perfection,  the  stately  curvi- 
linear or  orbicular  style ;  every  sentence 
makes  a  complete  circle ;  but  it  is  always 
a  real  thought,  a  real  distinction  that 
sweeps  through  the  circle.  Modern  style 
is  more  linear,  more  direct  and  pictur- 
esque ;  and  in  the  case  of  such  a  writer  as 
Ruskin,  much  more  loose,  discursive  and 
audacious.  The  highly  artificial  buckram' 
style  of  the  age  of  Gibbon  has  doubtless 
had  its  day,  but  it  gave  us  some  noble  lit- 
erature, and  is  no  more  to  be  treated  with 
contempt  than  the  age  which  produced  it 
is  to  be  treated  with  contempt. —  Bur- 
roughs, John,  1886,  Ruskin' s  Judgment 
of  Gibbon  and  Darwin,  The  Critic,  May  1. 

Gibbon  has  a  good  deal  to  answer  for. 
You  can  find  nearly  every  fact  in  him,  but 
he  began  by  making  the  subject  ridicu- 
lous, by  trotting  out  some  absurd,  and,  if 
possible,  indecent  anecdote,  as  if  it  were 
a  summary  of  the  whole  reign.  It  is  that 
chapter  which  gives  the  impression,  and 
those  which  follow  never  take  it  away. 
I  believe  that  Pipin  was  made  patrician  by 
authority  of  Constantine  Kopronymos,  but 


that  Pope  Stephen  bamboozled  them  all 
round. — Freeman,  Edward  A.,  1888, 
Letter  to  Goldwin  Smith,  April  25 ;  Life 
and  Letters,  ed.  Stephens,  vol.  n,  p.  380. 

In  accuracy,  thoroughness,  lucidity,  and 
comprehensive  grasp  of  a  vast  subject, 
the  ' ' History' '  is  unsurpassable.  It  is  the 
one  English  history  which  may  be  regarded 
as  definitive.  The  philosophy  is  of  course 
that  of  the  age  of  Voltaire  and  implies  a 
deficient  insight  into  the  great  social 
forces.  The  style,  though  variously 
judged,  has  at  least  the  cardinal  merit  of 
admirable  clearness,  and  if  pompous  is 
always  animated.  Whatever  its  short- 
comings the  book  is  artistically  imposing 
as  well  as  historically  unimpeachable  as  a 
vast  panorama  of  a  great  period.  Gibbon's 
fortunate  choice  of  a  subject  enabled  him 
to  write  the  one  book  in  which  the  clear- 
ness of  his  own  age  is  combined  with  a 
thoroughness  of  research  which  has  made 
it  a  standard  for  his  successors. — Ste- 
phen, Leslie,  1890,  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  vol.  xxi,  p.  255. 

It  is  no  personal  paradox,  but  the  judg- 
ment of  all  competent  men,  that  the 
"Decline  and  Fall"  of  Gibbon  is  the  most 
perfect  historical  composition  that  exists 
in  any  language:  at  once  scrupulously 
faithful  in  its  facts ;  consummate  in  its  lit- 
erary art ;  and  comprehensive  in  analysis 
of  the  forces  affecting  society  over  a 
very  long  and  crowded  epoch.  In  eight 
moderate  volumes,  of  which  every  sen- 
tence is  compacted  of  learning  and  brim- 
ful of  thought,  and  yet  every  page  is  as 
fascinating  as  romance,  this  great  histo- 
rian has  condensed  the  history  of  the"  civ- 
ilised world  over  the  vast  period  of  four- 
teen centuries — linking  the  ancient  world 
to  the  modern,  the  Eastern  world  to  the 
Western,  and  marshalling  in  one  magnifi- 
cent panorama  the  contrasts,  the  relations, 
and  the  analogies  of  all.  If  Gibbon  has 
not  the  monumental  simplicity  of  Thucy- 
dides,  or  the  profound  insight  of  Tacitus, 
he  has  performed  a  feat  which  neither  has 
attempted.  "Survey  mankind,"  says  our 
poet,  "from  China  to  Peru!"  And  our 
historian  surveys  mankind  from  Britain  to 
Tartary,  from  the  Sahara  to  Siberia,  and 
weaves  for  one-third  of  all  recorded  time 
the  epic  of  the  human  race. — Harrison, 
Frederic,  1894,  Some  Great  Books  of 
History,  The  Meaning  of  History,  p.  101. 
A  great  work  then,  and  a  great  work 


190 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


now,  measured  by  what  standard  we  will. 
To  say  that  one  approaches  the  accuracy 
of  Gibbon  is  to  exhaust  praise;  to  say 
that  one  surpasses  him  in  reach  of  learn- 
ing is  to  deal  in  hyperbole. — Mitchell, 
Donald  G.,  1895,  English  Lands  Letters 
and  Kings,  Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges, 
p.  128. 

Gibbon  gave  a  new  impetus  to  the  study 
of  the  history  of  Roman  law  through  the 
celebrated  44th  chapter  of  his  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."  It  was 
translated  by  Professor  Hugo  of  Gottin- 
gen  and  Professor  Warnkonig  of  Liege, 
and  has  been  used  as  the  text-book  on 
Civil  Law  in  some  of  the  foreign  universi- 
ties. .  .  .  Herder,  Savigny,  and  Niebuhr 
stand  all  under  the  immediate  influence  of 
Gibbon,  and  Lessing  saw  in  him  kindred 
tendencies,  though  in  a  different  direction. 
— Merz,  John  Theodore,  1896,  A  His- 
tory of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  vol.  i,  p.  169,  note. 

Gibbon  was  the  first  to  write  a  complete 
history  on  the  largest  scale,  with  a  mag- 
nificent sense  of  proportion,  and  with  pro- 
found original  research ;  tracing  the  com- 
plex, stormy  evolution  of  the  modern 
world  out  of  the  ancient,  and  the  momen- 
tous transitions  from  polytheism  and  slav- 
ery to  monotheism  and  free  industry.  It 
is  the  history  of  civilization  during  thir- 
teen centuries.  The  vast  canvas  is  filled 
without  confusion,  without  apparent  effort, 
and  without  discord  by  one  glowing,  dis- 
tinct, harmonious  composition.  He  was 
not  a  philosophic  historian,  nor  did  he 
profess  the  profound  insight  of  Thucy- 
dides,  of  Tacitus,  of  Bacon,  or  of  Hume, 
into  the  springs  of  human  action ;  but  he 
was  great  in  research,  and  his  work  re- 
mains as  the  initial  triumph  of  a  great 
historical  method.  Allowing  for  manifest 
defects,  arising  from  its  ornate  and  elab- 
orate style;  from  his  perverse  miscon- 
ception of  Christianity ;  from  his  disbelief 
in  heroism,  in  popular  enthusiasm,  and  in 
self-devotion;  and  from  his  own  epicu- 
rean and  aristocratic  habit  of  mind,  his 
''Decline  and  Fall"  stands  alone  and  un- 
rivalled for  breadth,  knowledge,  unity  of 
conception,  and  splendour  of  form.  It 
resembles  the  stately,  solid,  irresistible 
march  of  a  Roman  Legion ;  and  is  charac- 
terized by  Niebuhr  as  the  greatest  achieve- 
ment of  human  thought  and  erudition  in 
the  department  of  history. —  Aubrey, 


W.  H.  S.,  1896,  The  Rise  and  Growth  of  the 
English  Nation,  vol.  ill,  p.  254. 

Permanently  established  its  author  in 
that  position  of  supremacy  as  a  historian 
of  which  each  succeeding  generation  ren- 
ders his  tenure  more  secure.  .  .  . 
On  the  merits  and  demerits  of  his  style 
it  cannot  be  pretended  that  the  same  con- 
sensus of  competent  opinion  prevails.  It 
has  been  reprehended  by  many  who  had 
some  right  to  criticise  it,  and  by  more 
who  had  not.  Coleridge,  whose  own  prose 
style,  with  all  its  eloquence,  left  much  to 
be  desired,  condemned  it  in  terms  so  ex- 
travagant as  to  discredit  the  critic  rather 
than  the  criticised ;  but  others,  reviewing 
it  with  less  bias,  and  expressing  them- 
selves with  more  moderation,  have  man- 
aged to  draw  up  a  pretty  long  list  of  ob- 
jections to  it.  It  has  been  pronounced 
monotonous,  inelastic,  affected,  pompous; 
it  has  been  called  exotic  in  its  spirit,  and 
un-English  in  its  structure.  The  most 
serious  of  these  charges  is,  perhaps  the 
second.— Traill,  Henry  Duff,  1896, 
Social  England,  vol.  v,  pp.  448,  449. 

One  who  is,  all  things  told  and  all  things 
allowed  for,  the  greatest  historian  of 
the  world. — Saintsbury,  George,  1896, 
Social  England,  ed.  Traill,  vol.  v,  p.  268. 

If  we  continue  Gibbon  in  his  fame,  it 
will  be  for  love  of  his  art,  not  for  worship 
of  his  scholarship.  We  some  of  us,  now- 
adays, know  the  period  of  which  he  wrote 
better  even  than  he  did ;  but  which  one  of 
us  shall  build  so  admirable  a  monument  to 
ourselves,  as  artists,  out  of  what  we  know  ? 
The  scholar  finds  his  immortality  in  the 
form  he  gives  to  his  work.  It  is  a  hard 
saying,  but  the  truth  of  it  is  inexorable : 
be  an  artist,  or  prepare  for  oblivion. — 
Wilson,  Woodrow,  1896,  Mere  Litera- 
ture, p.  22.' 

To  Edward  Gibbon,  who  timidly  depre- 
cated comparison  with  Robertson  and 
Hume,  criticism  is  steadily  awarding  a 
place  higher  and  higher  above  them.  He 
is,  indeed,  one  of  the  great  writers  of 
the  century,  one  of  those  who  exemplify 
in  the  finest  way  the  signal  merits  of  the 
age  in  which  he  flourished.  The  book  by 
which  he  mainly  survives,  the  vast  ''De- 
cline and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  be- 
gan to  appey  in  1776,  and  was  not  com- 
pleted until  i788.  It  was  at  once  discov- 
ered by  all  who  were  competent  to  judge, 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


191 


that  here  was  a  new  thing  introduced  into 
the  literature  of  the  world. — GossE,  Ed- 
mund, 1897,  Short  History  of  Modern 
English  Literature,  p.  258. 

Gibbon  excels  all  other  English  histo- 
rians in  symmetry,  proportion,  perspect- 
ive, and  arrangement,  which  are  also  the 
pre-eminent  and  characteristic  merits  of 
the  best  French  literature.  We  find  in 
his  writing  nothing  of  the  great  miscalcu- 
lations of  space  that  were  made  by  such 
writers  as  Macaulay  and  Buckle  ;  nothing 
of  the  awkward  repetitions,  the  confused 
arrangement,  the  semi-detached  and  dis- 
jointed episodes  that  mar  the  beauty  of 
many  other  histories  of  no  small  merit. 
Vast  and  multifarious  as  are  the  subjects 
which  he  has  treated,  his  work  is  a  great 
whole,  admirably  woven  in  all  its  parts. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  foreign  taste  may 
perhaps  be  seen  in  his  neglect  of  the  Saxon 
element,  which  is  the  most  vigorous  and 
homely  element  in  English  prose.  Prob- 
ably in  no  other  English  writer  does  the 
Latin  element  so  entirely  predominate. 
Gibbon  never  wrote  an  unmeaning  and 
very  seldom  an  obscure  sentence ;  he  could 
always  paint  with  sustained  and  stately 
eloquence  an  illustrious  character  or  a 
splendid  scene :  but  he  was  wholly  want- 
ing in  the  grace  of  simplicity,  and  a  mo- 
notony of  glitter  and  of  mannerism  is  the 
great  defect  of  his  style.  He  possessed, 
to  a  degree  which  even  Tacitus  and  Bacon 
had  hardly  surpassed,  the  supreme  liter- 
ary gift  of  condensation,  and  it  gives  an 
admirable  force  and  vividness  to  his  nar- 
rative ;  but  it  is  sometimes  carried  to  ex- 
cess. Not  unfrequently  it  is  attained 
by  an  excessive  allusiveness,  and  a  v.ide 
knowledge  of  the  subject  is  needed  to  en- 
able the  reader  to  perceive  the  full  im- 
port and  meaning  conveyed  or  hinted  at 
by  a  mere  turn  of  phrase.  But  though 
his  style  is  artificial  and  pedantic,  and 
greatly  wanting  in  flexibility,  it  has  a  rare 
power  of  clinging  to  the  memory,  and  it 
has  profoundly  influenced  English  prose. 
— Lecky,  William  Edward  Hartpole, 
1897,  Edward  Gibbon,  Library  of  the 
World's  best  Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol. 
XI,  p.  6273. 

The  author's  profits  for  the  "Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  by  Gib- 
bon, are  put  down  at  £10,000.— An- 
drews, William,  1898,  The  Earnings  of 
Authors,  Literary  Byways,  p.  56. 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY  . 

1790-1896 

Papa  has  read  us  several  parts  of  Mr. 
Gibbon's  Memoirs,  written  so  exactly  in 
the  style  of  his  conversation  that,  while 
we  felt  delighted  at  the  beauty  of  the 
thoughts  and  elegance  of  the  language,  we 
could  not  help  feeling  a  severe  pang  at 
the  idea  we  should  never  hear  his  instruct- 
ive and  amusing  conversation  any  more. 
— Holroyd,  Maria  Josepha,  1793,  Girl- 
hood, p.  273. 

The  most  important  part  consists  of 
Memoirs  of  Mr.  Gibbon's  life  and  writings, 
a  work  which  he  seems  to  have  projected 
with  peculiar  solicitude  and  attention,  and 
of  which  he  left  six  different  sketches, 
all  in  his  own  hand-writing.  One  of  these 
sketches,  the  most  diffuse  and  circum- 
stantial, so  far  as  it  proceeds,  ends  at  the 
time  when  he  quitted  Oxford.  Another 
at  the  year  1764,  when  he  travelled  to 
Italy.  A  third,  at  his  father's  death,  in 
1770.  A  fourth,  which  he  continued  to 
a  short  time  after  his  return  to  Lausanne 
in  1788,  appears  in  the  form  of  Annals, 
much  less  detailed  than  the  others.  The 
two  remaining  sketches  are  still  more  im- 
perfect. It  is  difficult  to  discover  the 
order  in  which  these  several  pieces  were 
written,  but  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  the  most  copious  was  the  last.  From 
all  these  the  following  Memoirs  have  been 
carefully  selected,  and  put  together. — 
Sheffield,  John  Lord,  1795,  ed.,  The 
Miscellaneous  Works  of  Edward  Gibbon, 
Introduction. 

The  private  memoirs  of  Gibbon  the  his- 
torian have  just  been  published.  In  them 
we  are  able  to  trace  with  considerable 
accuracy  the  progress  of  his  mind.  W' hile 
he  was  at  college,  he  became  reconciled 
to  the  Roman  Catholic  faith.  By  this 
circumstance  he  incurred  his  father's  dis- 
pleasure, who  banished  him  to  an  obscure 
situation  in  Switzerland,  where  he  was 
obliged  to  live  upon  a  scanty  provision, 
and  was  far  removed  from  all  the  cus- 
tomary amusements  of  men  of  birth  and 
fortune.  If  this  train  of  circumstances 
had  not  taken  place,  would  he  ever  have 
been  the  historian  of  the  ' '  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire  ?"  Yet  how  unusual 
were  his  attainments  in  consequence  of 
these  events,  in  learning,  in  acuteness  of 
research,  and  intuition  of  genius. — GOD- 
AVIN,  William,  1797,  The  Enquirer,  p.  25. 


192 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


We  are  now  "in  the  thick  and  bustle" 
of  living  biographers;  but  let  a  tribute 
of  literary  respect  be  paid  to  the  recent 
dead.  The  autobiography  of  Gibbon,  at- 
tached to  his  Posthumous  Works  edited 
by  Lord  Sheffield,  has  been  perhaps  the 
most  popular  production,  of  its  kind,  of 
modern  times.  It  is  winning  in  an  un- 
usual degree.  The  periods  flow  with  a 
sort  of  liquid  cadence.  The  facts  are 
beautifully  brought  together,  and  ingen- 
iously argued  upon ;  and  the  life  of  a  stu- 
dious Recluse  has  something  about  it  of 
the  air  of  a  romantic  Adventurer.  This 
is  attributable  to  the  charm — the  polish — 
the  harmony  of  the  style.  But  the  auto- 
biography of  Gibbon  is,  in  fact,  the  con- 
summation of  Art :  and  never  were  pages 
more  determinedly  and  more  elaborately 
written  for  the  admiration  of  posterity. — 
DiBDiN,  Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The 
Library  Companion,  p.  529. 

Read  Gibbon's  autobiography  again ;  it 
rouses  me  like  a  bugle. — Alexander, 
James  W.,  1825,  Familiar  Letters,  May 
28,  vol.  I,  p.  78. 

The  most  imposing  of  domestic  narra- 
tives, the  model  of  dignified  detail. — 
Bagehot,  Walter,  1856,  Edward  Gibbon, 
Literary  Studies,  ed.  Hutton,  vol.  ii,  p.  53. 

English  literature  is  rich  in  autobiog- 
raphy. It  has,  indeed,  no  tale  so  deep 
and  subtle  as  that  which  is  told  in  the 
"Confessions  of  St.  Augustine."  It  has 
no  such  complete  and  unreserved  unbosom- 
ing of  a  life  as  is  given  by  the  strange 
Italian,  Benvenuto  Cellini,  who  is  the 
prince  of  unconcealment.  But  there  is 
hardly  any  self-told  life  in  any  language 
which  is  more  attractive  than  the  autobi- 
ography of  Edward  Gibbon,  in  which  he 
recounts  the  story  of  his  own  career  in  the 
same  stately,  pure  prose  in  which  he  nar- 
rates the  "Decline  and  Fall  of  Rome." 
It  must  have  needed  a  great  faith  in  a 
man's  self  to  write  those  sonorous  pages. 
Two  passages  in  them  have  passed  into 
the  history  of  man.  One  is  that  in  which 
he  describes  how,  in  Rome,  on  the  15th 
of  October,  1764,  as  he  sat  musing  amid 
the  ruins  of  the  Capitol,  while  the  bare- 
footed friars  were  singing  vespers  in  the 
Temple  of  Jupiter,  the  idea  of  writing  the 
decline  and  fall  of  the  city  first  started  in 
his  mind.  The  other  is  the  passage  in 
which  the  great  historian  records  how,  on 
the  night  of  the  27th  of  June,  1787, 


between  the  hours  of  eleven  and  twelve,  he 
wrote  the  last  lines  of  the  last  page  in  a 
summer-house  at  Lausanne,  and  how  then, 
laying  down  his  pen, he  "took  several  turns 
in  a  berceau,  or  covered  walk  of  acacias, 
which  commanded  a  prospect  of  the  coun- 
try, the  lake,  and  the  mountains. "  The 
story  is  all  very  solemn  and  exalted.  It 
is  full  of  the  feeling  that  the  begin- 
ning and  ending  of  a  great  literary  work 
is  as  great  an  achievement  as  the  founda- 
tion and  completion  of  an  empire — as 
worthy  of  record  and  of  honor ;  and  as  we 
read  we  feel  so  too. — Brooks,  Phillips, 
1880-94,  Biography,  Essays  and  Ad- 
dresses, p.  440. 

He  had  written  a  magnificent  history  of 
the  Roman  Empire.  It  remained  to  write 
the  history  of  the  historian.  Accordingly 
we  have  the  autobiography.  These  two 
immortal  works  act  and  react  upon  one 
another ;  the  history  sends  us  to  the  auto- 
biography, and  the  autobiography  returns 
us  to  the  history.  ...  He  made  six 
different  sketches  of  the  autobiography. 
It  is  a  most  studied  performance,  and  may 
be  boldly  pronounced  perfect. — Birrell, 
Augustine,  1892,  Res  Judicatce,  p.  50. 

Lord  Sheffield  executed  his  editorial 
task  with  extreme  judgment,  singular  in- 
genuity, but  remarkable  freedom.  .  .  . 
Quite  a  third  of  the  whole  manuscript  is 
omitted,  and  many  of  the  most  piquant 
passages  that  Gibbon  ever  wrote  were 
suppressed  by  the  caution  or  the  delicacy 
of  his  editor  and  his  family.  The  result 
is  a  problem  of  singular  literary  interest. 
A  piece,  most  elaborately  composed  by 
one  of  the  greatest  writers  who  ever  used 
our  language,  an  autobiography  often  pro- 
nounced to  be  the  best  we  possess,  is  now 
proved  to  be  in  no  sense  the  simple  work 
of  that  illustrious  pen,  but  to  have  been 
dexterously  pieced  together  out  of  seven 
fragmentary  sketches  and  adapted  into  a 
single  and  coherent  narrative. — Shef- 
field, Earl  OF,  1896,  The  Autobiographies 
of  Edward  Gibbon,  Introduction,  p.  ix. 

It  is  one  of  the  best  specimens  of  self- 
portraiture  in  the  language,  reflecting 
with  pellucid  clearness  both  the  life  and 
character,  the  merits  and  defects,  of  its 
author.— Lecky,  William  Edward  Hart- 
pole,  1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best 
Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol.  xi,  p.  6278. 

All  critics  agree  that  Gibbon's  autobi- 
ography is  a  model  in  its  way. — Stephen, 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


193 


Leslie,  1998,  Studies  of  a  Biographer, 
vol.  I,  p.  148. 

Gibbon's  miscellaneous  work,  both  in 
English  and  French,  is  not  inconsiderable, 
and  it  displays  hispeculiar  characteristics ; 
but  the  only  piece  of  distinct  literary  im- 
portance is  his  ''Autobiography."  This, 
upon  which  he  seems  to  have  amused  him- 
self by  spending  much  pains,  was  left  un- 
settled for  press.  Edited  with  singular 
judgment  and  success  under  the  care  of 
his  intimate  friend  and  literary  executor 
Lord  Sheffield,  it  has  been  for  three  gen- 
erations one  of  the  favourite  things  of  its 
kind  with  all  good  judges,  and  is  likely 
to  continue  so  in  the  textus  receptus,  for 
which  the  fussy  fidelity  of  modern  literary 
methods  will  probably  try  in  vain  to  sub- 
stitute a  chaos  of  rough  drafts. — Saints- 
bury,  George,  1898,  A  Short  History  of 
English  Literature,  p.  626. 

If,  as  Johnson  said,  there  had  been  only 
three  books  ''written  by  man  that  were 
wished  longer  by  their  readers, ' '  the  eight- 
eenth'century  was  not  to  draw  to  its  close 
without  seeing  a  fourth  added.  With 
' '  Don  Quixote, "  " The  Pilgrim's  Progress' ' 
and  "Robinson  Crusoe,"  the  "Autobiog- 
raphy of  Edward  Gibbon"  was  henceforth 
to  rank  as  "a  work  whose  conclusion  is 
perceived  with  an  eye  of  sorrow,  such  as 
the  traveller  casts  upon  departing  day." 
It  is  indeed  so  short  that  it  can  be  read 
by  the  light  of  a  single  pair  of  candles ; 
it  is  so  interesting  in  its  subject,  and  so 
alluring  in  its  turns  of  thought  and  its 
style,  that  in  a  second  and  a  third  reading 
it  gives  scarcely  less  pleasure  than  in  the 
first.  Among  the  books  in  which  men 
have  told  the  story  of  their  own  lives  it 
stands  in  the  front  rank. — Hill,  George 
BiRKBECK,1900,eJ.  The  Memoirs  of  the  Life 
of  Edward  Gibbon,  Preface,  p.  v. 

LETTERS  AND  MISCELLANEOUS 
WORKS 
1796-1897 

I  shall  thus  give  more  satisfaction,  by 
employing  the  language  of  Mr.  Gibbon, 
instead  of  my  own;  and  the  public  will 
see  him  in  a  new  and  admirable  light,  as 
a  writer  of  letters.  By  the  insertion  of 
a  few  occasional  sentences,  I  shall  obviate 
the  disadvantages  that  are  apt  to  arise 
from  an  interrupted  narration.  A  preju- 
diced or  a  fastidious  critic  may  condemn, 
perhaps,  some  parts  of  the  letters  as 

13  c 


trivial ;  but  many  readers,  I  flatter  myself, 
will  be  gratified  by  discovering,  even  in 
these,  my  friend's  affectionate  feelings, 
and  his  character  in  familiar  life.  His 
letters  in  general  bear  a  strong  resem- 
blance to  the  style  and  turn  of  his  conver- 
sation :  the  characteristics  of  which  were 
vivacity,  elegance,  and  precision,  with 
knowledge  astonishingly  extensive  and 
correct.  He  never  ceased  to  be  instruct- 
ive and  entertaining ;  and  in  general  there 
was  a  vein  of  pleasantry  in  his  conversa- 
tion which  presented  its  becoming  lan- 
guid, even  during  a  residence  of  many 
months  with  a  family  in  the  country.  It 
has  been  supposed  that  he  always  arranged 
what  he  intended  to  say,  before  he  spoke ; 
his  quickness  in  conversation  contradicts 
this  notion :  but  it  is  very  true,  that  be- 
fore he  sat  down  to  write  a  note  or  letter, 
he  completely  arranged  in  his  mind  what 
he  meant  to  express. — Sheffield,  John 
Lord,  1795,  ed..  The  Autobiography  of 
Edward  Gibbon,  Illustrated  from  his  Let- 
ters with  Occasional  Notes  and  Narra- 
tives. 

On  the  style  and  spirit  of  Mr.  Gibbon's 
own  letters  it  were  vain  to  comment. 
They  rank  in  the  first  class  of  epistolary 
composition,  equally  honourable  to  the 
head  and  heart  of  the  writer.  Ease,  vig- 
our, spirit,  and  the  very  soul  of  friendship 
pervade  the  whole.  On  the  subject  of 
religion,  they  maintained  a  general 
silence,  which  was  obviously  the  effect  of 
indifference;  and  on  another  subject  they 
contain  nothing  that  would  put  a  V estal 
to  blush.  On  one  or  two  occasions,  how- 
ever, enough  is  disclosed  to  shew,  that 
with  the  proofs  of  Revelation,  Gibbon 
rejected  the  probabilities  of  natural  reli- 
gion. Born  with  a  constitution  naturally 
incredulous,  he  had  refined  it  into  a  sys- 
tematic rejection  of  almost  everything 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  senses ;  and  this 
state  of  the  understanding,  after  the  ex- 
ample of  his  school,  he  dignified  with  the 
name  of  Philosophy. — Whitaker,  T.  D., 
1815,  Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works,  Quar- 
terly Review,  vol.  12,  p.  384. 

I  have  finished  reading  the  first  volume 
of  "Gibbon's  Miscellaneous  Works, "pub- 
lished by  Lord  Sheffield.  Of  mere  worldly 
production,  it  is  the  most  interesting  that 
I  have  read  for  many  years,  more  espe- 
cially Gibbon's  own  memoirs  of  himself. 
I  have  been  acquainted  with  Lord  Sheffield 


194 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


above  forty  years,  and  more  than  once 
met  Gibbon  at  his  house;  and,  if  1  re- 
member rightly,  the  first  time  I  was  at 
Sheffield  Place,  which,  1  think,  was  in 
1770,  being  invited  by  him  on  my  adver- 
tising the  intentions  of  the  Eastern  tour. 
.  .  .  But,  alas !  the  whole  volume  has 
not  one  word  of  Christianity  in  it,  though 
many  which  mark  the  infidelity  of  the 
whole  gang.  Lord  Sheffield  never  had  a 
grain  of  religion,  and  his  intimate  con- 
nections with  Gibbon  would  alone  account 
for  it.— Young,  Arthur,  1816,  Autobiog- 
raphy, ed.,  Bethavi-EdwardSy  pp.  468,  469. 

His  letters  have  the  faults  of  his  con- 
versation ;  they  are  not  easy  or  natural ; 
all  is  constrained,  all  for  effect.  No  one 
can  suppose  in  reading  them  that  a  word 
would  have  been  changed,  had  the  writer 
known  they  were  to  be  published  the 
morning  after  he  dispatched  them,  and 
had  sent  them  to  the  printing-office  in- 
stead of  the  post-office. —  Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1845-6,  Lives  of  Men  of 
Letters  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

If  the  Memoirs  give  us  Gibbon  in  the 
full  dress  of  a  fine  gentleman  of  letters, 
the  correspondence  reveals  to  us  the  man 
as  he  was  known  to  his  valet  and  his 
housekeeper.  The  letters  have  the  ease 
and  freshness  of  conversations  with  inti- 
mate friends,  and,  considering  the  char- 
acter of  the  century  in  which  they  were 
written,  they  present  one  feature  which 
deserves  special  notice.  Only  one  short 
sentence  has  been  omitted  as  too  coarse 
to  be  printed.  With  this  solitary  excep- 
tion, the  reader  knows  the  worst  as  well 
as  the  best  of  Gibbon,  and  there  are 
scarcely  a  dozen  phrases,  scattered  over 
800  pages,  which  will  offend  good  taste  or 
good  feeling.— Prothero,  Rowland  E., 
1896,  ed.y  Private  Letters  of  Edward  Gib- 
bon, Preface,  vol.  I,  p.  xii. 

It  is  Gibbon's  letters  that  will  most  in- 
terest the  reader.  With  very  few  excep- 
tions, they  were  addressed  to  his  father, 
his  stepmother,  and  his  friend  Lord  Shef- 
field. The  character  of  the  man  shines 
in  them  all.  As  a  son  he  was  constantly 
dutiful,  devoted,  obedient,  and  sympa- 
thetic—Halsey,  Francis  W.,  1897,  The 
New  Memoirs  of  Gibbon,  The  Book  Buyer, 
vol.  14,  p.  178. 

Gibbon's  Letters  may  be  said  to  derive 
more  interest  from  him  than  he  derives 


from  them.  They  have  not  the  audacious 
fun  and  commanding  force  of  Byron's,  the 
full-blooded  eloquence  of  Burns's,  the 
manly  simplicity  of  Cowper's,  the  pro- 
found humour  and  pathos  of  Carlyle's. 
They  are  without  the  radiant  geniality  of 
Macaulay's.  They  do  not  touch  the  high 
literary  water-mark  of  Gray's.  They  ex- 
press the  mundane  sentiments  of  an 
earthly  sage,  in  love,  if  the  phrase  may 
be  pardoned,  with  peace  and  wealth.  The 
secret  of  the  charm  which  most  of  them 
undoubtedly  have  is  that  they  reveal  the 
inner  homely  side  of  the  richest  and  most 
massive  intellect  which  the  eighteenth 
century  produced.  Gibbon  was  an  inde- 
fatigable student,  and  so  far  as  he  could 
rise  to  enthusiasm,  an  enthusiastic  admirer 
of  Cicero.  Peahaps  the  rather  monotonous 
flow  of  the  Ciceronian  rhythm  is  too  evident 
in  his  prose.— Paul,  Herbert,  1897,  Gib- 
bon's Life  and  Letters,  The  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  41,  p.  304. 

But  now  that  we  have  the  intimate  re- 
cords of  his  daily  life  from  youth  to  death 
in  their  original  form,  one  wonders  anew 
how  so  gigantic  a  work  as  the  Decline 
and  Fall"  was  ever  completed  in  about 
sixteen  years  amidst  all  the  distractions 
of  country  squires,  London  gaieties,  Parlia- 
mentary and  official  duties,  interminable 
worries  about  his  family  and  property, 
social  scandals  and  importunate  friends. 
In  all  these  six  hundred  letters  there 
is  not  very  much  about  his  studies  and 
his  writings,  but  a  great  deal  about 
politics,  society,  and  pecuniary  cares.  We 
are  left  to  imagine  for  ourselves  when 
the  great  scholar  read,  how  he  wrote, 
and  why  he  never  seemed  to  exchange 
a  thought  with  any  student  of  his  own 
calibre  of  learning.  One  would  think 
he  was  a  man  of  fashion,  a  dilettante 
man  of  the  world,  a  wit,  a  bon  vivant, 
and  a  collector  of  high-life  gossip.  All 
this  makes  the  zest  of  his  ''Letters," 
which  at  times  seem  to  recall  to  us  the 
charm  of  a  Boswell  or  a  Horace  Walpole. 
The  world  can  now  have  all  the  fun,  as 
Maria  Holroyd  said.  But  it  leaves  us  with 
the  puzzle  even  darker  than  before — how 
did  Gibbon,  whose  whole  epoch  of  really 
systematic  study  hardly  lasted  twenty-five 
years,  acquire  so  stupendous  a  body  of 
exact  and  curious  learning? — Harrison, 
Frederic,  1897,  The  New  Memoirs  of 
Edward  Gibbon,  The  Forum,  vol.  22,  p.lhl. 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


195 


GENERAL 

I  prefer  your  style,  as  an  historian,  to 
that  of  the  two  most  renowned  writers  of 
history  the  present  day  has  seen.  That 
you  may  not  suspect  me  of  having  said 
more  than  my  real  opinion  will  warrant,  I 
will  tell  you  why.  In  your  style  I  see  no 
affectation.  In  every  line  of  theirs  I  see 
nothing  else.  They  disgust  me  always, 
Robertson  with  his  pomp  and  his  strut, 
and  Gibbon  with  his  finical  and  French 
manners.— Co WPER,  William,  1783,  To 
Rev.  John  Newton,  July  27 ;  Works,  ed. 
Southey,  vol.  ill,  p.  33. 

Though  his  style  is  in  general  correct 
and  elegant,  he  sometimes  draws  out  the 
thread  of  his  verbosity  finer  than  the 
staple  of  his  argument. ' '  In  endeavouring 
to  avoid  vulgar  terms  he  too  frequently 
dignifies  trifles,  and  clothes  common 
thoughts  in  a  splendid  dress  that  would 
be  rich  enough  for  the  noblest  ideas.  In 
short  we  are  too  often  reminded  of  that 
great  man,  Mr.  Prig,  the  auctioneer, 
whose  manner  was  so  inimitably  fine  that 
he  had  as  much  to  say  on  a  ribbon  as  on 
a  Raphael.— PoRSON,  Richard,  1790, 
Letters  to  Archdeacon  Travis. 

Heard  of  the  death  of  Mr.  Gibbon,  the 
calumniator  of  the  despised  Nazarene,  the 
derider  of  Christianity.  Awful  dispensa- 
tion! He  too  was  my  acquaintance. 
Lord,  I  bless  Thee,  considering  how  much 
infidel  acquaintance  I  have  had,  that  my 
soul  never  came  into  their  secret !  How 
many  souls  have  his  writings  polluted ! 
Lord  preserve  others  from  their  contagion ! 
—More,  Hannah,  1794,  Diary,  Jan.  19. 

None  of  the  cursed  Gibbonian  fine  writ- 
ing, so  fine  and  composite !  —  Lamb, 
Charles,  1800,  Letters,  ed.  Ainger,  March 
1,  vol.  I,  p.  115. 

I  hear  Gibbon's  artificial  style  still 
commended  by  a  few ;  but  it  is  his  matter 
which  preserves  him. — Brydges,  Sir  Sam- 
uel Egerton,  1824,  Recollections  of  For- 
eign  Travel,  July  20,  vol.  i,  p.  86. 

His  way  of  writing  reminds  one  of 
those  persons  who  never  dare  look  you 
full  in  the  face. — Whately,  Richard, 
1826,  Elements  of  Logic,  note. 

There  can  be  no  gainsaying  the  sentence 
of  this  great  judge.  To  have  your  name 
mentioned  by  Gibbon,  is  like  having  it 
written  on  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's.  Pil- 
grims from  all  the  world  admire  and 


behold  it.— Thackeray,  William  Make- 
peace, 1853,  The  English  Humourists  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century. 

Gibbon,  however  excellent  an  authority 
for  facts,  knew  nothing  about  philosophy, 
and  cared  less.  — Kixgsley,  Charles, 
1854,  Alexandria  and  her  Schools. 

Gibbon's  literary  ambition  was  never 
pure.  It  was  rather  a  longing  for  tempo- 
rary distinction  than  a  desire  to  become 
of  use  to  his  age  and  his  fellow  men.  He 
sought  fame  rather  as  a  means  of  personal 
advantage  than  for  any  great  and  noble 
purpose.  Even  his  love  for  literature  was 
never  that  high  and  honorable  passion 
which  filled  all  the  nature  of  Hume,  and 
he  seems  now,  abandoning  the  common 
professions  as  unsuited  to  his  habits,  to 
have  betaken  himself  to  his  studies  as  a 
means  of  self-aggrandizement,  rather  than 
as  the  source  of  purest  satisfaction. 
.  .  .  Gibbon  had  none  of  the  quali- 
ties of  a  good  biographer.  His  style, 
heavy  and  sonorous,  was  never  suited  to 
convey  the  delicate  painting  of  character, 
or  to  unfold  a  simple  tale  of  domestic  life 
and  manners.  .  .  .  Gibbon  is  of  all 
the  historians  the  most  learned.  His 
rivals,  Hume  and  Robertson,  by  whose 
side  he  modestly  refused  to  place  himself, 
sink  into  insignificance  before  the  vast 
range  of  his  acquirements.  But  his  learn- 
ing is  not  his  chief  excellence ;  his  highest 
was  that  he  was  suited  exactly  to  his 
theme.  By  nature,  by  the  inclination  of 
his  taste,  by  his  fondness  for  learned  dis- 
quisition, by  his  clear  method,  by  his 
grand  and  powerful  style,  by  his  imagina- 
tion rising  with  his  subject,  by  his  accu- 
racy and  honesty  of  research,  by  his  un- 
tiring labor,  and  above  all  by  his  single 
and  unfaltering  devotion  to  one  absorbing 
theme,  he  was  fitted  above  all  men  to  be- 
come the  historian  of  the  Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire. ' '  On  this  field 
he  can  never  have  a  rival.  There  may, 
perhaps,  be  written  a  history  of  England, 
possessing  greater  research  and  purer 
honesty,  if  not  the  simple  and  perfect 
manner  of  Hume ;  but  we  can  hope  for  no 
second  ''History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall 
of  Rome. ' '  The  subject  is  fully  occupied, 
and  like  the  Coliseum  or  the  Pyramids, 
Gibbon's  vast  work  must  stand  alone  for 
ever.— Lawrence,  Eugene,  1855,  The 
Lives  of  the  British  Historians,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
256,  262,  310. 


196 


EDWARD  GIBBON 


These  will  bring  him  to  Gibbon,  who 
will  take  him  in  charge  and  convey  him 
with  abundant  entertainment  down — with 
notice  of  all  remarkable  objects  on  the 
way — through  fourteen  hundred  years  of 
time.  He  cannot  spare  Gibbon,  with  his 
vast  reading,  with  such  wit  and  continuity 
of  mind,  that,  though  never  profound,  his 
book  is  one  of  the  conveniences  of  civiliza- 
tion, like  the  new  railroad  from  ocean  to 
ocean, —  and  I  think,  will  be  sure  to 
send  the  reader  to  his  ''Memoirs  of  Him- 
self," and  the  "Extracts  from  my  Jour- 
nal, ' '  and  ' '  Abstracts  from  my  Readings, '  ^ 
which  will  spur  the  laziest  scholar  to  emu- 
lation of  his  prodigious  performance. — 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  1870-83,  Books; 
Works,  Riverside  ed.,  vol.  vii,  p.  195, 

He  possessed  in  the  largest  measure 
the  author's  first  great  requisites — a  full 
command  of  words,  and  the  power  of  strik- 
ing out  fresh  combinations.  His  chief 
mechanical  peculiarities  are  an  excessive 
use  of  the  abstract  noun,  and  an  unusually 
abundant  employment  of  descriptive  and 
suggestive  epithets.  This  last  peculiarity 
is  the  main  secret  of  what  is  often  de- 
scribed as  the  * '  pregnancy' '  of  his  style ;  it 
forms  one  of  the  principal  arts  of  conden- 
sation, brevity,  compression.  He  conveys 
incidentally,  by  a  passing  adjective,  infor- 
mation that  Macaulay  would  have  set 
forth  in  a  special  sentence :  from  its  form, 
the  expression  seems  to  take  for  granted 
that  the  reader  is  already  acquainted  with 
the  facts  referred  to,  but  substantially  in 
an  allusive  way  it  adds  to  the  knowledge 
of  the  most  uninitiated.— MiNTO,  Wil- 
liam, 1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose 
Literature,  p.  480. 

His  English  the  worst  ever  written  by 
an  educated  Englishman. — Ruskin,  John, 
1886,  Pail-Mall  Magazine. 

He  is  retrogressive  in  the  matter  of  sen- 
tence-length. Only  10  per  cent,  of  his 
sentences  fall  below  the  15-mark.  His 
stately  and  sonorous  periods  have  a  har- 
mony of  their  own,  but  it  is  not  para- 
graph harmony.  His  sentences  have 
much  proportion,  his  paragraphs  little. 
We  admire  the  comprehensive  analysis  of 
the  discourse  into  chapters  and  para- 
graphs, but  we  do  not  quite  feel  that  the 
paragraph  is  an  organism.  It  is  a  well- 
defined  cage  in  which  the  splendid  sen- 
tence is  confined.  His  movement  is  not 
rapid,  but  the  sequence  is  in  general  sure. 


Demonstratives  are  numerous.  When  an 
introductory  pronoun  would  be  ambiguous 
he  adds  a  noun,  seldom  a  repeated  one, 
but  rather  a  synonym.  Inversions,  so  fre- 
quent in  Burke,  are  infrequent  here. 
Conjunctions  the  author  utterly  despises, 
depending  on  the  sheer  inertia  of  his  roll- 
ing sentences  to  carry  the  thought  ahead. 
No  other  writer  examined  shows  so  small 
a  list  of  sentence-connectives.  The  aban- 
donment of  them  is  Gibbon's  only  contri- 
bution to  the  development ;  and  it  may  be 
questioned  if  the  contribution  is  a  real  or  a 
permanent  one,  depending  as  it  does  on 
balance  in  the  sentence. — Lewis,  Edwin 
Herbert,  1894,  The  History  of  the  Eng- 
lish Paragraph,  p.  124. 

Just  in  so  far  as  Gibbon  was  not  so 
great  a  man  as  Johnson,  does  his  style  fall 
below  Johnson's  level.  The  strain  of 
affectation,  the  undue  elaboration,  the 
tone  of  artificial  irony  are  always  unduly 
marked  in  that  style.  But  the  massive- 
ness  of  Gibbon's  intellect,  the  largeness 
of  his  grasp,  his  unfailing  sense  of  liter- 
ary proportion,  the  fearless  vigour  of  his 
historical  conception, — all  these  are  too 
great  to  be  buried  beneath  the  affectation. 
He  towers  above  all  competitors  as  a  giant 
amongst  the  pigmies. — Craik,  Henry, 
1895,  ed.,  English  Prose,  Introduction,  vol. 
IV,  p.  10. 

To  those  who  insist  upon  extreme  orna- 
mentation, or  extreme  simplicity  of  style, 
Gibbon's,  of  course,  must  be  distasteful. 
But  to  those  who  judge  a  thing  by  its 
possession  of  its  own  excellences,  and  not 
by  its  lack  of  the  excellences  of  others, 
it  must  always  be  the  subject  of  an  im- 
mense admiration.  In  the  first  place  it  is 
perfectly  clear,  and  for  all  its  stateliness 
so  little  fatiguing  to  the  reader  that  true 
Gibbonians  read  it,  by  snatches  or  in  long 
draughts,  as  others  read  a  newspaper  or 
a  novel  for  mere  pastime.  Although  full 
of  irony  and  epigram  it  is  never  un- 
easily charged  with  either ;  and  the  nar- 
rative is  never  broken,  the  composition 
never  interrupted  for  the  sake  of  a  flour- 
ish or  a  ''point."  It  may  be  thought  by 
some  to  abuse  antithesis  of  sense  and  bal- 
ance of  cadence ;  but  I  should  say  myself 
that  there  is  fully  sufficient  variety  in  the 
sentences  and  in  the  paragraph  arrange- 
ment to  prevent  this.  —  Saintsbury, 
George,  1895,  English  Prose,  ed.  Craikf 
vol.  IV,  p.  458. 


107 


Sir  William  Jones 

1746-1794. 

Born,  in  Westminster,  28  Sept.  1746.  At  Harrow  School,  1753-64.  Matric,  Univ. 
ColL,  Oxford,  15  March  1764;  Scholar,  31  Oct.  1764;  Fellow,  1766;  B.  A.,  1768; 
M.  A.,  1773.  Private  tutor  to  Lord  Althorp,  1765-70.  F.  K.  S.,  1772.  Mem.  of 
Literary  Club,  1773.  Called  to  Bar  at  Middle  Temple,  1774.  Commissioner  of  Bank- 
ruptcy, 1776.  Judge  of  High  Court  at  Calcutta,  1783-94.  Knighted,  19  March  1783. 
Married  Anna  Maria  Shipley,  April  1783.  Arrived  at  Calcutta,  Dec.  1783.  Founded 
Bengal  Asiatic  Soc,  Jan.  1784.  Edited  ''The  Asiatic  Miscellany,"  1787.  Wife 
returned  to  Europe,  owing  to  ill-health,  Dec.  1793.  He  died,  at  Calcutta,  27  April 
1794.  Buried  there.  Works :  ''Traite  sur  la  Poesie  Orientale, "  1770 ;  ''Dissertation 
sur  la  litterature  Orientale,"  (anon.),  ]771;  "Grammar  of  the  Persian  Language," 
1771;  "Lettre  a  Monsieur  a  *  *  *  du  P.  *  *  *"  (anon.),  1771;  "Poems,  consisting 
chiefly  of  translations  from  the  Asiatick  Languages"  (anon.),  1772;  "Poeseos  Asiaticse 
Commentariorum  libri  sex,"  1774;  "A  Dialogue  between  a  Country  Farmer  and  a 
Gentleman"  (anon),  1778;  "A  Speech."  1780;  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Legal  Mode  of 
Suppressing  Riots"  (anon.),  1780;  "An  Essay  on  the  Law  of  Bailments,"  1781 ;  "The 
Muse  Recalled,"  1781;  "An  Ode  in  imitation  of  Alcseus"  (anon.),  (1782);  "The 
Principles  of  Government"  (anon.),  1782;  "A  Letter  to  a  Patriot  Senator"  (anon.), 
1783;  "On  the  Orthography  of  Asiatick  Words, "  1784.  "On  the  Gods  of  Greece,  Italy 
and  India, "  1785  ;  " On  the  Hindus, ' '  1786  ;  " On  the  Arabs, "  1787 ;  "On  the  Tartars, ' ' 
1788;  "On  the  Persians,"  1789;  "On  the  Chinese,"  1790;  "On  the  Borderers, 
Mountaineers  and  Islanders  of  Asia,"  1791 ;  "On  the  Origin  and  Families  of  Nations," 
1792 ;  "On  Asiatick  History, ' '  1793 ;  " On  the  Philosophy  of  the  Asiaticks, ' '  1794.  He 
translated:  "Life  of  Nader  Shah"  (into  French),  1770  (English  version,  1773) ;  "The 
Moallakat,"  1782;  "The  Mahom.edan  Law  of  Succession, "  1782 ;  "Sacontala,"  1789; 
"Al-Sirajiyyah,  or  Mahomedan  Law  of  Inheritance,"  1792;  Manu's  "Institutes,"  1796. 
Collected  Works:  "Works,"  ed.  by  A.  M.  Jones  (6  vols.),  1799;  two  supplemental 
vols. ,  1801 ;  "  Poetical  Works, ' '  1810 ;  ' '  Discourses,  etc. , "  1821 .  Life :  ' '  Memoirs, ' ' 
by  Lord  Teignmouth,  1804.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English 
Authors,  p.  151. 

PERSONAL  of  character  and  abilities  was  extensive : 

I  knew  him  from  the  early  age  of  eight  he  liberally  rewarded  those  by  whom  he 
or  nine,  and  he  was  always  an  uncommon  was  served  and  assisted,  and  his  dependents 
boy.  Great  abilities,  great  particularity  were  treated  by  him  as  friends.  Under 
of  thinking,  fondness  for  writing  verses  this  denomination,  he  has  frequently  men- 
and  plays  of  various  kinds,  and  a  degree  tioned  in  his  works  the  name  of  Bahman, 
of  integrity  and  manly  courage,  of  which  a  native  of  Yezd,  and  follower  of  the 
I  remember  many  instances,  distinguished  doctrines  of  Zoroaster,  whom  he  retained 
him  even  at  that  period.  I  loved  him  and  in  his  pay,  and  whose  death  he  often  ad- 
revered  him,  and,  though  one  or  two  years  verted  to  with  regret.  Nor  can  I  resist 
older  than  he  was,  was  always  instructed  the  impulse  which  I  feel  to  repeat  an 
by  him  from  my  earliest  age.  In  a  word,  anecdote  of  what  occurred  after  his 
I  can  only  say  of  this  amiable  and  wonder-  demise ;  the  pundits  who  were  in  the  habit 
ful  man,  that  he  had  more  virtues,  and  less  of  attending  him,  when  I  saw  them  at  a 
faults,  than  I  ever  yet  saw  in  any  human  public  durbar,  a  few  days  after  that  melan- 
being ;  and  that  the  goodness  of  his  head,  choly  event,  could  neither  refrain  their 
admirable  as  it  was,  was  exceeded  by  that  tears  for  his  loss,  nor  find  terms  to  express 
of  his  heart.  I  have  never  ceased  to  ad-  their  admiration  at  the  wonderful  progress 
mire  him  from  the  moment  I  first  saw  him ;  which  he  had  made,  in  the  sciences  which 
and  my  esteem  for  his  great  qualities,  and  they  professed.  —  Teignmouth,  Lord, 
regret  for  his  loss,  will  only  end  with  my  1804,  The  Life  of  Sir  William  Jones,  vol. 
life.  —  Bennet,   William  (Bishop   of    ii,  p.  306. 

Asaph,  November.  associated,  not  only  with  the  splendour  of 

His  intercourse  with  the  Indian  natives    a  great  reputation,  but  with  almost  all  the 


198 


SIR  WILLIAM  JONES 


amiable  and  exemplary  virtues;  and  the 
gentler  affections,  which  were  a  little 
chilled  by  the  aspect  of  his  vast  literary 
attainments,  are  won  sweetly  back,  and 
rest  with  delight  upon  the  view,  which  is 
here  exhibited,  of  the  purity,  the  integrity, 
and  the  mildness,  of  his  private  manners. 
His  life,  indeed,  seems,  from  his  earli- 
est youth,  not  only  to  have  been  undefiled 
by  those  coarser  blemishes  of  excess  and 
debauchery,  which  are  generally  excluded 
by  an  addiction  to  letters,  but  to  have  been 
distinguished  for  all  that  manly  exertion, 
and  varied  activity,  which  so  rarely  escapes 
unimpaired  from  the  langour  of  an  aca- 
demical retirement ;  while  it  was  adorned 
by  the  polished  manners  and  elegant  ac- 
complishments which  are  still  more  fre- 
quently neglected  by  the  man  of  business 
and  the  scholar.  The  most  remarkable 
features  in  his  character,  indeed,  seem  to 
have  resulted  from  the  union  of  this  gentle- 
ness and  modesty  of  disposition,  with  a 
very  lofty  conception  of  his  own  capability 
and  destination.  Without  ever  appearing 
to  presume  upon  the  force  of  his  genius 
or  the  vigour  of  his  understanding,  he  seems 
to  have  thought  nothing  beyond  the  reach 
of  his  industry  and  perseverance. — Jef- 
frey, Francis  Lord,  1805,  Lord  Teign- 
mouth's  Life  of  Sir  W.  Jones,  Edinburgh 
Review,  vol.  5,  p.  329. 

^'Know  him,  sir  exclaimed  the  friend 
of  his  boyhood,  Samuel  Parr, — who,  with 
all  his  pompous  affectation,  had  a  warm 
heart  under  his  Roman  mail,  — * '  Know  him, 
sir !  Who  did  not  know  him  ?  Who  did 
not  bend  in  devout  respect  at  the  variety 
and  depth  of  his  learning,  the  integrity  of 
his  principles,  and  the  benevolence  of  his 
heart?" — Barker,  Edmund  Henry,  1828- 
29,  Parriana,  p,  322. 

When  I  entered  the  Temple  [1782],  Sir 
William  Jones  was  in  high  fame  as  a 
commentator  and  translator  of  Oriental 
poetry,  and  as  a  classical  scholar ;  but  the 
lawyers,  rightly  or  wrongly,  held  him  in 
little  estimation  for  his  skill  in  their  own 
profession ;  nor  was  he  considered  then  to 
have  the  talents  of  an  original  writer.  I 
had  not  the  good  luck  to  be  acquainted 
with  him,  nor  even  to  know  his  person. — ■ 
— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834, 
Autobiography,  vol.  I,  p.  190. 

His  acquaintance  with  the  history, 
philosophy,  laws,  religion,  science,  and 
manners  of  nations,  was  most  extensive 


and  profound.  As  a  linguist,  he  has 
scarcely,  if  ever,  been  surpassed ;  he  had 
made  himself  acquainted  with  no  fewer 
than  twenty-eight  different  languages,  and 
was  studying  the  grammars  of  several  of 
the  Oriental  dialects  up  to  within  a  week 
of  his  lamented  death.  In  accordance 
with  a  determination  to  which  we  have 
already  referred,  he  perfected  himself  in 
Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  French,  Spanish, 
Portuguese,  Hebrew,  Arabic,  Persian, 
Turkish,  German  and  English;  made  him- 
self master  of  Sanscrit,  and  less  com- 
pletely of  Hindostanee  and  Bengalee,  and 
also  of  the  dialects  called  the  Tibetian, 
the  Pali,  the  Phalavi,  and  the  Deri.  The 
other  languages  which  he  studied  more  or 
less  completely  were  the  Chinese,  Russian, 
Runic,  Syriac,  Ethiopic,  Coptic,  Dutch, 
Swedish,  and  Welsh. — Seymour,  Charles 
C.  B.,  1858,  Self-Made  Men,  p.  477. 

GENERAL 
He  too,  whom  Indus  and  the  Ganges  mourn, 
The  glory  of  their  banks,  from  Isis  torn, 
In  learning's  strength  is  fled,  in  judgment's 
prime, 

In  science  temp'rate,  various,  and  sublime; 
To  him  familiar  every  legal  doom. 
The  courts  of  Athens,  or  the  halls  of  Rome, 
Or  Hindoo  Yedas  taught ;  for  him  the  Muse 
Distill'd  from  every  flow'r  Hyblaean  dews; 
Firm,  when  exalted,  in  demeanour  grave, 
Mercy  and  truth  were  his,  he  lov'd  to  save. 
His  mind  collected;  at  opinion's  shock 
Jones  stood  unmov'd,  and  from  the  Christian 
rock, 

Coelestial  brightness  beaming  on  his  breast, 
He  saw  the  Star,  and  worshipp'd  in  the  East. 
— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1794-98,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  424. 

The  death  of  this  great  man  is  an  irrep- 
arable loss  to  Christianity,  to  science, 
and  to  literature. —  Drake,  Nathan, 
1798-1820,  Literary  Hours,  No.  xxix,  vol. 
II,  p.  122,  note. 

I  close  with  a  retrospect  of  the  works 
of  Sir  William  Jones,  who,  by  establishing 
the  affinity  between  the  Indian  language 
and  the  Latin,  Greek,  German,  and  Persian, 
first  threw  a  light  on  this  obscure  study, 
and  consequently  on  the  earliest  popular 
history  which  before  his  time  was  every- 
where dark  and  confused.  Yet  he  has 
extended  the  affinity  to  some  other  in- 
stances infinitely  less  important,  tracing 
back  the  exhaustless  abundance  of  lan- 
guage to  three  chief  families — the  Indian, 
Arabic,  and  Tartar;  and,  finally,  after 


SIR  WILLIAM  JONES 


199 


having  himself  so  finely  exhibited  the  total 
difference  of  the  Arabic  and  Indian  lan- 
guages, seeking,  from  a  love  of  unity,  to 
derive  all  from  one  common  source:  I 
have,  therefore,  been  unable  to  adhere 
closely  in  every  particular  to  this  excellent 
and  learned  man,  since  his  arguments 
being  directed  to  support  an  opposite 
theory,  would  unquestionably  militate 
against  my  own  opinions. — Schlegel, 
Frederick  von,  1808,  On  the  Indian 
Language,  Literature  and  Philosophy^  tr. 
Millington,  p.  464. 

The  doctrine  of  bailments  (which  lies 
at  the  foundation  of  the  law  of  ship- 
ments) was  almost  struck  out  at  a  single 
heat  by  Lord  Holt  who  had  the  good 
sense  to  incorporate  into  the  English 
code  that  system  which  the  text  and  the 
commentaries  of  the  civil  law  had  already 
built  up  on  the  continent  of  Europe. 
What  remained  to  give  perfect  symmetry 
and  connexion  to  all  the  parts  of  that 
system,  and  to  refer  it  to  its  principles, 
has  been  accomplished  in  our  times  by  the 
incomparable  essay  of  Sir  William  Jones, 
a  man,  of  whom  it  is  difficult  to  say,  which 
is  most  worthy  of  admiration,  the  splen- 
dour of  his  genius,  the  rareness  and  extent 
of  his  acquirements,  or  the  unspotted 
purity  of  his  life.  Had  he  never  written 
any  thing  but  his  ' '  Essay  on  Bailments, ' ' 
he  would  have  left  a  name  unrivalled 
in  the  common  law,  for  philosophical 
accuracy,  elegant  learning,  and  finished 
analysis.  Even  cold  and  cautious  as  is  the 
habit,  if  not  the  structure,  of  a  profes- 
sional mind,  it  is  impossible  to  suppress 
enthusiasm,  when  we  contemplate  such  a 
man. —  Story,  Joseph,  1817,  Hoffman's 
Course  of  Legal  Study,  North  American 
Review,  vol.  6,  p.  46. 

In  the  course  of  a  short  life.  Sir  William 
Jones  acquired  a  degree  of  knowledge 
which  the  ordinary  faculties  of  men,  if 
they  were  blest  with  antediluvian  lon- 
gevity, could  scarcely  hope  to  surpass. 
His  learning  threw  light  on  the  laws  of 
Greece  and  India,  on  the  general  literature 
of  Asia,  and  on  the  history  of  the  family 
of  nations.  He  carried  philosophy,  elo- 
quence, and  philanthropy  into  his  charac- 
ter of  a  lawyer  and  a  judge.  Amid  the 
driest  toils  of  erudition,  he  retained  a 
sensibility  to  the  beauties  of  poetry,  and 
a  talent  for  transfusing  them  into  his  own 
language,  which  has  seldom  been  united 


with  the  same  degree  of  industry.  Had 
he  written  nothing  but  the  delightful  ode 
from  Hafiz, 

"Sweet  maid,  if  thou  wouldst  charm  my 
sight," 

it  would  alone  testify  the  harmony  of  his 
ear,  and  the  elegance  of  his  taste.  When 
he  went  abroad,  it  was  not  to  enrich  him- 
self with  the  spoils  of  avarice  or  ambition ; 
but  to  search,  amid  the  ruins  of  Oriental 
literature,  for  treasures  which  he  would 
not  have  exchanged 

"For  all  Bokhara's  gold, 
Or  all  the  gems  of  Samarcand." 
It  is,  nevertheless,  impossible  to  avoid 
supposing,  that  the  activity  of  his  mind 
spread  itself  in  too  many  directions  to  be 
always  employed  to  the  best  advantage. 
The  impulse  that  carried  him  through  so 
many  pursuits,  has  a  look  of  something 
restless,  inordinate,  and  ostentatious. 
Useful  as  he  was,  he  would  in  all  prob- 
ability have  been  still  more  so,  had  his 
powers  been  concentrated  to  fewer  ob- 
jects. His  poetry  is  sometimes  elegant ; 
but  altogether,  it  has  too  much  of  the  florid 
luxury  of  the  East.— Campbell,  Thomas, 
1819,  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets. 

To  the  name  of  poet,  as  it  implies  the 
possession  of  an  inventive  faculty.  Sir 
William  Jones  has  but  little  pretension. 
He  borrows  much ;  and  what  he  takes  he 
seldom  makes  better.  Yet  some  portion 
of  sweetness  and  elegance  must  be  allowed 
him.  In  the  hymns  to  the  Hindu  deities, 
the  imagery  which  is  derived  chiefly  from 
Eastern  sources,  is  novel  and  attractive. 
—Gary,  Henry  Francis,  1821-45,  Lives 
of  English  Poets,  p.  384. 

Need  I  dwell  a  moment  on  the  recom- 
mendation of  the  works  of  Sir  William 
Jones?  .  .  .  A  scholar, a  critic, philosopher, 
lawyer,  and  poet, — where  shall  we  find,  in 
the  work  of  the  same  man,  greater  demon- 
stration of  pure  and  correct  feelings,  and 
cultivated  and  classical  taste,  than  in  the 
volumes  here  noticed  and  recommended  ? 
The  piety  of  Sir  William  Jones  was  not 
inferior  to  his  learning.  A  thoroughly 
good  and.great-minded  man, — his  caution, 
humility,  and  diffidence  were  equal  to  his 
learning  and  multifarious  attainments; 
and  there  is  a  vigour  and  raciness  in  his 
translations  of  Persian  poetry  which  give 
them  the  enchanting  air  of  original  pro- 
ductions.— DiBDLN,  Thomas  Frognall, 
1824,  Library  Companion,  p.  413,  note. 


200 


JONES— COLMAN 


The  professional  acquirements  of  Sir 
William  Jones  were  undoubtedly  of  a  very 
high  order.  He  commenced  the  study  of 
the  law  at  a  later  period  of  life  than  is 
usual ;  and  he  brought  with  him  to  the 
task  powers  of  mind  polished  to  the  finest 
brilliancy  by  unremitting  exercise,  and 
tempered  and  proved  in  a  variety  of  pur- 
suits. With  these  advantages,  he  applied 
himself  to  the  study  of  his  profession  as  to 
that  of  a  science,  resting  upon  principles, 
and  to  be  mastered,  like  other  sciences, 
by  an  exact  and  orderly  method.  His 
''Essay  on  the  Law  of  Bailments"  affords 
an  instance  of  the  logical  manner  in  which 
his  mind  was  accustomed  to  deal  with 
legal  subjects;  and  it  has  been  already 
stated  that  he  had  treated  several  other 
branches  of  the  law  upon  the  same  model. 
His  acquaintance  with  legal  writers  was 
doubtless  very  extensive ;  and  his  admira- 
ble memory  enabled  him  to  preserve  the 
greater  portion  of  whatever  he  pursued. 
As  a  judge  his  character  stood  stainless 
and  unreproached.— RoscoE,  Henry,  1830, 
Lives  of  Eminent  British  Lawyers,  p.  327. 

There  are  few  authors  to  whom  Oriental 
literature  is  under  more  deep  obligations 
than  to  Sir  William  Jones;  few  who, 
like  him,  have  not  merely  pointed  out 
original  and  important  sources  of  knowl- 
edge, but  contributed  in  no  inconsidera- 
ble degree  to  render  them  accessible.  He 
was  equally  remarkable  for  his  ardour 
and  industry  in  philological  pursuits,  from 
a  very  early  period  of  his  life,  until  its 
premature  and  lamented  close. — Wels- 
FORD,  Henry,  1845,  On  Origin  and  Ram- 
ifications of  the  English  Language. 

The  Admirable  Crichton  of  his  day.  .  .  . 
The'  poetry  of  Sir  William  Jones  is  very 


sonorous  and  imposing ;  and  in  his  happiest 
efforts  there  is  not  wanting  nobleness  of 
thought,  or  glow  of  passion,  as  well  as 
pomp  of  words.  He  cannot,  however,  be 
called  a  poet  of  an  original  genius ;  any 
peculiarty,  of  inspiration  that  may  seem  to 
distinguish  some  of  his  compositions  is 
for  the  most  part  only  the  Orientalism  of 
the  subject,  and  of  the  figures  and  images. 
He  is  a  brilliant  translator  and  imitator 
rather  than  a  poet  in  any  higher  sense. — 
Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Compendious 
History  of  English  Literature,  vol.  ii. 

Many  Englishmen,  notably  Warren  Hast- 
ings, who  had  spent  long  years  in  India, 
had  become  profoundly  versed  in  the  lan- 
guages and  literature  of  the  country ;  but 
they  were  too  much  occupied  with  the 
practical  work  of  administration  to  em- 
body their  knowledge  and  researches  in 
literary  and  scientific  form.  Jones,  on 
the  other  hand,  came  to  India  with  a  mind 
imbued  not  only  with  enthusiasm  for 
oriental  studies,  but  with  a  wider  knowl- 
edge of  classical  and  other  literatures  than 
men  sent  to  India  in  their  early  manhood 
ordinarily  possessed.  Moreover,  he  could 
express  himself  in  writing  with  rapidity 
and  elegance.  No  subject  was  too  abstruse 
or  too  trifling  for  Jones  to  investigate. 
Hindu  chronology,  music,  and  chess  were 
all  studied  and  described  by  him.  He 
planned  an  exhaustive  work  on  the  botany 
of  India,  and  paid  attention  to  the  local 
zoology.  The  famous  asoka  tree  of  Indian 
mythology  and  poetry  is  known  to  botan- 
ists as  Jonesia  asoka  and  was  so  named  by 
Dr.  William  Roxburgh  (1759-1815)  in 
honor  of  Sir  William  Jones. — Stephens, 
H.  Morse,  1892,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xxx,  p.  175. 


George  Colman 

The  Elder 
1732-1794. 

Born,  in  Florence,  March  (or  April?),  1732.  At  Westminster  School,  1746-51. 
To  Ch.  Ch.,  Oxford,  5  June  1751;  B.  A.,  18  April  1755;  M.  A.,  18  March  1758. 
Contributed  to  **The  Student,"  1751;  to  Hawkesworth's  ''The  Adventurer,"  Sept. 
1753;  ed.  *'The  Connoisseur,"  with  Bonnell  Thornton,  Jan.  1754  to  Sept.  1756. 
Called  to  Bar  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  1755.  On  Oxford  Circuit,  1759.  Farce,  'Tolly  Honey- 
combe,"  produced  atDrury  Lane,  5  Dec.  1760;  "The  Jealous  Wife"  produced,  12  Feb. 
1761.  Started  "St  James's  Chronicle,"  with  Bonnell  Thornton  and  Garrick,  1761.  .  .  . 
Purchased  Covent  Garden  Theatre  (with  Powell,  Harris,  and  Rutherford),  and  opened" 
it,  14  Sept.  1767.  Married  Miss  Ford,  1767  (?);  she  died,  29  March  1771.  .  .  .  Resigned 
management,  26  May  1774,  and  retired  to  Bath.  Contrib.  a  series  of  papers  called  "The 
Gentleman"  to  "The  London  Packet,"  July  to  Dec.  1775.   A  version  of  Ben  Jonson's 


GEORGE  COLMAN 


201 


"Epicoene,''  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  13  Jan.  1776;  ''The  Spleen,*'  7  March,  1776; 
''New  Brooms,"  21  Sept.  1776.  Manager  of  Haymarket,  1777-85.  .  .  .  Pall-bearer  at 
Dr.  Johnson's  funeral,  20  Dec,  1784.  Paralytic  stroke,  1785.  Mind  gradually  gave 
wav.  Died,  in  Paddington,  14  Aug.  1794.  Buried  in  vaults  of  Kensington  Church. 
Works:  'Tolly  Honeycombe"  (anon.),  1760;  "Ode  to  Obscurity"  (anon.),  1760; 
"The  Jealous  Wife,"  1761;  "Critical  Reflections  on  the  Old  English  Draraatick 
Writers"  (anon.),  1761;  "The  Clandestine  Marriage"  (with  Garrick),  1761;  "The 
Musical  Lady"  (anon.),  1762;  "The  Deuce  is  in  Him"  (anon.),  1763;  "Terrse  Filius" 
(4  nos.,  anon.),  1764;  "The  English  Merchant,"  1767;  "T.  Harris  Dissected,"  1768; 
"True  State  of  the  Differences,  etc., "  1768  (2nd  edn.  same  year) ;  "Occasional  Prelude," 
1768;  "The  Portrait,  (anon.;  date  misprinted  MCCCLXX.),  1770;  "Man  and  Wife" 
(anon.),  1770;  "The  Oxonian  in  Town"  (anon.),  1769;  "The  Fairy  Prince"  (anon.), 
1771 ;  "The  Man  of  Business,"  1774;  "The  Spleen,"  1776;  "The  Occasional  Prelude," 
1776;  "New  Brooms,"  1776;  "Dramatic  Works,"  1777;  "A  Fairy  Tale"  (adapted, 
with  Garrick,  from  "A  Mid-summer  Night's  Dream"),  1777;  "The  Sheep-shearing" 
(adapted  from  "Winter's  Tale"),  1777;  "The  Manager  in  Distress,"  1780;  "Prose 
on  Several  Occasions,"  1787;  "Tit  for  Tat"  (anon.),  1788;  "Ut  Pictura  Poesis," 
1789.  Posthumous :  "Some  Particulars  of  the  Life  of  the  late  George  Colman,  written 
by  himself '  (ed.  by  R.  Jackson),  1795 ; ' '  Miscellaneous  Works, ' '  1797.  He  translated  : 
Terence's  "Comedies,"  1765;  Horace's  "Art  of  Poetry,"  1783;  and  edited:  "Poems 
by  Eminent  Ladies"  (with  Bonnell  Thornton),  1755;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's 
"Philaster,"  with  alterations,  1763;  "Comus,"  altered  from  Milton,  1772;  Jonson's 
"Epicoene,"  with  alterations,  1776;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  "Dramatic  Works," 
1778;  Foote's  "Devil  Upon  Two  Sticks,"  1778;  Foote's  "Maid  of  Bath,"  1788; 
Foote's  "The  Nabob."  1778;  Foote's  "A  Trip  to  Calais,"  1778;  Lillo's  "Fatal 
Curiosity, "  with  alterations,  1783.  Life :  In  Peake's  "Memoirs  of  the  Colman  Family," 
1841.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  63. 


PERSONAL 

My  Dear  Sir.— I  have  this  moment 
taken  a  peep  at  the  house,  for  the  author 
of  Polly  Hon.  The  pit  and  galleries  are 
crammed — the  boxes  full  to  the  last  rows 
— and  every  thing  as  you  and  1  could  wish 
for  our  friend.  I  am  most  happy  about 
it,  and  could  not  help  communicating  it  to 
one  I  so  much  love  and  esteem.  Pray  let 
me  see  you  at  your  arrival — the  second 
music — and  time  for  me  to  put  on  my 
fool's  coat.  Yours  ever  and  most  affec- 
tionately.—Garrick,  David,  1760,  Letter 
to  Colman,  Dec.  31. 

And  Colman  too,  that  little  sinner. 

That  essay  weaver,  drama  spinner, 

Too  much  the  comic  sock  will  use, 

For  'tis  the  law  must  find  him  shoes; 

And  though  he  thinks  on  fame's  wide  ocean 

He  swims,  and  has  a  pretty  notion, — 

Inform  him,  Lloyd,  for  all  his  grin. 

That  Harry  Fielding  holds  his  chin. 

—Colman,  George,  1763,  Cobbler  of 
Cripplegate's  Letter  to  Robert  Lloyd,  A.  M., 
St.  James's  Magazine,  April. 

He  is  one  of  the  best  tempered  (though 
I  believe  very  passionate)  of  men,  lively, 
agreeable,  open-hearted,  and  clever. — 
BuRNEY,  Frances,  1771,  Early  Diary,  ed. 
Ellis,  vol.  I,  p.  105. 


I  correspond  again  with  Colman,  and 
upon  the  most  friendly  footing,  and  find 
in  his  instance,  and  in  some  others,  that  an 
intimate  intercourse  which  has  been  only 
casually  suspended,  not  forfeited  on  either 
side  by  outrage,  is  capable  not  only  of 
revival,  but  improvement. — Cowper,  Wil- 
liam, 1786,  Letter  to  Joseph  Hill,  June  9 ; 
Life  by  Hay  ley,  vol.  i,  p.  116. 

They  never  admitted  Colman  as  one  of 
the  set ;  Sir  Joshua  did  not  invite  him  to 
dinner.  If  he  had  been  in  the  room  Gold- 
smith would  have  flown  out  of  it,  as  if  a 
dragon  had  been  there.  I  remember 
Garrick  once  saying,  "D — n  his  dishclout 
face !  His  plays  would  never  do,  if  it  were 
not  for  my  patching  them  up  and  acting  in 
them."  Another  time  he  took  a  poem  of 
Colman' s  and  read  it  backwards  to  turn 
it  into  ridicule.  Yet  some  of  his  pieces 
keep  possession  of  the  stage,  so  that  there 
must  be  something  in  them. — Northcote, 
James,  1826-27,  Conversations,  ed.  Haz- 
litt,  p.  402. 

His  case  was  simply  this ;  that  he  had 
gout  in  his  habit,  which  had  been  indicated 
so  slightly,  that  he  neglected  the  hints  to 
take  care  of  himself  which  nature  had 
mildly  thrown  out.    Cold   bathing  is 


202 


GEORGE  COLMAN 


perhaps  one  of  the  most  dangerous  luxu- 
ries in  which  an  elderly  man  can  indulge, 
when  so  formidable  an  enemy  is  lurking  in 
his  constitution.  The  gout  having  been  re- 
pelled by  repeated  submersion  in  the  sea, 
not  only  paralyzed  the  body,  but  distem- 
pered the  brain,  and  Reason  was  subverted. ' 
But,  from  the  earliest  sparks  of  his  dis- 
order at  the  end  of  1785,  till  it  blazed 
forth  unequivocally  in  June,  1789,  an  in- 
terval of  rather  more  than  three  years 
and  a  half,  and  again  from  the  last  men- 
tioned year  to  the  time  of  his  decease,  tliere 
was  nothing  of  that  ''second  childish- 
ness and  mere  oblivion,"  which  his  biog- 
raphers have  attached  to  his  memory. 
The  assertion  that  his  gradually  increasing 
derangement  left  him  in  "a  state  of  idiot- 
ism,"  is  directly  the  reverse  of  fact.  His 
mind,  instead  of  having  grown  progres- 
sively vacant  till  it  became  a  blank,  was,  in 
the  last  stages  of  his  malady,  filled,  like 
a  cabalistic  book,  with  delusions,  and 
crowded  with  the  wildest  flights  of  morbid 
fancy ;  it  was  always  active,  always  on  the 
stretch ;  and,  so  far  from  his  exhibiting 
that  moping  fatuity  which  obscured  the 
last  sad  and  silent  days  of  Swift,  it  might 
have  been  said  of  him,  "how  pregnant 
sometimes  his  replies  are!  a  happiness 
which  reason  and  sanity  would  not  so 
prosperously  be  delivered  of." — Colman, 
George  (The  Younger),  1830,  Random 
Records. 

GENERAL 

I  believe  his  Odes  sell  no  more  than 
mine  did,  for  I  saw  a  heap  of  them  lie  in 
a  bookseller's  v;indow,  who  recommended 
them  to  me  as  a  very  pretty  thing. — 
Gray,  Thomas,  1760,  Letter,  July. 

I  have  read  Colman's  "Ars  Poetica;" 
he  is  much  too  negligent  a  versifier,  but 
easy  and  elegant. — More,  Hannah,  1783, 
Letter  to  Her  Sister,  Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts, 
vol.  I,  p.  165. 

It  is  very  much  to  the  credit  of  that 
excellent  writer  Mr.  Colman,  that,  while 
other  dramatists  were  lost  in  the  fashion 
of  sentiment,  his  comedies  always  present 
the  happiest  medium  of  nature ;  without 
either  affectation  of  sentiment,  or  affecta- 
tion of  wit.  That  the  able  translator  of 
Terence  should  yet  have  sufficient  force  of 
mind  to  keep  his  own  pieces  clear  of  the 
declamatory  dullness  of  that  ancient,  is 
certainly  a  matter  deserving  of  much 
applause.    The  "Jealous  Wife,"  and  the 


"Clandestine  Marriage,"  with  others  of 
his  numerous  dramas,  may  be  mentioned 
as  the  most  perfect  models  of  comedy  we 
have:  to  all  the  other  requisites  of  fine 
comic  writing  they  always  addjust  as  much 
sentiment  and  wit  as  does  them  good. 
This  happy  medium  is  the  most  difficult  to 
hit  all  composition,  and  most  declares  the 
hand  of  a  master.— Pinkerton,  John 
(Robert  Heron),  1785,  Letters  of  Liter- 
ature, p.  47. 

This  elegant  simplicity  of  Terence  has 
met  with  an  admirable  vehicle  in  the  well 
chosen  and  familiar  blank  verse  of  Colman. 
— Drake,  Nathan,  1798-1820,  Literary 
Hours,  No.  XXIX,  vol.  n,  p.  120. 

This  comedy,  by  Colman  the  elder,  was 
written  in  his  youth;  and,  though  he 
brought  upon  the  stage  no  less  than 
twenty-five  dramas,  including  those  he 
altered  from  Shakspeare  and  other  writers, 
subsequent  to  this  production,  yet  not  one 
of  them  was  ever  so  well  received  by  the 
town,  or  appears  to  have  deserved  so  well, 
as  "The  Jealous  Wife."  To  this  obser- 
vation, "The  Clandestine  Marriage,"  may 
possibly  be  an  exception;  but,  in  that 
work,  Mr.  Garrick  was  declared  his  joint 
labourer.  It  therefore  appears,  that  Mr. 
Colman' s  talents  for  dramatic  writing 
declined,  rather  than  improved,  by  ex- 
perience— ^or,  at  least,  his  ardour  abated  ; 
and  all  works  of  imagination  require,  both 
in  conception  and  execution,  a  degree  of 
enthusiasm.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Oakly  is,  in- 
deed, so  complete  a  character  from  life, 
and  so  ably  adapted  to  the  stage  by  the 
genius  of  the  writer,  that,  performed  by 
an  actress  possessed  of  proper  abilities 
for  the  part,  the  play  might  be  well  sup- 
ported, were  the  wit,  humor,  and  repartee, 
of  every  other  character  in  the  piece 
annihilated.— Inchbald,  Elizabeth,  1808, 
ed.,  The  Jealous  Wife,  The  British  Theatre, 
vol.  I. 

In  respect  to  the  report  of  Garrick 
having  written  the  entire  character  of  Lord 
Ogleby,  my  father  once  told  me  that  it 
was  not  true ;  that,  as  an  instance  to  the 
contrary,  he  (my  father)  wrote  the  whole 
of  Ogleby's  first  scene.  He  also  informed 
me  that  one  of  Garrick's  greatest  merits 
in  this  work  (and  it  is  a  very  good  one) 
was  planning  the  incidents  in  the  last  act ; 
the  alarm  of  the  families,  through  the 
means  of  Mrs.  Heidelberg  and  Miss  Ster- 
ling, and  bringing  forward  the  various 


GEORGE  COLMAN 


203 


characters  from  their  beds  to  produce  an 
explanation,  and  the  catastrophe.  I  re- 
gret that  when  my  father  imparted  this, 
1  did  not  make  further  inquiry ;  but  I  was 
then  ''a  moonish  youth,"  and  troubled  my 
head  little  or  nothing  about  the  matter. 
He  always  talked,  however,  of  the  play  as 
a  joint  production.  ...  It  would  be 
strange  if  Garrick  robbed,  or  were  acces- 
sory to  his  colleague's  robbing  his  friend 
Townley.  In  the  two  pieces,  there  may 
be  some  coincidence,  without  theft;  but 
the  ground  work  of  "The  Clandestine  Mar- 
riage" was  professedly  suggested  by 
Hogarth's  prints.  At  the  worst,  there  is 
no  great  literary  crime  in  catching  hints, 
if  any  were  caught,  from  an  apparently 
stillborn  farce,  and  improving  upon  them 
in  a  play  of  lasting  vitality. — Colman, 
George  ^(The  Younger),  1820,  On  The 
Clandestine  Marriage. 

His  abilities  as  a  dramatist  were  not 
more  the  subject  of  praise,  than  his  punc- 
tuality as  a  manager,  and  his  liberal  en- 
couragement to  other  writers  for  the 
stage.  From  the  lamentable  condition 
into  which  he  had  sunk,  both  mentally  and 
bodily,  his  death  must  have  been  considered 
a  happy  release.  A  few  hours  before 
he  expired,  he  was  sized  with  violent 
spasms,  and  these  were  succeeded  by  mel- 
ancholy stupor,  in  which  he  drew  his  last 
breath.  .  .  .  These  dramas  have  considera- 
ble merit.  In  his  petite  pieces  the  plots  are 
simple,  yet  they  contain  strong  character, 
and  aim  at  ridiculing  fashionable  and  pre- 
vailing follies.  His  comedies  have  the 
same  merit  with  the  others,  as  to  the  pre- 
servation of  character.  The  estimation 
in  which  the  entertainments  exhibited 
under  his  direction  were  held  by  the 
public,  the  reputation  which  the  Hay- 
market  Theatre  acquired,  and  the  con- 
tinual concourse  of  the  fashionable  world 
during  the  height  of  summer,  sufficiently 
spoke  the  praises  of  Mr.  Colman's  manage- 
ment.— Peake,  Richard  Brinsley,  1841, 
Memoirs  of  the  Colman  Family^  vol.  ii, 
p.  220. 

Among  the  respectable  dramatists  of 
this  period  who  exerted  an  influence  in 
leading  the  public  taste  away  from  the 
witty  and  artificial  schools  of  the  Restora- 
tion, the  two  Colmans  deserve  mention. — 
COPPEE,  Henry,  1872,  English  Literature, 
p.  366. 

In  1760  he  produced  a  farcical  piece  in 


one  act,  entitled  "Polly  Honeycombe,"  in 
which  the  novel-reading  propensities  of 
the  young  ladies  of  the  age  were  good- 
humouredly  satirised.  Honeycombe  was 
the  pseudonym  of  the  editor  of  the  "Royal 
Female  Magazine,"  which  was  chiefly 
made  up  of  the  silliest  and  most  vapid 
sentimental  novels.  The  skit  was  a  com- 
plete success ;  but  the  author,  on  account 
of  his  relations  with  his  uncle  Bath,  did 
not  consider  it  prudent  to  declare  himself. 
Early  in  the  ensuing  year  he  placed  "The 
Jealous  Wife"  in  Garrick's  hands;  the 
underplot  and  the  characters  of  Russet, 
Charles,  Lord  Trinket,  and  Lady  Freelove 
were  borrowed  from  "Tom  Jones,"  but 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Oakley  and  the  Major  are 
original  creations.  Probably  the  absurd 
side  of  jealousy  has  never  been  more 
felicitously  ridiculed  than  in  the  best 
scenes  of  this  comedy ;  but  it  appears  to 
have  gone  through  much  revision,  pruning, 
and  condensation  from  the  manager's  pen 
before  it  assumed  its  present  shape. 
Garrick  himself  played  Oakley,  but  he 
was  not  much  at  home  in  the  part,  and  its 
success  on  the  first  night,  which  during 
the  earlier  part  of  the  performance  seemed 
rather  doubtful,  was  ascribed  entirely  to 
Mrs.  Pritchard's  fine  acting  as  the  wife. 
The  comedy  is  still  familiar  to  old  play- 
goers, and  perhaps  the  two  leading  charac- 
ters were  never  more  admirably  performed 
than  they  were  some  few  years  ago  at 
Drury  Lane  by  Phelps  and  Mrs.  Hermann 
Vezin.— Baker,  H.  Barton,  1881,  George 
Colman,  Elder  and  Younger,  Belgravia, 
vol.  46,  p.  189. 

Colman  was  a  man  of  tact,  enterprise, 
and  taste;  his  plays  are  ingenious  and 
occasionally  brilliant,  and  more  than  one 
of  them  remains  on  the  acting  list.  The 
characters  are  as  a  rule  well  drawn,  and 
types  of  living  eccentricity  are  w-ell  hit 
off.— Knight,  Joseph,  1887,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  ed.  Stephen,  vol. 
XI,  p.  393. 

It  occurred  to  Garrick  and  to  George 
Colman  that  an  entertaining  drama  might 
be  drawn  up  on  the  lines  of  Hogarth's 
"Marriage  a  la  Mode,"  and  the  result  of 
their  joint  labours  was  "The  Clandestine 
Marriage"  (1766),  a  play  now  wholly  neg- 
lected, but  worthy  of  revival  as  much  on 
the  stage  as  in  the  study. — GossE,  Edmund, 
1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  318. 


204 


Susanna  Blamire 

1747-1794. 

Miss  Susanna  Blamire  was  born  at  Cardew  Hall,  near  Carlisle,  and  remained  there 
from  the  date  of  her  birth  (1747)  till  she  was  twenty  years  of  age,  when  she  accom- 
panied her  sister — who  had  married  Colonel  Graham  of  Duchray,  Perthshire — to  Scot- 
land, and  continued  there  some  years.  She  became  enamoured  of  Scottish  music  and 
poetry,  and  thus  qualified  herself  for  writing  such  sweet  lyrics  as  "The  Nabob"  and 
''What  ails  this  heart  o'  mine?"  On  her  return  to  Cumberland,  she  wrote  several 
pieces  illustrative  of  Cumbrian  manners.  She  died  unmarried  in  1794.  Her  poetical 
pieces,  some  of  which  had  been  floating  through  the  country  in  the  form  of  popular 
songs,  were  collected  by  Mr.  Patrick  Maxwell,  and  published  in  1842. — Gilfillan, 
George,  1860,  ed.  The  Less-Known  British  Poets,  vol.  iii,  p.  290. 


PERSONAL 

Of  graceful  form,  somewhat  above  the 
middle  size,  and  a  countenance — though 
slightly  marked  with  the  smallpox — 
beaming  with  good  nature.  Her  dark 
eyes  sparkled  with  animation,  and  won 
every  heart  at  the  first  introduction. — 
Maxwell,  Patrick,  1842,  ed..  Poems  of 
Susanna  Blamire, 

Judging  from  her  portrait,  and  from 
descriptions  which  are  extant  of  the  per- 
son of  Sukey  Blamire  (whose  sister  Sarah 
was  one  of  the  greatest  beauties  in 
Cumberland),  we  gather  that  she  was 
slightly  marked  from  small-pox,  but  not 
so  much  as  to  disfigure  her  features  or 
mar  her  complexion.  She  had  berry- 
brown  hair,  of  which  she  professed  to  be 
very  vain.  She  wore  it  thrown  back  from 
her  high  forehead,  and  hanging  down  on 
her  shoulders  in  a  long  roll,  formed  of  one 
thick  curl,  disposed  with  studied  negli- 
gence somewhat  in  the  style  of  the  present 
day.  Her  nose  was  large,  and  too  pro- 
nounce, but  her  mouth  was  very  sweet  in  its 
firmness,  and  her  eyes  and  brows  were  fine. 
She  was  tall  and  slender,  with  a  shapely 
neck,  bust,  and  shoulders.  Her  dress  (in 
the  portrait)  is  a  marvel  of  simple  ele- 
gance. The  body  of  the  gown  is  cut  square 
and  low,  with  a  full  white  edging  around 
the  bosom.  A  single  rose  is  worn  at  one 
side. — Tytler,  Sarah  and  Watson, J.  L., 
1871,  The  Songstresses  of  Scotland,  vol.  i, 
p.  243. 

Susanna  Blamire^s  life  was  uneventful, 
and  there  are  scarcely  any  records  of  it 
left.  She  lived  in  an  obscure  part  of  Eng- 
land amongst  her  own  relatives,  and  her 
correspondence  has  not  been  preserved. 
Her  poems  were  fugitives  pieces,  some  of 
which  appeared  in  magazines,  but  were 
never  signed  by  her  name.  They  were  not 
collected  till  long  after  her  death,  when 


her  memory  had  'almost  faded  away,  and 
personal  details  were  vague.  She  is  de- 
scribed as  of  "graceful  form,  somewhat 
above  the  middle  size,  and  a  countenance, 
though  slightly  marked  with  the  small- 
pox, beaming  with  good  nature ;  her  dark 
eyes  sparkled  with  animation. "  Her  coun- 
try neighbours  called  her  a  "bonnie  and 
varra  lish  young  lass."  She  lived  among 
the  rustics,  entered  into  their  enjoyments, 
and  sympathized  with  their  troubles.  She 
was  fond  of  society,  and  was  in  great  re- 
quest at  the  "merrie-neets,"  or  social 
gatherings,  where  she  mixed  with  every 
class.  A  good  farmer  said  sadly  after  her 
death:  "The  merrie-neets  won't  be  worth 
going  to  since  she  is  no  more."  The 
genuine  gaiety  and  sprightliness  of  her 
disposition  may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that 
if  she  met  a  wandering  musician  on  the 
road  she  was  known  to  dismount  from  her 
pony,  ask  for  the  music  of  a  jig,  and  dance, 
till  she  was  weary,  on  the  grass. — Creigh- 
TON,  Mandell,  1886,  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  vol.  v,  p.  191. 

GENERAL 

The  characteristics  of  Miss  Blamire's 
poetry  are  considerable  tenderness  of  feel- 
ing, very  gracefully  expressed,  and  a 
refined  delicacy  of  imagination,  which, 
whilst  it  never  thrills,  always  pleases. 
Her  poem  called  "The  Nabob,"  which 
describes  the  return  of  an  Indian  adven- 
turer to  the  home  of  his  youth,  is  a  very 
effecting  and  delightful  production.  Her 
songs,  though  not  without  marks  of  elab- 
oration, display  great  simplicity  and  force 
of  feeling.— RowTON,  Frederic,  1848, 
The  Female  Poets  of  Great  Britain,  p.  237. 

Susanna  Blamire  reached  by  keen  obser- 
vation what  Lady  Nairne  arrived  at  in- 
stinctively. As  a  result  which  might  be 
looked  for  from  the  two  processes.  Lady 
Nairne's  studies  of  ploughmen,  fish-wives. 


BLAMIRE— BRUCE 


205 


and  gude-wives  have  more  of  the  \diVgQ, 
framework  of  common  humanity,  are  more 
delicate  and  idealised ;  while  Susanna 
Blamire's  are  narrower,  and  more  literal. 
— Tytler,  Sarah,  and  Watson,  J.  L., 
1871,  The  Songstresses  of  Scotland,  vol.  i, 
p.  238. 

Susanna  Blamire  was  a  true  poet,  and 
deserves  more  recognition  than  she  has 
yet  received.  Her  sphere  is  somewhat  nar- 
row, but  everything  that  she  had  written 
is  genuine  and  truthful.  She  has  caught 
the  peculiar  humour  of  the  Cumbrian  folk 
with  admirable  truth,  and  depicts  it  faith- 
fully so  far  as  was  consistent  with  her 
own  refinement.  As  a  song-writer  she 
deserves  to  rank  very  high.    She  pre- 


ferred to  write  songs  in  the  Scottish 
dialect,  and  three  at  least  of  her  songs  are 
exquisite,  ''What  ails  this  heart  o' mine?" 
*'And  ye  shall  walk  in  silk  attire,"  and 
"The  Traveller's  Return."— Creighton, 
Mandell,  1886,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  v,  p.  192. 

She  wrote  a  variety  of  pieces  in  Eng- 
lish, but  is  chiefly  remembered  by  her 
Scottish  songs.  These  were  for  long  merely 
handed  about  in  manuscript,  and  it  was 
only  in  1842  that  they  were  collected 
and  published  at  Edinburgh,  the  author- 
ess being  designated  on  the  title-page  the 
''Muse  of  Cumberland."— Eyre-Todd, 
George,  1896,  Scottish  Poetry  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  81. 


James  Bruce 

1730-1794. 

Born,  at  Kinnaird,  Stirlingshire,  14  Dec.  1730.  At  Harrow  School,  21  Jan. 
1742,  to  8  May  1746 ;  then  with  tutor  till  April,  1747.  Returned  to  Scotland,  May 
1747;  to  Edinburgh  Univ.,  Nov.  1747,  to  study  Law.  Left  Univ.,  owing  to  ill-health, 
spring  of  1748.  To  London,  July  1753.  Married  Adriana  Allan,  3  Feb.  1754.  Took 
share  in  her  father's  wine  business.  Wife  died  in  Paris,  9  Oct.  1754.  In  Spain  and 
Portugal,  Aug.  to  Dec.  1757;  in  France  and  Holland,  1758.  Succeeded  to  family 
estates  on  father's  death,  and  returned  to  England,  July  1758.  Withdrew  from  wine 
business,  Aug.  1761.  Appointed  Consul-General  at  Algiers,  Feb.  1762.  In  Italy, 
July  1762,  to  March  1763;  arrived  at  Algiers,  20  March  1763.  Resigned  Consul- 
ship, Aug.  1765.  Travelled  in  Barbary,  Africa,  Crete,  Syria.  To  Egypt,  July  1768. 
To  Abyssinia,  Sept.  1769;  reached  Goudar,  14  Feb.  1770.  Lived  at  court  of  King 
of  Abyssinia,  with  various  expeditions  of  exploration,  till  Dec.  1771.  Through  Nubia 
to  Assouan ;  reached  there  29  Nov.  1772.  Arrived  at  Marseilles,  March  1773.  Re- 
turned to  England,  July  1774.  To  Scotland,  Autumn  of  1774.  Married  Mary  Dundas, 
20  May  1776;  she  died  spring  of  1785.  Engaged  in  compiling  his  "Travels."  Died 
at  Kinnaird,  from  an  accident,  27  April  1794 ;  buried  in  Larbert  churchyard.  Works : 
"Travels  to  Discover  the  Source  of  the  Nile"  (5  vols),  1790.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson, 
1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  35. 


PERSONAL 

In  this  tomb  are  deposited  the  remains 
of 

James  Bruce,  Esq.,  of  Kinnaird, 
tvho  died  on  the  27th  of  Ajwil,  1794, 
in  the  64th  year  of  his  age. 
his  life  was  spent  in  performing 
useful  and  splendid  actions, 
he  explored  many  distant  regions, 
he  discovered  the  sources  of  the  nile. 
he  traversed  the  deserts  of  nubia, 
he  was  an  affectionate  husband, 

an  indulgent  parent, 
an  ardent  lover  of  his  country, 
by  the  unanimous  voice  of  mankind 
his  name  is  enrolled  icith  those 
who  were  conspicuous 
for  genius,  for  valour,  and  for  virtue. 

—Inscription  on  Tomb,  1794,  Church- 
yard of  Larbert. 


Bruce  appears  to  have  been  seen  once, 
and  once  only,  by  our  Sexagenarian,  who 
nevertheless  expresses,  in  various  parts  of 
his  manuscript,  a  general  confidence  in 
his  veracity,  and  a  great  admiration  of  his 
prowess  and  intrepidity.  He  lived  inti- 
mately with  some  of  Bruce's  most  famil- 
iar friends,  and  had  frequent  opportuni- 
ties of  ascertaining  that  many  assertions 
made  by  the  traveller,  like  those  of  Hero- 
dotus, were  confirmed  by  subsequent  ob- 
servation and  examination.  But  it  was 
Bruce's  peculiar  character,  that  if  he  dis- 
cerned, or  ever  suspected  any  want  of 
confidence  in  his  auditors,  he  disdained 
all  explanation,  and  could  not  be  prevailed 
upon  to  enter  upon  any  further  discus- 
sion.   .    .    .   Though  very  partial,  on  the 


206 


JAMES  BRUCE 


whole,  to  this  most  extraordinary  man, 
he  was  by  no  means  blind  to  his  errors,  or 
insensible  of  his  inaccuracies.  His  con- 
fidence in  him  was  very  materially,  dimin- 
ished latterly,  from  having  discovered, 
that  Bruce,  in  all  probability,  never  was 
at  the  battle  of  Sebraxos,  which  he  never- 
theless describes  with  circumstantial 
minuteness,  and  of  which  he  has  intro- 
duced plans,  drawn  up  with  the  precision 
of- one  well  versed  in  military  tactics. 
There  was  also  something  remarkably  mys- 
terious and  suspicious,  as  our  friend 
seemed  to  think,  in  the  circumstance  and 
character  of  Luigi  Balugani,  who  accom- 
panied Bruce  as  a  draughtsman.  He  owed 
more  to  his  talents  than  he  was  willing  to 
acknowledge,  and  the  story  of  his  death 
is  glossed  over  in  a  very  unsatisfactory 
manner.  —  Beloe,  William,  1817,  The 
Sexagenarian,  vol.  ii,  pp.  45,  48. 

The  last  act  of  Bruce' s  life  was  one  of 
gentleman-like,  refined,  and  polite  atten- 
tion. A  large  party  had  dined  at  Kin- 
naird,  and  while  they  were  about  to  de- 
part, Bruce  was  gaily  talking  to  a  young 
lady  in  the  drawing-room,  when,  suddenly 
observing  that  her  aged  mother  was  pro- 
ceeding to  her  carriage  unattended,  he 
hurried  from  the  drawing-room  to  the 
great  staircase.  In  this  effort,  the  foot 
which  had  safely  carried  him  through  all 
his  dangers  happened  to  fail  him ;  he  fell 
down  several  of  the  steps — broke  some  of 
his  fingers — pitched  on  his  head — and 
never  spoke  again!  .  .  .  Thus  per- 
ished, in  the  sixty-fourth  year  of  his  age, 
in  the  healthy  winter  of  his  life,  in  vigour 
of  mind  and  body,  James  Bruce  of  Kin- 
naird,  a  Scotchman,  who  was  religious, 
loyal,  honourable,  brave,  prudent,  and  en- 
terprizing.  He  was  too  proud  of  his 
ancestors,  yet  his  posterity  have  reason 
to  be  proud  of  him.  His  temper  was 
eager,  hasty,  and  impetuous ;  yet  he  him- 
self selected  for  the  employment  of  his 
life  enterprizes  of  danger  in  which  haste, 
eagerness,  and  impetuosity  were  con- 
verted into  the  means  of  serving  science 
and  his  country.  The  eagerness  with 
which  he  toiled  for  the  approbation  of  the 
world,  and  the  pain  he  suffered  from  its 
cruelty  and  injustice,  exclude  him  from 
ranking  among  those  great  men,  who,  by 
religion,  or  even  by  philosophy,  may  have 
learnt  to  despise  both;  yet  it  must  be 
observed,  that,  had  he  possessed  the 


equanimity  of  mind,  he  would  never  have 
undertaken  the  race  which  he  won. — 
Head,  Sir  F.  B.,  1830,  The  Life  of  Bruce 
the  African  Traveller,  p.  533. 

The  really  honourable  and  superior 
points  of  Bruce's  character — such  as  his 
energy  and  daring,  his  various  knowledge 
and  acquirements,  and  his  disinterested 
zeal  in  undertaking  such  a  journey  at  his 
own  expense — were  overlooked  in  this 
petty  war  of  the  wits.  Bruce  felt  their 
attacks  keenly;  but  he  was  a  proud- 
spirited man,  and  did  not  deign  to  reply 
to  pasquinades  impeaching  his  veracity. 
He  survived  his  publication  only  four 
years.  The  foot  which  had  trod  without 
failing  the  deserts  of  Nubia,  slipped  one 
evening  on  his  own  staircase,  while  hand- 
ing a  lady  to  her  carriage,  and  he  died 
in  consequence  of  the  injury  then  received, 
April  16,  1794.  —  Chambers,  Robert, 
1876,  Cyclopcedia  of  English  Literature, 
ed.  Carruthers. 

TRAVELS  TO  DISCOVER  THE 
SOURCE  OF  THE  NILE 

1790 

I  have  only  to  add,  that  were  it  prob- 
able, as  in  my  decayed  state  of  health  it 
is  not,  that  I  should  live  to  see  a  second 
edition  of  this  work,  all  well-founded,  judi- 
cious remarks  suggested  should  be  grate- 
fully and  carefully  attended  to ;  but  I  do 
solemnly  declare  to  the  public  in  general, 
that  I  never  will  refute  or  answer  any 
cavils,  captious,  or  idle  objections,  such 
as  every  new  publication  seems  unavoid- 
ably to  give  birth  to,  nor  ever  reply  to 
those  witticisms  and  criticisms  that  appear 
in  newspapers  and  periodical  writings. 
What  I  have  written  1  have  written.  My 
readers  have  before  them,  in  the  present 
volumes,  all  that  I  shall  ever  say,  directly 
or  indirectly,  upon  the  subject ;  and  I  do, 
without  one  moment^s  anxiety,  trust  my 
defence  to  an  impartial,  well-informed, 
and  judicious  public. — Bruce,  James, 
1790,  Travels  to  Discover  the  Source  of  the 
Nile,  Introduction,  vol.  i,  p.  Ixxv. 

Everybody  is  looking  into  Bruce's 
Travels.  Part  takes  the  attention,  but 
they  are  abominably  abused.  Banks  ob- 
jects to  the  Botany,  Reynell  to  the  Geog- 
raphy, Cambridge  to  the  History,  The 
Greeks  to  the  Greek,  &c.,  &c. ;  yet  the 
work  is  to  be  found  on  every  table. 
Bruce  printed  the  work,  and  sold  2,000 
copies  to  Robertson  for  £6000.    He  sells 


JAMES  BRUCE 


207 


to  the  booksellers  at  4  guineas,  and 
they  to  their  customers  at  5  guineas. — 
Sheffield,  Lord,  1790,  Letter  to  Gibbon, 
Sept.  21,  Private  Letters,  ed.  Pr other o,  vol. 
II,  p.  226. 

O  Bruce,  I  own,  all  candour,  that  I  look 
With  envy,  do^vnright  envy,  on  the  book ; 
A  book,  like  Psalmanazar's,  formed  to  last, 
That  gives  th'  historic  eye  a  sweet  repast; 
A  book  like  Mandeville's,  that  yields  delight, 
And  puts  more  probability  to  flight ; 
A  book  that  even  Pontopidan  would  own ; 
A  book  most  humbly  offered  to  the  throne ; 
A  book,  how  happy,  which  the  king  of  isles 
Admires  (says  rumour),  and  received  with 
smiles ! 

— WoLCOT,  John  (Peter  Pindar),  1790? 
A  Complimentary  Epistle  to  James  Bruce, 
Poetical  Works. 

It  was  the  misfortune  of  that  traveller 
(Bruce)  who  is  now  no  more,  to  have 
known  that  his  veracity  had  too  often 
captiously,  and  sometimes  capriciously, 
been  called  in  question,  owing,  besides 
the  nature  of  his  adventures,  partly,  I  be- 
lieve, to  a  certain  manner  in  conversing 
as  well  as  in  writing,  which  alienated 
many  w^ho  were  less  than  himself  disposed 
to  take  offence.  He  is  now  beyond  the 
reach  of  flattery  or  humiliation;  and  I 
trust  it  will  not  be  imputed  merely  to  the 
partiality  of  friendship,  if,  as  a  small  but 
just  tribute  to  his  memory,  I  repeat  here 
what  I  have  often  before  asserted  in  occa- 
sional conversation,  that  however  I  might 
regret  a  constitutional  irritability  of  tem- 
per, so  injurious  to  its  owner,  or  however 
I  might  wish  to  have  seen  him  at  times 
condescend  to  explanations  which  I  have 
reason  to  think  would  have  removed  preju- 
dices, I  never,  either  in  course  of  our  ac- 
quaintance, or  in  the  perusal  of  his  book, 
found  myself  disposed  to  supect  him  of 
any  intentional  deviation  from  the  truth. 
— Russel,  Patrick,  1794,  Natural  His- 
tory of  Aleppo,  by  Alexander,  2nd  ed.,  with 
Notes. 

Bruce  sunk  into  his  grave  defrauded  of 
that  just  fame  which  his  pride  and  vivac- 
ity perhaps  too  keenly  prized,  at  least  for 
his  happiness,  and  which  he  authoritatively 
exacted  from  an  unwilling  public.  Morti- 
fied and  indignant  at  the  reception  of  his 
great  labour  by  the  cold-hearted  scepti- 
cism of  little  minds, and  the  maliciousness 
of  idling  wits,  he,  whose  fortitude  had 
toiled  through  a  life  of  difficulty  and  dan- 
ger, could  not  endure  the  laugh  and  scorn 


of  public  opinion ;  for  Bruce  there  was  a 
simoon  more  dreadful  than  the  Arabian, 
and  from  which  genius  cannot  hide  its 
head.  Yet  Bruce  only  met  with  the  fate 
which  Marco  Polo  had  before  encountered  ; 
whose  faithful  narrative  had  been  con- 
demned by  his  contemporaries,  and  who 
was  long  thrown  aside  among  legendary 
writers.— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1796-1818, 
Sensitiveness  to  Criticism,  The  Literary 
Character. 

Who  has  not  heard  of  Bruce, — the 
romantic,  the  intrepid,  the  indefatigable 
Bruce?  His  'Hale"  was  once  suspected; 
but  suspicion  has  sunk  into  acquiescence 
of  its  truth.  ...  A  more  enterpris- 
ing, light,  but  lion-hearted  traveller  never 
left  his  native  hills  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  such  purposes  as  those  which 
Bruce  accomplished. —  Dibdin,  Thomas 
Frognall,  1824,  The  Library  Companion, 
p.  445. 

Frank  and  open  in  society,  Bruce,  in  de- 
scribing his  adventures,  generally  related 
those  circumstances  which  he  thought 
were  most  likely  to  amuse  people  by 
the  contrast  they  afforded  to  the  Euro- 
pean fashions,  customs,  and  follies  of  the 
day.  Conscious  of  his  own  integrity,  and 
not  suspecting  that  in  a  civilized  country 
the  statements  of  a  man  of  honour  would 
be  disbelieved,  he  did  not  think  it  neces- 
sary gradually  and  cautiously  to  prepare 
his  hearers  for  a  climate  and  scenery  alto- 
gether different  from  their  own,  but,  as  if 
from  a  balloon,  he  at  once  landed  them  in 
Abyssinia,  and  suddenly  shewed  them  a 
vivid  picture  to  which  he  himself  had  been 
long  accustomed.  They  had  asked  for 
novelty ;  in  complying  with  their  request, 
he  gave  them  good  measure,  and  told  them 
of  people  who  wore  rings  in  their  lips  in- 
stead of  their  ears — who  annointed  them- 
selves not  with  bear's  grease  or  pomatum, 
but  with  the  blood  of  cows— who,  instead 
of  playing  tunes  upon  them,  wore  the  en- 
trails of  animals  as  ornaments — and  who, 
instead  of  eating  hot  putrid  meat,  licked 
their  lips  over  bleeding  living  flesh.  He 
described  debauchery  dreadfully  disgust- 
ing, because  it  was  so  different  from  their 
own. — He  told  them  of  men  who  hunted 
each  other — of  mothers  who  had  not  seen 
ten  winters — and  he  described  crowds  of 
human  beings  and  huge  animals  retreat- 
ing in  terror  before  an  army  of  little  flies ! 
In  short,  he  told  them  the  truth,  the  whole 


208 


JAMES  BRUCE 


truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  but  the 
mind  of  man,  like  his  stomach,  can  only 
contain  a  certain  quantity,  and  the  dose 
which  Bruce  gave  tO  his  hearers  was  more 
than  they  had  power  to  retain. — Head, 
Sir  F.  B.,  1830,  The  Life  of  Bruce  the 
African  Traveller,  p.  511. 

One  of  the  most  romantic  and  persevering 
of  our  travellers.  .  .  .  The  strangeness  of 
the  author's  adventures  at  the  court  at 
Gondar,  the  somewhat  inflated  style  of  the 
narrative,  and  the  undisguised  vanity  of 
the  traveller, led  to  a  disbelief  of  his  state- 
ments, and  numerous  lampoons  and  satires, 
both  in  prose  and  verse,  were  directed 
against  him.  .  .  .  The  style  of  Bruce  is 
prolix  and  inelegant,  though  occasionally 
energetic.  He  seized  upon  the  most  promi- 
nent points,  and  coloured  them  highly. 
The  general  accuracy  of  his  work  has 
been  confirmed  from  different  quarters. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of 
English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

Bruce's  character  is  depicted  with  in- 
com.parable  liveliness  by  himself.  It  is 
that  of  a  brave,  magnanimous,  and  merci- 
ful man,  endowed  with  excellent  abilities, 
though  not  with  first-rate  intellectual 
powers,  but  swayed  to  an  undue  degree  by 
self-esteem  and  the  thirst  for  fame.  The 
exaggeration  of  these  qualities,  without 
which  even  his  enterprise  would  have 
shrunk  from  his  perils,  made  him  uncan- 
did  to  those  whom  he  regarded  as  rivals, 
and  brought  inputations,  not  wholly  un- 
deserved, upon  his  veracity.  As  regards 
the  bulk  and  general  tenor  of  his  narra- 
tive, his  truthfulness  has  been  sufficiently 
established;  but  vanity  and  the  passion 
for  the  picturesque  led  him  to  embellish 
minor  particulars,  and  perhaps  in  some 
few  instances  to  invent  them.  The  cir- 
cumstances under  which  his  work  was  pro- 
duced were  highly  unfavorable  to  strict 
accuracy.  Instead  of  addressing  himself 
to  his  task  immediately  upon  his  return, 
with  the  incidents  of  his  travels  fresh  in 
his  mind  and  his  journals  open  before  him, 
Bruce  delayed  for  twelve  years,  and  then 
dictated  to  an  amanuensis,  indolently 
omitting  to  refer  to  the  original  journals, 
and  hence  frequently  making  a  lamentable 
confusion  of  facts  and  dates,  which  only 
came  to  light  upon  examination  of  his 
original  manuscripts.  ' '  In  the  latter  part 
of  his  days,"  says  his  biographer,  Murray, 
'*he  seems  to  have  viewed  the  numerous 


adventures  of  his  active  life  as  in  a  dream, 
not  in  their  natural  state  as  to  time  and 
place,  but  under  the  pleasing  and  arbi- 
trary change  of  memory  melting  into 
imagination."  .  .  .  His  method  of 
composition,  moreover,  if  unfavorable  to 
the  strictly  historical,  was  advantage- 
ous to  the  other  literary  qualities  of  his 
work.  Fresh  from  the  author's  lips,  the 
tale  comes  with  more  vividness  than  if  it 
had  been  compiled  from  journals;  and 
scenes,  characters,  and  situations  are  rep- 
resented with  more  warmth  and  distinct- 
ness. Bruce's  character  portraits  are 
masterly ;  and  although  the  long  conver- 
sations he  records  are  evidently  highly 
idealised,  the  essential  truth  is  probably 
conveyed  with  as  much  precision  as  could 
have  been  attained  by  a  verbatim  report. 
Not  the  least  of  his  gifts  is  an  eminently 
robust  and  racy  humour.  He  will  always 
remain  the  poet,  and  his  work  the  epic, 
of  American  travel.— Garnett,  Richard, 
1886,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  VII,  p.  102.' 

As  to  travel,  it  has  rarely  produced 
books  which  may  be  called  literature,  but 
the  works  of  biographers  and  travellers 
have  brought  together  the  materials  of 
literature.  Bruce  left  for  Africa  in 
1762,  and  in  the  next  seventy  years 
Africa,  Egypt,  Italy,  Greece,  the  Holy 
Land,  and  the  Arctic  Regions  were  made 
the  common  property  of  literary  men. — 
Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  1896,  English  Lit- 
erature, p.  209. 

No  traveller  is  more  dear  to  the  Scot- 
tish geographer  than  James  Bruce  of  Kin- 
naird.  It  was  owing  to  a  perusal  of  his 
travels  in  1848  that  I  was  induced  to  go 
to  Egypt ;  there  I  met  Outram,  as  I  have 
already  narrated ;  so  that  it  is  hardly  too 
much  to  say  that  Bruce  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  whatever  fortune  has  followed  me 
during  my  political  career.  .  .  .  I 
might  prolong  indefinitely  an  account  of 
the  good  work  Bruce  did  in  North  Africa ; 
but  enough  has  been  said  to  show  what 
great  reason  we  have  to  be  proud  of  our 
distinguished  countryman.  If  he  had 
never  been  to  Abyssinia  at  all,  his  ex:plo- 
rations  in  North  Africa  \yould  have  suf- 
ficed to  place  him  in  the  foremost  rank  of 
travellers,  artists,  and  archaeologists. — 
Playfair,  Sir  R.  Lambert,  1899,  Remin- 
iscences, Chambers's  Journal,  vol.  76,  pp, 
369,  372. 


209 


James  Boswell 

1740-1795. 

Born,  at  Auchinleck,  29  Oct.  1740.  Educated  by  private  tutor ;  then  at  private 
school  in  Edinburgh ;  then  at  Edinburgh  High  School  and  Edinburgh  Univ.  To  Glasgow 
as  Student  of  Civil  Law,  8  Jan.,  1759.  To  London,  March  1760.  In  Edinburgh, 
April,  1761  to  Nov.  1762;  then  returned  to  London.  Contrib.  poems  to  Collections 
of  Original  Poems  by  Mr.  Blacklock,"  1762.  First  met  Johnson,  16  May  1763.  In 
Berlin,  July  1764.  To  Italy,  Dec.  1764.  To  Utrecht,  to  study  Law,  Aug.  1765.  Tour 
in  Italy  and  Corsica.  Returned  to  Scotland,  Feb.  1766.  Admitted  Advocate,  26  July 
1766.  To  London  on  publication  of  ''Account  of  Corsica,"  May  1768.  Married 
Margaret  Montgomerie,  25  Nov.  1769.  Contrib.  to  "London  Magazine,"  J769-70, 
1777-79.  Frequent  visits  to  Johnson,  mostly  in  London,  between  1772  and  1784. 
Elected  Member  of  Literary  Club,  30  April  1773.  Voyage  to  Hebrides  with  Johnson, 
Aug.  to  Nov.  1773.  Began  to  keep  terms  at  Inner  Temple,  1775.  Auchinleck  estate 
entailed  on  him,  7  Aug.  1776.  Father  died,  30  Aug.  1782.  Called  to  Bar,  1786. 
Appointed  Recorder  of  Carlisle,  1788.  Took  chambers  in  Temple,  1790.  "Life  of 
Johnson"  appeared,  16  May  1791.  Appointed  Secretary  of  Foreign  Correspondence 
to  Royal  Academy  July,  1791.  Died,  in  London,  19  May  1795.  Buried  at  Auchinleck. 
Works:  "Ode  to  Tragedy"  (anon.),  1761;  "Elegy  upon  the  Death  of  an  amiable 
Young  Lady"  (anon.),  1761;  "The  Cub  at  Newmarket" (anon.),  1762 ;  "Correspondence 
with  Hon.  A.  Erskine,"  1763 ;  "Critical  Strictures  on  Mallet's  'Elvira'  "  (with  Erskine 
and  Dempster),  1763;  "Speeches,  Arguments  and  Determinations"  in  the  Douglas 
case  (anon.),  1767;  "Essence  of  the  Douglas  Cause"  (anon.), 1767 ;  "Dorando,"  1767; 
Prologue  for  the  Opening  of  Edinburgh  Theatre,  1767  ;  "An  Account  of  Corsica," 
1768;  "British  Essays  in  favour  of  the  Brave  Corsicans, "  1769;  "Decision  in  the 
Cause  of  Hunter  v.  Donaldson,"  1774;  "A  Letter  to  the  People  of  Scotland  on  the 
Present  State  of  the  Nation,"  1783;  "Ode  by  Samuel  Johnson  to  Mrs.  Thrale"  (by 
Boswell;  anon.),  1784;  "The  Journal  of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides, "  1785  (2nd  ed.  same 
year) ;  "Letter  to  the  People  of  Scotland  on  the  alarming  Attempt  to  infringe  the 
Articles  of  Union,^'  1786;  "The  Celebrated  Letter  from  Samuel  Johnson,  LL.  D.,  to 
Phillip  Dormer  Stanhope,  Earl  of  Chesterfield,"  1790;  "Conversation  between  George 
III.  and  Samuel  Johnson,"  1790;  "No  Abolition  of  Slavery"  (probably  suppressed), 
1791;  "Life  of  Johnson,"  1791;  (another  edn.,  pirated,  1792;  2nd  authorised  edn., 
1793);  "Principal  Corrections  and  Additions  to  First  Edition,"  1793.  Posthumous: 
"Letters  to  Rev.  J.  W.  Temple,"  1857;  "Boswelliana :  the  Common-place  Book  of 
J.  Bosweli,"  published  by  Grampian  Club,  1874.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897, 
A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  29. 


PERSONAL 

I  have  just  seen  a  very  clever  letter  to 
Mrs.  Montagu,  to  disavow  a  jackanapes 
who  has  lately  made  a  noise  here,  one 
Boswell,  by  anecdotes  of  Dr.  Johnson. — 
Walpole,  Horace,  1786,  To  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  March  16 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  IX,  p.  45. 

I  fancy  Boswell,  from  some  things  I 
heard  of  him,  and  it  seems  confirmed  by 
various  passages  in  his ' '  Life  of  Johnson, ' ' 
has  a  sort  of  rage  for  knowing  all  sorts 
of  public  men,  good,  bad,  and  indiflierent, 
all  one  if  a  man  renders  himself  known  he 
likes  to  be  acquainted  with  him. — Young, 
Arthur,  1790,  Autobiography,  Oct.  24, 
ed.  Betham-Edwards,  p.  191. 

I  loved  the  man ;  he  had  great  convivial 
powers  and  an  inexhaustible  fund  of  good 
14  c 


humour  in  society ;  no  body  could  detail 
the  spirit  of  a  conversation  in  the  true 
style  and  character  of  the  parties  more 
happily  than  my  friend  James  Boswell, 
especially  when  his  vivacity  was  excited,^ 
and  his  heart  exhilarated  by  the  circula- 
tion of  the  glass,  and  the  grateful  odour 
of  a  well-broiled  lobster. — Cumberland, 
Richard,  1806,  Memoirs  Written  by  Him- 
self, vol.  II,  p.  228. 

Of  those  who  were  frequently  at  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds's  parties,  Mr.  Boswell 
was  very  acceptable  to  him.  He  was  a 
man  of  excellent  temper,  and  with  much 
gaiety  of  manner,  possessed  a  shrewd  un- 
derstanding, and  close  observation  of 
character.  He  had  a  happy  faculty  of 
dissipating  that  reserve,  which  too  often 
damps  the  pleasure  of  English  society. 


210 


JAMES  BO  SWELL 


His  good-nature  and  social  feeling  always 
inclined  him  to  endeavour  to  produce  that 
effect;  which  was  so  well  known,  that 
when  he  appeared,  he  was  hailed  as  the 
harbinger  of  festivity.  Sir  Joshua  was 
never  more  happy  than  when,  on  such  oc- 
casions, Mr.  Boswell  was  seated  within 
his  hearing.  The  Royal  Society  gratified 
Sir  Joshua  by  electing  Mr.  Boswell  their 
Secretary  of  Foreign  Correspondence; 
which  made  him  an  Honorary  Member  of 
that  body.— Farrington,  Joseph,  1819, 
Memoirs  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  p,  83. 

With  the  usual  ill  hap  of  those  who  deal 
in  mauvaise  plaisanterie,  old  Bozzy  was  of- 
ten in  the  unpleasant  situation  of  retreat- 
ing from  expressions,  which  could  not  be 
defended.  He  was  always  labouring  at 
notoriety,  and,  having  failed  in  attracting 
it  in  his  own  person,  he  hooked  his  little 
bark  to  them  whom  he  thought  most 
likely  to  leave  harbour,  and  so  shine  with 
reflected  light,  like  the  rat  that  eat  the 
malt  that  lay  in  the  house  that  Jack  built. 
— Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1829,  Letter  to 
Mr.  Croker,  Jan.  30 ;  The  Croker  Papers, 
ed.  Jennings,  vol.  ii,  p.  32. 

He  united  lively  manners  with  indefat- 
igable diligence,  and  the  volatile  curiosity 
of  a  man  about  town  with  the  drudging 
patience  of  a  chronicler.  With  .a  very 
good  opinion  of  himself,  he  was  quick  in 
discerning,  and  frank  in  applauding,  the 
excellencies  of  others.  Though  proud  of 
his  own  name  and  lineage,  and  ambitious  of 
the  countenance  of  the  great,  he  was  yet  so 
cordial  an  admirer  of  merit,  wherever  found, 
that  much  public  ridicule,  and  something 
like  contempt,  were  excited  by  the  modest 
assurance  with  which  he  pressed  his  ac- 
quaintance on  all  the  notorieties  of  his 
time,  and  by  the  ostentatious  (but,  in  the 
main,  laudable)  assiduity  with  which  he 
attended  the  exile  Paoli  and  the  low-born 
Johnson!  These  v/ere  amiable,  and,  for 
us,  fortunate  inconsistencies.  His  con- 
temporaries indeed,  not  without  some  colour 
of  reason,  occasionally  complained  of  him 
as  vain,  inquisitive,  troublesome,  and  giddy ; 
but  his  vanity  was  inoflfensive — his  curios- 
ity was  commonly  directed  towards  lauda- 
ble objects — when  he  meddled,  he  did  so, 
generally,  from  good-natured  motives — ■ 
and  his  giddiness  was  only  an  exuberant 
gaiety,  which  never  failed  in  the  respect 
and  reverence  due  to  literature,  morals, 
and  religion;  and  posterity  gratefully 


.nowledges  the  taste,  temper,  and  talents 
h  which  he  selected,  enjoyed,  and  de- 
.-_.ibed  that  polished  and  intellectual 
society  which  still  lives  in  his  work,  and 
without  his  work  had  perished. — Croker, 
John  Wilson,  1831,  ed.  BoswelVs  Life  of 
Johnson,  Preface. 

He  was,  if  we  are  to  give  any  credit  to 
his  own  account,  or  to  the  united  testi- 
mony of  all  who  knew  him,  a  man  of  the 
meanest  and  feeblest  intellect.  Johnson 
described  him  as  a  fellow  who  had  missed 
his  only  chance  of  immortality,  by  not 
having  been  alive  when  the  Dunciad  was 
written.  Beauclerk  used  his  name  as  a 
proverbial  expression  for  a  bore.  He 
was  the  laughing-stock  of  the  whole  of 
that  brilliant  society  which  has  owed  to 
him  the  greater  part  of  its  fame.  He 
was  always  laying  himself  at  the  feet  of 
some  eminent  man,  and  begging  to  be  spit 
upon  and  trampled  upon.  .  .  .  Servile 
and  impertinent — shallow  and  pedantic — 
a  bigot  and  a  sot — bloated  with  family 
pride,  and  eternally  blustering  about  the 
dignity  of  a  born  gentleman,  yet  stooping 
to  be  a  talebearer,  an  eavesdropper,  a 
common  butt  in  the  taverns  of  London — 
so  curious  to  know  everybody  who  was 
talked  about,  that,  Tory  and  High  Church- 
man as  he  was,  he  manceuvered,  we  have 
been  told,  for  an  introduction  to  Tom 
Paine.  ...  All  the  caprices  of  his 
temper,  all  the  illusions  of  his  vanity,  all 
the  hypochondriac  whimsies,  all  his  cas- 
tles in  the  air,  he  displayed  with  a  cool 
self-complacency,  a  perfect  unconscious- 
ness that  he  was  making  a  fool  of  himself, 
to  which  it  is  impossible  to  find  a  parallel 
in  the  whole  history  of  mankind.  He 
has  used  many  people  ill,  but  assuredly 
he  has  used  nobody  so  ill  as  himself. — 
Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1831, 
BosweWs  Life  of  Johnson,  Edinburgh  Re- 
view;  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

In  that  cocked  nose,  cocked  partly  in 
triumph  over  his  weaker  fellow-creatures, 
partly  to  snuff  up  the  smell  of  coming 
pleasure,  and  scent  it  from  afar ;  in  those 
bag-cheeks,  hanging  like  half-filled  wine- 
skins, still  able  to  contain  more ;  in  that 
coarsely-protruded  shelf-mouth,  that  fat 
dewlapped  chin ;  in  all  this,  who  sees  not 
sensuality,  pretension,  boisterous  imbecil- 
ity enough;  much  that  could  not  have 
been  ornamental  in  the  temper  of  a  great 
man's  overfed  great  man  (what  the  Scotch 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


211 


name  flunky),  though  it  had  been  more 
natural  there?  The  under  part  of  Bos- 
well's  face  is  of  a  low,  almost  brutish 
character.  —  Carlyle,  Thomas,  1832, 
BosweWs  Life  of  Johnson. 

**Who  is  this  Scotch  cur  at  Johnson's 
heels?"  asked  some  one,  amazed  at  the 
sudden  intimacy.  ''He  is  not  a  cur," 
answered  Goldsmith ;  ' '  You  are  too  severe. 
He  is  only  a  bur.  Tom  Davies  flung  him 
at  Johnson  in  sport,  and  he  has  the  faculty 
of  sticking."— Prior,  Sir  James,  1836, 
The  Life  of  Oliver  Goldsmith. 

He  [Carlyle]  rescued  poor  Boswell  from 
the  unmerited  obloquy  of  an  ungrateful 
generation,  and  taught  us  to  see  some- 
thing half-comically  beautiful  in  the  poor, 
w^eak  creature,  with  his  pathetic  instinct 
of  reverence  for  what  was  nobler,  wiser, 
and  stronger  than  himself. — Lowell, 
James  Russell,  1866-90,  Carlyle,  Prose 
Works,  Riverside  ed.,  vol.  ii,  p.  87. 

Matching  his  vanity  was  his  love  for 
wine  and  his  admiration  of  the  other  sex. 
This  latter  was  a  terrible  failing,  and 
brings  him  fairly  within  our  list  of  lovers. 
Some  years  ago  were  published  the  Bos- 
well-Temple  letters,  as  to  whose  genuine- 
ness there  arose  a  controversy.  As  to 
this  point  there  can  be  no  question  now. 
These  were  said  to  be  found,  under  rather 
suspicious  circumstances,  in  a  shop  at 
Boulogne,  wrapping  up  articles.  This  con- 
ventional shape  of  introduction  for  spuri- 
ous papersmight  excite  reasonable  doubts ; 
but  since  their  publication  they  have  been 
traced  v/ith  reasonable  exactness  from 
hand  to  hand  to  France.  In  these  we 
have  all  his  amatory  raptures  set  out  with 
charming  candour.  He  began  when  he 
was  only  eighteen,  and  before  he  had 
left  Edinburgh  he  began  his  amatory 
course,  which  corresponded  not  a  little, 
both  in  tone  and  finale,  with  that  of  Mr. 
Sterne. — Fitzgerald,  Percy,  1872,  The 
Loves  of  Famous  Men,  Belgravia,  vol.  16, 
p.  222. 

Boswell' s  tastes,  however,  were  by  no 
means  limited  to  sensual  or  frivolous  en- 
joyments. His  appreciation  of  the  bottle 
was  combined  with  an  equally  hearty  sen- 
sibility to  more  intellectual  pleasures. 
He  had  not  a  spark  of  philosophic  or 
poetic  power,  but  within  the  ordinary 
range  of  such  topics  as  can  be  discussed 
at  a  dinner-party,  he  had  an  abundant 


share  of  liveliness  and  intelligence.  His 
palate  was  as  keen  for  good  talk  as  for 
good  wine.  He  was  an  admirable  recip- 
ient, if  not  an  originator,  of  shrewd  or 
humorous  remarks  upon  life  and  manners. 
What  in  regard  to  sensual  enjoyment  was 
mere  gluttony,  appeared  in  higher  matters 
as  an  insatiable  curiosity. — Stephen, 
Leslie,  1879,  Samuel  Johnson  (English 
Men  of  Letters),  p.  84. 

"Ambitious Thane,"  "The Bear-Leader," 
"Bozzy,"  ''Corsica  Boswell,"  "Curious 
Scrapmonger, "  "Dapper  Jemmy,"  "A 
Feather  in  the  Scale,"  "Thou  Jackall," 
' ' Lazarus, "  "  Will-o' -th'- Wisp.  "—Frey, 
Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobriquets  and  Nick- 
names, p.  381. 

It  is  peevish  to  refuse  credit  to  those 
who  do  things  admirably  well,  because 
there  is  something  incomprehensible  in 
their  capacity.  Those  who  think  that 
James  Boswell  was  a  vain  and  shallow 
coxcomb  of  mediocre  abilities,  without 
intellectual  gifts  of  any  eminence,  are 
confronted  with  the  fact  that  this  supposed 
fool  was  the  unaided  author  of  two  of  the 
most  graphic  and  most  readable  works 
which  the  eighteenth  century  has  left  us. 
It  is  right  that  Boswell's  claim  to  a  high 
independent  place  in  literature  should  be 
vindicated,  and  the  fact  is  that,  after 
Burke  and  Goldsmith,  he  is  by  far  the 
most  considerable  of  the  literary  compan- 
ions of  Johnson.  That  he  has  risen  into 
fame  on  the  shoulders  of  that  great  man 
is  true,  but  the  fact  has  been  insisted 
upon  until  his  own  genuine  and  peculiar 
merits  have  been  most  unduly  overlooked. 
— GossE,  Edmund,  1888,  A  History  of 
Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  p.  358. 

What  a  wonderful  fellow  was  James 
Boswell.  — Locker-Lampson,  Frederick, 
1896,  My  Confidences,  p.  307. 

"Love,"  wrote  Madame  de  Stael,  "is 
with  man  a  thing  apart,  'tis  woman's 
whole  existence."  This  is  not  true  at 
least  of  Boswell,  for  his  love  affairs  fill  as 
large  a  part  in  his  life  as  in  that  of  Benja- 
min Constant.  A  most  confused  chapter 
withal,  and  one  that  luckily  was  not  known 
to  Macaulay,  whose  colours  would  other- 
wise have  been  more  brilliant.  We  find 
Bozzy  paying  his  addresses  at  one  and  the 
same  time  to  at  least  eight  ladies,  exclu- 
sive as  this  is  of  sundry  minor  divinities 
of  a  fleeting  and  more  temporary  nature 


212 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


not  calling  here  for  allusion. — Leask, 
W.  Keith,  1897,  James  Boswell  {Famous 
Scots)y  p.  76. 

That  this  garrulous,  vain,  wine-bibbing 
tattler  should  ally  himself  with  the  great 
moralist,  may  be  explained  by  his  love  of 
notoriety  and  of  notables;  but  that  the 
austere,  intolerant  veteran  of  letters 
should  like — indeed  love  such  a  companion, 
is  a  curious  problem.  Yet,  moralist 
though  he  was,  he  liked,  as  he  said,  to 
"frisk  it'^  now  and  then, — he  loved  the 
Honourable  Tom  Hervey,  the  rake,  and 
Topham  Beauclerc,  whose  morals  were  far 
to  seek.  Boswell,  though  not  learned, 
and  needing  his  mentor's  advice  to  "read 
more  and  drink  less,"  knew  something  of 
his  letters,  knew  much  of  the  world,  was 
clever,  entertaining,  good-natured,  and 
loyal.  .  .  .  Meanwhile  his  wife,  a 
woman  of  sense  and  some  wit,  had  much 
to  endure — her  society  neglected  for 
"good  company, where  he  got  tipsy, 
with  the  usual  sequels  of  fits  of  depression 
and  tearful  sentiment.  He  reminds  us  of 
Sir  Richard  Steele  with  his  bibulous  indul- 
gence, and  protestations  of  affection  in 
notelets  to  his  much  suffering  spouse: 
"I  am,  dear  Prue,  a  little  in  drink,  but  all 
the  time  your  faithful  husband,  Richard 
Steele. '  *  All  his  characteristics  remained 
unchanged ;  his  alternate  hypochondria 
and  joviality ;  his  moods  of  piety  and  his 
lapses  from  it ;  his  superstitions ;  his  love 
of  excitement — especially  for  a  hanging, 
in  which  he  was  as  keen  a  connoisseur  as 
George  Selwyn  himself .  He  was  ready  to 
kneel  down  and  join  in  the  chaplain's  pray- 
ers in  the  prison  cells  with  the  convict 
in  profoundest  devotion,  and  to  see  him 
turned  off  at  Tyburn  with  the  greatest 
gusto, — to  witness  fifteen  men  hanged  at 
once  filled  him  with  the  keenest  pleasure 
and  the  finest  moral  reflections.  Vain  as 
poor  Goldsmith,  whose  pride  in  his  plum- 
coloured  coat  from  Filbey's  he  laughed 
at,  he  would  rush  in  his  Court  dress  from 
a  levee  at  St.  James's  to  dazzle  composi- 
tors at  the  printing-offices  with  his  mag- 
nificence. Few  figures  were  better  known 
in  London  artistic  and  literary  society 
than  his — paunchy  and  puffy,  with  red  face, 
long,  cocked  nose,  protuberant  mouth  and 
chin,  with  mock  solemnity  of  manner  and 
voice,  with  slow  gait  and  slovenly  dress — 
the  clothes  being  loose,  the  wig  untidy, 
the  gestures  restless  so  as  to  resemble  his 


great  master,  of  whom  he  incessantly 
spoke,  and  whose  big  manner  and  oddities 
he  mimicked  with  infinite  drollery,  making 
listeners  convulse  with  laughter  at  the 
exquisite,  but  irreverent  copy  of  his 
"revered  friend."  —  Graham,  Henry 
Grey,  1901,  Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  pp.  221,  223. 

Of  the  kind  of  man  Boswell  was  he  him- 
self has  given  us  the  most  abundant  evi- 
dence. His  pages  are  autobiographic  in 
their  self-delineation.  We  see  his  extraor- 
dinary want  of  tact;  his  amazing  folly, 
egotism,  self-obtrusion,  and  excessive 
freedom  of  manners;  his  want  of  self- 
respect,  amounting  alinost  to  self -debase- 
ment (he  did  not  hestitate  to  liken  himself 
to  a  dog) ;  his  conceit,  vanity,  absurd 
pomposity,  and  serene  self-complacency. 
He  was  easily  enamored,  and  was  no  Mos- 
lem when  the  wine  was  circulating;  for 
he  frequently  succumbed  to  the  material 
good  things,  and  admits  that  he  was  un- 
able to  recollect  the  intellectual  good 
things  that  flowed  around  him. — Sillard, 
P.  A.,  1901,  The  Prince  of  Biographers, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  88,  p.  214. 

AN  ACCOUNT  OF  CORSICA 

1768 

Jamie  had  taen  a  toot  on  a  new  horn. 
—Boswell,  Alexander,  1768,  Father  of 
James  Boswell. 

Mr.  Boswell's  book  I  was  going  to  rec- 
ommend to  you,  when  I  received  your 
letter:  it  has  pleased  and  moved  me 
strangely,  all  (I  mean)  that  relates  to 
Paoli.  He  is  a  man  born  two  thousand 
years  after  his  time !  The  pamphlet 
proves  what  I  have  always  maintained, 
that  any  fool  may  write  a  most  valuable 
book  by  chance,  if  he  will  only  tell  us 
what  he  heard  and  saw  with  veracity.  Of 
Mr.  Boswell's  truth  I  have  not  the  least 
suspicion,  because  I  am  sure  he  could  not 
invent  nothing  of  this  kind.  The  true 
title  of  this  part  of  his  work  is,  a  Dia- 
logue between  a  Green-Goose  and  a  Hero. 
— Gray,  Thomas,  1768,  Letter  to  Horace 
Walpole,  Feb.  25;  Works,  ed.  Gosse,  vol, 
in,  p.  310. 

He  came  to  my  country,  and  he  fetched 
me  some  letter  of  recommending  him; 
but  I  was  of  the  belief  he  might  be  an  im- 
postor, and  I  supposed  in  my  minte  he 
was  espy ;  for  I  look  away  from  him,  and 
in  a  moment  I  look  to  him  again,  and  I 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


213 


behold  his  tablets.  Oh!  he  was  to  the 
work  of  writing  down  all  I  say.  Indeed 
I  w^as  angry.  But  soon  I  discover  he  was 
no  impostor  and  no  espy ;  and  I  only  find 
J  was  myself  the  monster  he  had  come  to 
discern.  Oh !  he  is  a  very  good  man ;  I 
love  him  indeed ;  so  cheerful,  so  gay,  so 
pleasant !  but  at  the  first,  oh !  I  was  in- 
deed angry.— Paoli,  Pascal,  1782,  To 
Miss  Burney,  Diary  and  Letters,  Oct.  15, 
vol.  II,  p.  155. 

The  personal  part  of  which  is  far  better 
written  than  the  hasty  critic  is  wont  to 
acknowledge. —  GossE,  Edmund,  1888, 
A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  358. 

Mrs.  Barbauld  regarded  him  as  no  ordi- 
nary traveller,  with 

"Working  thoughts  which  swelled  the  breast 
Of  generous  Boswell,  when  with  noble  aim 
And  views  beyond  the  narrow  beaten  track 
By  trivial  fancy  trod,  he  turned  his  course 
From  polished  Gallia's  soft  delicious  vales." 
Such  thoughts  were  perhaps  really  foreign 
to  that  traveller,  yet  Dr.  Hill  assures  us 
that  by  every  Corsican  of  education  the 
name  of  Boswell  is  known  and  honoured. 
One  curious  circumstance  is  given.  At 
Pino,  when  Boswell  fancying  himself  ''in 
a  publick  house"  or  inn,  had  called  for 
things,  the  hostess  had  said  una  cosa 
dopo  un  altra,  signore,  "one  thing  after 
another,  sir."  This  has  lingered  as  a 
memento  of  Bozzy  in  Corsica,  and  has 
been  found  by  Dr.  Hill  to  be  preserved 
among  the  traditions  in  the  Tomasi  family. 
Translations  of  the  book  in  Italian,  Dutch, 
French,  and  German,  spread  abroad  the 
name  of  the  traveller  who,  if  like  a 
prophet  without  honour  in  his  own  country, 
has  not  been  without  it  elsewhere.  — 
Leask,  W.  Keith,  1897,  James  Boswell 
(Famous  Scots),  p.  52. 

JOURNAL  OF  A  TOUR  TO  THE 
HEBRIDES 

1785 

O  Boswell,  Bozzy,  Bruce,  whate'er  thy  name, 
Thou  mighty  shark  for  anecdote  and  fame. 

Triumphant,  thou  through  Time's  vast  gulf 
shalt  sail, 

The  pilot  of  our  literary  whale.    .    ,  . 
Thou,  curious  scrapmonger,  shalt  live  in  song. 
When  death  has  stilled  the  rattle  of  thy 
tongue ; 

Even  future  babes  to  lisp  thy  name  shall 
learn, 

And  Bozzy  join  with  Wood  and  Tommy 
Heam, 


Who  drove  the  spiders  from  much  prose  and 
rhyme. 

And  snatched  old  stories  from  the  jaws  of 

time.    .    .  . 
What  tasteless  mouth  can  gape,  what  eye 

can  close. 

What  head  can  nod,  o'er  thy  enlivening 

prose?    .  . 
Yes !  whilst  the  Rambler  shall  a  comet  blaze. 
And  gild  a  world  of  darkness  with  his  rays, 
Thee,  too, that  world  with  wonderment,  shall 

hail, 

A  lively,  bouncing  cracker  at  his  tail! 
— WoLCOT,  John  (Peter  Pindar),  1787, 
A  Poetical  and  Congratulatory  Epistle  to 
James  Boswell,  Esq.,  on  His  Journal  of  a 
Tour  to  the  Hebrides,  with  the  Celebrated 
Doctor  Johnson. 

I  return  you  many  thanks  for  BoswelFs 
Tour.  I  read  it  to  Mrs.  Unwin  after  sup- 
per, and  we  find  it  amusing.  There  is 
much  trash  in  it,  as  there  must  always  be 
in  every  narrative  that  relates  indiscrimi- 
nately all  that  passed.  But  now  and  then 
the  Doctor  speaks  like  an  oracle,  and  that 
makes  amends  for  all.  Sir  John  was  a 
coxcomb,  and  Boswell  is  not  less  a  cox- 
comb, though  of  another  kind. — Cowper, 
William,  1789,  Letter  to  Samuel  Rose, 
June  5 ;  Life,  ed.  Hayley,  vol.  i,  p.  188. 

In  my  "Tour,"  I  was  almost  unbound- 
edly open  in  my  communications,  and  from 
my  eagerness  to  display  the  wonderful 
fertility  and  readiness  of  Johnson's  wit, 
freely  showed  to  the  world  its  dexterity, 
even  when  I  was  myself  the  object  of  it. 
I  trusted  that  I  should  be  liberally  under- 
stood ;  as  knowing  very  well  what  I  was 
about,  and  by  no  means  as  simply  uncon- 
scious of  the  pointed  effects  of  the  satire. 
I  own,  indeed,  that  I  was  arrogant  enough 
to  suppose  that  the  tenour  of  the  rest  of 
the  book  would  sufficiently  guard  me 
against  such  a  strange  imputation.  But  it 
seems  I  judged  too  well  of  the  world; 
for,  though  I  could  scarcely  believe  it, 
I  have  been  undoubtedly  informed,  that 
many  persons,  especially  in  distant  quar- 
ters, not  penetrating  enough  into  John- 
son's character,  so  as  to  understand  his 
mode  of  treating  his  friends,  have  ar- 
raigned my  judgment,  instead  of  seeing 
that  I  was  sensible  of  all  that  they  could 
observe.  It  is  related  of  the  great  Dr. 
Clarke,  that  when,  in  one  of  his  leisure 
hours,  he  was  unbending  himself  with  a 
few  friends  in  the  most  playful  and  frol- 
icsome manner,  he  observed  Beau  Nash 


214 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


approaching;  upon  which  he  suddenly 
stopped: — "My  boys,"  said  he,  ''let  ns 
be  grave;  here  comes  a  fool."  The 
world,  my  friend,  I  have  found  to  be  a 
great  fool  as  to  that  particular  on  which 
it  has  become  necessary  to  speak  very 
plainly. — Boswell,  James,  1791,  The 
Life  of  Samuel  Johnson,  Dedication  to  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds. 

Never,  I  think,  was  so  unimportant  a 
journey  so  known  of  men.  Every  smart 
boy  in  every  American  school,  knows  now 
what  puddings  he  ate,  and  about  the 
cudgel  that  he  carried,  and  the  boiled 
mutton  that  was  set  before  him.  The 
bare  mention  of  these  things  brings  back 
a  relishy  smack  of  the  whole  story  of  the 
journey.  Is  it  for  the  literary  quality  of 
the  book  which  describes  it?  Is  it  for 
our  interest  in  the  great,  nettlesome, 
ponderous  traveller ;  or  is  it  by  reason  of 
a  sneaking  fondness  we  all  have  for  the 
perennial  stream  of  Boswell 's  gossip?  I 
cannot  tell,  for  one :  I  do  not  puzzle  with 
the  question;  but  I  enjoy. — Mitchell, 
Donald  G.,  1895,  English  Lands  Letters 
and  Kings,  Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges, 
p.  137. 

No  better  book  of  travels  in  Scotland 
has  ever  been  written  than  Boswell's 
''Journal  of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides." 
The  accuracy  of  his  description,  his  eye 
for  scenes  and  dramatic  effects,  have  all 
been  fully  borne  witness  to  by  those  who 
have  followed  in  their  track,  and  the  fact 
of  the  book  being  day  by  day  read  by 
Johnson,  during  its  preparation,  gives  it 
an  additional  value  from  the  perfect 
veracity  of  its  contents— "as  I  have  re- 
solved that  the  very  journal  which  Dr. 
Johnson  read  shall  be  presented  to  the 
publick,  I  will  not  expand  the  text  in  any 
considerable  degree". — Leask,  W.  Keith, 
1897,  James  Boswell  {Famous  Scots), 
p.  109. 

LIFE  OF  JOHNSON 

1791-93 

Boswell  tells  me  he  is  printing  anecdotes 
of  Johnson,  not  his  life,  but,  as  he  has 
the  vanity  to  call  it,  his  pyramid.  T  be- 
sought his  tenderness  for  our  virtuous  and 
most  revered  departed  friend,  and  begged 
he  would  mitigate  some  of  his  asperities. 
He  said,  roughly,  "He  would  not  cut  off 
his  claws,  nor  make  a  tiger  a  cat,  to 
please  anybody."  It  will,  1  doubt  not, 
be  a  very  amusing  book,  but  I  hope  not 


an  indiscreet  one ;  he  has  great  enthusi- 
asm, and  some  fire. — More,  Hannah, 
1785,  Letter,  Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts. 

Boswell's  book  will  be  curious,  or  at 
least  whimsical ;  his  hero,  who  can  so  long 
detain  the  public  curiosity,  must  be  no 
common  animal.— Gibbon,  Edward,  1791, 
Letter  to  Cadell. 

The  labour  and  anxious  attention  with 
which  I  have  collected  and  arranged  the 
materials  of  which  these  volumes  are  com- 
posed, will  hardly  be  conceived  by  those 
who  read  them  with  careless  felicity. 
The  stretch  of  mind  and  prompt  assiduity 
by  which  so  many  conversations  were  pre- 
served, I  myself,  at  some  distance  of  time, 
contemplate  with  wonder ;  and  I  must  be 
allowed  to  suggest  that  the  nature  of  the 
work  in  other  respects,  as  it  consists  of 
innumerable  detached  particulars,  all 
which,  even  the  most  minute,  I  have 
spared  no  pains  to  ascertain  with  a  scru- 
pulous authenticity,  has  occasioned  a  de- 
gree of  trouble  far  beyond  that  of  any 
other  species  of  composition.  Were  I  to 
detail  the  books  which  I  have  consulted, 
and  the  inquiries  which  I  have  found  it 
necessary  to  make  by  various  channels,  I 
should  probably  be  thought  ridiculously 
ostentatious.  Let  me  only  observe,  as  a 
specimen  of  my  trouble,  that  1  have  some- 
times been  obliged  to  run  half  over  Lon- 
don, in  order  to  fix  a  date  correctly; 
which,  when  I  had  accomplished  I  well 
knew  would  obtain  me  no  praise,  though 
a  failure  would  have  been  to  my  discredit. 
And  after  all,  perhaps,  hard  as  it  may  be, 
I  shall  not  be  surprised  if  omissions  or 
mistakes  be  pointed  out  with  invidious 
severity.  I  have  also  been  extremely 
careful  as  to  the  exactness  of  my  quota- 
tions ;  holding  that  there  is  a  respect  due 
to  the  public,  which  should  oblige  every 
author  to  attend  to  this,  and  never  to  pre- 
sume to  introduce  them  with,  "I  think  I 
have  read,"  or,  "If  I  remember  right," 
when  the  originals  may  be  examined. — 
Boswell,  James,  1791,  The  Life  of  Sam- 
uel Johnson,  Advertisement. 

Boswell  has  at  last  published  his  long- 
promised  "Life  of  Dr.  Johnson,"  in  two 
volumes  in  quarto.  I  will  give  you  an 
account  of  it  when  I  have  gone  through  it. 
I  have  already  perceived,  that  in  writing 
the  history  of  Hudioras,  Ralpho  has  not 
forgot  himself — nor  will  others,  I  believe, 
forget  /lim/— Walpole,  Horace,  1791, 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


215 


To  Miss  Berry,  May  19 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cun- 
ningham, vol.  IX,  p.  317. 

Highly  as  this  work  is  now  estimated, 
it  will,  lam  confident, be  still  more  valued 
by  posterity  a  century  hence,  when  the 
excellent  and  extraordinary  man,  whose 
wit  and  wisdom  are  here  recorded,  shall 
be  viewed  at  a  still  greater  distance; 
and  the  instruction  and  entertainment 
they  afford  will  at  once  produce  reveren- 
tial gratitude,  admiration,  and  delight. — 
M ALONE,  Edmond,  1804,  ed.  BoswelVs 
Life  of  Johnson,  Preface. 

The  circle  of  Mr.  Bosweirs  acquaint- 
ance among  the  learned,  the  witty,  and 
indeed  among  men  of  all  ranks  and  pro- 
fessions, was  extremely  extensive,  as  his 
talents  were  considerable,  and  his  conviv- 
ial powers  made  his  company  much  in  re- 
quest. His  warmth  of  heart  towards  his 
friends,  was  very  great;  and  I  have  known 
few  men  who  possessed  a  stronger  sense 
of  piety,  or  more  fervent  devotion  (tinc- 
tured, no  doubt,  with  some  little  share  of 
superstition  which  had,  probably  in  some 
degree,  been  fostered  by  his  habits  of  in- 
timacy with  Dr.  Johnson),  perhaps  not 
always  sufficient  to  regulate  his  imagina- 
tion, or  direct  his  conduct,  yet  still  genuine, 
and  founded  both  in  his  understanding 
and  his  heart.  His  ''Life"  of  that  ex- 
traordina:ry  man,  with  all  the  faults  with 
which  it  has  been  charged,  must  be  allowed 
to  be  one  of  the  most  characteristic  and 
entertaining  biographical  works  in  the 
English  language. — Forbes,  Sir  William, 
1806,  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of 
James  Beattie,  vol.  ii,  p.  378,  note. 

His  "Life  of  Samuel  Johnson"  exhibits 
a  striking  likeness  of  a  confident,  over- 
weening, dictatorial  pedant,  though  of 
parts  and  learning ;  and  of  a  weak,  shal- 
low, submissive  admirer  of  such  a  charac- 
ter, deriving  a  vanity  from  that  very  ad- 
miration.—Hurd,  Richard,  1808?  Com- 
monplace Book,  ed.  Kilvert,  p.  254. 

Boswell  was  probably  an  inferior  man 
to  Spence ; — but  he  was  a  far  better  col- 
lector of  anecdotes,  and  the  very  prince, 
indeed,  of  retail  wits  and  philosophers; 
so  that,  with  all  possible  sense  of  the 
value  of  what  he  has  done,  we  sometimes 
can  hardly  help  wishing  that  he  had  lived 
in  the  time  of  Pope,  instead  of  our  own. 
— Hazlitt,  William,  1820,  Spence's  Anec- 
dotes, Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  33,  p.  306. 

Considering  the  eminent  persons  to 


whom  it  relates,  the  quantity  of  miscel- 
laneous information  and  entertaining  gos- 
sip which  it  brings  together,  may  be 
termed,  without  exception,  the  best  par- 
lour-window book  that  ever  was  written. 
—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1823,  Samuel 
Johnson. 

I  now  approach,  with  a  keen  recollec- 
tion of  the  pleasure  which,  in  common 
with  every  tolerably  well-educated  Eng- 
lishman, I  have  felt,  and  shall  continue  to 
my  very  latest  hour  to  feel,  in  the  perusal 
of  it  the  biography  of  Dr.  Samuel  John- 
son, by  James  Boswell,  his  companion,  his 
chronicler,  and  his  friend.  This  fascina- 
ting, and  I  may  add  truly  original,  compo- 
sition, is  a  work  for  all  times.  In  read- 
ing it,  we  see  the  man — 

"Vir  ipse.  .  .  . 
Sic  oculos,  sic  ilk  manus,  sic  ora  ferebat.^* 
We  even  hear  his  voice,  and  observe  his 
gesticulations.  The  growth  of  discontent 
and  the  shout  of  triumph  equally  pervades 
our  ears.  Walking,  sitting,  reading, 
writing,  talking,  all  is  Johnsonian.  Such 
another  piece  of  domestic  painting,  in 
black  and  white,  is,  perhaps,  no  where  to 
be  seen.  We  place  Boswell's  Johnson  in 
our  libraries,  as  an  enthusiast  hangs  up 
his  Gerard  Dow  in  his  cabinet — to  be  gazed 
at  again  and  again ;  to  feed  upon,  and  to 
devour. — Dibdin,  Thomas  Frognall,  1824, 
Library  Companion,  p.  523. 

Of  above  twenty  years,  therefore,  that 
their  acquaintance  lasted,  periods  equiv- 
alent in  the  whole  to  about  three-quarters 
of  a  year  only,  fell  under  the  personal 
notice  of  Boswell.  ...  It  appears 
from  the  Life,  that  Mr.  Boswell  visited 
England  a  dozen  times  during  his  acquaint- 
ance with  Dr.  Johnson,  and  that  the  num- 
ber of  days  on  which  they  met  were  about 
180,  to  which  is  to  be  added  the  time  of 
the  Tour,  during  w^hich  they  met  daily  from 
the  18th  August,  to  the  22d  November, 
1773 ;  in  the  whole  about  276  days.  The 
number  of  pages  in  the  separate  editions 
of  the  two  works  is  2528,  of  which  1320 
are  occupied  by  the  history  of  these  276 
days ;  so  that  a  little  less  than  an  hundredth 
part  of  Dr.  Johnson's  life  occupies  above 
one-half  of  Mr.  Boswell's  works.  Every 
one  must  regret  that  his  personal  inter- 
course with  his  great  friend  was  not  more 
frequent  or  more  continued. — Croker, 
John  Wilson,  1831,  ed.  Boswell's  Life  of 
Johnson,  Preface. 


216 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


*'The  Life  of  Johnson"  is  assuredly  a 
great,  a  very  great  work.  Homer  is  not 
more  decidedly  the  first  of  heroic  poets, 
Shakspeare  is  not  more  decidedly  the 
first  of  dramatists,  Demosthenes  is  not 
more  decidedly  the  first  of  orators,  than 
Boswell  is  the  first  of  biographers.  He 
has  no  second.  He  has  distanced  all  his 
competitors  so  decidedly,  that  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  place  them.  Eclipse  is 
first,  and  the  rest  nowhere.  We  are  not 
sure  that  there  is  in  the  whole  history  of 
the  human  intellect  so  strange  a  phenom- 
enon as  this  book.  Many  of  the  greatest 
men  that  ever  lived  have  written  biogra- 
phy. Boswell  was  one  of  the  smallest 
men  that  ever  lived;  and  he  has  beaten 
them  all.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babing- 
TON,  1831,  BosweWs  Life  of  Johnson,  Edin- 
burgh Review,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays. 

Out  of  the  fifteen  millions  that  then 
lived,  and  had  bed  and  board  in  the  Brit- 
ish Islands,  this  man  has  provided  us  a 
gresiteY  pleasure  than  any  other  individual, 
at  whose  cost  we  now  enjoy  ourselves; 
perhaps  has  done  us  a  greater  service 
than  can  be  specially  attributed  to  more 
than  two  or  three:  yet,  ungrateful  that 
we  are,  no  written  or  spoken  eulogy  of 
James  Boswell  anywhere  exists ;  his  rec- 
ompense as  solid  pudding  (so  far  as  copy- 
right went)  was  not  excessive ;  and  as  for 
the  empty  praise,  it  has  altogether  been 
denied  him.  Men  are  unwiser  than  chil- 
dren ;  they  do  not  know  the  hand  that  feeds 
them.  ...  As  for  the  Book  itself, 
questionless  the  universal  favour  enter- 
tained for  it  is  well  merited.  In  worth 
as  a  Book  we  have  rated  it  beyond  any 
other  product  of  the  eighteenth  century : 
all  Johnson's  own  Writings,  laborious  and 
in  their  kind  genuine  above  most,  stand  on 
a  quite  inferior  level  to  it;  already,  in- 
deed, they  are  becoming  obsolete  for  this 
generation ;  and  for  some  future  genera- 
tion may  be  valuable  chiefly  as  Prolegom- 
ena and  expository  Scholia  to  this  John- 
soniad  of  Boswell.  Which  of  us  but  re- 
members, as  one  of  the  sunny  spots  in  his 
existence,  the  day  when  he  opened  these 
airy  volumes,  fascinating  him  by  a  true 
natural  magic !  It  was  as  if  the  curtains 
of  the  Past  were  drawn  aside,  and  we  look 
mysteriously  into  a  kindred  country, 
where  dwelt  our  Fathers;  inexpressibly 
dear  to  us,  but  which  had  seemed  forever 


hidden  from  our  eyes. — Carlyle,  Thomas, 
1832,  BosweWs  Life  of  Johnson. 

Do  you  know  our  English  ''BoswelPs 
Life  of  Johnson?"  If  not,  read  it. 
There  are  not  ten  books  of  the  eighteenth 
century  so  valuable.— Carlylj:,  Thomas, 
1834,  Letter  to  Eckermann,  May  6 ;  Cor- 
respondence Between  Goethe  and  Carlyle, 
ed.  Norton,  Appendix,  p.  342. 

Really,  the  ambition  of  the  man  to  illus- 
trate his  mental  insignificance,  by  contin- 
ually placing  himself  in  juxtaposition  with 
the  great  lexicographer,  has  something 
in  it  perfectly  ludicrous.  Never,  since 
the  days  of  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho  Panza, 
has  there  been  presented  to  the  world  a 
more  whimsically  contrasted  pair  of  as- 
sociates than  Johnson  and  Boswell. — Irv- 
ing, Washington,  1845,  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, p.  157. 

Content  not  only  to  be  called,  by  the 
object  of  his  veneration,  a  dunce,  a  para- 
site, a  coxcomb,  an  eavesdropper,  and  a 
fool,  but  even  faithfully  to  report  what 
he  calls  the  "keen  sarcastic  wit,"  the 
variety  of  degrading  images,"  the 
''rudeness,"  and  the  ferocity, "  of  which 
he  was  made  the  special  object :  bent  all 
the  more  firmly  upon  the  one  design  which 
seized  and  occupied  the  whole  of  such 
faculties  as  he  possessed,  and  living  in 
such  a  manner  to  achieve  it  as  to  have 
made  himself  immortal  as  his  hero. 
''You  have  but  two  topics,  sir,"  exclaimed 
Johnson;  "yourself  and  me.  I  am  sick 
of  both."  Happily  for  us,  nothing  could 
sicken  Boswell  of  either ;  and  by  one  of 
the  most  moderately  wise  men  that  ever 
lived,  the  masterpiece  of  English  biogra- 
phy was  written. — Forster,  John,  1848- 
54,  The  Life  and  Times  of  Oliver  Goldsmith, 
vol.  II,  p.  296. 

The  greatest  work  of  the  class  which 
exists  in  the  world.  The  "Tour  to  the 
Hebrides"  had  shown  what  was  to  be  ex- 
pected from  a  man  who  seems  to  have 
been  better  fitted  for  his  vocation  than 
anybody  else  who  ever  lived,  and  whose 
name  has  supplied  the  English  language 
with  a  new  word.  Every  year  increases 
the  popularity  of  Boswell's  marvellous 
work.  The  world  will  some  day  do  more 
justice  to  his  talents,  which  those  who 
cannot  forgive  his  Toryism  are  far  too 
prone  to  run  down  ;  for  he  possessed  great 
dramatic  talent,  great  feeling  for  humour, 
and  a  very  keen  perception  of  all  the  kinds 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


217 


of  colloquial  excellence.  With  these  men, 
— and  they  are  not  a  few, — nine-tenths 
of  whose  affected  contempt  of  him  rests 
on  the  mean  foundation  that  they  dislike 
the  very  pardonable  pride  he  took  in  his 
ancient  birth,  who  would  condescend  to 
reason?  But  if  any  unprejudiced  person 
doubts  the  real  talent  required  for  doing 
what  Boswell  did,  let  him  make  the  ex- 
periment by  attempting  to  describe  some- 
body's conversation  himself.  Let  him 
not  fancy  that  he  is  performing  a  trivial 
or  undignified  task;  for  which  of  us,  in 
any  station,  can  hope  to  render  a  tithe  of 
the  service  to  the  world  that  was  con- 
ferred on  it  by  the  Laird  of  Auchinleck  ? 
— Hannay,  James,  1856-61,  Table-Talk, 
Essays  from  the  Quarterly  Review,  p.  27. 

Hard  names  have  been  freely  applied  to 
what  has  unquestionably  proved  to  be 
disinterested  attachment.  Yet  who  has 
contributed  so  much  to  our  amusement? 
Where  shall  we  find  in  our  own  or  any 
other  language  one  who  has  shown  equal 
talent  and  industry  in  recording  so  much 
wit,  wisdom,  and  acquaintance  with  life 
for  the  instruction  and  amusement  of 
mankind?  Such  a  book  is  not  the  pro- 
duct of  chance.  He  had  no  model  to  fol- 
low ;  but  with  that  happiness  of  thought, 
which  if  it  does  not  imply  genius  certainly 
falls  little  short  of  it,  struck  out  one  for 
himself.  As  there  has  been  but  one  John- 
son, so  there  certainly  is  but  one  Boswell. 
He  stands  alone  in  the  plan  and  execution 
of  a  work  which  has  won  the  admiration 
of  every  description  of  reader. — Prior, 
Sir  James,  1860,  Life  of  Edmond  Malone, 
p.  124. 

That  altogether  unvenerable  yet  pro- 
foundly-verating  Scottish  gentleman, — 
that  queerest  mixture  of  qualities,  of 
force  and  weakness,  blindness  and  insight, 
vanity  and  solid  worth,— has  written  the 
finest  book  of  its  kind  which  our  nation 
possesses.  It  is  quite  impossible  to  over- 
state its  worth.  You  lift  it,  and  immedi- 
ately the  intervening  years  disappear,  and 
you  are  in  the  presence  of  the  Doctor. 
You  are  made  free  of  the  last  century,  as 
you  are  free  of  the  present.  You  double 
your  existence.  The  book  is  a  letter  of 
introduction  to  a  whole  knot  of  departed 
English  worthies.  In  virtue  of  Boswell's 
labours,  we  know  Johnson— the  central 
man  of  his  time  — better  than  Burke 
did,  or  Reynolds,  —  far  better  even  than 


Boswell  did.  We  know  how  he  expressed 
himself,  in  what  grooves  his  thoughts  ran, 
how  he  dressed,  how  he  ate,  drank,  and 
slept.  Boswell's  unconscious  art  is  won- 
derful, and  so  is  the  result  attained. 
This  book  has  arrested,  as  never  book  did 
before,  time  and  decay.  Bozzy  is  really 
a  wizzard :  he  makes  the  sun  stand  still. 
Till  his  work  is  done,  the  future  stands 
respectfully  aloof. — Smith,  Alexander, 
1863,  Dreamthorp,  p.  204. 

Boswell's  ''Life  of  Johnson"  not  only 
holds  an  undisputed  place  among  the  clas- 
sical achievements  of  English  Literature, 
but  belongs  to  that  group  within  the 
classical  groUp  which  may  be  distinguished 
as  consisting  of  works  both  well-reputed 
and  read,  the  other  classics  being  well- 
reputed  and  unopened.  No  one  who  has 
this  book  is  content  to  have  it  on  his 
shelves,  a  mere  respectability  in  calf-gilt 
— one  of  Charles  Lamb's  favourite  aver- 
sions, ''a  book  which  no  gentleman's 
library  should  be  without."  If  it  is  on 
his  shelves,  it  is  often  on  his  table.  .  .  . 
''Boswell's  Johnson"  is  for  me  a  sort 
of  test-book :  according  to  a  man's  judg- 
ment of  it,  I  am  apt  to  form  my  judgment 
of  him.  It  may  not  always  be  a  very 
good  test,  but  it  is  never  a  very  bad  one. 
In  spite,  however,  of  its  great  reputation, 
the  book  is  less  read  now-a-days  than  its 
admirers  imagine ;  and  I  have  often  been 
surprised  to  find  how  many  cultivated  men 
and  women,  who  would  assuredly  be  able 
to  do  it  full  justice,  were  satisfied  with 
vague  second-hand  knowledge  of  it,  simply 
because  they  had  allowed  the  idle  trash  of 
the  hour  to  come  between  them  and  it — 
preferring  to  read  what  "every  one"  is 
reading  to-day,  and  no  one  will  read  to- 
morrow. ...  No  one  has  ever  re- 
ported conversations  with  a  skill  compar- 
able to  that  of  Boswell — a  skill  which  ap- 
pears marvellous  when  compared  with  the 
attempts  of  others ;  and  although  there 
may  have  been  talkers  as  good  as  Johnson, 
no  man's  reported  talk  has  the  variety 
and  force  of  his.  .  .  .  It  is  Boswell's 
eternal  merit  to  have  deeply  reverenced 
the  man  whose  littlenesses  and  asperities 
he  could  keenly  discern,  and  has  coura- 
geously depicted ;  and  his  work  stands 
almost  alone  in  Biography  because  he  had 
this  vision  and  this  courage.  The  image 
of  Johnson  is  not  defaced  by  these  revela- 
tions, it  only  becomes  more  intelligible  in 


218 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


becoming  more  human. — Lewes,  George 
Henry,  1873,  Life  and  Conversations  of 
Dr.  Samuel  Johnson^  ed.  Main,  Preface, 
pp.  vii,  viii,  x,  xii. 

Johnson  entirely  depends  on  Boswell's 
life  of  him  for  his  fame.  The  fond  Bos- 
well,  with  all  his  Scotch  affection,  and 
Scotch  strength  of  diligence,  gathered  the 
gleanings  from  the  fields,  and  picked  up 
the  heads  of  grain,  long  after  the  reaper 
had  fulfilled  his  work.  The  pickings  and 
gatherings,  so  carefully  preserved,  have 
fed  many  a  hungry  and  empty  mind  since, 
and  enriched  the  gallery  of  English  liter- 
ature.—  Pur  yes,  James,  1874,  James 
Boswell,  Dublin  Magazine,  vol.  84,  p.  704. 

His  singular  gifts  as  an  observer  could 
only  escape  notice  from  a  careless  or  in- 
experienced reader.  Boswell  has  a  little 
of  the  true  Shaksperian  secret.  He  lets 
his  characters  show  themselves  without  ob- 
truding unnecessary  comment.  He  never 
misses  the  point  of  a  story,  though  he 
does  not  ostentatiously  call  our  atten- 
tion to  it.  He  gives  just  what  is  wanted 
to  indicate  character,  or  to  explain  the 
full  meaning  of  a  repartee.  It  is  not  till 
we  compare  his  reports  with  those  of  less 
skilful  hearers,  that  we  can  appreciate  the 
(  skill  with  which  the  essence  of  a  conver- 
'  sation  is  extracted,  and  the  whole  scene 
indicated  by  a  few  telling  touches.  We 
are  tempted  to  fancy  that  we  have  heard 
the  very  thing,  and  rashly  infer  that  Bos- 
well was  simply  the  mechanical  transmit- 
ter of  the  good  things  uttered.  Any  one 
who  will  try  to  put  down  the  pith  of  a 
brilliant  conversation  within  the  same 
space,  may  soon  satisfy  himself  of  the  ab- 
surdity of  such  an  hypothesis,  and  will 
learn  to  appreciate  Boswell's  powers  not 
only  of  memory  but  artistic  representation. 
Such  a  feat  implies  not  only  admirable 
quickness  of  appreciation,  but  a  rare  lit- 
erary faculty.  Boswell's  accuracy  is  re- 
markable ;  but  it  is  the  least  part  of  his 
merit. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1879,  Samuel 
Johnson  {English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  91. 

Johnson,  Goldsmith,  and  all  the  rest  of 
them  are  only  ghosts  until  the  pertina- 
cious young  laird  of  Auchinleck  comes  on 
the  scene  to  give  them  color,  and  life, 
and  form.— Black,  William,  1879,  Gold- 
smith (English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  41. 

The  most  remarkable  biography  writ- 
ten in  the  English  language — or  indeed, 
in  any  language.    .    »    .    Filled  with 


admiration  for  the  works  and  the  character 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  and  desiring  to  gratify 
his  own  vanity  and  insatiable  thirst  for 
notoriety,  Boswell  attached  himself  to 
Johnson  as  a  kind  of  a  humble  hanger-on 
and  satellite.  He  diligently  cultivated 
the  acquaintance  of  the  great  literary 
dictator,  sought  his  society  on  every  pos- 
sible occasion,  and  took  copious  notes  of 
everything  that  he  saw  or  heard.  .  .  . 
It  was  not  until  1791  that  he  gave  to  the 
world  that  wonderful  collection  of  sketches 
and  anecdotes  which  compose  his  great 
masterpiece  of  biography.  —  Baldwin, 
James,  1883,  English  Literature  and  Lit- 
erary Criticism,  Prose,  p.  96. 

A  paradox  in  himself,  Boswell  has  been 
a  great  cause  of  paradoxes.  The  virtue 
of  his  incomparable  "Life  of  Johnson," 
though  apparently  parasitic,  has  been  rec- 
ognized by  the  best  judges  as  original. 
— Saintsbury,  George,  1886,  Specimens 
of  English  Prose  Style,  p.  239. 

With  me  the  preparation  of  these  vol- 
umes has,  indeed,  been  the  work  of  many 
years.  Boswell's  ''Life  of  Johnson"  I 
read  for  the  first  time  in  my  boyhood, 
when  I  was  too  young  for  it  to  lay  any 
hold  on  me.  When  I  entered  Pembroke 
College,  Oxford,  though  I  loved  to  think 
that  Johnson  had  been  there  before  me, 
yet  I .  cannot  call  to  mind  that  I  ever 
opened  the  pages  of  Boswell.  .  .  . 
Such  was  my  love  for  the  subject  that 
on  one  occasion,  when  I  was  called  upon 
to  write  a  review  that  should  fill  two  col- 
umns of  a  weekly  newspaper,  I  read  a  new 
edition  of  the  ''Life"  from  beginning  to 
end  without,  I  believe,  missing  a  single 
line  of  the  text  or  a  single  note.  At 
length,  "towering  in  the  confidence"  of 
one  who  as  yet  has  but  set  his  foot  on  the 
threshold  of  some  stately  mansion  in  which 
he  hopes  to  find  for  himself  a  home,  I  was 
rash  enough  more  than  twelve  years  ago 
to  offer  myself  as  editor  of  a  new  edition 
of  Boswell's  "Life  of  Johnson."  Fortu- 
nately for  me  another  writer  had  been 
already  engaged  by  the  publisher  to  whom  \ 
I  applied,  and  my  offer  was  civilly  declined. 
From  that  time  on  I  never  lost  sight  of 
my  purpose  but  when  in  the  troubles  of 
life  I  well-nigh  lost  sight  of  every  kind  of 
hope.  Everything  in  my  reading  that 
bore  on  my  favourite  author  was  carefully 
noted,  till  at  length  I  felt  that  the  mate- 
rials which  I  had  gathered  from  all  sides 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


219 


were  sufficient  to  shield  me  from  a  charge 
of  rashness  if  I  now  began  to  raise  the 
building.  .  .  .  I  have  now  come  to 
the  end  of  my  long  labours.  ''There  are 
few  things  not  purely  evil,"  wrote  John- 
son, ''of  which  we  can  say  without  some 
emotion  of  uneasiness,  this  is  the  last." 
From  this  emotion  I  cannot  feign  that  I 
am  free.  My  book  has  been  my  compan- 
ion in  many  a  sad  and  many  a  happy  hour. 
I  take  leave  of  it  with  a  pang  of  regret, 
but  I  am  cheered  by  the  hope  that  it  may 
take  its  place,  if  a  lowly  one,  among  the 
works  of  men  who  have  laboured  patiently 
but  not  unsuccessfully  in  the  great  and  shin- 
ing fields  of  English  literature. — Hill, 
George  Birkbeck,  1887,  ed.  BoswelVs 
Life  of  Johnson,  Preface^  vol.  I,  pp.  xi, 
xiii,  xxix. 

The  universal  verdict  of  mankind  has 
placed  this  work  among  the  five  or  six 
most  interesting  and  stimulating  of  the 
world's  books.— GossE,  Edmund,  1888, 
A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  358. 

Did  he  (Macaulay)  recognise  to  the  full 
the  fact  of  Boswell's  pre-eminence  as  an 
artist  ?  Was  he  really  conscious  that  the 
"Life*'  is  an  admirable  workof  art  aswell 
as  the  most  readable  and  companionable  of 
books?  As,  not  content  with  committing 
himself  thus  far,  he  goes  on  to  prove  that 
Boswell  was  great  because  he  was  little ; 
that  he  wrote  a  great  book  because  he 
was  an  ass,  and  that  if  he  had  not  been 
an  ass  his  book  would  probably  have  been 
at  least  a  small  one,  incredulity  on  these 
points  becomes  repectable.  — Henley, 
William  Ernest,  1890,  Views  and  Re- 
views, p.  197. 

How  much  the  literary  Jupiter  owes  to 
his  literary  satellites,  particularly  to  the 
first  one,  it  is  not  easy,  at  this  distance 
of  time,  to  tell.  But  who  reads  his 
"Journey  to  the  Western  Islands  of  Scot- 
land" in  these  days?  How  often  is  his 
' '  Dictionary' '  consulted  ?  What  influence 
has  his  "Rambler"  upon  modern  letters? 
What  sweet  girl  graduate  or  cultivated 
Harvard  "man"  of  to-day  can  quote  a 
line  from  ' '  The  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes, ' ' 
or  knows  whether  that  production  is  in 
prose  or  verse  ?  What  would  the  world 
have  thought  of  Samuel  Johnson  at  the 
end  of  a  hundred  years  if  a  silly  little 
Scottish  laird  had  not  made  a  hero  of  him, 
to  be  worshipped  as  no  literary  man  was 


ever  worshipped  before  or  since,  and  if  he 
had  not  written  a  biography  of  him  which 
is  the  best  in  any  language,  and  the  model 
for  all  others. — Hutton,  Laurence,  1891, 
Literary  Landmarks  of  Edinburgh,  p.  20. 

Boswell,  then,  possessed  in  perfection 
some  essential  qualifications  for  the  biog- 
rapher— discernment,  discrimination,  the 
eye  of  an  artist,  a  keen  sense  of  literary 
proportion.  His  way  was  made  easy  for 
him  by  good  humour,  and  an  unbounded 
love  of  society,  and  his  vanity  made  him 
impervious  to  any  rebuflt,  however  crush- 
ing. His  keen  sympathy  enabled  him  to 
penetrate  the  motives  of  men,  and  he  had 
enough  of  literary  skill  to  convey  the  im- 
pression of  a  character  or  of  an  incident 
with  dramatic  reality.  In  spite  of  all  his 
weakness,  his  folly,  his  dissipation,  and 
the  essential  shallowness  of  his  character, 
he  had  earnestness  of  purpose  enough  to 
force  him  to  untiring  perseverance  in  his 
task.  .  .  .  Wonderful  as  it  is  that 
a  man  so  compact  of  folly  and  vanity,  so 
childish  and  so  weak  as  Boswell,  should 
have  produced  a  book  which  has  enforced 
the  admiration  of  the  world,  yet  we  need 
not  explain  that  book  as  a  literary  miracle. 
Its  success  is  achieved  by  the  usual 
means — insight,  sympathy,  skill,  and  per- 
severance ;  and  its  author  had  served  an 
apprenticeship  to  his  art  before  he  began 
his  greatest  work. — Craik,  Henry,  1895, 
English  Prose,  vol.  IV,  p.  479. 

Boswell's  book  itself  may  now,  in  Par- 
liamentary language,  be  taken  for  "read." 
As  Johnson  said  of  Goldsmith's  "Travel- 
ler," "its  merit  is  established,  and  in- 
dividual praise  or  censure  can  neither 
augment  nor  diminish  it." 
What  is  most  distinctive  in  Boswell  is 
Boswell's  method  and  Boswell's  manner. 
.  .  .  This  faculty  of  communicating 
his  impressions  accurately  to  his  reader 
is  Boswell's  most  conspicuous  gift.  Pres- 
ent in  his  first  book,  it  was  more  present 
in  his  second,  and  when  he  began  his  great 
biography  it  had  reached  its  highest  point. 
So  individual  is  his  manner,  so  unique  his 
method  of  collecting  and  arranging  his 
information,  that  to  disturb  the  native 
character  of  his  narrative  by  interpolat- 
ing foreign  material,  must  of  necessity 
impair  its  specific  character  and  imperil 
its  personal  note. — Dobson,  Austin,  1898, 
BoswelVs  Predecessors  and  Editors^  Miscel- 
lanies, pp.  110,  124,  125. 


220 


JAMES  BOSWELL 


It  is  refreshing  to  turn  to  Boswell. 
We  shall  confine  ourselves  to  Boswell's 
character,  which  has  been  little  studied. 
If  the  "Journal  to  Stella"  is  a  diary  of 
two  worlds,  Boswell's  ''Life"  is  an  atmos- 
phere of  one — that  of  his  hero.  Yet 
through  this  atmosphere  his  own  person- 
ality emerges  clear  and  palpable. — Sichel, 
W.,  1899,  Men  who  Have  Kept  A  Diary, 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol.  165,  p.  80. 
i  It  was  through  having  his  attention 
almost  always  alert  that  he  was  enabled  to 
give  us  those  vivid  pictures  which  make  his 
book  a  veritable  literary  cinematograph ; 
for  in  truth  his  pages  may  be  said  to  live ; 
with  a  few  simple  but  subtle  strokes  the 
living  scene  is  dramatically  brought  before 
us,  and  we  can  almost  fancy  that  we  hear 
the  loud  voice  of  Johnson  and  the  sonor- 
ous tones  of  Burke,  that  we  see  the  quaint 
figure  of  Goldsmith  and  the  sedate  deport- 
ment of  Gibbon.  — Sillard,  P.  A. ,  1901,  The 
Prince  of  Biographers,  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  88,  p.  214. 

GENERAL 

That  he  was  a  coxcomb  and  a  bore, 
weak,  vain,  pushing,  curious,  garrulous, 
was  obvious  to  all  who  were  acquainted 
with  him.  That  he  could  not  reason,  that 
he  had  no  wit,  no  humour,  no  eloquence, 
is  apparent  from  his  writings.  And  yet 
his  writings  are  read  beyond  the  Missis- 
sippi, and  under  the  Southern  Cross,  and 
are  likely  to  be  read  as  long  as  the  Eng- 
lish exists,  either  as  a  living  or  as  a  dead 
language.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babing- 
TON,  1843,  Samuel  Johnson,  Critical  and 
Historical  Essays. 

With  all  the  praise  that  is  lavished 
upon  his  biography,  the  author  himself  is 
rather  an  underrated  man.  It  is  pretty 
generally  supposed  that  little  intellectual 
power  was  required  for  such  a  production 
— that  it  is  merely  an  aff'air  of  memory 
and  observation.  Now  such  powers  of  mem- 
ory and  observation  are  certainly  no  com- 
mon endowment.  .  .  Macaulay,  who 
dilates  upon  theT?reanness  of  spirit  shown 
in  the  drawing  out  of  Johnson's  opinions, 
gives  no  credit  to  the  ingenuity.  Boswell 
was  undoubtedly  a  man  of  much  social 
tact,  possessing  great  general  knowledge 
of  human  nature,  and  a  most  penetrating 
insight  into  the  thoughts  and  intents  of 
his  habitual  companions. — Minto,  Wil- 
liam, 1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose 
Literature,  p.  481. 


James  Boswell  has  been  treated  with 
the  greatest  injustice  and  ingratitude  by 
nearly  all  the  literary  men  who  have  re- 
corded their  opinions  concerning  him  and 
his  work.  Sir  Walter  Scott  alone,  with 
characteristic  good  sense,  stands  aloof 
from  the  rest  in  his  respectful  treatment 
of  the  distinguished  biographer.  He  does 
not,  indeed,  seem  to  be  aware  that  Bos- 
well requires  defence,  or  that  there  is  any 
thing  particular  in  a  kindly  and  respectful 
demeanour  towards  the  author  of  John- 
'  son's  Life.  He  knows  that  Boswell,  in 
spite  of  his  faults,  was  a  high-spirited  and 
honourable  gentleman,  warm-hearted,  and 
of  a  most  candid  and  open  nature,  a  sunny 
temper,  and  the  most  unusual  and  genuine 
literary  abilities.  Accordingly,  when  Sir 
Walter  happens  to  allude  to  the  Laird  of 
Auchinleck  it  is  always  in  a  friendly  and 
frequently  admiring  tone  —  a  tone  very 
different  from  the  brutal  vituperation  of 
Macaulay  or  the  superior  compassion  and 
humane  condescension  of  the  great  Herr 
Teufelsdrock.  James  Boswell  did  not 
deserve  the  hatred  of  the  one  or  the 
pity  of  the  other.  In  standing  contrast  with 
the  resolute  vituperation  of  the  rhetori- 
cian and  the  determined  compassion  of  the 
prophet,  the  honest  student  of  English 
literature  will  be  always  glad  to  encounter 
the  kindly,  grateful,  and  admiring  lan- 
guage which  flows  so  gracefully  and  nat- 
urally from  the  pen  of  Sir  Walter  in  deal- 
ing with  the  character  and  the  literary  per- 
formances of  Boswell.— Clive,  Arthur, 
1874,  Boswell  and  his  Enemies,  Gentle- 
man's Magazine,  n.  s.,  vol.  13,  p.  68. 

The  unique  character  of  Boswell  is  im- 
pressed upon  all  his  works.  The  many 
foibles  which  ruined  his  career  are  con- 
spicuous but  never  offensive;  the  vanity 
which  makes  him  proud  of  his  hypochondria 
and  his  supposed  madness  is  redeemed  by 
his  touching  confidence  in  the  sympathy  of 
his  fellows ;  his  absolute  good-nature,  his 
hearty  appreciation  of  the  excellence  of 
his  eminent  contemporaries,  though  pushed 
to  absurdity,  is  equalled  by  the  real  vivacity 
of  his  observations  and  the  dramatic  power 
of  his  narrative.  Macaulay' s  graphic 
description  of  his  absurdities,  and  Car- 
lyle's  more  penetrating  appreciation  of 
his  higher  qualities,  contain  all  that  can 
be  said. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1885,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  V, 
p.  437. 


V 


OF  THt  . 

UNIVERSITY  o?ltU«  ^^5- 


221 


Robert  Burns 

1759-1796 

January  25,  1759,  Birth  at  Ayr,  parish  of  Alloway.  1765,  School  at  Alloway  Mill; 
with  xMurdoch.  1766-1777,  At  Mount  Oliphant,  parish  of  Ayr  (1766).  1768,  Early 
associations  on  the  farm.  Taught  at  home  by  his  father.  1769,  Books.  Love  and 
song.  Jenny  Wilson.  1777-84,  At  Lochlea,  parish  of  Tarbolton.  1778,  School  at 
Kirkoswald.  1780,  The  Bachelor's  Club.  1781,  Flax-dressing  at  Irvine.  1782,  Finds 
Fergusson's  Poems.  1783,  A  Freemason.  February  1784,  His  father's  death. 
1784-1786,  At  Mossgiel,  parish  of  Mauchline.  1785,  Early  friends:  Gavin  Hamil- 
ton, Robert  Aiken.  Struggle  with  Auld  Lichts.  Poetic  Springtide.  E^Met^. 
Satirical  Poems.  Descriptive  Poems.  Songs.  August  1786,  Kilmarnock ^tst) 
edition  of  poems  published.  Literary  friendships:  Dr.  Blacklock,  Dugald  Stewart, 
Dr.  Blair,  Rev.  Mr.  Laurie,  Mrs.  Dunlop.  Visits  Katrine,  meets  Lord  Daer  and  Mrs. 
Stewart.  November  1786,  Visits  Edinburgh.  Among  the  celebrities.  April  1787, 
Second  edition  of  poems.  Travels  in  Scotland,  May,  Border  Tour.  June,  Returns  to 
Mossgiel.  First  Highland  Tour.  Second  Highland  Tour.  Third  Highland  Tour. 
September,  Returns  to  Edinburgh,  Johnson's  Museum.  March  1788,  Leaves  Edin- 
burgh. 1788-1791,  At  Ellisland.  August  1788,  Marries  Jean  Armour,  At  Friar's 
Carse.  1790,  Appointed  Excise  Officer.  1791-1796,  At  Dumfries.  Bank  Vennel. 
Dumfries  Volunteers.  Thomson's  Collection.  1792,  Patriotic  Songs.  1793,  Visits 
Galloway.  1794,  Removes  to  Mill  Hill  Brae.  Failing  Health.  July  21,  1796,  Death. 
— George,  Andrew  J.,  1896,  ed.y  Select  Poems  of  Robert  Burns,  p.  231. 


PERSONAL 

This  kind  of  life — the  cheerless  gloom 
of  a  hermit,  with  the  unceasing  moil  of  a 
galley-slave,  brought  me  to  my  sixteenth 
year ;  a  little  before  which  period  I  first 
committed  the  sin  of  Rhyme.  You  know 
our  country  custom  of  coupling  a  man  and 
woman  together  as  partners  in  the  labours 
of  harvest.  In  my  fifteenth  autumn  my 
partner  was  a  bewitching  creature,  a  year 
younger  than  myself.  My  scarcity  of 
English  denies  me  the  power  of  doing  her 
justice  in  that  language;  but  you  know 
the  Scottish  idiom — she  was  a  bonnie 
sweet,  sonie  lass.  In  short,  she  altogether, 
unwittingly  to  herself,  initiated  me  in  that 
delicious  passion,  which,  in  spite  of  acid 
disappointment,  gin-horse  prudence,  and 
book-worm  philosophy,  I  hold  to  be  the 
first  of  human  joys,  our  dearest  blessing 
here  below  !  How  she  caught  the  conta- 
gion, I  cannot  tell :  you  medical  people 
talk  much  of  infection  from  breathing  the 
same  air,  the  touch,  &c.  ;  but  I  never  ex- 
pressly said  I  loved  her,  indeed,  I  did  not 
know  myself  why  I  liked  so  much  to 
loiter  behind  with  her,  when  returning  in 
the  evening  from  our  labours ;  why  the 
tones  of  her  voice  made  my  heart-strings 
thrill  like  an  /Eolian  harp ;  and  particu- 
larly my  pulse  beat  such  a  furious  ratan 
when  I  looked  and  fingered  over  her 
little  hand  to  pick  out  the  cruel  nettle- 
stings  and  thistles.    Among  her  other 


love-inspiring  qualities,  she  sung  sweetly; 
and  it  was  her  favourite  reel  to  which  I  at- 
tempted giving  an  embodied  vehicle  in 
rhyme.  I  was  not  so  presumptuous  as  to 
imagine  that  I  could  make  verses  like 
printed  ones,  composed  by  men  who  had 
Greek  and  Latin ;  but  my  girl  sung  a  song, 
which  was  said  to  be  composed  by  a  small 
country  laird's  son,  on  one  of  his  father's 
maids,  with  whom  he  was  in  love !  and  I 
saw  no  reason  why  I  might  not  rhyme  as 
well  as  he;  for,  excepting  that  he  could 
smear  sheep,  and  cast  peats,  his  father 
living  in  the  moor-lands,  he  had  no  more 
scholar-craft  than  myself. — Burns,  Rob- 
ert, 1787,  Letter  to  Dr.  Moore,  Aug.  2 ; 
Burns's  Works,  ed.  Currie. 

After  all  my  boasted  independence, 
curst  necessity  compels  me  to  implore  you 
for  five  pounds.  A  cruel  scoundrel  of  a 
haberdasher,  to  whom  I  owe  an  account, 
taking  it  into  his  head  that  1  am  dying, 
has  commenced  a  process,  and  will  infalli- 
bly put  me  into  jail.  Do,  for  God's  sake, 
send  me  that  sum,  and  that  by  return  of 
post.  Forgive  me  this  earnestness ;  but 
the  horrors  of  a  jail  have  made  me  half 
distracted.  I  do  not  ask  all  this  gratui- 
tously; for,  upon  returning  health,  I 
hereby  promise  and  engage  to  furnish  you 
with  five  pounds'  worth  of  the  neatest 
song-genius  you  have  seen.  I  tried  my 
hand  on  Rothermurchie  this  morning.  The 
measure  is  so  difficult,  that  it  is  impossible 


222 


ROBERT  BURNS 


to  infuse  much  genius  into  the  lines; 
they  are  on  the  other  side.  Forgive,  for- 
give me!  —  Burns,  Robert,  1796,  Letter 
to  George  Thomson,  July  12. 

If  others  have  climbed  more  successfully 
to  the  heights  of  Parnassus,  none  certainly 
out-shone  Burns  in  the  charms — the  sor- 
cery I  would  almost  call  it,  of  fascinating 
conversation;  the  spontaneous  eloquence 
of  social  argument,  or  the  unstudied  poign- 
ancy of  brilliant  repartee.  His  personal 
endowments  were  perfectly  correspondent 
with  the  qualifications  of  his  mind.  His 
form  was  manly ;  his  action  energy  itself ; 
devoid,  in  a  great  measure,  however,  of 
those  graces,  of  that  polish,  acquired 
only  in  the  refinement  of  societies,  where 
in  early  life  he  had  not  the  opportunity  to 
mix;  but,  where,  such  was  the  irresisti- 
ble power  of  attraction  that  encircled 
him,  though  his  appearance  and  manners 
were  always  peculiar,  he  never  failed  to 
delight  and  to  excel.  His  figure  certainly 
bore  the  authentic  impress  of  his  birth 
and  original  station  in  life;  it  seemed 
rather  moulded  by  nature  for  the  rough 
exercises  of  agriculture,  than  the  gentler 
cultivation  of  the  belles  lettres.  His  fea- 
tures were  stamped  with  the  hardy  char- 
acter of  independence,  and  the  firmness 
of  conscious,  though  not  arrogant  pre- 
eminence. I  believe  no  man  was  ever 
gifted  with  a  larger  portion  of  the  vivida 
vis  animi :  the  animated  expressions  of  his 
countenance  were  almost  peculiar  to  him- 
self. The  rapid  lightenings  of  his  eye 
were  always  the  harbingers  of  some  flash 
of  genius,  whether  they  darted  the  fiery 
glances  of  insulted  and  indignant  superi- 
ority, or  beamed  with  the  impassioned 
sentiment  of  fervent  and  impetuous  affec- 
tions. His  voice  alone  could  improve 
upon  the  magic  of  his  eye ;  sonorous,  re- 
plete with  the  finest  modulations,  it  alter- 
nately captivated  the  ear  with  the  melody 
of  poetic  numbers,  the  perspicuity  of  nerv- 
ous reasoning,  or  the  ardent  sallies  of  en- 
thusiastic patriotism. — Riddell,  Maria, 
1796,  Letter  to  Dumfries  Journal,  Aug,  7, 
Burns' s  Works,  ed.  Curry. 

My  pupil,  Robert  Burns,  was  then  be- 
tween six  and  seven  years  of  age;  his 
preceptor  about  eighteen.  Robert,  and 
his  younger  brother,  Gilbert,  had  been 
grounded  a  little  in  English  before  they 
were  put  under  my  care.  They  both  made 
a  rapid  progress  in  reading,  and  a  tolerable 


progress  in  writing.  In  reading,  divid- 
ing words  into  syllables  by  rule,  spelling 
without  book,  phrasing  sentences,  &c., 
Robert  and  Gilbert  were  generally  at  the 
upper  end  of  the  class,  even  when  ranged 
with  boys  by  far  their  seniors.  The  books 
most  commonly  used  in  the  school  were  the 
'^Spelling  Book,''  the  '*New  Testament," 
the ' '  Bible, " ' '  Masson's  Collection  of  Prose 
and  Verse,"  and  Fisher's  English  Gram- 
mar." They  committed  to  memory  the 
hymns,  and  other  poems  of  that  collection, 
with  uncommon  facility.  This  facility  was 
partly  owing  to  the  method  pursued  by 
their  father  and  me  in  instructing  them, 
which  was,  to  make  them  thoroughly  ac- 
quainted with  the  meaning  of  every  word 
in  each  sentence  that  was  to  be  commit- 
ted to  memory.  .  .  .  Gilbert  always 
appeared  to  me  to  possess  a  more  lively 
imagination,  and  to  be  more  of  the  wit, 
than  Robert.  I  attempted  to  teach  them 
a  little  church-music.  Here  they  were 
left  far  behind  by  all  the  rest  of  the 
school.  Robert's  ear,  in  particular,  was 
remarkably  dull,  and  his  voice  untunable. 
It  was  long  before  I  could  get  them  to 
distinguish  one  tune  from  another.  Rob- 
bert's  countenance  was  generally  grave, 
and  impressive  of  a  serious,  contempla- 
tive, and  thoughtful  mind.  Gilbert's  face 
said.  Mirth,  with  thee  I  mean  to  live ;  and 
certainly,  if  any  person  who  knew  the  two 
boys,  had  been  asked  which  of  them  was 
the  most  likely  to  court  the  muses,  he 
would  surely  never  have  guessed  that 
Robert  had  a  propensity  of  that  kind. 
—Murdoch,  John,  1799,  Letter  to  Joseph 
Cooper  Walker,  Feb.  22,  Burns's  Works, 
ed.  Currie. 

The  first  time  I  saw  Robert  Burns  was 
on  the  23d  of  October,  1786,  when  he  dined 
at  my  house  at  Ayrshire,  together  with 
our  common  friend  Mr.  John  Mackenzie, 
surgeon,  in  Mauchline,  to  whom  I  am  in- 
debted for  the  pleasure  of  his  acquaintance 
.  .  .  .  His  manners  were  then,  as  they 
continued  ever  afterwards,  simple,  manly, 
and  independent;  strongly  expressive  of 
conscious  genius  and  worth ;  but  without 
any  thing  that  indicated  forwardness, 
arrogance,  or  vanity.  He  took  his  share 
in  conversation,  but  not  more  than  belonged 
to  him ;  and  listened  with  apparent  atten- 
tion and  deference,  on  subjects  where  his 
want  of  education  deprived  him  of  the 
means  of  information.    If  there  had  been 


ROBERT  BURNS 


223 


a  little  more  of  gentleness  and  accommo- 
dation in  his  temper,  he  would,  I  think, 
have  been  still  more  interesting;  but  he 
had  been  accustomed  to  give  law  in  the 
circle  of  his  ordinary  acquaintance ;  and 
his  dread  of  any  thing  approaching  to 
meanness  or  servility,  rendered  his  man- 
ner somewhat  decided  and  hard.  Nothing, 
perhaps,  was  more  remarkable  among  his 
various  attainments,  than  the  fluency,  and 
precision,  and  originality  of  his  language, 
when  he  spoke  in  company ;  more  particu- 
larly as  he  aimed  at  purity  in  his  turn  of 
expression,  and  avoided  more  successfully 
than  most  Scotchmen,  the  peculiarities  of 
Scottish  phraseology.  .  .  .  The  at- 
tentions he  received  during  his  stay  in 
town  from  all  ranks  and  descriptions  of 
persons,  were  such  as  would  have  turned 
any  head  but  his  own.  1  cannot  say  that 
I  could  perceive  any  unfavourable  effect 
which  they  left  on  his  mind.  He  retained 
the  same  simplicity  of  manners  and  ap- 
pearance which  had  struck  me  so  forcibly 
when  I  first  saw  him  in  the  country ;  nor 
did  he  seem  to  feel  any  additional  self- 
importance  from  the  number  and  rank  of 
his  new  acquaintance.  His  dress  was  per- 
fectly suited  to  his  station,  plain  and  un- 
pretending, with  a  sufl[icient  attention  to 
neatness.  If  I  recollect  right  he  always 
wore  boots;  and,  when  on  more  than 
usual  ceremony,  buck-skin  breeches. 
.  .  .  All  the  faculties  of  Burns's  mind 
were,  as  far  as  I  could  judge,  equally  vig- 
orous ;  and  his  predilection  for  poetry  was 
rather  the  result  of  his  own  enthusiastic 
and  impassioned  temper,  than  of  a  gen- 
ius exclusively  adapted  to  that  species  of 
composition.  From  his  conversation  I 
should  have  pronounced  him  to  be  fitted 
to  excel  in  whatever  walk  of  ambition  he 
had  chosen  to  exert  his  abilities. — Stew- 
art, DuGALD,  1800,  Letter  to  James  Cur- 
rie,  Curriers  Life  of  Burns. 

Burns  died  in  great  poverty;  but  the 
independence  of  his  spirit,  and  the  exem- 
plary prudence  of  his  wife,  had  preserved 
him  from  debt.  He  had  received  from  his 
poems  a  clear  profit  of  about  nine  hundred 
pounds.  Of  this  sum,  the  part  expended 
on  his  library  (which  was  far  from  exten- 
sive) and  in  the  humble  furniture  of  his 
house,  remained;  and  obligations  were 
found  for  two  hundred  pounds  advanced  by 
him  to  the  assistance  of  those  to  whom  he 
was  united  by  the  ties  of  blood,  and  still 


more  by  those  of  esteem  and  affection. 
When  it  is  considered,  that  his  expenses 
in  Edinburgh,  and  on  his  various  journeys, 
could  not  be  inconsiderable ;  that  his  agri- 
cultural undertaking  was  unsuccessful ; 
that  his  income,  from  the  Excise  was  for 
some  time  as  low  as  fifty,  and  never  rose 
to  above  seventy  pounds  a  year ;  that  his 
family  was  large  and  his  spirit  was  liberal 
— no  one  will  be  surprised  that  his  cir- 
cumstances were  so  poor,  or  that,  as  his 
health  decayed,  his  proud  and  feeling  heart 
sunk  under  the  secret  consciousness  of 
indigence,  and  the  apprehensions  of  abso- 
lute want.  Yet  poverty  never  bent  the 
spirit  of  Burns  to  any  pecuniary  mean- 
ness. Neither  chicanery  nor  sordidness 
ever  appeared  in  his  conduct.  He  carried 
his  disregard  of  money  to  blameable  excess. 
Even  in  the  midst  of  distress  he  bore  him- 
self loftily  to  the  world,  and  received  with 
a  jealous  reluctance  every  offer  of  friendly 
assistance.  .  .  .  Burns,  as  has  already 
been  mentioned,  was  nearly  five  feet  ten 
inches  in  height,  and  of  a  form  that  indi- 
cated agility  as  well  as  strength.  His 
well-raised  forehead,  shaded  with  black 
curling  hair,  indicated  extensive  capacity. 
His  eyes  were  large,  dark,  full  of  ardour 
and  intelligence.  His  face  was  well 
formed ;  and  his  countenance  uncommonly 
interesting  and  expressive.  His  mode  of 
dressing  which  was  often  slovenly,  and  a 
certain  fulness  and  bend  in  his  shoulders, 
characteristic  of  his  original  profession, 
disguised  in  some  degree  the  natural  sym- 
metry and  elegance  of  his  form.  The  ex- 
ternal appearance  of  Burns  w^as  most 
strikingly  indicative  of  the  character  of 
his  mind.— CuRRiE,  James,  1800,  ed., 
Works  of  Robert  Burns,  Life. 

We  turned  again  to  Burns's  house.  Mrs. 
Burns  was  gone  to  spend  some  time  by 
the  seashore  with  her  children.  We  spoke 
to  the  servant-maid  at  the  door,  who  in- 
vited us  forward,  and  we  sate  down  in  the 
parlour.  The  walls  were  coloured  witi]  a 
blue  wash ;  on  one  side  of  the  fire  was  a 
mahogany  desk,  opposite  to  the  window  a 
clock,  and  over  the  desk,  a  print  from 
^'Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  which  Burns 
mentions  in  one  of  his  letters  having  re- 
ceived as  a  present.  The  house  was  cleanly 
and  neat  in  the  inside,  the  stairs  of  stone, 
scoured  white,  the  kitchen  on  the  right 
side  of  the  passage,  the  parlour  on  the 
left.    In  the  room  above  the  parlour  the 


224 


ROBERT  BURNS 


poet  died,  and  his  son  after  him  in  the 
same  room. —  Wordsworth,  Dorothy, 
Aug.  18,  1803,  Journals. 

Till  he  fixed  his  residence  in  Dumfries, 
his  irregularities,  though  by  no  means 
unfrequent,  had  not  become  inveterately 
habitual ;  the  temptations,  however,  to 
which  he  was  now  exposed  proved  too 
powerful  for  his  better  impressions ;  after 
various  struggles  against  the  stream  of 
dissipation  which  was  gradually  surround- 
ing him,  he  at  length  suffered  himself  to 
be  rapidly  carried  alongfby  its  fatal  cur- 
rent. A  large  proportion  of  the  more 
genteel,  or  more  idle  inhabitants  of  Dum- 
fries, consists  of  men  connected  with  the 
profession  of  law :  and  in  some  of  these, 
as  well  as  in  other  inhabitants  of  the  town 
and  its  vicinity,  Burns  found  associates 
from  whom  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that 
,he  should  learn  sobriety.  The  fame  of  his 
literary  character  also  exposedliim  to  the 
company  of  every  stranger  who  professed 
a  respect  for  poetry.  As  their  interviews 
commonly  took  place  in  taverns,  his  famil- 
iarity with  riotous  excess  was  daily  in- 
creasing. In  the  midst  of  such  distrac- 
tions, it  must  have  been  impossible  for  him 
to  discharge  the  duties  of  his  office  with 
that  regularity  which  is  almost  indispen- 
sable.—Irvine,  David,  1810,  The  Lives  of 
the  Scottish  Poets. 

I  was  not  much  struck  with  his  first 
appearance,  as  I  had  previously  heard  it 
described.  His  person,  though  strong 
and  well  knit,  and  much  superior  to  what 
might  be  expected  in  a  plough^man,  was 
still  rather  coarse  in  its  outline.  His 
stature,  from  want  of  setting  up,  appeared 
to  be  only  of  the  middle  size,  but  was 
rather  above  it.  His  motions  were  firm 
and  decided,  and  though  without  any  pre- 
tentions to  grace,  were  at  the  same  time 
so  free  from  clownish  constraint,  as  to 
show  that  he  had  not  always  been  confined 
to  the  society  of  his  profession.  His 
countenance  was  not  of  that  elegant  cast, 
which  is  most  frequent  among  the  upper 
ranks,  but  it  was  manly  and  intelligent, 
and  marked  by  a  thoughtful  gravity  which 
shaded  at  times  into  sternness.  In  his 
large  dark  eye  the  most  striking  index  of 
his  genius  resided.  It  was  f  all  of  mind ; 
and  would  have  been  singularly  expressive, 
under  the  management  of  one  who  could 
employ  it  with  more  art,  for  the  purpose 
of  expression.    .    .    »    In  conversation 


he  was  powerful  His  conceptions  and 
expression  were  of  corresponding  vigour, 
and  on  all  subjects  were  as  remote  as 
possible  from  common  places.  Though 
somewhat  authoritative,  it  was  in  a  way 
which  gave  little  offence,  and  was  readily 
imputed  to  his  inexperience  in  those  modes 
of  smoothing  dissent  and  softening  asser- 
tion, which  are  important  characteristics 
of  polished  manners.  After  breakfast  I 
requested  him  to  communicate  some  of 
his  unpublished  pieces,  and  he  recited  his 
farewell  song  to  the  Banks  of  Ayr,  in- 
troducing it  with  a  description  of  the 
circumstances  in  which  it  was  composed, 
more  striking  than  the  poem  itself.  I 
paid  particular  attention  to  his  recitation, 
which  was  plain,  slow,  articulate,  and 
forcible,  but  without  any  eloquence  or  art. 
He  did  not  always  lay  the  emphasis  with 
propriety,  nor  did  he  humour  the  senti- 
ment by  the  variations  of  his  voice.  He 
was  standing,  during  the  time,  with  his 
face  towards  the  window,  to  which,  and 
not  to  his  auditors,  he  directed  his  eye — 
thus  depriving  himself  of  any  additional 
effect  which  the  language  of  his  composi- 
tion might  have  borrowed  from  the  lan- 
guage of  his  countenance. —  Walker, 
JosiAH,  1811,  Life  of  Burns. 

No  person  can  regret  more  than  I  do 
the  tendency  of  some  of  my  Brother's  writ- 
ings to  represent  irregularity  of  conduct 
as  a  consequecce  of  genius,  and  sobriety 
the  effect  of  dulness ;  but  surely  more  has 
been  said  on  tl\at  subject  than  the  fact 
warrants :  and  it  ought  to  be  remembered 
that  the  greatest  part  of  his  writings, 
having  that  tendency,  were  not  published 
by  himself,  nor  intended  for  publication. 
But  it  may  likewise  be  observed,  and  every 
attentive  reader  of  Burns's  Works,  must 
have  observed,  that  he  frequently  presents 
a  caricature  of  his  feelings,  and  even  of  his 
failings — a  kind  of  mock-heroic  account 
of  himself  and  his  opinions,  which  he 
never  supposed  could  be  taken  literally. 
I  dare  say  it  never  entered  into  his  head, 
for  instance,  that  when  he  was  speaking 
in  that  manner  of  Milton's  Satan,  any  one 
should  gravely  suppose  that  was  the  model 
on  which  he  wished  to  form  his  own  char- 
acter. Yet  on  such  rants,  which  the 
author  evidently  intends  should  be  con- 
sidered a  mere  play  of  imagination,  joined 
to  some  abstract  reasoning  of  the  critic, 
many  of  the  heavy  accusations  brought 


ROBERT  BURNS 


225 


against  the  Poet  for  bad  taste  and  worse 
morals,  rest.— Burns,  Gilbert,  1814,  Let- 
ter to  Alexander  Peterkin,  Sep.  29 ;  Life  and 
Works  of  Robert  Burns,  ed.  Peterkin. 

IN  AETERNUM  HONOREM 

ROBERTI  BURNS 

POETARUM  CALEDONIAE  SUI  AEVI  LONGE 
PRINCIPIS 

CUJUS  CARMINA  EXIMIA  PATRIO  SERMONE 
SCRIPTA 

ANIMI  MAGIS  ARDENTIS  VIQUE  INGENII 
QUAM  ARTE  VEL  CULTU  CONSPICUA 
FACETIIS  JUCUNDITATE  LEPORE  AFFLUENTIA 
OMNIBUS  LITTERARUM  CULTORIBUS 

SATIS  NOTA 
GIVES  SUI  NECNON  PLERIQUE  OMNES 
MUSARUM  AMANTISSIMI  MEMORIAMQUE  VIRI 
ARTE  POETICA  TAM  PRAECLARI  FOVENTES 

HOC  MAUSOLEUM 

SUPER  RELIQUIAS  POETAE  MORTALES 
EXTRUENDUM  CURAVERE 
PRIMUM  HUJUS  AEDIFICII  LAPIDEM 
GULIELMUS  MILLER  ARMIGER 
REIPUBLICAE  ARCHITECTONICAE  APUD 
SCOTOS 

IN  REGIONE  AUSTRALI  GURIO  MAXIMUS 
PROVINCIALIS 
GEORGIO  TERTIO  REGNANTE 
GEORGIO  WALLIARUM  PRINCIPE 
SUMMAM  IMPERII  PRO  PATRE  TENENTE 
JOSEPHO  GASS  ARMIGERO  DUMFRISIAE 
PRAEFECTO 
THOMA  F.  HUNT  LONDINENSI  ARCHITECTO 
POSUIT 

nonis  juniis  anno  lucis  vmdcccxv 
salutis  humanae  mdcccxv. 
— Inscription  on  Tomb,  1815. 

The  truth  is,  that  the  convivial  excesses 
or  other  errors  of  Robert  Burns,  were 
neither  greater  nor  more  numerous  than 
those  which  we  every  day  see  in  the  con- 
duct of  men  who  stand  high  in  the  esti- 
mation of  society ; — of  some  men,  who, 
like  Burns,  have,  in  their  peculiar  spheres, 
conferred  splendid  gifts  of  genius  on  their 
country,  and  whose  names  are  breathed  in 
every  voice,  with  pride  and  enthusiasm,  as 
the  benefactors  of  society.  Are  their 
errors  officiously  dragged  from  the  tomb, 
or  emblazoned  amidst  the  trophies  of 
victory  without  universal  reprobation? 
All  we  ask  is  the  same  measure  of  justice 
and  of  mercy  for  Burns. — Peterkin, 
Alexander,  1815,  ed..  The  Life  and  Works 
of  Robert  Burns,  vol.  i,  p.  xlix. 

One  song  of  Burns's  is  of  more  worth 
to  you  than  all  I  could  think  for  a  whole 

15  G 


year  in  his  native  country.  His  misery  is 
a  dead  weight  upon  the  nimbleness  of 
one's  quill ;  I  tried  to  forget  it — to  drink 
toddy  without  any  care — to  write  a  merry 
sonnet — it  won't  do — he  talked  with 
bitches,  he  drank  with  blackguards;  he 
was  miserable.  We  can  see  horribly 
clear,  in  the  v;orks  of  such  a  man,  his 
whole  life,  as  if  we  were  God's  spies. — 
Keats,  John,  1818,  Letters. 

He  had  a  strong  mind,  and  a  strong 
body,  the  fellow  to  it.  He  had  a  real 
heart  of  flesh  and  blood  beating  in  his 
bosom — you  can  almost  hear  it  throb. 
Some  one  said,  that  if  you  had  shaken 
hands  with  him,  his  hand  would  have 
burnt  yours.  The  gods,  indeed,  "made 
him  poetical;"  but  nature  had  a  hand  in 
him  first.  His  heart  was  in  the  right 
place.  He  did  not  ''create  a  soul  under 
the  ribs  of  death,"  by  tinkling  siren 
sounds,  or  by  piling  up  centos  of  poetic 
diction;  but  for  the  artificial  flowers  of 
poetry,  he  plucked  the  mountain-daisy 
under  his  feet ;  and  a  field  mouse,  hurry- 
ing from  its  ruined  dwelling,  could  inspire 
him  with  the  sentiments  of  terror  and 
pity.  He  held  the  plough  or  the  pen  with 
the  same  firm,  manly  grasp;  nor  did  he 
cut  out  poetry  as  we  cut  out  watch-papers, 
with  finical  dexterity,  nor  from  the  same 
flimsy  materials.  Burns  was  not  like 
Shakspeare  in  the  range  of  his  genius; 
but  there  is  something  of  the  same  mag- 
nanimity, directness,  and  unafl^ected  char- 
acter about  him.  He  was  not  a  sickly 
sentimentalist,  a  namby-pamby  poet,  a 
mincing  metre  ballad-monger,  any  more 
than  Shakspeare.  He  would  as  soon 
hear  "a  brazen  candlestick  tuned,  or  a 
dry  wheel  grate  on  the  axletree."  He 
was  as  much  of  a  man— not  a  twentieth 
as  much  of  a  poet — as  Shakspeare.  With 
but  little  of  his  imagination  or  inventive 
power,  he  had  the  same  life  of  mind : 
within  the  narrow  circle  of  personal 
feeling  or  domestic  incidents,  the  pulse 
of  his  poetry  flows  as  healthily  and  vigor- 
ously. He  had  an  eye  to  see ;  a  heart  to 
feel : — no  more.  — Hazlitt, W illiam,  1818, 
Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  Lecture  vii. 

To-day  our  Burns's  dinner.  .  .  .  Burns's 
son  was  brought  forward,  and  spoke 
sensibly :  very  like  the  father  to  judge  by 
the  engravings,  and  worthy  of  him  in  the 
manly  sentiments  he  expressed  about  poli- 
tics ;  too  manly  and  free,  poor  fellow,  for 


226 


ROBERT  BURNS 


his  advancement  as  a  placeman. — Moore, 
Thomas,  1819,  Journal,  June  5 ;  Memoirs^ 
ed.  Russell,  vol.  ii,  p.  322. 

Dumfries  was  like  a  besieged  place. 
It  was  known  that  he  was  dying,  and  the 
anxiety,  not  of  the  rich  and  the  learned 
only,  but  of  the  mechanics  and  peasants, 
exceeded  all  belief.  Wherever  two  or 
three  people  stood  together,  their  talk 
was  of  Burns,  and  of  him  alone.  They 
spoke  of  his  history — of  his  person — of 
his  works — of  his  family — of  his  fame— 
and  of  his  untimely  and  approaching  fate, 
with  a  warmth  and  an  enthusiasm  which 
will  ever  endear  Dumfries  to  my  remem- 
berance.  All  that  he  said  or  was  saying — 
the  opinions  of  the  physicians  (and  Maxwell 
was  a  kind  and  a  skillful  one),  were  eagerly 
caught  up  and  reported  from  street  to 
street,  and  from  house  to  house.  .  .  . 
His  good  humour  was  unruffled,  and  his 
wit  never  forsook  him.  He  looked  to  one 
of  his  fellow  volunteers  with  a  smile,  as 
he  stood  by  the  bed-side  with  his  eyes  wet, 
and  said,  ''John,  don't  let  the  awkward 
squad  fire  over  me."  He  repressed  with 
a  smile  the  hopes  of  his  friends,  and  told 
them  he  had  lived  long  enough.  As  his 
life  drew  near  a  close,  the  eager,  yet 
decorous  solicitude  of  his  fellow-towns- 
men, increased.  It  is  the  practice  of  the 
young  men  of  Dumfries  to  meet  in  the 
streets  during  the  hours  of  remission  from 
labour,  and  by  these  means  I  had  an  oppor- 
tunity of  witnessing  the  general  solici- 
tude of  all  ranks  and  of  all  ages.  His 
difference  with  them  on  some  important 
points  were  forgotten  and  forgiven ;  they 
thought  only  of  his  genius — of  the  delight 
his  compositions  had  diffused — and  they 
talked  of  him  with  the  same  awe  as  of 
some  departing  spirit,  whose  voice  was 
to  gladden  them  no  more.  ...  I 
went  to  see  him  laid  out  for  the  grave, 
several  elder  people  were  with  me.  He 
lay  in  a  plain  unadorned  coffin,  with  a 
linen  sheet  drawn  over  his  face,  and  on 
the  bed,  and  around  the  body,  herbs  and 
flowers  were  thickly  strewn,  according  to 
the  usage  of  the  country.  He  was  wasted 
somewhat  by  long  illness ;  but  death  had 
not  increased  the  swarthy  hue  of  his  face, 
which  was  uncommonly  dark  and  deeply 
marked — his  broad  and  open  brow  was 
pale  and  serene,  and  around  it  his  sable 
hair  lay  in  masses,  slightly  touched  with 
grey.    The  room  where  he  lay  was  plain 


and  neat,  and  the  simplicity  of  the  poet's 
humble  dwelling  pressed  the  presence  of 
death  more  closely  on  the  heart  than  if 
his  bier  had  been  embellished  by  vanity, 
and  covered  with  the  blazonry  of  high 
ancestry  and  rank.  We  stood  and  gazed 
on  him  in  silence  for  the  space  of  several 
minutes — we  went,  and  others  succeeded 
us — not  a  whisper  was  heard.  This  was 
several  days  after  his  death.  .  .  . 
The  multitude  who  accompanied  Burns  to 
the  grave  went  step  by  step  with  the 
chief  mourners.  They  might  amount  to 
ten  or  twelve  thousand.  Not  a  word  was 
heard.  ...  It  was  an  impressive 
and  mournful  sight  to  see  men  of  all 
ranks  and  persuasions  and  opinions  ming- 
ling as  brothers,  and  stepping  side  by  side 
down  the  streets  of  Dumfries,  with  the 
remains  of  him  who  had  sung  of  their 
loves  and  joys  and  domestic  endearments, 
with  a  truth  and  a  tenderness  which  none 
perhaps  have  since  equalled. — Cunning- 
ham, Allan,  1824,  Robert  Burns  and 
Lord  Byron,  London  Magazine. 

I  was  a  lad  of  fifteen  in  1786-7,  when 
he  came  first  to  Edinburgh,  but  had  sense 
and  feeling  enough  to  be  much  interested 
in  his  poetry,  and  would  have  given  the 
world  to  know  him ;  but  I  had  very  little 
acquaintance  with  any  literary  people, 
and  still  less  with  the  gentry  of  the  west 
country,  the  two  sets  that  he  most  fre- 
quented. Mr.  Thomas  Grierson  was  at 
that  time  a  clerk  of  my  father's.  He 
knew  Burns,  and  promised  to  ask  him  to 
his  lodgings  to  dinner,  but  had  no  oppor- 
tunity to  keep  his  word,  otherwise  I  might 
have  seen  more  of  this  distinguished  man. 
.  .  .  His  person  was  strong  and  robust : 
his  manners  rustic,  not  clownish ;  a  sort 
of  dignified  plainness  and  simplicity 
which  received  part  of  its  effect  perhaps 
from  one's  knowledge  of  his  extraordinary 
talents.  His  features  are  represented  in 
Mr.  Nasmyth's  picture,  but  to  me  it  con- 
veys the  idea  that  they  are  diminished  as 
if  seen  in  perspective.  I  think  his  coun- 
tenance was  more  massive  than  it  looks  in 
any  of  the  portraits.  I  would  have  taken 
the  poet,  had  I  not  known  what  he  was, 
for  a  very  sagacious  country  farmer  of 
the  old  Scotch  school — i.  e.  none  of  your 
modern  agriculturists,  who  keep  labour- 
ers for  their  drudgery,  but  the  douce  gude- 
man  who  held  his  own  plough.  There 
was  a  strong  expression  of  sense  and 


ROBERT  BURNS 


227 


shrewdness  in  all  his  lineaments ;  the  eye 
alone,  I  think,  indicated  the  poetical  char- 
acter and  temperament.  It  was  large,  and 
of  a  dark  cast,  and  glowed  (I  say  literally 
glowed)  when  he  spoke  with  feeling  or  in- 
terest. I  never  saw  such  another  eye  in 
a  human  head,  though  I  have  seen  the 
most  distinguished  men  in  my  time.  His 
conversation  expressed  perfect  self-confi- 
dence, without  the  slightest  presumption. 
Among  the  men  who  were  the  most  learned 
of  their  time  and  country,  he  expressed 
himself  with  perfect  firmness,  but  without 
the  least  intrusive  forwardness ;  and  when 
he  differed  in  opinion,  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  express  it  firmly,  yet  at  the  same  time 
with  modesty.  1  do  not  remember  any  part 
of  his  conversation  distinctly  enough  to 
be  quoted,  nor  did  I  ever  see  him  again, 
except  in  the  street,  where  he  did  not 
recognize  me,  as  I  could  not  expect  he 
should.  He  was  much  caressed  in  Edin- 
burgh, but  (considering  what  literary 
emoluments  have  been  since  his  day)  the 
efforts  made  for  his  relief  were  extremely 
trifling. — Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1827,  Let- 
ter to  Lockharty  Memoirs  by  Lockhart,  vol. 
I,  pp.  166,  167. 

Burns,  eager  of  temper,  loud  of  tone, 
and  with  declamation  and  sarcasm  equally 
at  command,  was,  we  may  easily  believe, 
the  most  hated  of  human  beings,  because 
the  most  dreaded,  among  the  provincial 
champions  of  the  administration  of  which 
he  thought  fit  to  disapprove.  But  that 
he  ever,  in  his  most  ardent  moods,  upheld 
the  principles  of  those  whose  applause  of 
the  French  Revolution  was  but  the  mask  of 
revolutionary  designs  at  home,  after  these 
principles  had  been  really  developed  by 
those  that  maintained  them,  and  under- 
stood by  him,  it  may  be  safely  denied. 
There  is  not  in  all  his  correspondence,  one 
syllable  to  give  countenance  to  such  a 
charge.  .  .  .  Here,  then,  as  in  most 
other  cases  of  similar  controversy,  the 
fair  and  equitable  conclusion  would  seem 
to  be,  truth  lies  between."  To  what- 
ever Burns's  excesses  amounted,  they  were, 
it  is  obvious,  and  that  frequently,  the  sub- 
ject of  rebuke  and  remonstrance  even  from 
his  own  dearest  friends— even  from  men 
who  had  no  sort  of  objection  to  potations 
deep  enough  in  all  conscience.  That  such 
reprimands,  giving  shape  and  form  to  the 
thoughts  that  tortured  his  own  bosom, 
should  have  been  received  at  times  with 


a  strange  mixture  of  remorse  and  indig- 
nation, none  that  have  considered  the 
nervous  susceptibility  and  haughtiness  of 
Burns's  character,  can  hear  with  surprise. 
—Lockhart,  John  Gibson,  1828,  Life  of 
Robert  Burns,  pp.  308,  341. 

To  the  ill-starred  Burns  was  given  the 
power  of  making  man's  life  more  vener- 
able, but  that  of  wisely  guiding  his  own 
was  not  given. ^Destiny — for  so  in  -our 
ignorance  we  must  speak — his  faults,  the 
faults  of  others,  proved  too  hard  for  him ; 
and  that  spirit,  which  might  have  soared, 
could  it  but  have  walked,  soon  sank  to  The 
dust,  its^^lorious,  faculties  trodden  under 
foot  in  the  blossom,  and  died,  we  may 
almost  say,  without  ever  having  lived.  ^ 
And  so  kind  and  warm  a  soul ;  so  full  of 
inborn  riches,  of  love  of  all  living  and  life- 
less things !  ...  He  has  a  just  self- 
consciousness,  v/hich  too  often  degener- 
ates into  pride ;  yet  it  is  a  noble  pride, 
for  defence,  not  for  offence,  no  cold,  sus- 
picious feeling,  but  a  frank  and  social  one. 
The  peasant  poet  bears  himself,  we  might 
say,  like  a  king  in  exile :  he  is  cast  among 
the  low,  and  feels  himself  equal  to  the 
highest ;  yet  he  claims  no  rank  that  none 
may  be  disputed  to  him.  .  .  .  And 
this  was  he  for  whom  the  world  found  no 
fitter  business  than  quarreling  with  smug- 
glers and  vintners,  computing  excise  dues 
upon  tallow,  and  gauging  ale  barrels! 
In  such  toils  was  that  mighty  spirit  sor- 
rowfully wasted :  and  a  hundred  years  may 
pass  on  before  another  such  is  given  us 
to  waste.  .  .  .  We  had  something 
to  say  on  the  public  moral  character  of 
Burns,  but  this  also  we  must  forbear. 
We  are  far  from  regarding  him  as  guilty 
before  the  world,  as  guiltier  than  the  aver- 
age; nay,  from  doubting  that  he  is  less 
guilty  than  one  of  ten  thousand.  Tried 
at  a  tribunal  far  more  rigid  than  that 
where  the plebiscita  of  common  civic  repu- 
tations are  pronounced,  he  had  seemed  to 
us  even  there  less  worthy  of  blame  than 
of  pity  and  wonder.— Carlyle,  Thomas, 
1828,  Essay  on  Burns. 

In  early  life  he  laboured  under  a  disor- 
der of  the  stomach,  accompanied  by  pal- 
pitations of  the  heart,  depression  of  the 
spirits,  and  nervous  pains  in  the  head,  the 
nature  of  which  he  never  appears  to  have 
understood,  but  which  evidently  arose 
from  dyspepsia.  These  sufferings,  be  it 
remembered,  are  complained  of  in  his 


228 


ROBERT  BURNS 


letters  years  before  he  had  committed  any 
excess ;  and  so  far  from  being  the  conse- 
quence of  intemperance,  as  they  are  gen- 
erally considered  to  have  been,  the  ex- 
haustion they  produced  was  probably  the 
cause  which  drove  him  in  his  moments  of 
hypochondria,  to  the  excitement  of  the 
bottle  for  a  temporary  palliation  of  his 
symptoms. — Madden,  R.  R.,  1833,  In- 
firmities  of  Genius,  vol.  I,  p.  276. 

The  cranial  bones  were  perfect  in  every 
respect,  if  we  except  a  little  erosion  of 
their  external  table,  and  firmly  held  to- 
gether by  their  sutures ;  even  the  delicate 
bones  of  the  orbits,  with  the  trifling  ex- 
ception of  the  OS  unguis  in  the  left,  were 
sound,  and  uninjured  by  death  and  the 
grave.  The  superior  maxillary  bones  still 
retained  the  four  most  posterior  teeth  on 
each  side,  including  the  dentes  sapientiae, 
and  all  without  spot  or  blemish ;  the  in- 
cisores,  cuspidati,  &c.,  had  in  all  proba- 
bility recently  dropped  from  the  jaw,  for 
the  alveoli  were  but  little  decayed.  The 
bones  of  the  face  and  palate  were  also 
sound.  Some  small  portions  of  black  hair, 
with  a  very  few  gray  hairs  intermixed, 
were  observed  while  detaching  some  ex- 
traneous matter  from  the  occiput.  In- 
deed, nothing  could  exceed  the  high  state 
of  preservation  in  which  we  found  the  bones 
of  the  cranium,  or  offer  a  fairer  opportu- 
nity of  supplying  what  has  so  long  been 
desiderated  by  phrenologists — a  correct 
model  of  our  immortal  poet's  head :  and 
in  order  to  accomplish  this  in  the  most 
accurate  and  satisfactory  manner,  every 
particle  of  sand,  or  other  foreign  body, 
was  carefully  washed  off,  and  the  plaster 
of  Paris  applied  with  all  the  tact  and  ac- 
curacy of  an  experienced  artist.  The  cast 
is  admirably  taken,  and  cannot  fail  to 
prove  highly  interesting  to  phrenologists 
and  others.  Having  completed  our  inten- 
tion, the  skull,  securely  enclosed  in  a 
leaden  case,  was  again  committed  to  the 
earth,  precisely  where  we  found  it. — 
Blacklock,  Dr.  Archibald,  1834,  Re- 
port on  the  Cranium  of  Robert  Burns. 

I.    DIMENSIONS  OF  THE  SKULL. 

Greatest  circumference    .    .    .    inches  22}^ 
From  Occipital  Spine  to  Individuality, 
over  the  top  of  the  head,      ...  14 

 Ear  to  Ear  vertically  over  the 

top  of  the  head,  13 

 Philoprogenitiveness  to  Individu- 
ality (greatest  length)    ...  8 


 Concentrativeness  to  Comparison  7}4 

 Ear  to  Philoprogenitiveness,     .  4% 

 Individuality,    .....  4^ 

 Benevolence,    5}4 

 Firmness,   5j4 

 Destructiveness  to  Destructive- 

ness,   5% 

 Secretiveness  to  Secretiveness,  .  5% 

 Cautioness  to  Cautioness,     :    .  5}i 

 Ideality  to  Ideality,      ....  4% 

 Constructiveness  to  Constructive - 

ness,   4j4 

 Mastoid  Process  to  Mastoid  Pro- 
cess,   4^ 

—Combe,  George,  1834,  Report  on  the 
Cast  of  Burns' s  Skull. 

A  £10  bank  note,  by  way  of  subscrip- 
tion for  a  few  copies  of  an  early  edition 
of  his  poems — this  the  outside  that  I  could 
ever  see  proof  given  of  Burns  having  re- 
ceived anything  in  the  way  of  patronage ; 
and  doubtless  this  would  have  been  gladly 
returned,  but  from  the  dire  necessity  of 
dissembling.  Lord  Glencairn  is  the 
patron"  for  whom  Burns  appears  to 
have  felt  the  most  sincere  respect.  Yet 
even  he — did  he  give  him  more  than  a  seat 
at  his  dinner  table  ?  Lord  Buchan  again, 
whose  liberalities  are  by  this  time  pretty 
well  appreciated  in  Scotland,  exhorts 
Burns,  in  a  tone  of  one  preaching  upon  a 
primary  duty  of  life,  to  exemplar  grati- 
tude towards  a  person  who  had  given  him 
absolutely  nothing  at  all.  The  man  has 
not  yet  lived  to  whose  happiness  it  was 
more  essential  that  he  should  live  unen- 
cumbered by  the  sense  of  obligation ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  man  has  not  lived 
upon  whose  independence  as  professing 
benefactors  so  many  people  practised, 
or  who  found  so  many  others  ready  to  ratify 
and  give  value  to  their  pretences.  Him, 
whom  beyond  most  men  nature  had  created 
with  the  necessity  of  conscious  independ- 
ence, all  men  beseiged  with  the  assurance 
that  he  was,  must  be,  ought  to  be  depend- 
ent ;  nay,  that  it  was  his  primary  duty  to 
be  grateful  for  his  dependence  .  .  . 
not  merely  that,  with  his  genius,  and  with 
the  intellectual  pretentions  generally  of 
his  family,  he  should  have  been  called  to 
a  life  of  early  labour,  and  of  labour  un- 
happily not  prosperous,  but  also  that  he, 
by  accident  about  the  proudest  of  human 
spirits,  should  have  been  by  accident  sum- 
moned, beyond  all  others,  to  eternal  rec- 
ognitions of  some  mysterious  gratitude 
which  he  owed  to  some  mysterious 
patrons  little  and  great,  whilst  yet,  of  all 


ROBERT  BURNS 


229 


men,  perhaps,  he  reaped  the  least  obvious 
or  known  benefit  from  any  patronage  that 
has  ever  been  put  on  record. — De  Quincey, 
Thomas,  1837,  Literary  Reminiscences^ 
Collected  Writings^  ed.  Masson,  vol.  ii, 
pp.  133,  134. 

Altogether  independently  of  his  writ- 
ings, the  character  of  Burns,  like  that  of 
Johnson,  was  one  of  great  massiveness 
and  power.  There  was  a  cast  of  true 
tragic  greatness  about  it.  There  was  a 
largeness  in  his  heart,  and  a  force  in  his 
passions,  that  corresponded  with  the  mass 
of  his  intellect  and  the  vigour  of  his  gen- 
ius. We  receive  just  such  an  impression 
from  reading  his  life  as  we  do  from  perus- 
ing one  of  the  greater  tragedies  of  Shak- 
speare.  Like  the  Othellos  or  Macbeths 
of  the  dramatist, — characters  that  fasten 
upon  the  imagination  and  sink  into  the 
memory  from  causes  altogether  uncon- 
nected with  either  literary  taste  or  moral 
feeling, — we  feel  in  him,  perforce,  an 
interest  which  exists  and  grows  alike  inde- 
pendently of  the  excesses  into  which  his 
passions  betrayed  him,  or  the  trophies 
which  his  genius  enabled  him  to  erect. 
Burns  was  not  merely  a  distinguished 
poet, — he  was  a  man  on  a  large  scale. — 
Miller,  Hugh,  1844, '  The  Burns  Festival 
and  Hero  Worship,  Essays,  p.  148. 

He  married  his  Jean,  and  chose  his  farm 
on  the  banks  of  the  Nith,  as  Allan  Cun- 
ningham's father  remarked  to  him  at 
the  time,  not  with  a  farmer's,  but  a  poet's 
choice.  But  here,  half  farmer,  half  ex- 
ciseman, poverty  came  rapidly  upon  him 
once  more ;  in  three  years'  time  only  he 
quitted  it,  a  man  ruined  in  substance  and 
constitution,  and  went  to  depend  on  his 
excise  salary  of  £70  a  year  in  the  town 
of  Dumfries.  I  visited  this  farm  in 
August,  1845.  .  .  .  The  farm,  as  I 
have  said,  is  a  very  pleasant  one.  Burns 
is  supposed  to  have  chosen  the  particular 
situation  of  his  house  not  only  for  its  fine 
situation  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  and 
overlooking  the  vale  and  country  round, 
but  on  account  of  a  beautiful  spring 
which  gushes  from  the  slope  just  below 
the  house.  The  ground-plan  of  his  house 
is  very  much  like  that  of  most  Scotch 
farms.  The  buildings  form  three  sides  of 
a  quadrangle.  The  house  and  buildings 
are  only  one  story  high,  white,  and  alto- 
gether a  genuine  Scotch  steading.  The 
house  is  on  the  lower  side,  next  to  the 


river.  Burns's  bedroom  has  yet  two  beds 
in  it,  of  that  sort  of  cupboard  fashion, 
with  check  curtains,  which  are  so  often 
seen  in  Scotch  farm-houses.  The  humble 
rooms  are  much  as  they  were  in  his  time. 
Near  the  house,  and  running  parallel  with 
the  river,  is  a  good  large  garden  which 
he  planted.  The  side  of  the  farm-yard 
opposite  to  the  house  is  pleasantly  planted 
off  with  trees.  The  farm  is  just  as  it 
was,  about  one  hundred  acres.  By  places 
it  exhibits  that  stony  soil  which  made 
Burns  call  it  ''the  riddlings  of  creation," 
and  say  that  when  a  ploughed  field  was 
rolled  it  looked  like  a  paved  street ;  but 
still  it  carries  good  crops.  Burns  had  it 
for  £50  a  year,  or  ten  shillings  an  acre. 
I  suppose  the  present  tenant  pays  three 
times  the  sum,  and  is  proud  of  his  bar- 
gain. He  observed  that  it  was  an  ill 
wind  that  blew  nobody  any  profit.  *'Mr. 
Burns,"  said  he,  ''had  the  farm  on  lease 
for  ninety  years,  and  had  he  not  thrown 
it  up,  I  should  not  have  been  here  now." 
.  .  .  The  view  from  the  house  is  very 
charming.  The  river  runs  clear  and  fleet 
below,  broad  as  the  Thames  at  Hampton 
Court,  or  the  Trent  at  Nottingham,  and 
its  dark  trees  hang  far  along  it  over  its 
waters.  Beyond  the  stream  lie  the  broad, 
rich  meadows  and  house  of  Dalswinton,  a 
handsome  mansion  of  red  freestone  aloft 
amid  its  woods,  and  still  beyond  and  higher 
up  the  river  rise  still  bolder  hills.  — 
HowiTT,  William,  1847,  Homes  and  Haunts 
of  the  Most  Eminent  British  Poets,  vol.  I, 
pp.  424,  428,  431. 

Could  he  have  remained  always  at  the 
plough,  and  worn  always  the  mantle  of 
inspiration  which  fell  on  him  there,  and 
enjoyed  ever  the  lawful  intoxication  of 
natural  scenery  and  solitary  thought,  he 
had  been  as  happy  as  he  was  glorious. 
But  night  came,  and  found  him  weary  and 
jaded  in  mind  and  body,  thirsting  for  some 
new  excitement,  and  eager  to  pass  (0 
human  nature!  0  hideous  anti-climax!) 
from  an  Elisha-like  plough — to  a  penny- 
wedding!  There  the  lower  part  of  his 
nature  found  intense  gratification  and  un- 
restricted play.  There  the  "blood  of 
John  Barleycorn"  furnished  him  with  a 
false  and  hollow  semblance  of  the  true 
inspiration  he  had  met  in  the  solitary  field, 
or  on  "the  side  of  a  plantain,  when  the 
wind  was  howling  among  the  trees,  and 
raving  over   the   plain."    And  there. 


230 


ROBERT  BURNS 


through  the  misty  light  of  the  presiding 
punch- bowl,  he  saw  the  most  ordinary 
specimens  of  female  nature  transformed 
into  angels ;  and  fancied  that,  like  divini- 
ties they  should  be  adored. — Gilfillan, 
George,  1856,  ed.,  The  Poetical  Works  of 
Robert  Burns,  vol.  i,  p.  xii. 

Burns  was  a  grand  Man.  I  am  not 
going  to  praise  him ;  I  leave  that  to  Scot- 
land and  to  you;  supported,  and  sympa- 
thised with,  by  the  universal  heart  of 
humanity.  All  this  is  so  very  well  known 
that  it  has  almost  degenerated  into  com- 
mon-place. Miss  Edgeworth  once  re- 
marked to  me  that  such  or  such  a  thing 
"had  been  said  till  it  was  not  believed!" 
A  splendid  remark,  as  I  thought  at  the 
time  but  the  fame  of  your  Burns  can  sur- 
vive it.— Hamilton,  Sir  William  Rowan, 
1859,  Letter  to  John  Nichol,  Jan.  22 ;  Life, 
ed.  Graves,  vol.  iii,  p.  109. 

Beholding  his  poor,  mean  dwelling  and 
its  surroundings,  and  picturing  his  out- 
ward life  and  earthly  manifestations  from 
these,  one  does  not  so  much  wonder  that 
the  people  of  that  day  should  have  failed 
to  recognize  all  that  was  admirable  and 
immortal  in  a  disreputable,  drunken,  shab- 
bily clothed,  and  shabbily  housed  man, 
consorting  with  associates  of  damaged 
character,  and,  as  his  only  ostensible  oc- 
cupation, gauging  the  whiskey,  which  he 
too  often  tasted.  .  .  .  For  my  part, 
I  chiefly  wonder  that  his  recognition 
dawned  so  brightly  while  he  was  still  liv- 
ing. There  must  have  been  something 
very  grand  in  his  immediate  presence, 
some  strangely  impressive  characteristic 
in  his  natural  behavior,  to  have  caused 
him  to  seem  like  a  demigod  so  soon. 
.  .  .  There  is  no  writer  whose  life,  as 
a  man,  has  so  much  to  do  with  his  fame, 
and  throws  such  a  necessary  light  upon 
whatever  he  has  produced. — Hawthorne, 
Nathaniel,  1863,  Some  of  the  Haunts  of 
Burns,  Our  Old  Home. 

Mighty  is  the  hallowing  of  death  to  all, 
— ^to  him  more  than  to  most.  As  he  lay 
stretched,  his  dark  locks  already  streaked 
with  unnatural  gray,  all  unworthiness  fell 
away  from  him — every  stain  of  passion 
and  debauch,  every  ignoble  word,  every 
ebullition  of  scorn  and  pride — and  left 
pure  nobleness.  Farmer  no  longer,  ex- 
ciseman no  longer,  subject  no  longer  to 
criticism,  to  misrepresentation,  to  the 
malevolence  of  mean  natures  and  evil 


tongues,  he  lay  there  the  great  poet  of 
his  country,  dead  too  early  for  himself 
and  for  it.  He  had  passed  from  the  judg- 
ments of  Dumfries,  and  made  his  appeal 
to  Time.— Smith,  Alexander,  1865,  The 
Poetical  Works  of  Robert  Burns,  Life, 
p.  xxxvi. 

In  1856  I  spent  an  afternoon  with  Mrs. 
Begg,  the  poet's  sister.  She  said  that 
Robert  took  their  father 'splace  in  conduct- 
ing household  worship,  and  that  he  in- 
structed her  in  the  Shorter  Catechism. 
''He  was  a  father  to  me,"  said  Mrs.  Begg, 
''and  my  knowedge  of  the  Scriptures  in 
my  youth  I  derived  from  his  teachings." — 
Rogers,  Charles,  1871,  A  Century  of 
Scottish  Life. 

Another  happy  man,  after  all,  seems 
to  be  Allingham,  for  all  his  want  of  "suc- 
cess." Nothing  but  the  most  absolute 
calm  and  enjoyment  of  outside  Nature 
could  account  for  so  much  gadding  hither 
and  thither  on  the  soles  of  his  two  feet. 
Fancy  carrying  about  grasses  for  hours 
and  days  from  the  field  where  Burns 
ploughed  up  a  daisy !  Good  God,  if  I  found 
the  daisy  itself  there,  I  would  sooner  swal- 
low it  than  be  troubled  to  carry  it  twenty 
yards. — Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  1871, 
Letter  to  Scott,  Letters  and  Memoir,  ed. 
Rossetti,  vol.  i,  p.  418. 
This  is  the  cottage  room  as  'twas  of  old : 

The  window  four  small  panes,  and  in  the 
wall 

The  box-bed,  where  the  first  daylight  did 
fall 

Upon  their  new-born  infant's  narrow  fold 
And  poor,  when  times  were  hard  and  winds 
were  cold, 

As  they  were  still  with  him.  Lo !  now  close  by 
Above  Corinthian  columns  mounted  high 
The  old  Athenian  Tripod  shines  in  gold ! 
The  lumbering  carriages  of  these  dull  years 
Have  passed  away :  their  dust  has  ceased  to 
whirr 

About  the  footsore :  silent  to  our  ears 
Is  that  maelstrom  of  Scottish  men ;  this  son 
Of  all  that  age  we  count  the  kingliest  one : 
Such  is  Time's  justice,  Time  the  harvester. 
— Scott,  William  Bell,  1871,  On  Visit- 
ing Burns^s  Cottage  and  Monument,  Auto- 
biographical Notes  of  the  Life  of  Scott,  ed. 
Minto,  vol.  11,  p.  164. 

But,  not  frae  Life's  rough  work  was  brought 

For  him,  the  least  exemption : 
At  his  ain  task,  he  painfu'  wrought, 
He  strugglit,  sulf 'rit,  felt,  and  thought, 
Aschewin'  name,  and  shrinkin'  naught. 

Till  Death  brought  him  redemption. 


ROBERT  BURNS 


231 


Nae  thomless  road  through  Life  he  sought, 

Just  where  he  was,  he  entered : 
He  dealt  his  blows,  where  ithers  fought, 

There  where  the  battle  centered ! 
Frae  early  dawn,  ahint  the  plew, 

Until  the  sun  was  settin' : 
The  mornin'  an'  the  'enen  dew 

His  fit  right  manly  wettin'. 
—Rankin,    J.    E.,    1872-87,  Ingleside 
RhaimSf  Verses  in  the  Dialect  of  Burns, 
p.  127. 

The  name  of  Robert  Burns  is  a  well- 
understood  signal  for  an  overflow  of  all 
sorts  of  commonplaces  from  the  right- 
minded  critic.  These  commonplaces  run 
mainly  in  three  channels : — ecstatic  aston- 
ishment at  finding  that  a  ploughman  was 
also  a  poet ;  wringing  of  hands  over  the 
admission  that  the  ploughman  and  poet 
was  like- wise  a  drunkard,  and  a  somewhat 
miscellaneous  lover ;  and  caustic  severity 
upon  the  lionizers  and  "admirers  of  na- 
tive genius"  who  could  find  no  employment 
more  appropriate  than  that  of  excise- 
officer  for  the  brightest  and  finest  mind 
of  their  country  and  generation.  All 
these  commonplaces  must  stand  confessed 
as  warranted  by  the  facts:  they  are 
truths,  but  they  are  also  truisms.  We 
have  heard  them  very  often,  and  have 
always  sat  in  a  meek  acquiescence  and 
unfeigned  concurrence.  But  the  time 
comes  when  they  have  been  repeated  fre- 
quent enough  to  make  the  enlarging  upon 
them  a  weariness,  and  the  profuse  and 
argumentative  re-enforcement  of  them  a 
superfluity. — Rossetti, William  Michael, 
1878,  Lives  of  Famous  Poets,  p.  189. 

Here  was  a  man,  a  son  of  toil,  looking 
out  on  the  world  from  his  cottage,  on 
society  low  and  high,  and  on  nature 
homely  or  beautiful,  with  the  clearest  eye, 
the  most  piercing  insight,  and  the  warm- 
est heart;  touching  life  at  a  hundred 
points,  seeing  to  the  core  all  the  sterling 
worth,  nor  less  the  pretence  and  hollow- 
ness  of  the  men  he  met,  the  humour,  the 
drollery,  the  pathos,  and  the  sorrow  of 
human  existence  ;  and  expressing  what  he 
saw,  not  in  the  stock  phrases  of  books, 
but  in  his  own  vernacular,  the  language 
of  his  fireside,  with  a  directness,  a  force, 
a  vitality  that  tingled  to  the  finger  tips, 
and  forced  the  phrases  of  his  peasant  dia- 
lect into  literature,  and  made  them  for 
ever  classical.  Large  sympathy,  gener- 
ous enthusiasm,  reckless  abandonment, 
fierce  indignation,  melting  compassion, 


rare  flashes  of  moral  insight,  all  are  there. 
Everywhere  you  see  the  strong  intellect 
made  alive,  and  driven  home  to  the  mark, 
by  the  fervid  heart  behind  it.  And  if  the 
sight  of  the  world's  inequalities,  and  some 
natural  repining  at  his  own  obscure  lot, 
mingled  from  the  beginning,  as  has  been 
said,  "some  bitterness  of  earthly  spleen 
and  passion  with  the  workings  of  his  in- 
spiration, and  if  these  in  the  end  ate  deep 
into  the  great  heart  they  had  long  tor- 
mented," who  that  has  not  known  his  ex- 
perience may  venture  too  strongly  to  con- 
demn him?— Shairp,  John  Campbell, 
1879,  Robert  Burns  {English  Men  of  Let- 
ters), p.  190. 

He  was  born  poor,  he  lived  poor,  he 
died  poor,  and  he  always  felt  his  poverty 
to  be  a  curse.  He  was  fully  conscious  of 
himself  and  of  his  intellectual  superiority. 
He  disdained  and  resented  the  condecension 
of  the  great,  and  he  defiantly  asserted  his 
independence.  I  do  not  say  that  he  might 
not  or  ought  not  to  have  lived  tranquilly 
and  happily  as  a  poor  man.  Perhaps,  as 
Carlyle  suggests,  he  should  have  divided 
his  hours  between  poetry  and  virtuous 
industry.  W^e  only  know  that  he  did  not. 
Like  an  untamable  eagle  he  dashed  against 
the  bars  he  could  not  break,  and  his  life 
was  a  restless,  stormy  alternation  of  low 
and  lofty  moods,  of  pure  and  exalted  feel- 
ing, of  mad  revel  and  impotent  regret. 
.  .  .  Distracted  by  poetry  and  poverty 
and  passion,  and  brought  to  public  shame, 
he  determined  to  leave  the  country,  and 
in  1786,  when  he  was  twenty-seven  years 
old.  Burns  published  his  poems  by  sub- 
scription, to  get  the  money  to  pay  his 
passage  to  America.  Ah !  could  that 
poor,  desperate  ploughman  of  Mossgiel 
have  forseen  the  day,  could  he  have 
known  that  because  of  those  poems — an 
abiding  part  of  literature,  familiar  to 
every  people,  sung  and  repeated  in  Amer- 
ican homes  from  sea  to  sea — his  genius 
would  be  honored  and  his  name  blessed, 
and  his  statue  raised  with  grateful  pride 
to  keep  his  memory  in  America  green  for- 
ever, perhaps  the  amazing  vision  might 
have  nerved  him  to  make  his  life  as  noble 
as  his  genius ;  perhaps  the  full  sunshine 
of  assured  glory  might  have  wrought  upon 
that  great,  generous,  wilful  soul  to 
"tak'  a  thought  an'  men'." 

—Curtis,  George  William,  1880,  Robert 
Burns,  an  address  Delivered  at  the  Unveiling 


232 


ROBERT  BURNS 


of  the  Statue  of  the  Poet,  in  Central  Park, 
New  York,  October  2;  Orations  and  Ad- 
dresses, vol.  Ill,  pp.  309,  310. 

He  set  out  for  Edinburgh  on  a  pony  he 
had  borrowed  from  a  friend.  The  town 
that  winter  was  ''agog  with  the  plough- 
man poet."  Robertson,  Dugald  Stewart, 
Blair,  "Duchess  Gordon  and  all  the  gay 
world, ' '  were  of  his  acquaintance.  Such 
a  revolution  is  not  to  be  found  in  literary 
history.  He  was  now,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, twenty-seven  years  of  age ;  he  had 
fought  since  his  early  boyhood  an  obsti- 
nate battle  against  poor  soil,  bad  seed, 
and  inclement  seasons,  wading  deep  in 
Ayrshire  mosses,  guiding  the  plough  in 
the  furrow,  wielding  ''the  thresher's 
weary  flingin'-tree and  his  education, 
his  diet,  and  his  pleasures,  had  been  those 
of  a  Scotch  countryman.  Now  he  stepped 
forth  suddenly  among  the  polite  and 
learned.  We  can  see  him  as  he  then  was, 
in  his  boots  and  buckskins,  his  blue  coat 
and  waistcoat  striped  with  buff  and  blue, 
like  a  farmer  in  his  Sunday  best ;  the  heavy 
ploughman's  figure  firmly  planted  on  its 
burly  legs;  his  face  full  of  sense  and 
shrewdness,  and  with  a  somewhat  melan- 
choly air  of  thought,  and  his  large  dark 
eye  "literally  glowing"  as  he  spoke.  "I 
never  saw  such  another  eye  in  a  human 
head,"  says  Walter  Scott,  "though  I  have 
seen  the  most  distinguished  men  of  my 
time."  With  men,  whether  they  were 
lords  or  omnipotent  critics,  his  manner 
was  plain,  dignified,  and  free  from  bash- 
fulness  or  affectation.  If  he  made  a  slip 
he  had  the  social  courage  to  pass  on  and 
refrain  from  explanation. — Stevenson, 
Robert  Louis,  1882,  Some  Aspects  of 
Robert  Burns,  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and 
Books,  p.  62. 

That  night,  at  my  lonely  dinner  in  the 
King's  Arms,  I  had  the  Edinburgh  papers. 
There  were  in  them  three  editorials  headed 
with  quotations  from  Burns' s  poems,  and 
an  account  of  the  sale  in  Edinburgh,  that 
week,  of  an  autograph  letter  of  his  for 
ninety-four  pounds !  Does  he  think  sadly, 
even  in  heaven,  how  differently  he  might 
have  done  by  himself  and  by  Earth,  if 
Earth  had  done  for  him  then  a  tithe  of 
what  it  does  now?  Does  he  know  it? 
Does  he  care?  And  does  he  listen  when, 
in  lands  he  never  saw,  great  poets  sing  of 
him  in  words  simple  and  melodious  as  his 
own?— Jackson,  Helen  Hunt,  1883,  A 


Burns  Pilgrimage,  The  Century,  vol.  26- 
p.  761. 

It  was  at  a  slightly  earlier  date  than  I 
have  been  referring  to  that  our  first  visit 
to  Scotland  was  paid.  Our  tour  was  lim- 
ited as  to  extent,  and  was  made  without 
any  special  purpose,  except  to  describe  and 
report  "the  Burns  Festival"  held  at  Ayr 
on  the  6th  of  August,  1844.  I  had  been 
engaged  by  Mr.  Herbert  Ingram  of  the 
Illustrated  London  News,  to  write  the  de- 
scriptive article,  which  was  to  be  illus- 
trated by  wood-engravings. 
The  Burns  Festival!  I  do  not  think, 
if  we  ransacked  the  annals  of  the  world 
from  the  earliest  ages,  they  would  furnish 
the  record  of  a  ceremonial  more  truly 
glorious.  Was  it  a  stretch  of  fancy  to 
believe  the  poet  was  present  on  that  day, 
to  receive  part  of  his  reward?  It  was 
not  in  "the  Pavilion,"  when  two  thou- 
sand guests  drank  in  silence  the  toast, 
"The  memory  of  Robert  Burns, "  and  with 
cheers  that  shook  the  canvas  of  the  tent, 
the  healths  of  his  three  sons,  seated  at 
the  side  of  the  chairman,  the  Earl  of 
Eglinton,  that  the  real  business  of  the 
day,  was,  so  to  speak,  transacted.  The 
glory  and  the  triumph  were  for  the  pro- 
digious crowd  of  peasants  and  artisans 
who  passed  slowly  and  in  order  before  the 
platform,  where  the  family  of  the  poet 
had  their  seats,  bowing  or  courtesying  as 
each  passed  on  receiving  in  return  a  rec- 
ognition the  memory  of  which,  no  doubt, 
all  of  them  carried  to  their  graves.  It 
was  the  cheers  in  Gaelic  or  "broad 
Scotch,"  and  the  waving  of  Glengarry 
bonnets,  tartan  shawls  and  shepherd 
plaids,  that  made  the  triumph  and  glory 
of  that  marvelous  day,  when  one  contin- 
ually asked,  "Was  it  only  a  man  who  had 
written  verses,  who  was  of  no  account  in 
the  world's  estimation  during  his  earth- 
life,  who  was  born  in  the  hovel  within  ken, 
lived  in  a  continual  struggle  with  poverty, 
and,  to  say  the  least,  died  needy — was  it 
really  to  commemorate  such  a  man  that 
these  plaudits  went  up  from  a  Scottish 
field  to  a  Scottish  sky?"— Hall,  S.  C, 
1883,  Retrospect  of  a  Long  Life;  from  1815 
to  1883,  pp.  467,  468. 

I  had  come  to  Dumfries  because  it  was 
for  some  time  the  home  of  Robert  Burns, 
because  here  he  had  found  his  death-bed, 
and  here  lay  burled.  I  had  been  at  Ayr,  and 
stood  in  the  small  cottage  where  the 


ROBERT  BURNS 


233 


baby-poet  was  tossed  up  and  down,  like  an 
ordinary  child,  by  his  thrifty,  loving 
mother,  who  little  dreamed  that  this  tiny, 
nervous,  weird-eyed  creature  was  to  make 
her  name  remembered  as  long  as  mothers 
exist.  .  .  .  *'Yon  building  across  the 
way"  proved  to  be  a  hospital, — in  fact,  a 
kind  of  more  genteel  poorhouse, — estab- 
lished by  some  wealthy  men  of  the  town. 
To  this  institution  poor  people  were  ad- 
mitted, who  by  birth,  talents,  or  other 
cause,  were  considered  too  good  for  the 
common  work-house.  And  here  1  found 
him,— a  grandson  of  Robert  Burns,  a  man 
of  the  same  given  name,  a  man  whose 
father  was  of  the  same  given  name,  and, 
in  truth,  resembling  wonderfully  the  best 
pictures  of  the  poet.  ...  He  was  a 
stout,  soldierly-looking  old  man,  with  a 
considerable  appearance  of  neatness  peep- 
ing out  through  all  his  poverty.  His  face 
was  cleanly  shaven,  except  that  he  wore 
closely  trimmed  side-whiskers:  his  eyes 
were  large  and  bright,  and  his  manners 
and  language  those  of  a  gentleman. 
Throughout  the  interview,  he  maintained 
what  might  be  called  a  nervous,  restless 
sort  of  dignity,  although  evidently  feeling 
the  awkwardness  of  his  position ;  for  few 
really  sensitive  and  proud,  people  like  to 
be  exhibited  as  some  distinguished  person's 
descendant,  unless  they  themselves  have 
done  something  to  add  to  the  family  re- 
nown. ...  I  could  almost  fancy 
that  the  poetic  hero  of  my  boy-days  had 
come  back  for  an  hour  into  this  old  town 
of  Dumfries,  had  met  me  in  some  rude  inn, 
and  was  modestly  telling  his  own  trials 
and  triumphs  as  those  of  another  person. 
But,  at  last,  the  old  man  came  to  speak 
of  the  squalor  and  wretchedness  that 
marked  the  last  months  of  the  poet's  life, 
— a  state  of  which  his  own  must  often 
have  reminded  him.  It  was  then  that  he 
burst  forth  in  a  torrent  of  eloquence  that 
showed  him  to  be  possessed  of  some  of 
the  talent,  and  much  of  the  fire,  of  his 
immortal  ancestor.  .  .  .  As  I  parted 
with  this  interesting  acquaintance  of  an 
hour,  there  came  a  pang  of  hopeless  pity 
for  this  poor  man,  who,  with  the  warn- 
ing before  him  of  his  grandfather's  mis- 
ery and  early  death,  had  all  his  days  fol- 
lowed the  same  broad,  misery-seeking 
road. — Carleton,  Will,  1885,  A  Grand- 
son of  Robert  Burns,  Some  Noted  Princes, 
Authors,  and  Statesmen  of  Our  Time. 


In  fancy,  as  wi'  dewy  een, 

I  part  the  clouds  aboon  the  scene 

Where  thou  wast  born,  and  peer  atween, 

I  see  nae  spot 
In  a'  the  Hielands  half  sae  green 

And  unf orgot ! 
—Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  1888,  To  Rob- 
ert Burns,  Afterwhiles. 

He  was  utterly  incapable  of  anything 
like  baseness.  No  man  could  be  more  jeal- 
ous of  his  honour ;  no  man  had  a  greater 
pride  in  being  largely  and  loftily  a  man. 
— Blackie,  John  Stuart,  1888,  Life  of 
Robert  Burns  (Great  Writers),  p.  163. 

"The  Ayrshire  Bard,"  "The  Ayrshire 
Ploughman,"  "The  Ayrshire  Poet,"  "The 
Bard  of  Ayrshire,"  "The  Glory  and  Re- 
proach of  Scotland, "  "  The  Peasant  Bard. ' ' 
— Frey,  Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobriquets  and 
Nicknames,  p.  385. 

Burns  was  but  a  visitor,  the  lion  of  a 
season  and  therefore  we  are  not  called 
upon  to  associate  with  Edinburgh  the 
whole  tragic  story  of  his  life.  And  yet 
his  appearance  was  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable that  had  distinguished  the 
ancient  town.  ...  All  the  accounts 
we  have  of  his  appearance  in  Edinburgh 
agree  in  this.  He  was  neither  abashed 
nor  embarrassed;  no  rustic  presumption 
or  vulgarity,  but  quite  as  little  any  timid- 
ity or  awkwardness,  was  in  the  Ayrshire 
ploughman.  His  shoulders  a  little  bent 
with  the  work  to  which  he  had  been  accus- 
tomed, his  dress  like  a  countryman,  a 
rougher  cloth  perhaps,  a  pair  of  good 
woollen  stockings  rig  and  fur,  his  mother's 
knitting,  instead  of  the  silk  which  covered 
limbs  probably  not  half  so  robust — but 
so  far  as  manners  went,  nothing  to  apolo- 
gise for  or  smile  at.  The  accounts  all 
agree  in  this.  If  he  never  put  himself 
forward  too  much,  he  never  withdrew 
with  any  unworthy  shyness  from  his  mod- 
est share  in  the  conversation.  Sometimes 
he  would  be  roused  to  eloquent  speech, 
and  then  the  admiring  ladies  said  he  car- 
ried them  "off  their  feet"  in  the  conta- 
gion of  his  enthusiasm  and  emotion.  But 
this  was  a  very  strange  phenomenon  for 
the  Edinburgh  professors  and  men  of  let- 
ters to  deal  with :  a  novice  who  had  not 
come  humbly  to  be  taught,  but  one  who 
had  come  to  take  up  his  share  of  the  in- 
heritance, to  sit  down  among  the  great, 
as  in  his  natural  place.  He  was  not  per- 
haps altogether  unmoved  by  their  insane 


234 


ROBERT  BURNS 


advices  to  him,  one  of  the  greatest  of 
lyrical  poets,  a  singer  above  all — ^to  write 
a  tragedy,  to  give  up  the  language  he 
knew  and  write  his  poetry  in  the  high 
English  which,  alas !  he  uses  in  his  letters. 
Not  unmoved,  and  seriously  inclining  to 
a  more  lofty  measure,  he  compounded  ad- 
dresses to  Edinburgh : 

"Edina,  Scotia's  darling  seat!" 
and  other  such  intolerable  effusions. — 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1890,  Royal 
Edinburgh,  pp,  476,  481. 

Robert  Burns  was  a  great  man  and  a 
great  poet,  and  the  influence  of  his  truly 
tremendous  satiric  lyrical  genius  has  been 
one  of  the  great  factors  in  the  disintegra- 
tion of  Scottish  superstition.  ...  He 
was  a  convivial  creature,  and  his  conviv- 
iality was  that  of  a  fearless  and  liberal 
nature,  overflowing  with  love,  and  honest 
as  the  day.  But  what  was  to  some  extent 
a  virtue  in  him  has  become  to  my  mind, 
a  very  curious  vice  in  his  disciples.  The 
fact  is,  Scotchmen  seem  to  have  granted 
Burns  his  apotheosis  chiefly  on  account 
of  its  being  an  excuse  for  the  consump- 
tion of  Whiskey.  So  they  celebrate  his 
Birthday.  So  they  fill  their  glasses,  hic- 
cup ' '  Auld  Langsyne, ' '  and  cry  in  chorus : 

"Robin  was  a  rovin'  boy, 
Rantin'  rovin',  rantin'  rovin'; 

Robin  was  a  rovin'  boy, 
Rantin'  rovin'  Robin!" 

The  drunken  squirearchy,  whose  progeni- 
tors broke  the  poet's  heart,  and  who,  if 
the  poet  were  alive  now,  would  break  his 
heart  again,  are  full  of  enthusiasm  for 
his  memory.  Even  some  of  the  more  lib- 
eral-minded ministers  of  the  Gospel  join 
in  the  acclaim.  Farmers  and  shepherds, 
factors  and  ploughmen,  all  come  together 
on  the  one  great  occasion  to  honour  the 
bard  whom  everybody  can  understand, 
because  his  synonym  is  the  Whiskey  Bot- 
tle. They  weep  over  his  woes;  they 
smack  their  lips  over  his  satire;  they 
shriek  at  his  denunciations  and  they  mur- 
mur his  songs.  Burns  or  Bacchus — it  is 
all  one.  The  chief  point  is  that,  now  or 
never,  there  is  an  excuse  for  getting 
' '  reeling  ripe"  or  ' ' mortal  drunk. "  It  is 
poetic,  it  is  literary, it  is — hiccup? — hon- 
ouring the  Muses.  Any  frenzy,  however 
maniacal,  is  justifiable  under  the  circum- 
stances. ' '  Glorious  Robin !' '  Pledge  him 
again  and  again,  pledge  him  and  bless  him ; 
and  when  you  can't  pledge  him  upright. 


pledge  him  prone,  as  you  lie,  with  your 
fellow  Burns-worshippers,  under  the  table. 
— Buchanan,  Robert,  1891,  The  Coming 
Terror  and  Other  Essays  and  Letters, p.Slb. 

When  it  is  remembered  how  much  he 
suffered,  how  much  he  vanquished,  and 
how  much  he  accomplished,  with  what 
misery  his  genius  had  to  fight  to  loe  born 
and  to  live,  the  perseverance  of  his  years 
of  apprenticeship,  his  intellectual  exploits, 
and,  after  all,  his  glory ;  one  cannot  help 
saying  that  what  he  did  not  succeed  in, 
or  what  he  did  not  undertake,  was  as 
nothing  compared  to  what  he  achieved, 
and  he  was  a  man  who  achieved  much. 
What  remains  to  be  said  except  that  the 
clay  of  which  he  was  made  was  full  of 
diamonds,  and  that  his  life  was  one  of 
the  bravest  and  proudest  ever  lived  by 
a  poet  ? —  Angellier,  Auguste,  1893, 
Robert  Burns. 

Adequate  length  of  days  is  indispensa- 
ble to  the  production  of  any  monumental 
work.  Milton  spent  nearly  as  much  time 
as  was  granted  for  the  whole  mortal 
career  of  Burns  in  what  he  regarded  as  a 
mere  apprenticeship  to  the  art  of  poetry. 
It  is  indispensable  too,  opportunity  should 
be  granted  as  well  as  time.  Those  Greek 
philosophers,  whose  superb  wisdom,  dis- 
credited for  a  while  by  the  youthful  self- 
assurance  of  modern  science,  is  again  en- 
forcing recognition,  insist  upon  nothing 
so  much  as  the  need  of  o-xoAt?  to  the  noble 
mind.  In  this  respect  Burns  was  still  more 
unfortunate  than  in  the  matter  of  time. 
His  thirty-seven  years  of  life  were  shorter 
for  effective  purposes  of  art  than  the  nine- 
and-twenty  of  Shelley,  hardly  longer  than 
five-and-twenty  of  Keats.  The  crushing 
weight  of  circumstance  becomes  evident 
when  we  contemplate  his  career  from 
his  first  introduction  to  the  world  till  his 
death.  A  period  of  ten  years  passed  be- 
tween the  publication  of  the  Kilmarnock 
edition  and  the  closing  of  the  grave.  For 
the  purposes  of  poetry  they  ought  to  have 
been  far  more  valuable  than  all  the  time 
that  went  before.  They  did  not  prove  so. 
The  cause  must  lie  either  in  the  man  or 
his  environment.  The  man  was  not  blame- 
less ;  but  it  was  not  he  who  was  chiefly  to 
blame.  Few  probably  who  study  Burns 
will  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  his  was 
one  of  those  minds  which  bloom  early  and 
fade  early.  A  shrewd  observer  remarked 
of  his  great  countryman  and  successor, 


ROBERT  BURNS 


235 


Scott,  that  his  sense  was  even  more  ex- 
traordinary than  his  genius.  Strange  as 
it  may  seem  to  many,  the  same  assertion 
may  be  made  with  only  a  little  less  truth 
of  Burns.  He  possessed  a  clear,  penetrat- 
ing, logical  intellect,  a  sound  and  vigor- 
ous judgment.  Once  and  again  in  his 
poems  he  delights  the  idealist  with  his 
flashes  of  inspiration;  but  just  as  fre- 
quently he  captivates  the  man  of  common 
sense,  who  finds  his  own  sober  views  of 
life  expressed  by  the  poet  with  infinitely 
more  of  force  and  point  than  he  could 
give  them. — Walker,  Hugh,  1893,  Three 
Centuries  of  Scottish  Literature,  vol.  II, 
p.  147. 

The  picture  [Nasmyth  Portrait]  has 
been  painted  with  a  careful  and  a  loving 
hand.  It  renders  the  ripe  contours  of 
cheek  and  chin,  the  fine  arching  of  the 
eyebrows,  the  rippling  lines  of  the  lips 
and  the  exquisite  dimples  that  end  them ; 
and  it  seems  to  catch  not  a  little  of  what 
must  have  been  the  normal  look  of  the 
poet's  rich  brown,  widely-opened  eyes, 
which  were  so  memorable  a  feature  in 
his  face,  and  which,  when  an  impassioned 
moment  arrived,  actually  ''glowed"— 
''I  say  literally  glowed'' — as  Sir  Walter 
Scott  has  so  emphatically  recorded.  Yet 
we  feel  here  that  the  kindly  painter  has 
a  little  softened  down  the  actual  man ; 
we  miss  something  of  the  rustic  strength 
that  must  have  been  visible  in  the  peasant- 
bard.— Gray,  J.  M.,  1894,  The  Authen- 
tic Portraits  of  Robert  Burns,  Magazine  of 
Art,  vol.  17,  p.  239. 

In  his  family  Burns  was  the  watchful, 
kindly,  diligent  father, — not  to  be  spoken 
of  in  the  same  day  with  the  father  who 
neglects  his  household  for  himself,  who 
forgets  their  need,  and  loses  their  love ; 
and  the  man  who  degrades  him  as  an 
habitual  drunkard,  unable  to  meet  life's 
daily  duties,  does  not  know  what  he  is 
speaking  of.— Hale,  Edward  Everett, 
1896,  Address  at  the  Burns  Centennial, 
Boston,  July  21. 

'*0n  the  fourth  day,"  we  are  told, 
*'when  his  attendant  held  a  cordial  to  his 
lips,  he  swallowed  it  eagerly,  rose  almost 
wholly  up,  spread  out  his  hands,  sprang  for- 
ward nigh  the  whole  length  of  the  bed, fell 
on  his  face  and  expired. ' '  I  suppose  there 
are  many  who  can  read  the  account  with 
composure.  They  are  more  fortunate 
than  I.    There  is  nothing  much  more 


melancholy  in  all  biography.  The  brilliant 
poet,  the  delight  of  all  society,  from  the 
highest  to  the  lowest,  sits  brooding  in 
silence  over  the  drama  of  his  spent  life; 
the  early  innocent  home,  the  plough  and 
the  savour  of  fresh  turned  earth,  the 
silent  communion  with  nature  and  his  own 
heart,  the  brief  hour  of  splendour,  the 
dark  hour  of  neglect,  the  mad  struggle 
for  forgetfulness,  the  bitterness  of  van- 
ished homage,  the  gnawing  doubt  of  fame, 
the  distressful  future  of  his  wife  and 
children  —  and  endless  witch-dance  of 
thought  without  clew  or  remedy,  all  per- 
plexing, all  soon  to  end  while  he  is  yet 
young,  as  men  reckon  youth ;  though 
none  know  so  well  as  he  that  his  youth  is 
gone,  his  race  is  run,  his  message  is  deliv- 
ered. —  Rosebery,  Archibald  Philip 
Primrose  Lord,  1896,  Address  at  Dum- 
fries July  21. 

•  At  least  50,000  people  celebrated  the 
centenary  of  Robert  Burns's  death,  at 
Dumfries,  on  Tuesday.  In  the  morning  a 
long  procession,  accompanied  by  bands, 
filed  through  the  streets,  and  hundreds  of 
persons  visited  the  poet's  grave,  on  which 
wreaths  were  laid,  many  being  sent  by 
Scottish  societies  in  the  most  distant  parts 
of  the  world.  At  two  o'clock  within  the 
Drill  Hall  a  conversazione,  attended  by 
4,000  persons  was  held.  .  .  .  Burns 
has  become  the  patron  saint  of  Dumfries, 
and  he  had  borne  aloft  the  banner  of  the 
essential  equality  of  man.  At  St.  Michael's 
Church-yard,  wreaths  presented  by  130 
Burns  and  other  societies  were  handed 
to  Lord  Rosebery,  who  placed  them  on 
the  poet's  tomb.  The  first  wreath  laid  on 
the  tomb  was  that  of  Lord  Rosebery, 
consisting  of  arum  lilies  and  eucharis. 
The  most  modest  wreath,  and  yet,  proba- 
bly, the  most  interesting,  was  that  from 
the  Glasgow  Mauchline  Society.  It  con- 
sisted of  holly  and  gowans,  the  latter 
grown  on  the  field  at  Mossgiel,  celebrated 
by  Burns  in  his  poem  "To  a  Mountain 
Daisy. ' '  The  wreath  was  made  up  by  the 
granddaughters  of  Burns,  the  daughters 
of  Col.  James  Glencairn  Burns. — Anon, 
1896,  Publisher's  Circular,  July  25. 

The  farm  of  Mossgiel  is  situated  in  the 
parish  of  Mauchline,  from  the  town  of 
which  name  it  is  about  a  mile  distant. 
Whatever  it  may  have  been  in  the  poet's 
time,  it  strikes  the  visitor  in  these  days 
as  a  most  desirable  home.    ...  Its 


236 


ROBERT  BURNS 


walls  have  been  considerably  raised  since 
it  was  Burns's  home,  and  the  roof  of  thatch 
has  given  place  to  one  of  slates.  When 
Hawthorne  visited  it  in  1857,  and  forced 
his  way  inside  in  the  absence  of  the  fam- 
ily, he  found  it  remarkable  for  nothing  so 
much  as  its  dirt  and  dunghill  odour. 
There  is  neither  dirt  nor  odour  to-day. 
The  good  wife  of  the  present  occupant  of 
Mossgiel,  Mr.  Wyllie,  keeps  her  house 
spotlessly  clean  notwithstanding  the  de- 
mands made  upon  her  time  by  innumerable 
inquisitive  visitors.  On  the  parlour  table 
lies  the  copious  visitors'  book,  and  in  the 
same  room  hang  the  manuscript  of  ''The 
Lass  o'  Ballochmyle,"  and  the  letter  in 
which  Burns  asked  Miss  Alexander's  per- 
mission to  publish  the  song.  At  the  back 
of  the  house  lies  the  field  where  Burns 
turned  down  the  daisy,  and  the  soil 
''seems  to  have  been  consecrated  to 
daisies  by  the  song  which  he  bestowed  on 
that  first  immortal  one."  Over  the 
hedge,  there  is  the  other  field  where  the 
poet's  ploughshare  tore  up  the  mouse's 
nest.— Shelley,  Henry  C.,  1897,  The 
Ayrshire  Homes  and  Haunts  of  Burns,  pp. 
28,  30. 

During  his  own  lifetime  Thomson  suf- 
fered keenly  from  the  charge  that  he  had 
taken  an  unfair  advantage  of  Burns,  in 
accepting  so  much  from  the  poet  without 
making  him  any  substantial  pecuniary 
return.  The  charge  still  hangs  about 
Thomson's  name  in  a  vague  sort  of  way, for 
in  affairs  of  this  kind  the  dog  who  has  once 
acquired  a  bad  repute  is  likely  to  retain 
it.  The  unfortunate  editor,  as  he  puts  it 
himself  was  assailed,  "first  anonymously, 
and  afterwards,  to  my  great  surprise,  by 
some  writers  who  might  have  been  ex- 
pected to  possess  sufficient  judgment  to 
see  the  matter  in  its  true  light."  He 
defended  himself,  in  the  words  of  one  of 
his  calumniators,  "about  once  every  seven 
years;"  but  it  is  not  until  the  appearance 
of  Professor  Wilson's  onslaught  in  the 
"Land  of  Burns"  (1838)  that  his  corre- 
spondence begins  to  show  the  full  extent 
of  his  suffering  under  the  lash.  .  .  . 
The  truth  is  that  Burns  declined  to  write 
deliberately  for  money.  He  would — in  a 
patriotic  undertaking  of  this  kind  at  any 
rate — write  for  love,  or  not  write  at  all. 
If  his  poems  brought  him  a  profit — well, 
they  were  not  written  with  that  profit 
directly  in  view;  the  pecuniary  return 


was,  as  it  were,  but  an  accident,  not  affect- 
ing in  any  way  the  inception  of  the  work. 
This  was  practically  his  view  of  the  mat- 
ter as  expressed  to  Thomson.  It  appears 
that  he  expressed  the  same  view  also  to 
others. — Hadden,  J.  Cuthbert,  1898, 
George  Thomson  the  Friend  of  Burns,  pp. 
139,  145. 

Home  life  was  poor  in  the  little  tw^o- 
roomed  cottage,  and  toil  hard  on  the  farm, 
on  which  the  family  did  all  the  work. 
Robert  and  Gilbert,  as  each  reached  the 
age  of  thirteen,  would  weed  the  furrows 
and  thresh  the  corn ;  at  fifteen  they  would 
act  as  ploughman  and  shearers,  working 
from  daybreak  till  late  evening,  when  they 
were  ready  to  go  weary  to  their  chaff 
beds.  The  fare,  like  the  home  life,  was 
mean  and  monotonous — sowans  and  kail 
and  milk,  with  little  variations  at  the 
meals;  no  meat  appearing  on  the  board 
except  when  a  cow  or  sheep  died  of  old 
age  or  infirmity.  .  .  .  While  engaged 
on  the  farm,  which  did  not  pay  much,  and 
composing  poems,  which  paid  still  less,  he 
had  time  for  his  favourite  wooing,  which 
paid  worst  of  all.  His  relations  with  the 
"sex"  were  many  and  migratory.  He  was 
no  sooner  off  with  the  old  love  than  he  was 
on  with  the  new,  and  even  for  that  he  often 
did  not  wait.  In  his  tastes  he  was  not  fas- 
tidious as  to  the  position,  quality,  or  even 
looks  of  his  entrancer.  "He  had  always 
a  particular  jealousy  of  people  who  were 
richer  than  himself,  or  had  more  conse- 
quence,"  says  his  brother  Gilbert.  "His 
love  therefore  seldom  settled  on  per- 
sons of  this  description. ' '  A  buxom  barn- 
door beauty,  a  servant  girl  was  enough, 
although  she  was  as  devoid  of  romance  as 
of  stockings.  He  must  be  the  superior. 
A  "fine  woman,"  especially  among  his 
humble  acquaintance,  he  could  not  resist ; 
and  seldom  could  she  resist  the  masterful 
wooer,  with  his  winning  ways,  his  bewitch- 
ing talk,  his  eyes  that  "glowed  like  coals 
of  fire.  "—Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901, 
Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  pp.  383,  394. 

JEAN 

Poor  ill-advised  ungrateful  Armour 
came  home  on  Friday  last.  You  have 
heard  of  all  the  particulars  of  that  affair, 
and  a  black  affair  it  is.  What  she  thinks 
of  her  conduct  now,  I  don't  know;  one 
thing  I  do  know,  she  has  made  me  com- 
pletely miserable.    Never  man  loved,  or 


ROBERT  BURNS 


287 


rather  adored,  a  woman,  more  than  I  did 
her ;  and  to  confess  a  truth  between  you 
and  me,  I  do  still  love  her  to  distraction 
after  all,  although  I  won't  tell  her  so  if  I 
were  to  see  her,  which  1  don't  want  to  do. 
My  poor,  dear,  unfortunate  Jean,  how 
happy  I  have  been  in  thy  arms !  It  is  not 
the  losing  her  that  made  me  so  unhappy, 
but  for  her  sake  I  feel  most  severely ;  I 
forsee  she  is  on  the  road  to — I  am  afraid 
— eternal  ruin.  Alay  Almighty  God  for- 
give her  ingratitude  and  perjury  to  me, 
as  I  from  my  soul  forgive  her;  and 
may  His  grace  be  with  her  and  bless 
her  in  all  her  future  life!  I  can  have 
no  nearer  idea  of  the  place  of  eternal 
punishment  than  what  I  have  felt  in  my 
own  heart  on  her  account.  I  have  tried 
often  to  forget  her.  I  have  run  into  all 
kinds  of  dissipation  and  riots,  mason 
meetings,  drinking  matches,  and  other 
mischief,  to  drive  her  out  of  my  head,  but 
all  in  vain.  And  now  for  a  grand  cure : 
the  ship  is  on  her  way  home  that  is  to  take 
me  out  to  Jamaica;  then  farewell,  dear 
old  Scotland ;  and  farewell,  dear,  ungrate- 
ful Jean,  for  never,  never,  will  I  see  you 
more. — Burns,  Robert,  1786,  Letter  to 
David  Brice. 

Compared  Robert  Burns,  with  Jean 
Armour,  his  alleged  spouse.  They  both 
acknowledged  their  irregular  marriage, 
and  their  sorrow  for  that  irregularity,  and 
desiring  that  the  Session  will  take  such 
steps  as  may  seem  to  them  proper,  in 
order  to  the  solemn  confirmation  of  the 
said  marriage.  The  Session,  taking  this 
aifair  under  their  consideration,  agree 
that  they  both  be  rebuked  for  this  acknowl- 
edged irregularity,  and  that  they  be  sol- 
emnly engaged  to  adhere  faithfully  to  one 
another  as  man  and  wife  all  the  days  of 
their  life.  In  regard  the  Session  have  a 
title  in  law  to  some  fine  for  behoof  of  the 
poor,  they  agree  to  refer  to  Mr.  Burns  his 
own  generosity.  The  above  sentence  was 
accordingly  executed,  and  the  Session  ab- 
solved the  said  parties  from  any  scandal 
on  this  account. — Auld,  William  (Mod- 
erator), 1788,  Mauchline  Kirk-Session 
Books,  Aug.  5. 

She  still  survives  to  hear  her  name,  her 
early  love,  and  her  youthful  charms, 
warbled  in  the  songs  of  her  native  land. 
He,  on  whom  she  bestowed  her  beauty  and 
her  maiden  truth,  dying,  has  left  to  her 
the  mantle  of  his  fame.    What  though 


she  be  now  a  grandmother?  to  the  fancy, 
she  can  never  grow  old,  or  die.  We  can 
never  bring  her  before  our  thoughts  but 
as  the  lovely,  graceful  country  girl, 
* '  lightly  tripping  among  the  wild  flowers, ' ' 
and  v/arbling,  "Of  a'  the  airs  the  win' 
can  blaw," — and  this,  0  women,  is  what 
genius  can  do  for  you  !  Wherever  the  ad- 
venturous spirit  of  her  countrymen  trans- 
port them,  from  the  spicy  groves  of  India 
to  the  wild  banks  of  the  Mississippi,  the 
name  of  Bonnie  Jean  is  heard,  bringing 
back  to  the  wanderer  sweet  visions  of 
home,  and  of  days  of  *'Auld  lang  Syne." 
—Jameson,  Anna  Brownell,  1829,  The 
Loves  of  the  Poets,  vol.  ii,  p.  195. 

Mrs.  Burns  through  the  liberality  of 
her  children,  spent  her  latter  years  in 
comparative  aflluence,  yet ' '  never  changed, 
nor  wished  to  change  her  place."  In 
March  1843,  at  the  age  of  sixty-eight,  she 
closed  her  respectable  life  in  the  same 
room  in  which  her  husband  had  breathed 
his  last  thirty-eight  years  before. — Cham- 
bers, Robert,  1851-52,  The  Life  and 
Works  of  Robert  Burns. 

Patrick  said  she  was  *'a  decent,  weel- 
doin'  lass,"  full  of  sprightliness  and  fun. 
She  was  a  good-looking  brunette,  or  as 
Patrick's  father  (a  shoemaker,  next  door 
to  her  father's,  in  the  Cowgate)  used  to 
say,  ''Jean,  you're  a  ticht  jaud,  but  a  dun 
one !' '  a  compliment  which  she  always  took 
in  good  part,  with  her  usual  bright  laugh 
or  smile,  accompanied  by  a  smart  retort. 
Willie  also  described  her  as  "ticht  i'  the 
legs" — most  expressive  Scotch,  meaning 
at  once,  handsome,  sprightly,  and  well- 
knit,  from  the  idea  of  being  firmly  bound. 
The  poet  himself  uses  the  same  word  re- 
garding her  ;  and  regarding  no  less  a  per- 
sonage than  the  Muse,  Coila,  w^hen  she 
appeared  to  him  in  "the  spence"  at  Moss- 
giel,  portraying  her  as 

"A  tight  outlandish  hizzie  braw; " 
and  continuing  the  picture  thus — 

"Down  flowed  her  robe,  a  tartan  sheen. 

Till  half  a  leg  was  scriniply  seen ; 

And  such  a  leg !  my  bonny  Jean 
Could  only  peer  it ; 

Sae  straught,  sae  taper,  tight  and  clean, 
Nane  else  cam'  near  it." 
— Jolly,  William,  1881,  Robert  Burns 
at  Mossgiel ;  With  Reminiscences  of  the 
Poet  by  His  Herd-Boy,  p.  63. 

It  may  be  questionable  whether  any  mar- 
riage could  have  tamed  Burns ;  but  it  is 


238 


ROBERT  BURNS 


at  least  certain  that  there  was  no  hope 
for  him  in  the  marriage  he  contracted. 
He  did  right,  but  then  he  had  done  wrong 
before ;  it  was,  as  I  said,  one  of  those  re- 
lations in  life  which  it  seems  equally 
wrong  to  break  or  to  perpetuate.  He 
neither  loved  nor  respected  his  wife. 
**God  knows,"  he  writes,  ''my  choice  was 
as  random  as  blind  man's  buff."  He 
consoles  himself  by  the  thought  that  he 
has  acted  kindly  to  her;  that  she  ''has 
the  most  sacred  enthusiasm  of  attach- 
ment to  him ;"  that  she  has  a  good  figure ; 
that  she  has  a  ''wood-note  wild,"  "her  voice 
rising  with  ease  to  B  natural,"  no  less. 
The  effect  on  the  reader  is  one  of  unmin- 
gled  pity  for  both  parties  concerned.  This 
was  not  the  wife  who  (in  his  own  words) 
could  "enter  into  his  favourite  studies  or 
relish  his  favourite  authors;"  this  was 
not  even  a  wife,  after  the  affair  of  the 
marriage  lines,  in  whom  a  husband  could 
joy  to  place  his  trust.  Let  her  manage 
a  farm  with  sense,  let  her  voice  rise  to 
B  natural  all  day  long,  she  would  still  be 
a  peasant  to  her  lettered  lord,  and  an 
object  of  pity  rather  than  of  equal  affec- 
tion. She  could  now  be  faithful,  she  could 
now  be  forgiving,  she  could  now  begener-- 
ous  even  to  a  pathetic  and  touching  de- 
gree ;  but  coming  from  one  who  was  un- 
loved, and  who  had  scarce  shown  herself 
worthy  of  the  sentiment,  these  were  all 
virtues  thrown  away,  which  could  neither 
change  her  husband's  heart  nor  effect  the 
inherent  destiny  of  their  relation.  From 
the  outset,  it  was  a  marriage  that  had  no 
root  in  nature ;  and  we  find  him,  ere  long, 
lyrically  regretting  Highland  Mary,  re- 
newing correspondence  with  Clarinda  in 
the  warmest  language,  on  doubtful  terms 
with  Mrs.  Riddel,  and  on  terms  unfortu- 
nately beyond  any  question  with  Anne 
Park. — Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  1882, 
Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books,  p.  72. 

Her  condition  being  discovered,  Burns, 
after  some  strong  revulsions  of  feeling 
against — not  Jean,  I  hope,  but — the  estate 
of  marriage,  gave  her  what  he  presently  had 
every  reason  to  call  "an  unlucky  paper," 
recognising  her  as  his  wife ;  and,  had 
things  been  allowed  to  drift  in  the  usual 
way,  the  world  had  lacked  an  unforgotten 
scandal  and  a  great  deal  of  silly  writing. 
— Henley,  William  Ernest,  1897,  Life, 
Genius,  Achievement,  The  Poetry  of  Rob- 
ert Burns,  vol.  iv,  p.  280. 


HIGHLAND  MARY 

He  loved  Mary  Campbell,  his  "Highland 
Mary,"  with  as  pure  a  passion  as  ever 
possessed  a  young  poet's  heart;  nor  is 
there  so  sweet  and  sad  a  passage  recorded 
in  the  life  of  any  other  one  of  all  the  sons 
of  song.  Many  such  partings  there  have 
been  between  us  poor  beings— blind  at  all 
times,  and  often  blindest  in  our  bliss — but 
all  gone  to  oblivion.  But  that  hour  can 
never  die — that  scene  will  live  forever. 
Immortal  the  two  shadows  standing  there, 
holding  together  the  Bible— a  little  rivu- 
let flowing  between — in  which,  as  in  con- 
secrated water,  they  have  dipt  their 
hands,  water  not  purer  than,  at  that 
moment,  their  united  hearts.  There  are 
few  of  his  songs  more  beautiful,  and  none 
more  impassioned. — Wilson,  John,  1844, 
The  Genius  and  Character  of  Burns,  p,  15. 

0  loved  by  him  whom  Scotland  loves, 
Long  loved,  and  honoured  duly 

By  all  who  love  the  bard  who  sang 

So  sweetly  and  so  truly ! 
In  cultured  dales  his  song  prevails ; 

Thrills  o'er  the  eagle's  aery — 
Has  any  caught  that  strain,  nor  sighed 

For  Burns 's  "Highland  Mary?  " 

1  wandered  on  from  hill  to  hill, 

I  feared  nor  wind  nor  weather. 
For  Burns  beside  me  trode  the  raoor, 

Beside  me  pressed  the  heather. 
I  read  his  verse :  his  life— alas ! 

O'er  that  dark  shades  extended: — 
With  thee  at  last,  and  him  in  thee. 

My  thoughts  their  wanderings  ended. 
His  golden  hours  of  youth  were  thine ; 

Those  hours  whose  flight  is  fleetest. 
Of  all  his  songs  to  thee  he  gave 

The  freshest  and  the  sweetest. 
Ere  ripe  the  fruit  one  branch  he  brake, 

All  rich  with  bloom  and  blossom ; 
And  shook  its  dews,  its  incense  shook, 

Above  thy  brow  and  bosom. 
-De  Vere,  Aubrey,  1847,  To  Burns's 
Highland  Mary. 

All  the  world  has  heard  of  Highland 
Mary — in  life  a  maid-servant  in  the  family 
of  Mr.  Hamilton,  after  death  to  be  re- 
membered wit^i  Dante's  Beatrice  and 
Petrarch's  Laura.  How  Burns  and  Mary 
became  acquainted  we  have  little  means  of 
knowing — indeed  the  whole  relationship  is 
somewhat  obscure — but  Burns  loved  her 
as  he  loved  no  other  woman,  and  her 
memory  is  preserved  in  the  finest  expres- 
sion of  his  love  and  grief.  Strangely 
enough,  it  seems  to  have  been  in  the  fierce 
rupture  between  himself  and  Jean  that 


ROBERT  BURNS 


239 


this  white  flower  of  love  sprang  up,  sud- 
den in  its  growth,  brief  in  its  passion  and 
beauty.  It  was  arranged  that  the  lovers 
should  become  man  and  wife,  and  that 
Mary  should  return  to  her  friends  to  pre- 
pare for  her  wedding.  Before  her  depar- 
ture there  was  a  farewell  scene.  ''On 
the  second  Sunday  of  May,"  Burns  writes 
to  Mr.  Thomson,  after  an  historical  fash- 
ion which  has  something  touching  in  it, 
"in  a  sequestered  spot  on  the  banks  of 
the  Ayr  the  interview  took  place."  The 
lovers  met  and  plighted  solemn  troth. 
According  to  popular  statement,  they 
stood  on  either  side  of  a  brook,  they 
dipped  their  hands  in  the  water,  exchanged 
Bibles — and  parted.  Mary  died  at  Green- 
ock, and  was  buried  in  a  dingy  church- 
yard hemmed  by  narrow  streets— be- 
clanged  now  by  innumerable  hammers, 
and  within  a  stone's  throw  of  passing 
steamers.  Information  of  her  death  was 
brought  to  Burns  at  Mossgiel ;  he  went  to 
the  window  to  read  the  letter,  and  the 
family  noticed  that  on  a  sudden  his  face 
changed.  He  went  out  without  speaking ; 
they  respected  his  grief  and  were  silent. 
On  the  whole  matter  Burns  remained  sing- 
ularly reticent;  but  years  after,  from  a 
sudden  geysir  of  impassioned  song,  we 
learn  that  through  all  that  time  she  had 
never  been  forgotten. — Smith,  Alexan- 
der, 1865,  The  Poetical  Works  of  Robert 
Burns,  Life,  p.  xiii. 

There  is  no  stronger  proof  of  the  tran- 
scending power  of  the  genius  of  Burns 
than  is  found  in  the  fact  that,  by  a  bare 
half  dozen  of  his  stanzas,  an  humble  dairy 
servant — else  unheard  of  outside  her  par- 
ish and  forgotten  at  her  death — is  immor- 
talized as  a  peeress  of  Petrarch's  Laura 
and  Dante's  Beatrice,  and  has  been  for  a 
century  loved  and  mourned  of  all  the 
world.  .  .  .  How  little  is  known  of 
Highland  Mary,  the  most  famous  heroine 
of  modern  song,  is  shown  by  the  brief, 
incoherent,  and  often  contradictory  allu- 
sions to  her  which  the  biographies  of  the 
ploughman-poet  contain.  .  .  .  She 
first  saw  the  light  in  1764,  at  Ardrossan, 
on  the  coast,  fifteen  miles  northward  from 
the  ''auld  town  of  Ayr."  Her  parentage 
w^as  of  the  humblest,  her  father  being  a 
sailor  before  the  mast,  and  the  poor 
dwelling  which  sheltered  her  was  in  no 
way  superior  to  the  meanest  of  those  we 
find  to-day  on  the  narrow  streets  of  her 


village.  ...  He  told  a  lady  that  he 
first  saw  Mary  while  walking  in  the  woods 
of  Coilsfield,  and  first  spoke  with  her  at  a 
rustic  merry-making,  and,  ''having  the 
luck  to  win  her  regards  from  other  suit- 
ors," they  speedily  became  intimate. 
.  .  .  The  bard's  niece,  Miss  Begg,  of 
Bridgeside,  told  the  writer  that  she  often 
heard  Burns' s  mother  describe  Mary  as 
she  saw  her  at  Hamilton's:  she  had  a 
bonnie  face,  a  complexion  of  unusual  fair- 
ness, soft  blue  eyes,  a  profusion  of  shin- 
ing hair  which  fell  to  her  knees,  a  petite 
figure  which  made  her  seem  younger  than 
her  twenty  summers,  a  bright  smile,  and 
pleasing  manners,  which  won  the  old  lady's 
heart.  ...  All  who  have  written  of 
her  have  noticed  her  beauty,  her  good 
sense,  her  modesty  and  self-respect. 
.  .  .  Poor  Mary  is  laid  in  the  burial- 
plot  of  her  uncle  in  the  west  kirk-yard  of 
Greenock,  near  Crawford  Street ;  our  pil- 
grimage in  Burnsland  may  fitly  end  at  her 
grave.  A  pathway,  beaten  by  the  feet  of 
many  reverent  visitors,  leads  us  to  the 
spot.  It  is  so  pathetically  diiferent  from 
the  scenes  she  loved  in  life,^ — the  heather- 
clad  slopes  of  her  Highland  home,  the 
seclusion  of  the  wooded  braes  where  she 
loitered  with  her  poet-lover.  Scant  foli- 
age is  about  her;  few  birds  sing  above 
her  here.  She  lies  by  the  wall ;  narrow 
streets  hem  in  the  enclosure ;  the  air  is 
sullied  by  smoke  from  factories  and  from 
steamers  passing  within  a  stone's-throw  on 
the  busy  Clyde;  the  clanging  of  many 
hammers  and  the  discordant  din  of 
machinery  and  traffic  invade  the  place  and 
sound  in  our  ears  as  we  muse  above  the 
ashes  of  the  gentle  lassie.  For  half  a 
century  her  grave  was  unmarked  and 
neglected;  then,  by  subscription,  a  mon- 
ument of  marble,  twelve  feet  in  height, 
and  of  graceful  proportions,  was  raised. 
It  bears  a  sculptured  medallion  represent- 
ing Burns  and  Mary,  with  clasped  hands, 
plighting  their  troth.  Beneath  is  the 
simple  inscription  read  oft  by  eyes  dim 
with  tears : 

Erected  over  the  Grave  of 
Highland  Mary 

1842; 

"My  Mary,  dear  departed  sliade, 
Where  is  thy  place  of  blissful  rest?" 
—Wolfe,  Theodore  F.,  1895,  A  Literary 
Pilgrimage,  pp.  194,  195,  196,  197,  205. 

There  is  probably  no  name  in  Scottish 
literature  that  has  so  affectingly  touched 


240 


ROBERT  BURNS 


the  hearts  of  her  fellow-countrymen  as 
that  of  Mary  Canripbell.  Though  born  of 
an  obscure  family,  brought  up  in  circum- 
stances little  fitted  to  attract  attention, 
and  credited  with  no  achievement  that  in- 
vests heroism  with  permanent  or  even 
transient  distinction,  this  Highland  girl 
is  now  a  brilliant  star  in  the  galaxy  of 
Fame,  and  has  become  an  object  of  un- 
mingled  and  growing  admiration.  The 
lustre  of  Mary's  name,  like  that  of  other 
stars,  whether  fixed  or  planetary,  borrows 
its  fascination  from  a  luminary  brighter 
and  greater  than  itself.  The  very  obscu- 
rity of  her  origin  and  early  condition 
sets  off  by  constrast  the  halo  that  now 
encircles  her  memory.  Moralists  have 
noted  and  extolled  her  virtues,  critics 
have  lovingly  dropped  their  satiric  shafts 
when  commenting  on  the  few  but  roman- 
tic appearances  she  made  on  the  stage  of 
Time,  and  poets  of  several  generations, 
and  of  almost  all  countries,  have  exhausted 
their  poetical  resources  in  their  efforts  to 
express  their  conceptions  of  her  worth,  but 
all  their  contributions  towards  the  sum  of 
her  praise  have  taken  their  force  and  com- 
plexion from  the  picture  which  inspired 
genius  has  given  of  her  to  the  world.  The 
interest  created  by  the  association  of  the 
heroine's  career  with  that  of  the  gifted 
lover  who  has  procured  for  her  the  honour 
of  poetical  immortality,  is  not,  it  is  pleas- 
ant to  know,  confined  to  the  little  country 
that  gave  her  birth.  In  England ,  Ireland, 
America,  and  the  Colonies,  and  even  in 
countries  that  have  less  in  common  with 
Great  Britain,  Mary's  worth,  ill-starred 
career,  and  premature  death,  have  found 
admirers  and  mourners  as  cordial  and  sin- 
cere as  any  that  Caledonia  has  produced. 
— MuNRO,  Archibald,  1896,  Burns  and 
Highland  Mary. 

Little  that  is  positive  is  known  of  Mary 
Campbell  except  that  she  once  possessed  a 
copy  of  the  Scriptures  (now  very  piously 
preserved  at  Ayr),  and  that  she  is  a  sub- 
ject of  a  fantasy,  in  bronze,  at  Dunoon. — 
Henley,  William  Ernest,  1897,  Life, 
Genius,  Achievement,  The  Poetry  of  Rob- 
ert Burns,  vol.  iv,  pp.  285. 

By  all  means  let  us  reject  the  Mary 
Campbell  tradition,  immolate  the  Bible  at 
Ayr,  melt  down  the  fantasy  in  bronze"  at 
Dunoon,  make  building  material  of  the 
monument  at  Greenock,  reduce  all  get-at- 
able  Highland  Mary  literature  to  pulp, 


and  for  ever  more  let  the  story  stand  as 
Burns  left  it. — Lockhart,  Robert  M., 
1898,  Mr.  Henley  and  Highland  Mary, 
The  Westminster  Review,  vol.  149,  p.  336. 

CLARINDA 

Mrs.  M'Lehose  originally  refused  Mr. 
Syme  (who  collected  for  Dr.  Currie)  per- 
mission to  publish  the  Letters,  and  de- 
clined, as  has  been  already  stated,  various 
similar  applications  in  her  latter  years. 
But  the  present  editor  is  of  opinion,  that 
the  time  is  now  come  for  their  publication, 
and  that  an  authentic  edition  of  the  Cor- 
respondence will  have  the  effect  of  remov- 
ing prejudice,  will  do  honour  to  the  mem- 
ory of  his  respected  relative,  and  interest 
the  public,  by  giving  them  a  new  chapter 
in  the  life  of  our  immortal  poet.  This 
interest,  too,  is  increased  by  the  consid- 
eration that  these  letters  are  probably  the 
last  original  composition  of  his  which  will 
ever  be  made  public. — M'Lehose,  Wil- 
liam C,  1843,  ed.,  The  Correspondence 
between  Burns  and  Clarinda,  Preface,  p.  ix. 

She  called  herself  "high-spirited,"  which 
meant  ''unyielding ;"  she  mingled  romance 
and  strong  Calvinistic  principles,  an  al- 
most incompatible  mixture  ;  she  was  light, 
vain;  a  "foolish  woman,"  listening  to  the 
rhapsodies  of  the  Ayrshire  ploughman 
when  she  ought  to  have  been  thinking  of 
her  children ;  and  her  quiet  discussion  of 
certain  matters  relating  to  her  admirer 
shows  her  to  have  been  eminently  coarse. 
She  also,  as  one  of  her  family  says,  ''cul- 
tivated the  Muses."  All  these  elements, 
combined  as  it  were  in  one  dish,  make  up 
a  doubtful  sort  of  salad. — Fitzgerald, 
Percy,  1870,  The  Loves  of  Famous  Men, 
Belgravia,  vol.  12,  p.  425. 

It  was  at  this  time  Burns  met  Clarinda 
once  more.    She  was  about  to  sail  for  the 
West  Indies,  in  search  of  the  husband  who 
had  forsaken  her;  the  interview  was  a 
brief  and  hurried  one,  and  no  account  of 
it  remains,  except  some  letters,  and  a  few- 
lyrics  which  he  addressed  to  her.    One  of 
these  is  distinguished  as  one  of  the  most 
impassioned  effusions  which  Burns  ever 
poured  forth.    It  contains  that  one  con- 
summate stanza  in  which  Scott,  Byron, 
and  many  more,  saw  concentrated,  "the 
essence  of  a  thousand  love-tales." 
Had  we  never  loved  so  kindly, 
Had  we  never  loved  so  blindly ; 
Never  met,  or  never  parted, 
We  had  ne'er  been  broken-hearted. 


ROBERT  BURNS 


241 


Mrs.  Burns  is  said  to  have  been  a  marvel 
of  long-suffering  and  forgiveness,  for  the 
way  in  which  she  bore  the  wrongs  her 
husband  inflicted  upon  her  by  his  unfaith- 
fulness. There  is  no  doubt  that  Burns 
also  tasted  self-reproach  and 
"Self -con tempt,  bitterer  to  drink  than 
blood." 

—Price,  Charlotte  A.,  1895,  Famous 
Poets,  Belgravia,  vol.  87,  p.  273. 

Poor  Clarinda !  Well  for  her  peace  of 
mind  that  the  poet  was  leaving  her ;  well 
for  Burns,  also,  that  he  was  leaving  Cla- 
rinda and  Edinburgh.  Only  one  thing  re- 
mained for  both  to  do,  and  it  had  been  wise, 
to  burn  their  letters.  Would  that  Cla- 
rinda had  been  as  much  alive  to  her  own 
good  name,  and  the  poet's  fair  fame,  as 
Peggy  Chalmers,  who  did  not  preserve 
her  letters  from  Burns! — Setoun,  Ga- 
briel, 1896,  Robert  Burns  {Famous  Scots 
Series),  p.  109. 

So  in  the  beginning  of  December  he 
falls  in  with  Mrs.  M'Lehose ;  he  instantly 
proposes  to  cultivate  her  friendship  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  religion '  and  the  two 
are  languishing  in  Arcady  in  the  twinkling 
of  a  cupid's  wing.  She  was  a  handsome, 
womanly  creature  ''of  a  somewhat  volup- 
tuous style  of  beauty:"  a  style  the  Bard 
appreciated — lively  but  devout,  extremely 
sentimental  yet  inexorably  dutiful:  a 
grass  widow  with  children — nine  times  in 
ten  a  lasting  safeguard — and  the  strictest 
notions  of  propriety— a  good  enough  de- 
fence for  a  time ;  but  young  (she  was  the 
Bard's  own  age),  clever,  "of  a  poetical 
fabric  of  mind,"  and  all  the  rest.  .  .  . 
In  the  prime-of  life,  deserted,  sentimental, 
a  tangle  of  simple  instincts  and  as  simple 
pieties,  she  had  the  natural  woman's  de- 
sire for  a  lover  and  the  religious  woman's 
resolve  to  keep  that  lover's  passion 
within  bounds.  .  .  .  She  was  plainly  an 
excellent  creature,  bent  on  keeping  her- 
self honest  and  her  lover  straight ;  and  it 
is  impossible  to  read  her  letters  to  Syl- 
vander  without  a  respect,  a  certain  admira- 
tion even,  which  have  never  been  awak- 
ened yet  by  the  study  of  Sylvander's  let- 
ters to  her.  From  Sylvander's  point  of 
view,  as  M'Lehose  was  still  alive,  and  an 
open  intrigue  with  a  married  woman  would 
have  been  ruin,  only  one  inference  is  pos- 
sible :  that  he  longed  for  the  shepherd's 
hour  to  strike  for  the  chimes'  sake  only ; 
so  that,  when  he  thought  of  his  future,  as 

16  c 


he  must  have  done  anxiously  and  often,  he 
cannot  ever  have  thought  of  it  as  Clarin- 
da's,  even  though  in  a  moment  of  peculiar 
exaltation  he  swore  to  keep  single  till  that 
wretch,  the  wicked  husband  died.— Hen- 
ley, William  Ernest,  1897,  Life,  Genius, 
Achievement,  The  Poetry  of  Robert  Burns, 
vol.  IV,  pp.  304,  305,  306. 

MRS.  DUNLOP 

Madam, — I  have  written  you  so  often 
without  recg.  any  answer,  that  I  would 
not  trouble  you  again  but  for  the  circum- 
stances in  which  I  am.  An  illness  which 
has  long  hung  about  me  in  all  probability 
will  speedily  send  me  beyond  that  bourne 
whence  no  traveller  returns.  Your  friend- 
ship with  which  for  so  many  years  you 
honored  me  was  a  friendship  dearest  to 
my  soul.  Your  conversation  and  especially 
your  correspondence  were  at  once  highly 
entertaining  and  instructive.  With  what 
pleasure  did  I  use  to  break  up  the  seal !  The 
remembrance  yet  adds  one  pulse  more  to 
my  poor  palpitating  heart !  —  Farewell ! ! ! 
— Burns,  Robert,  1796,  Last  Letter  to 
Mrs.  Dunlop. 

The  friendship  of  Mrs.  Dunlop  was  of 
particular  value  to  Burns.  This  lady, 
daughter  and  sole  heiress  to  Sir  Thomas 
Wallace  of  Craige,  and  lineal  descendant 
of  the  illustrious  Wallace,  the  first  of 
Scottish  warriors,  possesses  the  qualities 
of  mind  suited  to  her  high  lineage.  Pre- 
serving, in  the  decline  of  life,  the  gener- 
ous affections  of  youth ;  her  admiration  of 
the  poet  was  soon  accompanied  by  a  sin- 
cere friendship  for  the  man ;  which  pur- 
sued him  in  after  life  through  good  and 
evil  report;  in  poverty,  in  sickness,  and 
in  sorrow ;  and  which  is  continued  to  his 
infant  family,  now  deprived  of  their 
parent.— CuRRiE,  James,  1800,  ed.,  Works 
of  Robert  Burns,  Life. 

He  appears  from  first  to  last  to  have 
stood  somewhat  in  awe  of  this  excellent 
lady,  and  to  have  been  no  less  sensible  of 
her  sound  judgment  and  strict  sense  of 
propriety,  than  of  her  steady  and  generous 
partiality.  —  Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord, 
1809,  Reliques  of  Burns,  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, vol.  13,  p.  256. 

His  letters  to  Mrs.  Dunlop  form  a  very 
large  proportion  of  all  his  subsequent  cor- 
respondence, and,  addressed  as  they  were 
to  a  person,  whose  sex,  age,  rank,  and 
benevolence,  inspired  at  once  profound 


242 


ROBERT  BURNS 


respect  and  a  graceful  confidence,  will 
ever  remain  the  most  pleasing  of  all  the 
materials  of  our  poet's  biography. — Lock- 
hart,  John  Gibson,  1828,  Life  of  Robert 
Burns,  p.  122. 

The  real  basis  of  the  friendship  was 
their  common  warmth  and  generosity  of 
soul.  Mrs.  Dunlop's  interest  in  the  poet 
was  not  purely,  or  even  primarily,  intel- 
lectual. She  was  not  what  would  be 
called  a  literary  lady.  She  was  by  no 
means  a  pedant.  She  was  simply  a  woman 
of  good  birth  and  good  breeding;  old 
enough  and  wise  enough  to  have  drawn 
profit  from  the  experiences  of  life ;  fond 
of  books  and  sincerely  religious ;  endowed 
with  good  judgment  and  good  sense,  with 
quick  womanly  sympathy  and  inextinguish- 
able youthfulness  of  heart.  Being  what 
she  was,  she  won  the  poet's  confidence 
and  sincere  affection,  and  drew  out  all  his 
finer  feelings.  His  letters  to  her  are  not 
indeed  free  from  that  artificiality  which 
characterised  the  epistolary  style  of  his 
day,  and  marred  all  his  correspondence; 
but  they  are  less  disfigured  by  it  than  those 
addressed  to  some  of  his  patrons,  or  to 
his  unknown  literary  correspondents — to 
say  nothing  of  the  effusions  to  * '  Clarinda. ' ' 
— Roberts,  L.  M.,  1895,  The  Burns  and 
Dunlop  Correspondence,Fortnightly  Review, 
vol.  64,  p.  663. 

The  Lochryan  MSS.,  now  published  for 
the  first  time,  were  in  all  probability  never 
seen  by  Currie.  Manifestly  none  of  them 
has  ever  been  handled  by  either  editor 
or  printer.  They  are  all  in  a  state  of 
beautiful  preservation,  and  include  at  least 
as  fine  specimens  of  the  poet's  handwrit- 
ing as  any  that  have  seen  the  light  in  the 
original  or  reproduction.  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Dunlop  kept  the  Lochryan  MSS.  at  Dun- 
lop till  her  death,  when  she  left  the  estate 
of  Lochryan  and  the  MSS.  to  her  grandson. 
General  Sir  John  Wallace,  from  whom  the 
documents  descended  to  his  son  and  heir, 
the  next  possessor  of  Lochryan,  who  left 
them  by  will  to  his  youngest  brother  the 
present  Colonel  F.  J.  Wallace,  from  whom 
they  were  recently  acquired  by  Mr.  Adam. 
They  have  thus  been  continuously  in  the 
hands  of  the  Dunlop- Wallace  family  dur- 
ing the  past  century.  Colonel  Wallace 
states  to  the  best  of  his  knowledge  that 
they  have  been  kept  in  a  box  in  the  safe- 
room  at  Lochryan  for  the  last  fifty  years. 
The  interweaving  of  this  new  material  with 


the  old  makes  the  Correspondence  of 
Burns  and  Mrs.  Dunlop  almost  unique  in 
its  completeness.  A  careful  search  after 
possible  lacunae  has  discovered  no  more 
than  four  places  where  it  can  be  definitely 
stated  that  the  letter  of  Burns  is  missing, 
and  of  the  gross  sum  of  Mrs.  Dunlop's  it 
appears  that  Burns  had  lost  or  destroyed 
only  nine — a  circumstance  which  must 
have  wiped  out  the  memory  of  the  many 
proofs  the  lady  had  received  that  he  did 
not  always  read  her  communications  with 
the  most  respectful  care,  and  at  the  same 
time  must  have  deepened  the  remorse  she 
felt  for  her  neglect  of  the  poet  during  the 
last  eighteen  months  of  his  life.— Wal- 
lace, William,  1898,  Robert  Burns  and 
Mrs.  Dunlop,  Preface,  vol.  I,  pp.  vi,  vii. 

A  curious  figure,  this  Mrs.  Dunlop,  of 
Dunlop,  and  most  out  of  line  with  one's 
notion  of  a  Scotch  gentlewoman !  To  be  a 
lady  of  sensibility  was  her  ideal.  To  go 
to  posterity  as  the  social  and,  forsooth,  the 
literary  mentor  of  her  gifted  neighbor 
was  her  ambition.  Her  religion  was  of  the 
Genevan  type — not  Jean  Calvin's,  but 
Jean  Jacques  Rousseau's.  The  religion 
of  the  heart,  she  called  it,  and  had  she 
not  been  a  Sexagenarian  and  forever  occu- 
pied with  the  births  of  grandchildren, 
there  is  no  telling  where  it  Avould  have 
landed  her.  In  comparison  with  her  solic- 
itude for  Burns,  the  cares  of  a  patriarchal 
household  sat  light  upon  her,  and  with  pen 
in  hand  she  could  say,  ''as  to  forming 
schemes,  it  is  a  kind  of  castle-building 
that  I  cannot  resign,  as  it  pleases  myself 
and  does  little  harm  to  anything  else." 
Scolding,  questioning,  teasing,  advising, 
and  spoiling  Burns  like  a  grandmother, 
she  is  yet  irrepressibly  youthful.  With 
all  her  intellectual  fire,  and  with  all  her 
provincial  awkwardness,  it  is  impossible 
not  to  admire  her  buoyancy,  freshness, 
and  hero-worship.  She  comes  near  pos- 
sessing charm,  and  is  almost  a  romantic 
figure. — Harper,  George  McLean,  1898, 
Burns  in  his  Correspondence,  The  Book 
Buyer,  vol.  17,  p.  20. 

THE  HOLY  FAIR 

In  Burns's  time  this  poem  was  much  rel- 
ished by  the  moderate  clergy,  and  Dr. 
Blair  condescended  to  suggest  the  change 
of  a  word  in  order  to  render  its  satire 
more  pointed.  In  these  days  of  better 
taste,  a  regret  will  be  generally  felt 
that  Burns  should  have  been  tempted  or 


ROBERT  BURNS 


243 


provoked  into  such  subjects.  This  is,  how- 
ever, a  general  belief  in  Ayrshire  that 
the ''Holy  Fair"  was  attended  with  a  good 
effect,  for  since  its  appearance,  the  custom 
of  resorting  to  the  ''occasion"  in  neighbour- 
ing parishes  for  the  sake  6t  holiday  mak- 
ing has  been  much  abated,  and  a  great  in- 
crease of  decorous  observance  has  taken 
place. — Chambers,  Robert,  1851-52, 
The  Life  and  Works  of  Robert  Burns,  vol. 
I,  p,  270. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  history  of 
Scottish  literature  and  religion,  this  cari- 
cature of  the  Holiest,  as  some  might  be 
inclined  to  call  it,  did  no  harm,  but  rather 
good ;  for  the  caricature  lay  undoubtedly 
to  no  small  extent  in  the  real  facts  of  the 
case,  not  in  the  mere  treatment  of  the 
poet.  Harm  to  Burns  it  certainly  did  do ; 
for  it  tended  to  raise  a  wall  of  partition 
between  him  and  the  reverential  sentiment 
of  the  country,  which  stands  in  the  way 
of  his  acceptance  with  not  a  few  of  the 
most  worthy  of  his  countrymen  even  at 
the  present  hour.  Harm  to  the  people  it 
could  not  do ;  for  so  far  as  it  was  over- 
charged, the  roots  of  the  popular  piety 
had  stuck  too  deep  to  be  shaken  by  a  rude 
hand ;  and  so  far  as  it  was  true,  the  re- 
proof has  been  so  effective  that  not  a 
shadow  of  the  abuse  remains.  Had  it  not 
been  for  the  polemical  relation  in  which 
he  found  himself  to  the  zealous  party  in 
the  Church,  and  for  the  glaring  nature  of 
the  abuse  of  sacred  ceremonies  that  forced 
itself  on  his  observation,  I  feel  certain 
that  Burns  was  the  last  man  in  the  world 
to  have  wantonly  held  so  sacred  a  rite  up 
to  public  ridicule.— Blackie,  John  Stu- 
art, 1888,  Life  of  Robert  Burns  (Great 
Writers),  p.  51. 

Of  all  the  series  of  satires,  however, 
**The  Holy  Fair"  is  the  most  remarkable. 
It  is  in  a  sense  a  summing  up  of  all  the 
others  that  preceded  it.  The  picture  it 
gives  of  the  mixed  and  motley  multitude 
fairing  in  the  church-yard  at  Mauchline, 
with  a  relay  of  ministerial  mountebanks 
catering  for  their  excitement,  is  true  to 
the  life.  It  is  begging  the  question  to 
deplore  that  Burns  was  provoked  to  such 
an  attack.  The  scene  was  provocation 
sufficient  to  any  right-thinking  man  who 
associated  the  name  of  religion  with  all 
that  was  good  and  beautiful  and .  true. 
Such  a  state  of  things  demanded  reforma- 
tion.   The  church-yard — that  holy  ground 


on  which  the  church  was  built  and  sancti- 
fied by  the  dust  of  pious  and  saintly  men 
— cried  aloud  against  the  desecration  to 
which  it  was  subjected,  and  Burns,  who 
alone  had  the  power  to  purify  it  from  such 
profanities,  would  have  been  untrue  to 
himself  and  a  traitor  to  the  religion  of 
his  country  had  he  merely  shrugged  his 
shoulders  and  allowed  things  to  go  on  as 
they  were  going. — Setoun,  Gabriel,  1896, 
Robert  Burns  (Famous  Scots  Series),  p.  51. 

The  "Holy  Fair,"  that  "joyful  solem- 
nity" in  which  the  scandals  attending  the 
open-air  communions  are  painted  with 
vivid  power  and  merciless  veracity.  In 
these  satires  there  is  not  saeva  indignatio 
at  evils  he  hated,  but  wild  humour  over 
scandals  he  laughed  at.  In  them  he  was 
merely  voicing  the  feelings  of  the  educated 
classes,  and  echoing  the  teaching  of  the 
moderate  clergy  in  two-thirds  of  the  Low- 
land pulpits  of  Scotland.  To  say  that 
Burns,  by  his  drastic  lines,  broke  down 
the  despotism  of  the  Church,  overthrew 
the  spirit  of  Puritanism,  and  dispelled  re- 
ligious gloom  in  the  country,  is  to  speak 
in  ignorance  of  the  real  part  he  played. 
That  work  had  been  begun  effectively  by 
others  before  him,  and  was  to  be  carried 
on  by  others  who  never  felt  his  influ- 
ence.— Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scot- 
tish Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  p.  392. 

COTTER'S  SATURDAY  NIGHT 
I  intended  writing  you  last  night,  but 
happening  to  lift  the  "Cotter's  Saturday 
Night,"  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  close 
the  book  without  reading  it,  tho'  for  the 
five  hundred  time.  Do,  I  beg  you,  try  if 
you  can  make  anything  now  like  it.  I'm 
sure  no  one  else  I  have  ever  seen  can ; 
but  I'll  say  no  more  of  it,  or  I  could  speak 
of  nothing  else. — Dunlop,  Mrs.  Frances 
A.,  1789,  Letter  to  Burns,  Sept.  23;  Rob- 
ert Burns  and  Mrs.  Dunlop,  ed.  Wallace, 
vol  I,  p.  308. 

"The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  is  ten- 
der and  moral,  it  is  solemn  and  devotional, 
and  rises  at  length  into  a  strain  of  grand- 
eur and  sublimity,  which  modern  poetry 
has  not  surpassed.  The  noble  sentiments 
of  patriotism  with  which  it  concludes,  cor- 
respond with  the  rest  of  the  poem.  In  no 
age  or  country  have  the  pastoral  muses 
breathed  such  elevated  accents,  if  the 
Messiah  of  Pope  be  excepted,  which  is 


244 


ROBERT  BURNS 


indeed  a  pastoral  in  form  only.^ — ^Currie, 
James,  1800,  ed..  Works  of  Robert  Burns, 
Life. 

A  noble  and  pathetic  picture  of  human 
manners,  mingled  with  a  fine  religious 
awe. — Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lectures 
on  the  English  Poets,  Lecture  vii. 

The  "Cottar's  Saturday  Night"  is,  per- 
haps, of  all  Burns's  pieces,  the  Qne  whose 
exclusion  from  the  collection,  were  such 
things  possible  now-a-days,  would  be  the 
most  injurious,  if  not  to  the  genius,  at 
least  to  the  character,  of  the  man.  In 
spite  of  many  feeble  lines,  and  some  heavy 
stanzas,  it  appears  to  me,  that  even  his 
genius  would  suffer  more  in  estimation,  by 
being  contemplated  in  the  absence  of  this 
poem,  than  of  any  other  single  perform- 
ance he  has  left  us.  Loftier  flights  he 
certainly  had  made,  but  in  these  he  re- 
mained but  a  short  while  on  the  wing,  apd 
effort  is  too  often  perceptible ;  here  the 
motion  is  easy,  gentle,  placidly  undulating. 
There  is  more  of  the  conscious  security  of 
power,  than  in  any  other  of  his  serious 
pieces  of  considerable  length ;  the  whole 
has  an  appearance  of  coming  in  a  full 
stream  from  the  fountain  of  the  heart — • 
a  stream  that  soothes  the  ear,  and  has  no 
glare  on  the  surface.  — Lockhart,  John 
Gibson,  1828,  Life  of  Robert  Burns,  p.  97. 

In  "the  Cottar's  Saturday  Night,"  the 
poet  has  so  varied  his  dialect  that  there 
are  scarcely  two  consecutive  stanzas  writ- 
ten according  to  the  same  model.  An 
hour  of  winter  evening  music  on  the 
^olian  harp,  when  all  the  winds  are  on 
the  wing,  would  hardly  be  more  wild,  and 
sweet,  and  stern,  and  changeable  than  the 
series.  Some  of  the  strains  are  as  purely 
English  as  the  author  could  reach ;  others 
so  racily  Scottish  as  often  to  require  a 
glossary ;  while  in  a  third  class  the  two 
are  so  enchantingly  combined,  that  no 
poetic  diction  can  excel  the  pathos  and 
sublimity,  blended  with  beauty  and  home- 
liness, that  equally  mark  them. — Mont- 
gomery, James,  1833,  Lectures  on  Gen- 
eral Literature,  Poetry,  etc.,  p.  135. 

There  are  a  few  more  perfect  poems.  It 
is  the  utterance  of  a  heart  whose  cords 
were  all  tuned  to  gratitude,  "making 
sweet  melody"  to  the  Giver,  on  a  night 
not  less  sacred  in  His  eye  than  His  own 
appointed  Sabbath. —Wilson,  John,  1844, 
The  Genius  and  Character  of  Burns,  p.  31. 


There  is  an  artless  beauty  and  solem- 
nity in  the  picture  of  the  humble  devo- 
tions of  the  farmer  and  his  household 
which  shows  that  the  poet  himself  felt 
the  influence  of  such  scenes,  and  inclines 
us  the  more  to  look  with  pity  and  leniency 
on  the  excesses  which  ruined  the  man, 
and  which  these  stanzas  show  that  he 
himself,  in  his  better  moments,  must  have 
both  lamented  and  condemned. — Yonge, 
Charles  Duke,  1872,  Three  Centuries  of 
English  Literature,  p.  475. 

This  is  true,  but  the  piece  as  a  whole  is 
formed  on  English  models.  It  is  the 
most  artificial  and  the  most  imitative  of 
Burns's  works.  Not  only  is  the  influence 
of  Gray's  "Elegy"  conspicuous,  but  also 
there  are  echoes  of  Pope,  Thomson,  Gold- 
smith, and  even  Milton ;  while  the  stanza, 
which  was  taken,  not  from  Spenser,  whom 
Burns  had  not  then  read,  but  from  Beattie 
and  Shenstone,is  so  purely  English  as  to  lie 
outside  the  range  of  Burns's  experience 
and  accomplishment. — Henley,  William 
Ernest,  and  Henderson,  Thomas  P., 
1896,  ed..  The  Poetry  of  Robert  Burns, 
vol.  I,  p.  362,  note. 

No  nobler  tribute  to  the  sturdy  virtues 
of  the  poor  has  ever  been  penned.  It  is 
not  marred  by  ranting ;  in  a  pure,  simple, 
homely  way,  it  pictures  the  sweetness  of 
life  in  honest  poverty. — Watrous,  George 
A. ,  1898,  ed.,  Selections  from  Dry  den.  Burns, 
Wordsworth  and  Browning,  p.  131,  note. 

TAM  O'SHANTER 
1793 

The  humor,  the  grandeur,  and  the  fancy 
of  that  poem  will  never  be  equaled. — 
MiTFORD,  Mary  Russell,  1813,  Letter  to 
Sir  William  Elford,  Nov.  10;  Life,  ed. 
UEstrange,  vol.  i,  p.  186. 

It  is  not  so  much  a  poem  as  a  piece  of 
ysparkling  rhetoric ;  the  heart  and  body  of 
(the  story  still  lies  hard  and  dead.  He 
has  not  gone  back,  much  less  carried  us 
back,  into  that  dark,  earnest,  wondering 
age,  when  the  tradition  was  believed,  and 
when  it  took  its  rise ;  he  does  not  attempt, 
by  any  new  modelling  of  his  supernatural 
ware,  to  strike  anew  that  deep  mysterious 
chord  of  human  nature,  which  once  re- 
sponded to  such  things,  and  w^hich  lives  in 
us  too,  and  will  forever  live,  though  silent, 
or  vibrating  with  far  other  notes,  and  to 
far  different  issues.  Our  German  readers 
will  understand  us  when  we  say  that  he  is 


ROBERT  BURNS 


245 


not  the  Tieck  but  the  Musaus  of  this  tale. 
Externally  it  is  all  green  and  living ;  yet 
look  closer,  it  is  no  firm  growth,  but 
only  ivy  on  a  rock.  The  piece  does  not 
properly  cohere ;  the  strange  chasm  which 
yawns  in  our  incredulous  imagination  be- 
tween the  Ayr  public-house  and  gate  of 
Tophet  is  nowhere  bridged  over;  nay, 
the  idea  of  such  a  bridge  is  laughed  at ; 
and  thus  the  tragedy  of  the  adventure 
becomes  a  mere  drunken  phantasmagoria 
painted  on  ale-vapors,  and  the  farce 
alone  has  any  reality.  We  do  not  say 
that  Burns  should  have  made  much  more 
of  this  tradition;  we  rather  think  that, 
for  strictly  poetical  purposes,  not  much 
was  to  be  made  of  it.  Neither  are  we 
blind  to  the  deep,  varied,  genial  power  dis- 
played in  what  he  has  actually  accomplished; 
but  we  find  far  more  ''Shakespearean" 
qualities,  as  these  of  "Tarn  o'  Shanter" 
have  been  fondly  named,  in  many  of  his 
other  pieces;  nay,  we  incline  to  believe 
that  this  latter  might  have  been  written, 
all  but  quite  as  well,  by  a  man  who,  in 
place  of  genius,  had  only  possessed  talent. 
—  Carlyle,  Thomas,  1828,  Essay  on 
Burns. 

He  himself  regarded  it  as  his  master- 
piece of  all  his  poems,  and  posterity  has 
not,  I  believe,  reversed  the  judgment. — 
Shairp,  John  Campbell,  1879,  Robert 
Burns  {English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  121. 

Ay,  the  very  house  in  which  Tarn  and 
Souter  Johnny  prolonged  their  market- 
night  m.eetings,  the  foaming  ale  growing 
better  with  each  successive  draught, 
Souter  telling  his  queerest  stories,  Tarn 
and  the  landlady  growing  gracious — a 
house  not  less  famous  than  the  old  Boar's 
Head  in  Eastcheap,  or  the  Bell  at  Edmon- 
ton, named  in  these  latter  days  after  that 
drouth] est  of  "drouthy  neebors,"  the  in- 
corrigible Tam,  who  elbows  Rip  Van 
Winkle,  Bailie  Nichol  Jarvie,  and  Conn  in 
our  vagabond  affiliations.  It  is  a  plain,  plas- 
tered, thatched  little  tavern,  tinted  yel- 
low, in  contrast  to  the  surrounding  houses, 
which  are  white.  Over  the  door  is  a  sign- 
board with  a  creditable  painting  of  Tam 
leaving  the  house, 

"Weel  mounted  on  his  gray  mare  Meg," 
and  the  Souter  grasping  his  hand  with 
maudlin  affection  before  he  plunges 
through  the  storm  toward  Alloway.  The 
landlord  holds  the  history  of  the  tavern 
precious,  and  on  another  sign-board  he 


specifies  its  associations,  with  the  addi- 
tional announcement  that  "a  chair  and 
caup  are  in  the  house."  The  "caup"  is 
the  identical  one  drained  by  Tam,  the  chair 
the  one  he  sat  in,  and  it  would  be  a  tee- 
totaler of  less  than  usual  flexibility  who 
could  pass  without  ordering  some  mild 
beverage  as  an  excuse  for  viewing  the  in- 
terior. The  landlord's  name  is  A.  Glass, 
and  he  is  not  only  a  most  devoted  admirer 
of  Burns,  but  also  a  poet  in  a  very  small 
way  himself.— RiDEiNG,  William  H.,1879, 
The  Land  o'  Burns,  Harpefs  Magazine, 
vol.  59,  p.  184. 

"Tam  0'  Shanter"  is  not  so  marvellous 
a  creation  as  "The  Dance  of  the  Sevin 
Deidly  Synnis,"  though  we  may  find  it 
easier  to  appreciate  the  modern  poem,  in 
which  the  tipsy  hilarity  of  the  hero  gives 
a  familiar  aspect  to  the  devilry  of  the 
Avitches,  and  robs  it  of  the  weirdness  and 
Ihorror  that  should  mark  the  spectacle  of 
a  supernatural  world.  Burns' s  humour 
plays  most  freely  round  the  incidents  of 
human  life,  though  none  can  deny  the 
boldness  with  which  it  now  and  again 
makes  a  sweep  into  the  realms  of  super- 
stition.—Ross,  John  Merry,  1884,  Scot- 
tish History  and  Literature,  ed.  Brown, 
p.  214. 

Scarcely  excelled  in  powers  of  imagina- 
tion by  Shakespeare  himself  is  Burns's 
weird  description  of  the  orgies  of  the 
witches,  and  the  infernal  scenery  in  which 
they  are  exhibited.  .  .  .  The  only 
fault  found  in  this  poem  is  that  at  the 
conclusion  it  falls  off  in  interest.  This  is 
said  to  be  owing  to  Burns  having  stuck 
to  the  papular  tale  of  this  hero ;  for  Tam 
was  not  a  creation  of  fancy,  but  a  real 
person.  .  .  .  Burns  considered  "Tam 
0' Shanter"  his  masterpiece,  and  many 
critics  have  regarded  it  in  the  same  light ; 
yet  it  does  not  perhaps  embody  what  is 
brightest  and  best  in  his  poetry.  His  ad- 
dress to  a  mouse  on  turning  up  her  nest 
with  a  plough  in  November  is  richer  in 
true  poetic  light  and  color.  Its  compan- 
ion is  that  to  a  daisy.  In  these  and  in  the 
"Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  it  has  been 
lappily  remarked  that  "the  poet  is  seen 
n  his  happiest  inspiration,  his  brightest 
ijunshine,  and  his  tenderest  tears."  The 
atter  poem  is  familiar  to  all,  and  in  true 
and  touching  description  is  almost  un- 
rivalled.—Brooks,  Sarah  Warner,  1890, 
English  Poetry  and  Poets,  pp.  289,290,291. 


246 


ROBERT  BURNS 


THE  JOLLY  BEGGARS 
Perhaps  we  may  venture  to  say  that  the 
most  strictly  poetical  of  all  his  ''poems" 
is  one  which  does  not  appear  in  Currie's 
edition,  but  has  been  often  printed  before 
and  since  under  the  humble  title  of  "The 
Jolly  Beggars."  The  subject  truly  is 
among  the  lowest  in  nature ;  but  it  only 
the  more  shows  our  poet's  gift  in  raising 
it  into  the  domain  of  art.  To  our  minds 
this  piece  seems  thoroughly  compacted; 
melted  together,  refined;  and  poured  forth 
in  one  flood  of  true  liquid  harmony.  It 
is  light,  airy,  and  soft  of  movement,  yet 
sharp  and  precise  in  its  details ;  every  face 
is  a  portrait :  that  raucle  carlin,  that  wee 
Apollo,  that  Son  of  Mars  are  Scottish,  yet 
ideal ;  the  scene  is  at  once  a  dream,  and 
the  very  Rag-castle  of  "Poosie-Nansie." 
Further,  it  seems  in  a  considerable  degree 
complete,  a  real  self-supporting  whole, 
which  is  the  highest  merit  in  a  poem. — 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  1828,  Essay  on  Burns. 

In  the  world  of  the  "Jolly  Beggars"  there 
is  more  than  hideousness  and  squalor, 
there  is  bestiality;  yet  the  piece  is  a 
superb  poetic  success.  It  has  a  breadth, 
truth,  and  power  which  make  the  famous 
scene  in  Auerbach's  Cellar,  of  Goethe's 
''Faust,"  seem  artificial  and  tame  beside  it, 
and  which  are  only  matched  by  Shake- 
speare and  Aristophanes. — Arnold,  Mat- 
thew, 1880,  English  Poets,  ed.  Ward,  In- 
troduction, vol.  I,  p.  xlv. 

That  incomparable  opera  in  which  crit- 
ical genius  of  the  highest  order  has  dis- 
covered the  highest  flight  of  his  poetical 
genius.— Service,  John,  1880,  English 
Poets,  ed.  Ward,  vol.  ni,  p.  521. 

In  Burns's  "Jolly  Beggars,"  it  seems 
to  me  that  Burns  touched  nearly  the  high- 
est point  of  his  creative  genius,  though 
nothing,  except  the  large  licence  of  the 
roving  vagabond's  life,  is  concentrated 
into  it,  and  rendered  with  an  almost  pas- 
sionate wealth  of  vigour  and  sympathy, 
— HuTTON,  Richard  Holt,  1882,  Profes- 
sor Shairp's  ''Aspects  of  Poetry,'^  Criticisms 
on  Contemporary  Thought  and  Thinkers, 
vol.  II,  p.  163. 

For  riotous  luxuriance,  "The  Jolly  Beg- 
gars" overtops  all  that  Burns  ever  wrote. 
Probably  no  poem  more  graphic  exists  in 
literature.  It  describes  what  the  writer 
had  actually  seen,  and  not  otherwise  would 
its  extreme  vividness  seem  to  be  attainable. 


—Walker,  Hugh,  1893,  Three  Centuries 
of  Scottish  Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  162. 

Is  an  immortal  masterpiece  of  melody 
and  observation.  The  squalor  of  the 
piece  is  glorified  by  a  style  so  little  rustic 
that  every  word  and  every  rhythm  is  fitted 
to  its  purpose.  It  is  the  literature  of  the 
street,  maybe,  but  the  literature  of  the 
street  made  classic  for  all  time. — Whib- 
ley,  Charles,  1898,  Burns,  Macmillan's 
Magazine,  vol.  77,  p.  183. 

HOLY  WILLIE'S  PRAYER 

"Holy  Willie's  Prayer"  is  a  satirical 
crucifixion  —  slow,  lingering  inexorable. 
He  hated  Hypocrisy,  he  tore  its  holy  robe, 
and  for  the  outrage  Hypocrisy  did  not  for- 
give him  while  he  lived,  nor  has  it  yet 
learned  to  forgive  him. — Smith,  Alex- 
ander, 1865,  The  Complete  Works  of  Rob- 
ert Burns,  Life,  p.  xxxix. 

The  unfortunate  man,  William  Fisher, 
known  as  "Holy  Willie, "  both  Patrick  and 
his  wife  were  little  inclined  to  speak  of. 
When  they  did  so,  it  was  only  as  a  man 
'neither  very  bad  nor  very  guid,  to  ootward 
appearance."  Mrs.  Patrick  said  he  must 
have  drawn  attention  to  himself,  in  his  ear- 
lier days,  as  at  least  a  good  professor,  "to 
be  made  an  elder  o'. "  Seeing  that  I  knew 
that  the  satires  of  Burns  were  only  too 
well  founded,  for  he  was  subsequently  dis- 
missed the  eldership  and  died  in  a  ditch 
after  a  debauch,  they  admitted  that  "he 
was  blaim'd  for  takin'  the  kirk  bawbees. 
When  standin'  at  the  plate  on  Sabbath, 
fowk  said,  he  would  boo  doon  to  pat  his 
boots  richt,  as  it  were,  and  slip  in  a  baw- 
bee or  so!"  Poor  man,  his  punishment 
has  been  greater  than  Burns,  with  all  his 
indignation  against  his  character,  I  am 
sure,  meant  it  to  be ;  for  the  poet  had  lit- 
tle anticipation  that  his  fiery  words  would 
reach  so  far  and  wide  when  he  wrote 
them,  and  be  so  long  remembered  against 
their  luckless  object.  Happily,  however, 
in  such  world-wide  pages,  the  man  him- 
self becomes  a  myth,  a  mere  ideal  repre- 
sentative of  certain  thoughts  and  actions, 
which  alone  remain  as  the  theme  of  the 
poem.— Jolly,  William,  1881,  Robert 
Burns  at  Mossgiel ;  JVith  Reminiscences  of 
the  Poet  by  His  Herd-Boy,  p.  100. 

This  amazing  achievement  in  satire, 
this  matchless  parody  of  Calvinistic  inter- 
cession— so  nice,  so  exquisite  in  detail, 
so  overwhelming  in  effect. —  Henley, 


ROBERT  BURNS 


247 


William  Ernest,  and  Henderson,  Thomas 
F.,  1896,  ed.,  The  Poetry  of  Robert  Burns, 
vol.  II,  p.  320,  note. 

LETTERS 

The  prose  works  of  Burns  consist  almost 
entirely  of  his  letters.  They  bear,  as  well 
as  his  poetry,  the  seal  and  the  impress  of 
his  genius ;  but  they  contain  much  more 
bad  taste,  and  are  written  with  far  more 
apparent  labour.  His  poetry  was  almost 
all  written  primarily  from  feeling,  and 
only  secondarily  from  ambition.  His  let- 
ters seem  to  have  been  nearly  all  com- 
posed as  exercises,  and  for  display. 
There  are  few  of  them  written  with  sim- 
plicity or  plainness;  and  though  natural 
enough  as  to  the  sentiment,  they  are  gen- 
erally very  strained  and  elaborate  in  the 
expression.  A  very  great  proportion  of 
them,  too,  relate  neither  to  facts  nor  feel- 
ings peculiarly  connected  with  the  author 
or  his  correspondent — but  are  made  up 
of  general  declamation,  moral  reflections, 
and  vague  discussions — all  evidently  com- 
posed for  the  sake  of  effect,  and  fre- 
quently introduced  with  long  complaints 
of  having  nothing  to  say,  and  of  the  ne- 
cessity and  difficulty  of  letter-writing. — 
Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1809-44,  Con- 
tributions to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  u, 
p.  398. 

Allen  (Lord  Holland's  Allen — the  best 
informed  and  one  of  the  ablest  men  I  know 
— a  perfect  Magliabecchi — a  devourer,  a 
Helluo  of  books,  and  an  observer  of  men), 
has  lent  me  a  quantity  of  Burns's  unpub- 
lished and  never-to-be  published,  Letters. 
They  are  full  of  oaths  and  obscene  songs. 
What  an  antithetical  mind ! — tenderness, 
roughness — delicacy,  coarseness— senti- 
ment, sensuality — soaring  and  grovelling, 
dirt  and  deity — all  mixed  up  in  that  one 
compound  of  inspired  clay !  —  Byron, 
Lord,  1813,  Journal,  Dec.  13,  ed.  Moore. 

His  prose-letters  are  sometimes  tinc- 
tured with  affectation.  They  seem  writ- 
ten by  a  man  who  has  been  admired  for 
his  wit,  and  is  expected  on  all  occasions 
to  shine.  Those  in  which  he  expresses 
his  ideas  of  natural  beauty  in  reference  to 
Alison's  "Essay  on  Taste,"  and  advocates 
the  keeping  up  the  remembrances  of  old 
customs  and  seasons,  are  the  most  pow- 
erfully written.  —  Hazlitt,  William, 
1818,  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  Lec- 
ture vii. 


Lord  Byron's  correspondence  exhibits 
some  of  the  finest  specimens  of  epistolary 
composition  in  the  language;  but  the 
monotony  of  selfish  complaint  without 
cause,  petulant  aspersion  of  his  fellow- 
creatures,  inexcusable  accumulation  of 
oaths,  and  occasional  use  of  slang,  which 
disfigures  it,  are  faults  that  must  offend 
the  most  partial  reader.  Page  after 
page  of  sneering,  of  wilful  swearing,  or 
of  petty  scandal,  with  scarcely  the  relief 
of  a  single  tear,  or  the  sunshine  of  a 
single  smile,  is  overwhelming  at  once  to 
taste  and  patience.  In  variety  of  topic 
there  is  nothing  in  him  at  all  like  Burns, 
and  in  appropriate  diversity  of  style — on 
this,  or  on  that  theme,  as  it  occurs — there 
is  but  little  approach  to  him.  In  Burns 
we  have  sometimes  an  oath,  and  some- 
times indecorum ;  but  sympathy  and  sin- 
cerity always,  and  slang  never. — Wad- 
dell,  Hately,  1869,  Critical  Edition  of 
the  Life  and  Works  of  Burns,  vol.  ii. 

The  letters  are  of  unequal  value,  and 
have  been  variously  estimated.  They 
show  indeed  that,  like  almost  all  poets,  he 
might,  if  choice  and  fate  had  united,  have 
become  a  very  considerable  prose-writer, 
and  they  have  immense  autobiographic 
value.  But  they  are  sometimes,  and  per- 
haps often,  written  as  much  in  falsetto  as 
the  division  of  verse  just  ruled  out ;  their 
artificiality  does  not  take  very  good  mod- 
els ;  and  their  literary  attraction  is  alto- 
gether second-rate.— Saintsbury,George, 
1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  14. 

GENERAL 
Unacquainted  with  the  necessary  requi- 
sites for  commencing  Poet  by  rule,  he 
sings  the  sentiments  and  manners  he  felt 
and  saw  in  himself  and  his  rustic  com- 
peers around  him,  in  his  and  their  native 
language.  Though  a  Rhymer  from  his 
earliest  years,  at  least  from  the  earliest 
impulses  of  the  softer  passions,  it  v/as 
not  till  very  lately  that  the  applause,  per- 
haps the  partiality,  of  Friendship,  wak- 
ened his  vanity  so  far  as  to  make  him 
think  anything  of  his  was  w^orth  showing ; 
and  none  of  the  following  w^orks  were  ever 
composed  with  a  view  to  the  press.  To 
amuse  himself  with  the  little  creations  of 
his  own  fancy,  amid  the  toil  and  fatigues 
of  a  laborious  life;  to  transcribe  the 
various  feelings,  the  loves,  the  griefs,  the 
hopes,  the  fears,  in  his  own  breast;  to 


248 


ROBERT  BURNS 


find  some  kind  of  counterpoise  to  the 
struggles  of  a  world,  always  an  alien  scene, 
a  task  uncouth  to  the  poetical  mind ;  these 
were  his  motives  for  courting  the  Muses, 
and  in  these  he  found  Poetry  to  be  its  own 
reward.  ...  To  his  Subscribers  the 
Author  returns  his  most  sincere  thanks. 
Not  the  mercenary  bow  over  a  counter, 
but  the  heart-throbbing  gratitude  of  the 
Bard,  conscious  how  much  he  is  indebted 
to  Benevolence  and  Friendship  for  gratify- 
ing him,  if  he  deserves  it,  in  that  dearest 
wish  of  every  poetic  bosom— to  be  distin- 
guished. He  begs  his  readers,  particu- 
larly the  Learned  and  the  Polite,  who  may 
honour  him  with  a  perusal,  that  they  will 
make  every  allowance  for  Education  and 
Circumstances  of  Life :  but  if,  after  a  fair, 
candid,  and  impartial  criticism,  he  shall 
stand  convicted  of  Dulness  and  Nonsense, 
let  him  be  done  by,  as  he  would  in  that 
case  do  by  others — let  him  be  condemned 
without  mercy,  to  contempt  and  oblivion. 
— Burns,  Robert,  1786,  Poems  Chiefly  in 
the  Scottish  Dialect,  Preface. 

I  hope  I  shall  not  be  thought  to  assume 
too  much,  if  I  endeavour  to  place  him  in  a 
higher  point  of  view,  to  call  for  a  verdict 
of  his  country  on  the  merit  of  his  works, 
and  to  claim  for  him  those  honours  which 
their  excellence  appears  to  deserve.  In 
mentioning  the  circumstance  of  his  humble 
station,  I  mean  not  to  rest  his  pretensions 
solely  on  that  title,  or  to  urge  the  merits 
of  his  poetry,  when  considered  in  relation 
to  the  lowness  of  his  birth,  and  the  little 
opportunity  of  improvement  which  his  edu- 
cation could  alford.  These  particulars, 
indeed,  might  excite  our  wonder  at  his  pro- 
ductions; but  his  poetry,  considered  ab- 
stractedly, and  without  the  apologies  aris- 
ing from  his  situation,  seems  to  me  fully 
entitled  to  command  our  feelings,  and  to 
obtain  our  applause. — Mackenzie,  Henry, 
1786,  The  Lounger,  Dec.  9. 

Many  instances  have  I  seen  of  Nature's 
force  and  beneficence  exerted  under 
numerous  and  formidable  disadvantages; 
but  none  equal  to  that  with  which  you 
have  been  kind  enough  to  present  me. 
There  is  a  pathos  and  delicacy  in  his  seri- 
ous poems,  a  vein  of  wit  and  humour  in 
those  of  a  more  festive  turn,  which  can- 
not be  too  much  admired,  nor  too  warmly 
approved ;  and  I  think  I  shall  never  open 
the  book  without  feeling  my  astonishment 
renewed  and  increased.    It  was  my  wish 


to  have  expressed  my  approbation  in  verse ; 
but  whether  from  declining  life,  or  a  tem- 
porary depression  of  spirits,  it  is  at  present 
out  of  my  power  to  accomplish  that  agree- 
able intention.  Mr.  Stewart,  Professor  of 
Morals  in  this  University,  had  formerly 
read  me  three  of  the  poems,  and  I  had 
desired  him  to  get  my  name  inserted 
among  the  subscribers:  but  whether  this 
was  done,  or  not,  I  never  could  learn.  I  have 
little  intercourse  with  Dr.  Blair,  but  will 
take  care  to  have  the  poems  communicated 
to  him  by  the  intervention  of  some  mutual 
friend.  It  has  been  told  me  by  a  gentle- 
man, to  whom  I  shewed  the  performances, 
and  who  sought  a  copy  with  diligence  and 
ardour,  that  the  whole  impression  is 
already  exhausted.  It  were,  therefore, 
much  to  be  wished,  for  the  sake  of  the 
young  man,  that  a  second  edition,  more 
numerous  than  the  former,  could  immedi- 
ately be  printed:  as  it  appears  certain 
that  its  intrinsic  merit,  and  the  exertion 
of  the  author's  friends,  might  give  it  a 
more  universal  circulation  than  any  thing 
of  the  kind  which  has  been  published 
within  my  memory. — Blacklock,  Thomas, 
1786,  Letter  to  Rev.  G.  Lowrie. 

Some  of  the  poems  you  have  added  in  this 
last  edition  are  very  beautiful,  particularly 
the ' '  Winter  Night, "  the ' '  Address  to  Edin- 
burgh,"  ''Green  Grow  the  Rashes,"  and 
the  two  songs  immediately  following,  the 
latter  of  which  is  exquisite.  By  the  way, 
I  imagine  you  have  a  peculiar  talent  for 
such  compositions,  which  you  ought  to  in- 
dulge. No  kind  of  poetry  demands  more 
delicacy  or  higher  polishing.  Horace  is 
more  admired  on  account  of  his  Odes  than 
all  his  other  writings.  But  nothing  now 
added  is  equal  to  your  ''Vision"  and  "Cot- 
ter's Saturday  Night."  In  these  are 
united  fine  imagery,  natural  and  pathetic 
description,  with  sublimity  of  language 
and  thought.  It  is  evident  that  you 
already  possess  a  great  variety  of  expres- 
sion and  command  of  the  English  language ; 
you  ought,  therefore,  to  deal  more  spar- 
ingly for  the  future  in  the  provincial  dia- 
lect ;  why  should  you,  by  using  that,  limit 
the  number  of  your  admirers  to  those  who 
understand  the  Scottish,  when  you  can  ex- 
tend it  to  all  persons  of  taste  who  under- 
stand the  English  language?  In  my  opin- 
ion, you  should  plan  some  larger  work  than 
any  you  have  as  yet  attempted.  I  mean, 
reflect  upon   some  proper  subject,  and 


ROBERT  BURNS 


249 


arrange  the  plan  in  your  mind,  without 
beginning  to  execute  any  part  of  it  till  you 
have  studied  most  of  the  best  English 
poets,  and  read  a  little  more  of  history. 
— Moore,  John,  1787,  Letter  to  Burns, 
May  23. 

I  have  been  much  pleased  with  the 
poems  of  the  Scottish  ploughman^  of 
which  you  have  had  specimens  in  the 
Review.  His ' ' Cotter's  Saturday  Night, ' ' 
has  much  of  the  same  kind  of  merit  as  the 
School-mistress ;"  and  the  Daisy,  "and 
the  ''Mouse,"  which  I  believe  you  have  had 
in  the  papers,  I  think  are  charming.  The 
endearing  diminutives,  and  the  Doric  rus- 
ticity of  the  dialect,  suit  such  subjects 
extremely. — Barbauld,  Anna  L^titia, 
1787,  Letter  to  Dr.  Aikin,  Works,  vol.  ii, 
p.  151. 

Read  Burns' s  poems,  and  have  read  them 
twice :  and  though  they  be  written  in  a 
language  that  is  new  to  me,  and  many  of 
them  on  subjects  much  inferior  to  the 
author's  ability,  1  think  them,  on  the 
whole,  a  very  extraordinary  production. 
He  is,  I  believe,  the  only  poet  these  king- 
doms have  produced  in  the  lower  rank  of 
life  since  Shakspeare,  1  should  rather  say 
since  Prior,  who  need  not  be  indebted  for 
any  part  of  his  praise  as  a  charitable  con- 
sideration of  his  origin,  and  the  disadvan- 
tages under  which  he  has  laboured.  It 
will  be  pity  if  he  should  not  hereafter 
divest  himself  of  barbarism,  and  content 
himself  with  writing  pure  English,  in 
which  he  appears  perfectly  qualified  to 
excel.  .  .  .  Poor  Burns  loses  much 
of  his  deserved  praise  in  this  country, 
through  our  ignorance  of  his  language. 
I  despair  of  meeting  with  any  Englishman 
who  will  take  the  pains  that  I  have  taken 
to  understand  him.  His  candle  is  bright, 
but  shut  up  in  a  dark  lantern.  I  lent  him 
to  a  very  sensible  neighbour  of  mine, 
but  his  uncouth  dialect  spoiled  all,  and 
before  he  had  half  read  him  through,  he 
was  quite  ram/eez/ec^.— Cowper,  William, 
1787,  Letters  to  Samuel  Rose,  July  24,  and 
Aug.  27;  Life,  ed.  Hayley,  vol.  I,  pp. 
138,  139. 

Robert  Burns,  a  natural  poet  of  the 
first  eminence,  does  not,  perhaps  appear 
to  his  usual  advantage  in  song — non  omnia 
possumus.  The  political  ''fragment,"  as 
he  calls  it,  inserted  in  the  second  volume 
of  the  present  collection,  has,  however, 
much  merit  in  some  of  the  satirical  stanzas. 


and  could  it  have  been  concluded  with 
the  spirit  with  which  it  is  commenced, 
would  indisputably  have  been  entitled  to 
great  praise;  but  the  character  of  his 
favourite  minister  seems  to  have  operated 
like  the  touch  of  a  torpedo;  and  after 
vainly  attempting  something  like  a  pane- 
gyric, he  seems  under  the  necessity  of 
relinquishing  the  task.  Possibly  the  bard 
will  one  day  see  occasion  to  complete  his 
performance  as  a  uniform  satire. — RiT- 
SON,  Joseph,  1794,  Historical  Essay  on 
Scottish  Songs,  p.  71. 

Rustick  Burns, 
And  all  his  artless  wood-notes  Scotland 
mourns, 

— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  417. 

Old  and  young,  high  and  low,  grave  and 
gay,  learned  or  ignorant,  all  were  alike 
delighted,  agitated,  transported.  I  was 
at  that  time  resident  in  Galloway,  contig- 
uous to  Ayrshire :  and  I  can  well  remem- 
ber, how  that  even  the  plough-boys  and 
maid-servants  would  have  gladly  bestowed 
the  wages  which  they  earned  and  most 
hardly,  and  which  they  wanted  to  pur- 
chase necessary  clothing,  if  they  might 
but  secure  the  works  of  Burns. — Heron, 
Robert,  1797,  A  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  the 
Late  Robert  Burns. 

It  was  not,  indeed,  until  the  appearance 
of  the  rustic  Burns,  that  Bard  of  Nature 
and  of  Love,  that  we  could  boast  of  a 
writer  of  eminent  genius,  who  had  paid 
due  attention  to  this  department  of  Lyric 
poetry,  and  had  brought  forward  numer- 
ous specimens  of  undoubted  excellence. 
—Drake,  Nathan,  1798-1820,  Literary 
Hours,  vol.  II,  No.  xliii,  p.  374. 

Now  I  have  to  satisfy  you  as  to  my 
favourite  poem  of  Burns.  Doubtless  the 
*' Daisy"  is  the  most  finished  and  excels 
in  simple  elegance;  "The  De'il  himsel" 
in  humour — exquisite,  peculiar  humour. 
I  confess,  if  decorous  people  could  be 
reconciled  to  blackguardism,  John  Horn- 
book is  the  very  Emperor  of  blackguards. 
Only  think  of  that  despotic  power  over 
the  fancy,  which  can  unite,  what  the  crea- 
tive Shakspeare  himself  never  united, 
the  terrible  and  ludicrous.  Yet,  where 
Death  is  personified  meeting  the  bard,  I 
am  sure  you  would  laugh,  if  you  were  not 
afraid.  The  same  power  reappears  in 
"Tam  O'Shanter,"  which  I  allow  to  possess 
superior  excellence,  though  not  the  very 


250 


ROBERT  BURNS 


sort  of  excellence  most  to  my  taste.  But 
if  you  talk  of  my  very  own  taste,  I  find 
myself  quite  at  home  in  ''The  Epistle  to 
Davy,"  and    "The   Cottar's  Saturday 
Night."— Grant,  Mrs.  Anne,  1802,  To 
Miss  Dunbar,  April  25 ;  Letters  from  the 
Mountains,  vol.  ii,  p.  176. 
I  mourned  with  thousands,  but  as  one 
More  deeply  grieved,  for  He  was  gone 
Whose  light  I  hailed  when  first  it  shone, 

And  showed  my  youth 
How  Verse  may  build  a  princely  throne 
On  humble  truth. 

—Wordsworth,  William,  1803,  At  the 
Grave  of  Burns. 

Much  as  I  admire  the  exquisite  tender- 
ness and  moral  delicacy  of  Cowper's  tem- 
perament, I  confess  I  am  still  more  de- 
lighted with  the  boldness  and  vehemence 
of  the  bard  of  Caledonia.  ''His  generous 
affections,  his  ardent  eloquence,  his  bril- 
liant and  daring  imagination"  make  him 
my  idol.  His  proper  regard  to  the  dignity 
of  his  own  powers,  his  stern  and  indig- 
nant elevation  of  manners,  and  due  jeal- 
ousy and  repression  of  the  insolence  of 
rank  and  wealth,  are  worthy  of  inexpres- 
sible applause.  .  .  .  The  genius  of 
Burns  was  more  sublime  than  that  of  Cow- 
per.  Both  excelled  in  the  familiar :  but 
yet  the  latter  was  by  nature  as  well  as 
education  more  gentle,  more  easy,  and 
delicate :  he  had  also  more  of  tenuity, 
while  Burns  was  more  concise,  more  bold, 
and  energetic.  They  both  also  abounded 
in  humour,  which  possessed  the  same 
characteristics  in  each ;  one  mild,  serene, 
and  smiling ;  the  other  daring  and  power- 
ful, full  of  fire  and  imagery.  The  poems 
of  one  fill  the  heart  and  the  fancy  with 
the  soft  pleasures  of  domestic  privacy, 
with  the  calm  and  innocent  occupations  of 
rural  solitude,  the  pensive  musings  of  the 
moralist,  and  the  chastised  indignation  of 
pure  and  simple  virtue :  the  poems  of  the 
other  breathe  by  turns  Grief,  Love,  Joy, 
Melancholy,  Despair  and  Terror;  plunge 
us  in  the  vortex  of  passion,  and  hurry  us 
away  on  the  wings  of  unrestrained  and 
undirected  fancy. — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel 
Egerton,  1806,  Censura  Liter  aria,  vol. 
II,  pp.  43,  59. 

Yes,  Burns,  "thou  dear  departed  shade!" 
When  rolling  centuries  have  fled, 
Thy  name  shall  still  survive  the  wreck  of 
time. 

Shall  rouse  the  genius  of  thy  native  clime ; 
Bards  yet  unborn,  and  patriots  shall  come. 


And  catch  fresh  ardour  at  thy  hallow'd 
tomb ! 

There's  not  a  cairn-built  cottage  on  our  hills, 
Nor  rural  hamlet  on  our  fertile  plains, 
But  echoes  to  the  magic  of  thy  strains, 
While  every  heart  with  highest  transport 
thrills. 

Our  country's  melodies  shall  perish  never, 
For,  Burns,  thy  songs  shall  live  for  ever. 
— Tannahill,  Robert,  1807,  Ode  for  the 
Celebration  of  the  Birthday  of  Burns,  Works, 
ed.  Ramsay,  p.  157. 

An  earnest  wish  to  possess  a  scrap  of 
the  hand-writing  of  Burns,  originally  led 
to  the  discovery  of  most  of  the  papers 
that  compose  this  volume.  In  the  manner 
of  laying  them  before  the  public  I  hon- 
estly declare  that  I  have  done  my  best ; 
and  I  trust  I  may  fairly  presume  to  hope 
that  the  man  who  has  contributed  to  ex- 
tend the  bounds  of  literature  by  adding 
another  genuine  volume  to  the  writings 
of  Robert  Burns,  has  some  claim  on  the 
gratitude  of  his  countrymen.  On  this 
occasion,  I  certainly  feel  something  of 
that  sublime  and  heart-swelling  gratifica- 
tion, which  he  experiences,  who  cast 
another  stone  on  the  Cairn  of  a  great 
and  lamented  chief.  — Cromek,  R.  H., 
1808,  ed.,  Reliques  of  Robert  Burns,  Pref- 
ace, p.  viii. 

The  illustrious  soul  that  has  left 
amongst  us  the  name  of  Burns,  has  often 
been  lowered  down  to  a  comparison  with 
me ;  but  the  comparison  exists  more  in 
circumstances  than  in  essentials.  That 
man  stood  up  with  the  stamp  of  superior 
intellect  on  his  brow;  a  visible  great- 
ness: and  great  and  patriotic  subjects 
would  only  have  called  into  action  the 
powers  of  his  mind,  which  lay  inactive 
while  he  played  calmly  and  exquisitely 
the  pastoral  pipe.  The  letters  to  which 
I  have  alluded  in  my  preface  to  the 
Rural  Tales,"  were  friendly, warnings, 
pointed  with  immediate  reference  to  the 
fate  of  that  extraordinary  man.  ''Re- 
member Burns,"  has  been  the  watchword 
of  my  friends.  I  do  remember  Burns; 
but  I  am  not  Burns !  I  have  neither  his 
fire  to  fan,  or  to  quench ;  nor  his  passions 
to  control !  Where  then  is  my  merit,  if  1 
make  a  peaceful  voyage  on  a  smooth  sea, 
and  with  no  mutiny  on  board. — Bloom- 
field,  Robert,  1808,  Reliques  of  Robert 
Burns,  ed.  Cromek. 

Burns  is  certainly  by  far  the  greatest 
of  our  poetical  prodigies — from  Stephen 


ROBERT  BURNS 


251 


Duck  down  to  Thomas  Dermody.  They 
are  forgotten  already;  or  only  remem- 
bered for  derision.  But  the  name  of 
Burns,  if  we  are  not  mistaken,  has  not 
yet  "gathered  all  its  fame;"  and  will  en- 
dure long  after  those  circumstances  are 
forgotten  which  contributed  to  its  first 
notoriety.  So  much  indeed  are  we  im- 
pressed with  a  sense  of  his  merits,  that 
we  cannot  help  thinking  it  a  derrogation 
from  them  to  consider  him  as  a  prodigy 
at  all ;  and  are  convinced  that  he  will 
never  be  rightly  estimated  as  a  poet,  till 
that  vulgar  wonder  be  entirely  repressed 
which  was  raised  on  his  having  been  a 
ploughman.  It  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  he 
was  born  in  an  humble  station ;  and  that 
much  of  his  early  life  was  devoted  to 
severe  labour,  and  to  the  society  of  his 
fellow-labourers.  But  he  was  not  himself 
either  uneducated  or  illiterate;  and  was 
placed  in  a  situation  more  favourable, 
perhaps,  to  the  development  of  great  poet- 
ical talents,  than  any  other  which  could 
have  been  assigned  him. — Jeffrey,  Fran- 
cis Lord,  1809-44,  Contributions  to  the 
Edinburgh  RevieWy  vol.  ii,  p.  389. 

The  sweetest,  the  subliraest,  the  most 
tricksy  poet  who  has  blest  this  nether 
world  since  the  days  of  Shakespeare ! — 
MiTFORD,  xVIary  Russell,  1813,  Letter  to 
Sir  William  E.  Elford,  Nov.  10;  Life,  ed. 
UEstrange,  vol.  I,  p.  186. 

Whether  engaged,  or  roaming  at  liberty, 
Wither  never  seems  to  have  abated  a  jot 
of  that  free  spirit,  which  sets  its  mark 
upon  his  writings,  as  much  as  a  predom- 
inant feature  of  independence  impresses 
every  page  of  our  late  glorious  Burns; 
but  the  elder  poet  wraps  his  proof-armour 
closer  about  him,  the  other  wears  his  too 
much  outwards ;  he  is  thinking  too  much 
of  annoying  the  foe,  to  be  quite  easy 
within. — Lamb,  Charles,  1814,  George 
Wither's  Poetical  Works,  Quarterly  Re- 
view, Oct. 

It  is  a  remark  too  trite  perhaps  to  re- 
quire repetition,  that  the  writings  of  Rob- 
ert Burns  are,  in  Scotland,  the  most  pop- 
ular of  any  works  of  fancy,  ancient  or 
modern, — that  there  is  scarcely  a  home  in 
the  kingdom  which  does  not  contain  a 
copy  of  his  poems — and  that  there  are  few 
individuals  elevated  above  the  clods  of 
valley,  who  are  not  familiar  with  the  pro- 
ductions of  his  muse.  The  tendency  of 
works  so  widely  circulated,  and  so  highly 


esteemed,  is  evidently  a  matter  of  no  triv- 
ial moment.  —  Peterkin,  Alexander, 
1815,  ed..  The  Life  and  Works  of  Robert 
Burns,  vol.  i,  p.  xiii. 

Neither  the  subjects  of  his  poems,  nor 
his  manner  of  handling  them,  allow  us 
long  to  forget  their  author.  On  the  basis 
of  his  human  character  he  has  reared  a 
poetic  one,  which  with  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctness presents  itself  to  view  in  almost 
every  part  of  his  earlier,  and  in  my  esti- 
mation, his  most  valuable  verses.  This 
poetic  fabric,  dug  out  of  the  quarry  of 
genuine  humanity,  is  airy  and  spiritual: 
— and  though  the  materials,  in  some  parts, 
are  coarse,  and  the  disposition  is  often 
fantastic  and  irregular,  yet  the  whole  is 
agreeable  and  strikingly  attractive.  .  .  . 
It  is  probable  that  he  would  have  proved 
a  still  greater  poet  if,  by  strength  of  rea- 
son, he  could  have  controlled  the  pro- 
pensities which  his  sensibility  engendered ; 
but  he  would  have  been  a  poet  of  a  differ- 
ent class;  and  certain  it  is,  had  that 
desirable  restraint  been  early  established, 
many  peculiar  beauties  which  enrich  his 
verses  could  never  have  existed,  and  many 
accessary  influences,  which  contribute 
greatly  to  their  effect,  would  have  been 
wanting.— Wordsworth,  William,  1816, 
A  Letter  to  a  Friend  of  Robert  Burns. 

Burns  has  given  an  elixir  of  life  to 
his  native  dialect.  The  Scottish  "Tam 
O'Shanter"  will  be  read  as  long  as  any 
English  production  of  the  same  century. 
The  impression  of  his  genius  is  deep  and 
universal ;  and,  viewing  him  merely  as  a 
poet,  there  is  scarcely  any  other  regret 
connected  with  his  name,  than  that  his 
productions,  with  all  their  merit,  fall 
short  of  the  talents  which  he  possessed. 
.  .  .  He  meets  us,  in  his  composi- 
tions, undisguisedly  as  a  peasant.  At  the 
same  time,  his  observations  go  extensively 
into  life,  like  those  of  a  man  who  felt  the 
proper  dignity  of  human  nature  in  the 
character  of  a  peasant.  The  writer  of 
some  of  the  severest  strictures  that  ever 
have  been  passed  upon  his  poetry  conceives 
that  his  beauties  are  considerably  defaced 
by  a  portion  of  false  taste  and  vulgar 
sentiment,  which  adhere  to  him  from  his 
low  education.  That  Burns's  education, 
or  rather  the  want  of  it,  excluded  him 
from  much  knowledge,  which  might  have 
fostered  his  inventive  ingenuity,  seems  to 
be  clear ;  but  his  circumstances  cannot  be 


252 


ROBERT  BURNS 


admitted  to  have  communicated  vulgarity 
to  the  tone  of  his  sentiments.  They  have 
not  the  sordid  taste  of  low  condition.  It 
is  objected  to  him,  that  he  boasts  too 
much  of  his  own  independence;  but,  in 
reality,  this  boast  is  neither  frequent  nor 
obtrusive ;  and  it  is  in  itself  the  expres- 
sion of  a  manly  and  laudable  feeling.  So 
far  from  calling  up  disagreeable  recollec- 
tions of  rusticity,  his  sentiments  triumph, 
by  their  natural  energy,  over  those  false 
and  fastidious  distinctions  which  the 
mind  is  but  too  apt  to  form  in  allotting 
its  sympathies  to  the  sensibilities  of  the 
rich  and  poor.  He  carries  us  into  the 
humble  scenes  of  life,  not  to  make  us  dole 
out  our  tribute  of  charitable  compassion 
to  paupers  and  cottagers,  but  to  make  us 
feel  with  them  on  equals  terms,  to  make 
us  enter  into  their  passions  and  interests, 
and  share  our  hearts  with  them  as  with 
brothers  and  sisters  of  the  human  species. 
— Campbell,  Thomas,  1819,  Specimens  of 
the  British  Poets. 

What  bird,  in  beauty,  flight,  or  song, 

Can  with  the  Bard  compare. 
Who  sang  as  sweet,  and  soar'd  as  strong, 

As  ever  child  of  air? 
His  plume,  his  note,  his  form,  could  Bums 

For  whim  or  pleasure  change ; 
He  was  not  one,  but  all  by  turns, 

With  transmigration  strange. 


Peace  to  the  dead — In  Scotia's  choir 

Of  Minstrels  great  and  small. 
He  sprang  from  his  spontaneous  fire, 

The  Phoenix  of  them  all. 

—  Montgomery,  James,  1820,  Robert 
Burns. 

There  have  been  loftier  themes  than  his. 

And  longer  scrolls,  and  louder  lyres. 
And  lays  lit  up  with  Poesy's 

Purer  and  holier  fires : 
Yet  read  the  names  that  know  not  death  ; 

Few  nobler  ones  than  Burns  are  there ; 
And  few  have  won  a  greener  wreath 

Than  that  which  binds  his  hair. 
His  is  that  language  of  the  heart. 

In  which  the  answering  heart  would  speak, 
Thought,  word,  that  bids  the  w^arm  tear  start, 

Or  the  smile  light  the  cheek ; 
And  his  that  music,  to  whose  tone 

Tlie  common  pulse  of  man  keeps  time, 
In  cot  or  castle's  mirth  or  moan, 

In  cold  or  sunny  clime. 
And  who  hath  heard  his  song,  nor  knelt 

Before  its  spell  with  willing  knee. 
And  listened,  and  believed,  and  felt 

The  Poet's  mastery 
O'er  the  mind's  sea,  in  calm  and  storm, 


O'er  the  heart's  sunshine  and  its  showers > 
O'er  Passion's  moments,  bright  and  warm, 
O'er  Reason's  dark  cold  hours. 


Praise  to  the  bard !  his  words  are  driven, 

Like  flower-seeds  by  the  far  winds  sown, 
Where'er,  beneath  the  sky  of  heaven, 

The  birds  of  fame  have  flown. 
— Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  1822,  Burns. 

*'Mr.  John  Home,  the  celebrated  au- 
thor of  Douglas,"  says  an  evening  paper 
of  6th  Nov.  1789,  ''was  lately  asked 
his  opinion  of  the  poems  of  Robert  Burns. 
His  answer  was,  'The  encouragement  that 
fellow  has  met  with  is  a  perfect  disgrace 
to  the  nation. '  This  anecdote  is  genuine, 
and  the  majority  is  satisfied  the  remark 
is  just.  His  reputation  is  vastly  faded !" 
— Collet,  Stephen,  1823,  Relics  of  Lit- 
erature, p.  260. 

The  great  Master  of  lyrical  composi- 
tion, in  its  purest  and  most  intelligible 
sense.  His  ballads,  on  the  simplest, 
sweetest,  and  most  powerful  subjects,  are 
beyond  all  coifipetition ;  and  the  strains  of 
love,  friendship,  and  patriotism,  by  turn 
take  possession  of  the  heart. — Dibdin, 
Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The  Library 
Companion,  p.  743,  note. 
His  native  strains  each  bard  may  try. 

But  who  has  got  his  fire? 
Why.  none— for  Nature  saw  him  die, 

Then  took  away  his  lyre. 
And  for  that  lyre  the  learned  youth 

May  search  the  world  in  vain ; 
She  vowed  she  ne'er  would  lend  it  more 

To  sound  on  earth  again ; 
But  called  on  Fame  to  hang  it  by — 

She  took  it  with  a  tear. 
Broke  all  the  strings  to  bind  the  wreath 
That  Burns  shall  ever  wear. 
— Nicholson,  John,  1826,  The  Birthday 
of  Burns. 

Lyrical  poetry  admits  of  less  variety 
than  any  other  species :  and  Burns,  from 
this  circumstance,  as  well  as  from  the 
flexibility  of  his  talents,  may  be  considered 
as  the  representative  of  his  whole  nation. 
Indeed,  his  universal  genius  seems  to  have 
concentrated  within  itself  the  rays  which 
were  scattered  among  his  predecessors: 
the  simple  tenderness  of  Crawford,  the 
fidelity  of  Ramsay,  and  careless  humour 
of  Ferguson.  The  Doric  dialect  of  his 
country  was  an  instrument  peculiarly  fit- 
ted for  the  expression  of  his  manly  and 
unsophisticated  sentiments.  But  no  one 
is  more  indebted  to  the  national  music 
than  Burns:  embalmed  in  the  sacred 


ROBERT  BURNS 


253 


melody,  his  songs  are  familiar  to  us  from 
childhood,  and,  as  we  read  them,  the  sil- 
ver sounds  with  which  they  have  been 
united  seem  to  linger  in  our  memory, 
heightening  and  prolonging  the  emotions 
which  the  sentiments  have  excited.— 
Prescott,  William  Hickling,  1826,  ScoU 
tish  Song,  Biographical  and  Critical  Mis- 
cellanies. 

If,  in  spite  of  Burns,  and  all  his  succes- 
sors, the  boundary  lines  of  society  are 
observed  with  increasing  strictness  among 
us — if  the  various  orders  of  men  still, 
day  by  day,  feel  the  chord  of  sympathy 
relaxing,  let  us  lament  over  symptoms  of 
a  disease  in  the  body  politic,  which,  if  it 
goes  on,  must  find  sooner  or  later  a  fatal 
ending :  but  let  us  not  undervalue  the  an- 
tidote which  has  all  along  been  checking 
this  strong  poison.  Who  can  doubt,  that 
at  this  moment  thousands  of  "the  first- 
born of  Egypt"  look  upon  the  smoke  of  a 
cottager's  chimney  with  feelings  which 
would  never  have  been  developed  within 
their  being,  had  there  been  no  Burns? — 
LocKHART,  John  Gibson,  1828,  Life  of 
Robert  Burns,  p.  434. 

A  certain  rugged  sterling  worth  per- 
vades whatever  Burns  has  written :  a  vir- 
tue, as  of  green  fields  and  mountain 
breezes,  dwells  in  his  poetry ;  it  is  redo- 
lent of  natural  life,  and  hardy  natural 
men.  There  is  a  decisive  strength  in 
him,  and  yet  a  sweet  native  gracefulness : 
he  is  tender,  and  he  is  vehement,  yet 
without  constraint  or  too  visible  effort; 
he  melts  the  heart,  or  inflames  it,  with  a 
power  which  seems  habitual  and  familiar 
to  him.  We  see  in  him  the  gentleness, 
the  trembling  pity  of  a  woman,  with  the 
deep  earnestness,  the  force,  and  passion- 
ate ardour  of  a  hero.  Tears  lie  in  him, 
and  consuming  fire,  as  lightning  lurks  in 
the  drops  of  a  summer  cloud.  He  has  a 
resonance  in  his  bosom  for  every  note  of 
human  feeling :  the  high  and  the  low,  the 
sad  and  the  ludicrous,  the  joyful,  are  wel- 
come in  their  turns  to  his  "lightly-moved 
and  all-conceiving  spirit."  ...  No 
poet  of  any  age  or  nation  is  more  graphic 
than  Burns:  the  characteristic  features 
disclose  themselves  to  him  at  a  glance ; 
three  lines  from  his  hand,  and  we  have 
a  likeness.  And  in  that  rough  dialect, 
in  that  rude,  often  awkward  meter,  so 
clear  and  definite  a  likeness !  It  seems  a 
draughtsman  working  with  a  burnt  stick ; 


and  yet  the  burin  of  a  Retzsch  is  not 
more  expressive  or  exact.  ...  No 
one,  at  all  events,  is  ignorant  that  in  the 
poetry  of  Burns  keenness  of  insight  keeps 
pace  with  keenness  of  feeling;  that  his 
light  is  not  more  pervading  than  his 
warmth.  He  is  a  man  of  the  most  impas- 
sioned temper;  with  passions  not  strong 
only,  but  noble,  and  of  the  sort  in  which 
great  virtues  and  great  poems  take  their 
rise.  It  is  reverence,  it  is  love  toward 
all  Nature  that  inspires  him,  that  opens 
his  eyes  to  its  beauty,  and  makes  heart 
and  voice  eloquent  in  its  praise.  .  .  . 
Burns,  indeed,  lives  in  sympathy ;  his  soul 
rushes  forth  into  all  realms  of  being; 
nothing  that  has  existence  can  be  indiffer- 
ent to  him.  The  very  Devil  he  cannot 
hate  with  right  orthodoxy! — Carlyle, 
Thomas,  1828,  Essay  on  Burns. 

For  son. — What  an  admirable  Spanish 
scholar  must  Mr.  Wordsworth  be  !  How 
completely  has  he  transfused  into  his  own 
compositions  all  the  spirit  of  those 
verses!  Nevertheless,  it  is  much  to  be 
regretted  that,  in  resolving  on  simplicity, 
he  did  not  place  himself  under  the  tuition 
of  Burns ;  which  quality  Burns  could  have 
taught  him  in  perfection ;  but  others  he 
never  could  have  imparted  to  sueh  an 
auditor.  He  would  have  sung  in  vain  to 
him 

"Scots  wha  hae  wi'  Wallace  bled." 
A  song  more  animating  than  ever  Tyr- 
tseus  sang  to  the  fife  before  the  Spar- 
tans. But  simplicity  in  Burns  is  never 
stale  and  unprofitable.  In  Burns  there  is 
no  waste  of  words  out  of  an  ill-shouldered 
sack;  no  troublesome  running  backward 
and  forward  of  little,  idle,  ragged  ideas ; 
no  ostentation  of  sentiment  in  the  surtout 
of  selfishness. — Landor,  Walter  Savage, 
1828,  Southey  and  PorsoUy  Imaginary 
Conversations,  Third  Series. 

Burns,  whose  lofty  soul  spread  its  own 
pathos  and  dignity  over  the  "short  and 
simple  annals  of  the  poor." — Alison, Sir 
Archibald,  1833-42,  History  of  Europe 
During  The  French  Revolution, vol.  xiy,p.S. 

When  we  consider  the  genius  of  Burns, 
we  see  it  manifestly  moulded  and  coloured 
by  his  agricultural  life.  It  was  thus  that 
nothing  seemed  worthy  to  engross  his 
attention  but  the  feelings  and  the  pas- 
sions of  the  heart  of  man.— Hogg,  James, 
1838-40,  Memoir  of  Burns,  ch.  ii. 

It  is  not  easy  to  conceive  any  two  men 


254 


ROBERT  BURNS 


more  unlike  each  other,  than  Cowper  and 
Burns  were;  and  yet,  in  their  genius, 
there  is  much  similarity.  Burns,  perhaps, 
was  twice  as  much  a  man  as  Cowper,  and 
the  tenth  part  of  the  tithe  as  much  a 
poet  as  Shakspeare  or  Scott:  he  was 
a  giant,  nevertheless.  His  Muse  was 
manliness:  he  was  honest  and  fearless. 
The  Muse  of  Cowper  was  conscious;  he 
was  honest  but  not  fearless;  he  trem- 
bled, and  a  shadow  overthrew  him  but 
it  was  a  shadow  darker  than  the  shadow 
of  death.  He  would  have  been  a  far 
greater  poet  than  he  was,  if  disease  had 
not  made  him  a  coward.  Not  that  he 
was  insincere :  oh  no !  and  yet  he  dared 
not  whisper  to  his  poor  heart  that  God  is 
merciful.  Nor  was  his  despair  unpoetical ; 
but  the  hope  of  Burns  is  more  poetical 
than  Cowper's  despair;  and  Burns  had 
this  further  advantage,  that  he  neither 
despaired  of  a  man  as  he  is,  nor  of  his  ulti- 
mate destiny.  How  much  more  respecta- 
ble human  nature  appears  in  our  eyes  after 
reading  Burns,  than  after  reading  Byron ! 
— Elliott,  Ebenezer,  1842,  Cowper  and 
Burns,  Edinburgh  Magazine,  vol,  9,  p.  357. 

Read  Burns :  no  one  ever  compressed  so 
much  meaning  into  so  few  words.  Their 
beautiful  rhythm  seems  their  least  beauty. 
— Eastlake,  Lady,  1843,  Journal,  May 
19 ;  Memoirs,  ed.  Smith,  vol.  i,  p.  68. 

The  divine  qualities  of  Burns  would 
have  been  lost  had  he  been  more  lettered. 
.  .  .  What  plant  is  more  frail  or  deli- 
cate than  genius,  and  what  a  combination 
of  circumstances  is  necessary  for  its 
growth?  It  is  not  enough  this  time  to 
have  a  passionate  heart  and  an  ardent 
imagination.  It  was  necessary  that  adver- 
sity should  flourish  and  hatch  the  seed, 
that  ignorance  should  screen  the  flower 
of  it.  And  can  we  help  being  astonished 
that  this  fruit  divine  should  be  so  rare, 
and  that,  like  the  marvellous  tree  in  East- 
ern stories,  genius  should  only  flourish 
once  in  a  hundred  years!  .  .  .  . 
Burns  is  of  that  family  of  writers  whose 
power  reaches  the  heart :  Pectus  est  quod 
facit  disertos.  With  him  there  is  no  literary 
preoccupation,  none  of  the  beauties  of  the 
room ;  he  lives  in  the  pure  air  amid  nature. 
He  is  not  one  of  those  pastoral  muses  who 
only  visits  the  country  on  fine  days  to  re- 
coup themselves  after  all  their  luxuriant 
winter  dissipations;  courtly  muses  who 
only  sing  of  nature  in  her  pleasant  garb, 


whose  forests  like  those  of  Virgil,  are 
dignified  as  a  consul ;  who  transfer  their 
armours  from  the  city  to  bring  them  back 
to  the  shams  of  a  gravelled  walk  and  an 
artificial  river.  The  muse  of  Burns  is  en- 
tirely rustic ;  she  dwells  in  a  cottage ;  rises 
with  the  sun ;  harnesses  herself  with  the 
cattle ;  soaks  the  furrows  with  her  sweat ; 
lives  on  oatmeal ;  willingly  frequenting  the 
village  hostel ;  speaking  more  of  poppies 
than  of  lillies ;  of  pools  than  of  lakes ;  of 
wild  ducks  than  of  swans ;  and  only  taking 
her  loves  in  the  village — perhaps  it  is  for 
this  reason  that  she  is  so  constant.  With 
such  a  guide  we  are  far  away  from  the 
boudoirs  of  the  warm  greenhouses,  as  we 
inspire  the  noble  air,  as  we  are  animated, 
interested,  impassioned  in  speaking  to  the 
heart,  as  we  are  conscious  of  the  intimate 
harmony  with  those  we  love,  and  in  whom 
we  live. — Wailly,  Leon  de,  1843,  Poesies 
Completes  de  Robert  Burns,  traduites  de 
VEcossais. 

Burns  is  by  far  the  greatest  poet  that 
ever  sprung  from  the  bosom  of  the  people, 
and  lived  and  died  in  an  humble  condition. 
Indeed,  no  country  in  the  world  but  Scot- 
land could  have  produced  such  a  man ;  and 
he  will  be  for  ever  regarded  as  the  glorious 
representative  of  the  genius  of  his  coun- 
try. He  was  born  a  poet,  if  ever  man  was, 
and  to  his  native  genius  alone  is  owing  the 
perpetuity  of  his  fame.  For  he  manifestly 
had  never  very  deeply  studied  poetry  as 
an  art,  nor  reasoned  much  about  its  prin- 
ciples, nor  looked  abroad  with  the  wide  ken 
of  intellect  for  objects  and  subjects  on 
which  to  pout  out  his  inspiration.  .  .  . 
The  strings  of  his  lyre  sometimes  yield 
their  finest  music  to  the  sighs  of  remorse 
or  repentance.  Whatever,  therefore,  be 
the  faults  or  defects  of  the  poetry  of 
Burns — and  no  doubt  it  has  many — it  has, 
beyond  all  that  was  ever  written,  this 
greatest  of  all  merits,  intense,  life-pervad- 
ing, and  life-breathing  truth.  ...  No 
poet  ever  lived  more  constantly  and  more 
intimately  in  the  hearts  of  a  people.  .  .  . 
Of  all  men  that  ever  lived.  Burns  was  the 
least  of  a  sentimentalist ;  he  was  your  true 
Man  of  P^eeling.  He  did  not  preach  to 
Christian  people  the  duty  of  humanity  to 
animals;  he  spoke  of  them  in  winning 
words  warm  from  a  manliest  breast,  as  his 
fellow-creatures,  and  made  us  feel  what 
we  owe. — Wilson,  John,  1844,  TAe  Genius 
and  Character  of  Burns,  pp.  1,  3,  4,  118. 


ROBERT  BURNS 


255 


And  Bums,  with  pungent  passionings 
Set  in  his  eyes :  deep  lyric  springs 
Are  of  the  fire-mount's  issuings. 

— Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1844, 
A  Vision  of  Poets. 
On,  exulting  in  his  magic, 

Swept  the  gifted  peasant  on — 
Though  his  feet  were  on  the  greensward, 

Light  from  Heaven  around  him  shone ; 
At  his  conjuration  demons 

Issued  from  their  darkness  drear ; 
Hovering  round  on  silver  pinions, 
Angels  stoop'd  his  songs  to  hear; 
Bow'd  the  Passions  to  his  bidding. 

Terror  gaunt,  and  Pity  calm ; 
Like  the  organ  pour'd  his  thunder. 

Like  the  lute  his  fairy  psalm. 
Lo !  when  clover-swathes  lay  round  him, 

Or  his  feet  the  furrow  press'd. 
He  could  mourn  the  sever'd  daisy, 

Or  the  mouse's  ruined  nest; 
Woven  of  gloom  and  glory,  visions 

Haunting  throng'd  his  twilight  hour; 
Birds  enthrall' d  him  with  sweet  music, 

Tefnpests  with  their  tones  of  power ; 
Eagle- wing' d,  his  mounting  spirit 
Custom's  rusty  fetters  spurn'd; 
Tasso-like,  for  Jean  he  melted, 
Wallace -like,  for  Scotland  burn'd! 
— MoiR,  David  Macbeth,  1844,  Stanzas 
for  the  Burns  Festival. 

In  these  poems  and  letters  of  Burns,  we 
apprehend,  is  to  be  found  a  truer  history 
than  any  anecdote  can  supply,  of  the  things 
which  happened  to  himself,  and  moreover 
of  the  most  notable  things  which  went  on 
in  Scotland  between  1759  and  1796.  .  .  . 
Consider  the  terrible  contradiction  be- 
tween faith  and  practice  which  must  have 
met  the  eyes  of  the  man,  before  he  could 
write  with  the  same  pen — and  one  as 
honestly  as  the  other — ''The  Cottar's 
Saturday  Night,"  and  ''Holy  Willie's 
Prayer."  .  .  .  The  field  in  which  Burns's 
influence  has  been,  as  was  to  be  expected, 
most  important  and  most  widely  felt,  is  in 
the  poems  of  working  men.  He  first 
proved  that  it  was  possible  to  become  a 
poet  and  a  cultivated  man,  without  desert- 
ing his  class,  either  in  station  or  in  sym- 
pathies; nay,  that  the  healthiest  and 
noblest  elements  of  a  lowly  born  poet's 
mind  might  be,  perhaps  certainly  must  be, 
the  very  feelings  and  thoughts  'which  he 
brought  up  with  him  from  below,  not 
those  which  he  received  from  above,  in  the 
course  of  his  artificial  culture.  From  the 
example  of  Burns,  therefore,  many  a  work- 
ing man,  who  would  otherwise  have  "died 
and  given  no  sign,"  has  taken  courage, 


and  spoken  out  the  thought  within  him,  in 
verse  or  prose,  not  always  wisely  and  well, 
but  in  all  cases,  as  it  seems  to  us,  in  the 
belief  that  he  had  a  sort  of  divine  right  to 
speak  and  be  heard,  since  Burns  had  broken 
down  the  artificial  ice-wall  of  centuries, 
and  asserted,  by  act  as  well  as  song,  that 
"a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that." — Kings- 
ley,  Charles,  1848?  Burns  and  his 
School. 

Burns  wrote  in  this  class  of  poetry  at 
no  such  length  as  Ramsay;  but  he  was 
pastoral  poetry  itself,  in  the  shape  of  an 
actual,  glorious  peasant,  vigorous  as  if 
Homer  had  written  him,  and  tender  as 
generous  strength,  or  as  memories  of  the 
grave.  Ramsay  and  he  have  helped  Scot- 
land for  ever  to  take  pride  in  its  heather, 
and  its  braes,  and  its  bonny  rivers,  and  be 
ashamed  of  no  beauty  or  honest  truth,  in 
high  estate  or  in  low; — an  incalculable 
blessing.  Ramsay,  to  be  sure,  with  all  his 
genius,  and  though  he  wrote  an  entire  and 
excellent  dramatic  pastoral,  in  five  legiti- 
mate acts,  is  but  a  small  part  of  Burns ; — 
is  but  a  field  in  a  corner  compared  with 
the  whole  Scots  pastoral  region.  He  has 
none  of  Burns's  pathos ;  none  of  his  grand- 
eur ;  none  of  his  burning  energy ;  none  of 
his  craving  after  universal  good.  How 
universal  is  Burns!  What  mirth  in  his 
cups !  What  softness  in  his  tears  !  What 
sympathy  in  his  very  satire !  What  man- 
hood in  everything!  If  Theocritus,  the 
inventor  of  a  loving  and  affecting  Poly- 
phemus, could  have  forseen  the  verses  on 
the ' ' Mouse' '  and  the  ' '  Daisy"  turned  with 
plough,  the  "Tarn  o'  Shanter,"  "0  Willie 
brew'd  a  peck  o'  maut,"  "Ye  banks  and 
braes  o'  bonnie  Doon,"  &c.,  (not  to  men- 
tion a  hundred  others,  which  have  less  to 
do  with  our  subject),  tears  of  admiration 
would  have  rushed  into  his  eyes. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  1848,  A  Jar  of  Honey  from  Mount 
Hybla,  ch.  viii. 

Burns'  Songs  are  better  than  Buhver's 
Epics. — Bronte,  Charlotte,  1849,  Letter 
to  W.  S.  Williams,  April  2;  Charlotte 
Bronte  and  Her  Circle^  ed.  Shorter^  p.  392. 

I  have  passed  the  morning  in  writing  to 
James  Stephen,  and  reading  about  fifty  of 
Burns's  songs,  to  the  merit  of  which  I  re- 
main insensible.  A  happy  verse  there 
may  be  here  and  there,  and  even  a  few 
good  songs ;  but  I  have  read  nothing  to- 
day which  seems  worthy  to  live  for  twenty 
years.    I  have  often  in  the  course  of  my 


256 


ROBERT  BURNS 


life  taken  up  Burns  to  see  if  I  would  change 
my  mind  about  him,  but  my  mind  won't  be 
changed.  He  was  a  man  of  highly  poetic 
temperament,  and  some  other  attributes  of 
genius,  but  for  one  reason  or  another  99 
per  cent,  of  what  he  wrote  was  worthless, 
and  I  think  nothing  that  he  wrote  was  of 
such  excellence  as  to  found  a  poet's  fame. 
Perhaps  if  he  had  written  nothing  but  his 
best  pieces  I  should  think  more  highly  of 
him,  and  with  less  liability  to  error ;  but 
no  man's  best  lies  buried  under  more  of 
worse,  worser,  and  worsest. — Taylor, 
Henry,  1850,  Letter  to  his  wife,  May  3 ; 
Correspondence,  ed.  Dowden,  p.  187. 
He  rose  and  sang,  and  Scotland  heard; 

The  round  world  echoed  with  his  song, 
And  hearts  in  every  land  were  stirred 

With  love,  and  joy,  and  scorn  of  wrong. 
Some  their  cold  lips  disdainful  curled, 

Yet  the  sweet  lays  would  many  learn ; 
But  he  went  singing  through  the  world, 

In  most  melodious  unconcern. 

— Parsons,  Thomas  William,  1852,  The 
Birthplace  of  Robert  Burns,  Poems,  p.  81. 

We  must  listen,  too,  -while  in  homely 
Scots  vernacular  we  are  told  by  an  Ayrshire 
ploughman  authentic  tidings  of  living  in- 
stincts, of  spontaneous  belief,  which  not 
all  the  philosophy  in  the  brain  of  the  intel- 
lectual can  banish  from  the  breast  of  the 
human  being. — Clough,  Arthur  Hugh, 
1852,  Development  of  English  Literature, 
Prose  Remains,  p.  350. 

There  was  one  writer  of  the  last  century, 
one  who  wrote  satire  but  who  has  done 
higher  things, — who  has  left  a  name  writ- 
ten upon  the  earth's  surface  in  flowers; 
one,  in  all  ways,  of  the  greatest  men  that 
the  literature  of  Great  Britain  boasts, — I 
mean  Robert  Burns.  Burns  wrote  satire, 
as  the  greatest  men  do,  when  that  was  the 
natural  attitude  for  him.  .  .  .  Burns 
wrote  satirical  verses,  ballads,  squibs,  and 
epigrams,  as  he  wrote  everything  else, — ■ 
from  his  heart.  He  loved,  and  hated,  and 
prayed,  and  drank,  in  obedience  to  the  in- 
stincts of  a  most  vivid  and  genuine  nature, 
and  more  absolutely  than  any  writer 
poured  out  himself.  He  is  as  real  as  a 
summer  afternoon:  and  his  very  faults 
were  as  natural  as  poppies  among  the  corn ; 
and  because  they  glare  and  are  staring  in 
color,  you  must  not  forget  how  few  and 
how  light  they  are,  compared  in  bulk  and 
weight  with  the  masses  of  most  beautiful 
and  nutritious  grain  in  the  crop.  .  .  .  His 
satire  is  a  piece  of  himself ;  and  whether  he 


produced  nettles  or  roses,  they  were  both 
fresh.  ...  1  must  leave  "Holy  Willie's 
Prayer"  to  anybody's  private  perusal, 
who  wishes  to  see  irony  as  exquisite  as 
Swift's, — bitter  and  brilliant  ridicule ;  and 
the  "Address  to  the  unco  Guid"  also,  full 
of  humor  and  of  heart.  I  think  the  best 
satire  he  has  written,  without  doubt,  to  be 
the  "Holy  Fair,"  which  has  so  much  comic 
painting,  besides  its  cutting  wit. — Han- 
nay,  James,  1854,  Satire  and  Satirists, 
pp.  198,  200,  202. 

Through  all  his  tuneful  art,  how  strong 

The  human  feeling  gushes ! 
The  very  moonlight  of  his  song 

Is  warm  with  smiles  and  blushes ! 
Give  lettered  pomp  to  teeth  of  Time, 

So  "Bonnie  Doon"  but  tarry; 
Blot  out  the  Epic's  stately  rhyme, 

But  spare  his  "  Highland  Mary!" 

—  Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  1856, 
Burns,  Poetical  Works. 

If  scant  his  service  at  the  kirk,  » 

He  paters  heard  and  aves 
From  choirs  that  lurk  in  hedge  and  birk, 

From  blackbird  and  from  mavis ; 
The  cowering  mouse,  poor  unroofed  thing, 

In  him  found  Mercy's  angel ; 
The  daisy's  ring  brought  every  spring 

To  him  Love's  fresh  evangel! 

— Lowell,  James  Russell,  1859,  At  the 
Burns  Centennial,  Jan. 

Not  Latimer,  not  Luther  struck  more 
telling  blows  against  false  theology  than 
did  this  brave  singer.  The  Confession  of 
Augsburg,  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, the  French  Rights  of  Man,  and  the 
Marseillaise,  are  not  more  weighty  docu- 
ments in  the  history  of  freedom  than  the 
songs  of  Burns.  His  satire  has  lost  none 
of  its  edge.  His  musical  arrows  yet  sing 
through  the  air.  He  is  so  substantially  a 
reformer  that  I  find  his  grand  plain  sense  in 
close  chain  with  the  greatest  masters — Ra- 
belais, Shakespeare  in  comedy,  Cervantes, 
Butler  and  Burns.  .  .  .  Yet  how  true  a  poet 
is  he !  and  the  poet,  too,  of  poor  men,  of 
gray  hodden  and  the  guernsey  coat,  and  the 
blouse.  He  has  given  voice  to  all  the  ex- 
periences of  common  life ;  he  has  endeared 
the  farm-house  and  cottage,  patches  and 
poverty,  beans  and  barley ;  aie,  the  poor 
man's  wine;  hardship;  the  fear  of  debt; 
the  dear  society  of  weans  and  wife,  of 
brothers  and  sisters,  proud  of  each  other, 
knowing  so  few,  and  finding  amends  for 
want  and  obscurity  in  books  and  thoughts. 
...  As  he  was  thus  the  poet  of  the  poor, 


ROBERT  BURNS 


257 


anxious,  cheerful,  working  humanity,  so 
had  he  the  lanojuage  of  low  life.  He  grew 
up  in  a  rural  district,  speaking  a  patois 
unintelligible  to  all  but  natives,  and  he 
has  made  the  Lowland  Scotch  a  Doric 
dialect  of  fame.  It  is  the  only  example 
ia  history  of  a  language  made  classic  by 
the  genius  of  a  single  man. — Emerson, 
Ralph  Waldo,  1859,  Address  at  the 
Burns  Centenary,  Boston,  Jan.  25. 

We  love  him,  not  for  sweetest  song, 

Though  never  tone  so  tender ; 
We  love  him,  even  in  his  wrong, — 

His  wasteful  self -surrender. 
We  praise  him,  not  for  gifts  divine, — 

His  Muse  was  born  of  woman, — 
His  manhood  breathes  in  every  line, — 

Was  ever  heart  more  human? 
We  love  him,  praise  him,  just  for  this: 

In  every  form  and  feature, 
Through  wealth  and  want,  through  woe  and 
bliss, 

He  saw  his  fellow -creature !    .    .  . 
The  waning  suns,  the  wasting  globe, 

Shall  spare  the  minstrel's  story, — 
The  centuries  weave  his  purple  robe, 

The  mountain-mist  of  glory! 

— Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  1859,  For 
the  Burns  Centennial  Celebration,  Jan.  25. 

All  hail!  immortal  Robin,  hail! 

Thy  natal  day  again  returns. 
And  here  the  gather'd  clans  are  met 

To  crown  their  Poet — Burns ! 
A  crowded  century  has  pass'd, 

Auld  Scotia,  a  repentant  dame, 
Kneels  at  her  ploughboy's  feet  and  gives 

A  hundred  years  of  fame. 
How  dear  to  her  his  memory  now — 

See  to  his  grave  how  pilgrims  wend ; 
Dear  are  liis  haunts,  the  fields  he  ploughed 

And  every  line  he  penn'd. 
Rare  bards  have  borne  across  the  deep 

The  wild  rose  pluck'd  from  Alio  way's  aisle, 
Sprays  from  the  birks  of  EUisland 

And  braes  o'  Ballochmyle. 

— Latto,  Thomas  C,  1859,  The  Poefs 
Jubilee,  Jan.  25. 

.    .    .    He  learned  the  touch  that  speeds 

Right  to  the  natural  heart  of  things ; 
Struck  rootage  down  to  where  Life  feeds 

At  the  eternal  Springs :    .    .  . 
He  caught  them,  Witch  and  Warlock,  ere 

They  vanished ;  all  the  revelry 
Of  wizard  wonder,  we  must  wear 

The  mask  of  Sleep  to  see ! 
Droll  Humours  came  for  him  to  paint 

Their  pictures ;  straight  his  merry  eye 
Had  taken  them,  so  queer,  so  quaint. 

We  laugh  until  we  cry.    .    .  . 
He  knew  the  Sorrows  of  poor  folk, 

He  felt  for  all  their  patient  pain ; 

17  C 


And  from  his  clouded  soul  he  shook 

Lark -like  the  music-rain    .    .  . 
Auld  Scotland's  Music  waited  long, 

And  wandered  wailing  through  the  land, 
Divinely  yearning  in  her  wrong. 

And  sorrowfully  grand ; 
And  many  touched  responsive  chords, 

But  could  not  tell  what  She  would  say; 
Till  Robin  wed  her  with  his  V/^ords, 

And  they  were  One  for  aye    .    .  . 
.    .    .    now  we  recognize  in  him, 

One  of  the  high  and  shining  race ; 
All  gone  the  mortal  mists  that  dim 

The  fair  immortal  face. 
— Massey,  Gerald,  1859,  Robert  Burns. 
To  nature's  feast, — 

Who  knew  the  noblest  guest 

And  entertained  him  best, — 
Kingly  he  came.    Her  chambers  of  the  east 

She  draped  with  crimson  and  with  gold, 
And  poured  her  pure  joy-wines 

For  him  the  poet-souled. 

For  him  her  anthem  rolled, 
From  the  storm -wind  among  the  winter 
pines, 

Down  to  the  slenderest  note 

Of  a  love-warble  from  the  linnet's  throat. 
—Knox,  Is  a  Craig,  1859,  Ode  on  the 
Centenary  of  Burns. 

The  most  serious  and  profound  Scotch- 
men of  later  days  have  hailed  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Ayrshire  ploughman  poet  as  an 
element  of  wholesome  human  reality 
brought  into  the  midst  of  an  atmosphere 
thick  and  heavy  with  notions  and  book 
lore.  They  say  that  his  songs  brought  back 
to  them  the  belief  in  green  fields  and  hills, 
as  well  as  the  fact  of  their  belonging  to 
a  land  on  which  their  fathers  had  dwelt 
and  suffered  before  them  ;  and  that  his  life 
showed  them  there  is  need,  in  the  heart  of 
every  peasant,  of  a  hope  to  raise  him  and 
protect  him  against  himself,  as  well  as 
against  his  rich  patrons,  which  neither  the 
divinity  nor  the  philosophy  of  Scotland  at 
that  time  afforded ;  which  was  not  offered 
by  old  light  formalism  or  new  light  ex- 
periences ;  which  was  not  found  necessary 
by  the  polite  circles  that  Hume  frequented, 
and  which  only  glimmered  faintly  through 
the  consciousness  and  common  sense  of 
Reid ;  but  of  which  Burns  could  see  the 
pledge  and  the  promise  in  the  domestic 
life  of  his  sires,  and  in  the  testimony  they 
bore  to  a  Father  whose  righteousness  the 
earthly  father  was  feebly  to  exhibit  in  his 
own.  —  Maurice,  Frederick  Denisox, 
1 862,  Moral  and  Metaphysical  Philosophy^ 
vol.  II,  p.  586.  fl^K^ 
In  his  own  day  the  Ballad  singer  oHfte 


258 


ROBERT  BURNS 


street,  chanting  the  last  new  Ballad, 
sought  for  guerdon  and  applause  by  an- 
nouncing it  as  a  new  song  by  Rabble  Burns ; 
and  when  the  grave  had  closed  over  his 
remains,  every  scrap  written  in  his  noble, 
manly  hand- writing,  however  unworthy, — 
and  many  a  Poem  and  Song,  because  ex- 
pressed in  the  rough  quaint  Doric,  were 
claimed  as  his,  and  forthwith  thrown  from 
the  press. — M'Kie,  James,  1869,  ed., 
Poems  Chiefly  in  the  Scottish  Dialect  by 
Robert  Burns,  Preface,  vol.  ii,  p.  vi. 

Many  of  those  who  sit  at  this  table  have 
doubtless  heard  the  report  of  a  cannon 
discharged  among  the  Highlands  that  over- 
look the  Hudson,  our  own  ''exulting  and 
abounding  river."  The  sound  has  scarcely 
left  the  cannon's  mouth  before  it  is  re- 
echoed by  one  of  the  majestic  mountains — 
Dunderberg,  perhaps — on  whose  summit 
the  clouds  rest  and  the  lightnings  are 
born.  Crow  Nest  rolls  it  back  from  his 
dark  precipices  and  ancient  forests.  Then 
some  headland  more  remote  receives  it, 
and  from  its  cliffs  flings  it  back  to  the 
listener.  The  sound  travels  swiftly  on, 
and  a  response  comes  from  height  after 
height,  until  it  passes  away  among  the 
hills  and  shores  which  lie  beyond  the 
sight.  ...  So  the  reverberation  is 
likely  to  go  on  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion, an  involuntary  tribute  of  admiration 
from  the  world  of  letters  to  the  genius  of 
Burns.— Bryant,  William  Cullen,  1870, 
Address  at  Celebration  of  the  111th  Anni- 
versary of  Robert  Burns'  Natal  Day. 

Of  all  the  poets,  larger  and  less,  not  one 
has  been  so  true  to  his  own  thought ;  so 
faithful  to  the  sight  of  his  eye,  to  the 
sound  in  his  ear,  to  the  emotion  of  his 
heart!  ''A  touch  of  nature  makes  the 
whole  world  kin" — and  so  it  is  that  Burns 
is  the  accredited  oracle  of  the  human  soul, 
not  only  where  the  Scottish  dialect — that 
beautiful  modern  Doric — is  spoken  and 
best  appreciated,  but  in  all  lands  where 
men  employ  our  capable  English  tongue. 
The  memory  of  Burns !  Ah !  the  poetry  of 
Burns  has  taken  care  of  that,  for  all  time 
to  come !  It  beams  like  an  aureole  over 
every  hallowed  spot  where  he  suffered  and 
sung ;  it  breathes  on  the  ''Banks  and  Braes 
of  Bonny  Doon it  is  renewed  with  each 
returning  Spring  in  his  own  "Mountain 
Daisy;"  it  lives  in  the  immortal  life  of 
"Mary  in  Heaven!"  So  long  as  love  is 
precious,  and  bereavement  sacred,  and 


hypocrisy  hateful,  and  pretension  ridicu- 
lous, and  labor  honorable,  and  true  man- 
hood noble— so  long  as  poetry,  simple, 
natural,  eloquent,  is  the  delight  of  man- 
kind, alike  in  the  halls  of  the  opulent  and 
by  "wee  bit  ingle  bluikies'  family,"  so  long 
shall  the  memory  of  Burns  endure! — 
Saxe,  John  G.,  1870,  Address  at  Cele- 
bration of  the  111th  Anniversary  of  Robert 
Burns'  Natal  Day. 

Burns  cries  out  in  favour  of  instinct  and 
joy,  so  as  to  seem  epicurean.  He  has 
genuine  gaiety,  comic  energy;  laughter 
commends  itself  to  him ;  he  praises  it  and 
the  good  suppers  of  good  comrades,  where 
the  wine  flows,  pleasantry  abounds,  ideas 
pour  forth,  poetry  sparkles,  and  causes  a 
carnival  of  beautiful  figures  and  good- 
humoured  people  to  move  about  in  the 
human  brain.  .  .  .  That,  indeed,  was 
natural  poetry ;  not  forced  in  a  hothouse, 
but  born  of  the  soil  between  the  furrows, 
side  by  side  with  music,  amidst  the  gloom 
and  beauty  of  the  climate,  like  the  violet 
gorse  of  the  hillside  and  woods.  We  can 
understand  that  it  gave  vigour  to  his 
tongue :  for  the  first  time  this  man  spoke 
as  men  speak,  or  rather  as  they  think, 
without  premeditation,  with  a  mixture  of 
all  styles,  familiar  and  terrible,  hiding  an 
emotion  under  a  joke,  tender  and  jeering 
in  the  same  place,  apt  to  combine  taproom 
trivialities  with  the  high  language  of 
poetry,  so  indiflterent  was  he  to  rules,  con- 
tent to  exhibit  his  feeling  as  it  came  to 
him,  and  as  he  felt  it.  At  last,  after  so 
many  years,  v/e  escape  from  the  measured 
declamation,  we  hear  a  man's  voice !  much 
better,  we  forget  the  voice  in  the  emotion 
which  it  expresses,  we  feel  this  motion 
reflected  in  ourselves,  we  enter  into  rela- 
tions with  a  soul.  Then  form  seems  to 
fade  away  and  disappear :  I  will  say  that 
this  is  the  great  future  of  modern  poetry ; 
Burns  has  reached  it  seven  or  eight  times. 
— Taine,  H.  a.,  1871,  History  of  English 
Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun,  vol.  ii,  bk.  iv, 
ch.  i,  pp.  237,  239. 

O  Burns!  where  bid?  where  bide  you  now? 
Where  are  you  in  this  night's  full  noon, 
Great  master  of  the  pen  and  plough? 
Might  you  not  on  yon  slanting  beam 
Of  moonlight,  kneeling  to  the  Doon, 
Descend  once  to  this  hallow' d  stream? 
Sure  yon  stars  yield  enough  of  light 
For  heaven  to  spare  your  face  one  night. 

O  Burns !  another  name  for  song, 
Another  name  for  passion — pride ; 


ROBERT  BURNS 


259 


For  love  and  poesy  allied ; 

For  strangely  blended  right  and  wrong. 

I  picture  you  as  one  who  kneel'd 
A  stranger  at  his  own  hearthstone ; 
One  knowing  all,  yet  all  unknown, 
One  seeing  all,  yet  all  conceal'd; 
The  fitful  years  you  linger'd  here, 
A  lease  of  peril  and  of  pain ; 
And  I  am  thankful  yet  again 
The  gods  did  love  you,  ploughman!  peer! 
— Miller,  Joaquin,  1871,  Songs  of  the 
Sierras,  p.  259. 

About  the  time  you  were  writing  to  me 
about  Burns  and  Beranger,  I  was  thinking 
of  them  "which  was  the  Greater  Genius?" 
— I  can't  say ;  but,  with  all  my  Admiration 
for  about  a  Score  of  the  Frenchman's 
almost  perfect  Songs,  I  would  give  all  of 
them  up  for  a  Score  of  Burns'  Couplets, 
Stanzas,  or  single  Lines  scattered  among 
those  quite  imperfect  Lyrics  of  his. 
Beranger,  no  doubt,  was  The  Artist ;  which 
still  is  not  the  highest  Genius — witness 
Shakespeare,  Dante,  iEschylus,  Calderon, 
to  the  contrary.  Burns  assuredly  had 
more  Passion  than  the  Frenchman ;  which 
is  not  Genius  either,  but  a  great  Part  of 
the  Lyric  Poet  still.  What  Beranger 
might  have  been,  if  born  and  bred  among 
Banks,  Braes,  and  Mountains,  I  cannot  tell : 
Burns  had  that  advantage  over  him.  And 
then  the  Highland  Mary  to  love,  amid  the 
heather,  as  compared  to  Lise  the  Grisette 
in  a  Parisian  Suburb!  Some  of  the  old 
French  Virelays  and  Vaudevires  come 
much  nearer  the  Wild  Notes  of  Burns,  and 
go  to  one's  heart  like  his ;  Beranger  never 
gets  so  far  as  that  1  think. — Fitzgerald, 
Edward,  1873,  Letters  to  Fanny  Kemhle, 
ed.  Wright,  p.  18. 

Neither  Pope  with  his  smooth  verses, 
nor  Lord  Bolingbroke  with  his  sceptical 
wit,  nor  Dr.  Johnson  amid  his  worshippers, 
gave  forth  the  first  truly  original  note 
which  announced  a  new  phase  in  the 
poetry  of  Great  Britain :  from  the  banks 
of  the  Doon,  out  of  a  cottage  in  Scotland, 
rose  the  wood-lark  who  uttered  it. — 
SCHERR,  J.,  1874,  A  History  of  English 
Liter ature,tr.  M.  F.,  p.  177. 

In  Part  II.  are  social  and  drinking  songs, 
with  which  latter  Scotland  is  abundantly 
supplied.  In  this  province,  too.  Burns  has 
lavishly  poured  out  his  splendid  genius, 
with  a  strange  fatality,  singing  the  praises 
of  the  Syren  that  lured  him  to  his  own 
ruin.— AiTKEN,  Mary  Carlyle,  1874, 
ed.f  Scottish  Song,  Preface,  p.  vii. 


As  a  lyric  poet  Burns  deserves  the  name 
of  great.  In  the  most  essential  qualities 
of  this  form  of  verse ;  in  fire,  tenderness 
and  naturalness,  none  have  surpassed  him. 
.  .  .  Though  Burns  stands  at  the 
entrance  of  the  new  period,  none  of  the 
great  poets  that  followed  surpassed  him  in 
individuality  of  faculties,  a  freedom  which 
yet  left  him  in  full  mastery  of  a  varied  and 
most  melodious  verse. — Bascom,  John, 
1874,  Philosophy  of  English  Literature, 
pp.  221,  222! 

In  a  company  of  German  critics  who 
were  weighing  the  claims  and  estimating 
the  rank  of  the  poets,  their  contempora- 
ries, the  leader  of  their  chorus,  the  genial 
humorist,  Jean  Paul  Kichter,  is  said  to 
have  hushed  his  audience  when  the  name 
of  Goethe  was  introduced,  exclaiming— 
''We  are  not  to  sit  in  judgment  on  that 
sacred  head. ' '  Scotsmen  are  apt  to  attach 
the  same  half  superstitious  reverence  to 
the  name  which  is,  more  than  any  other, 
that  of  Scotland  condensed  in  a  personal- 
ity, the  representative  of  what  is  noblest 
and  also  of  much  that  is  erring  in  their 
race.  .  .  .  The  affectations  of  his 
style  are  insignificant  and  rare.  His  pre- 
vailing characteristic  is  an  absolute  sin- 
cerity. A  love  for  the  lower  forms  of 
social  life  was  his  besetting  sin ;  Nature 
was  his  healing  power.  Burns  compares 
himself  to  an  ^Eolian  harp,  strung  to  every 
wind  of  heaven.  His  genius  flows  over 
all  living  and  lifeless  things  with  a  sym- 
pathy that  finds  nothing  mean  or  insignifi- 
cant.— Nicol,  John,  1875,  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  vol.  11. 

Three  things  may  be  noted  as  to  the  in- 
flunce  of  Burns  on  men's  feeling  for 
Nature.  First,  he  was  a  more  entirely 
open-air  poet  than  any  first-rate  singer 
who  had  yet  lived,  and  as  such  he  dealt 
with  Nature  in  a  more  free,  close,  intimate 
way  than  any  English  poet  since  the  old 
ballad-singers.  He  did  more  to  bring  the 
hearts  of  men  close  to  the  outer  world, 
and  the  outer  world  to  the  heart,  than  any 
former  poet.  His  keen  eye  looked 
directly,  with  no  intervening  medium,  on 
the  face  alike  of  Nature  and  of  man,  and 
embraced  all  creation  in  one  large  sym- 
pathy. With  familiar  tenderness  he  dwelt 
on  the  lower  creatures,  felt  for  their 
sufferings,  as  if  they  had  been  his  own, 
and  opened  men's  hearts  to  feel  how  much 
the  groans  of  creation  are  needlessly 


260 


ROBERT  BURNS 


increased  by  the  indifference  or  cruelty  of 
man.  In  Burns,  as  in  Cowper,  and  in  him 
perhaps  more  than  in  Cowper,  there  was  a 
large  going  forth  of  tenderness  to  the 
lower  creatures,  and  in  their  poetry  this 
first  found  utterance,  and  in  no  poet  since 
their  time,  so  fully  as  in  these  two. 
Secondly,  his  feeling  in  Nature's  presence 
was  not,  as  in  the  English  poets  of  his 
time,  a  quiet  contemplative  pleasure.  It 
was  nothing  short  of  rapture.  Other 
more  modern  poets  may  have  been  thrilled 
with  the  same  delight,  he  alone  of  all  in 
last  century  expressed  the  thrill.  In 
this,  as  in  other  things,  he  is  the  truest 
herald  of  that  strain  of  rejoicing  in  Nature, 
even  to  ecstasy,  which  has  formed  one  of 
the  finest  tones  in  the  poetry  of  this  cen- 
tury. Thirdly,  he  does  not  philosophize 
on  Nature  or  her  relation  to  man ;  he  feels 
it,  alike  in  his  joyful  moods  and  in  his  sor- 
rowful. It  is  to  him  part  of  what  he  calls 
''the  universal  plan,'^  but  he  nowhere 
reasons  about  the  life  of  Nature  as  he 
often  does  so  trenchantly  about  that  of 
man. — Shairp,  John  Campbell,  1877, 
On  Poetic  Interpretation  of  Nature,  p.  229. 

The  vigorous  and  beautiful  poetry  which 
Burns  thus  produced  gave  men  a  new 
standard  of  criticism.  The  decasyllabic 
metre,  which  Pope  had  made  fashionable, 
was  at  once  discarded,  and  most  of  the 
great  writers  of  the  period  adopted  either 
original  or  other  styles.  —  Walpole, 
Spencer,  1878,  A  History  of  England 
from  the  Conclusion  of  the  Great  War  in 
1815,  vol.  I,  p.  348. 

 Burns,  like  Chaucer,  comes  short  of  a 

f  high  seriousness  of  the  great  classics, 
\  and  the  virtue  of  matter  and  manner  which 
\  goes  with  that  high  seriousness  is  wanting 
to  his  work.  .  .  .  We  arrive  best  at 
the  real  estimate  of  Burns,  I  think,  by  con- 
ceiving his  work  as  having  truth  of  matter 
and  truth  of  manner,  but  not  the  accent 
or  the  poetic  virtue  of  the  highest  mas- 
*  ters.  .  .  .  The  freedom  of  Chaucer  is 
heightened,  in  Burns,  by  a  fiery,  reckless 
energy ;  the  benignity  of  Chaucer  deepens, 
in  Burns,  into  an  overwhelming  sense  of  the 
pathos  of  things ; — of  the  pathos  of  human 
nature,  the  pathos,  also,  of  non-human 
nature.  Instead  of  the  fluidity  of  Chau- 
cer's manner,  the  manner  of  Burns  has 
spring,  bounding  swiftness.  Burns  is  by 
far  the  greater  force,  though  he  has  per- 
haps less  charm.    The  world  of  Chaucer 


is  fairer,  richer,  more  significant  than  that 
of  Burns ;  but  when  the  largeness  and  free- 
dom of  Burns  get  full  sweep,  as  in  "Tam 
o'  Shanter,"  or  still  more  in  that  puissant 
and  splendid  production,  ''The  Jolly  Beg- 
gars," his  world  may  be  what  it  will,  his 
poetic  genius  triumphs  over  it. — Arnold, 
Matthew,  1880,  English  Poets,  ed.  Ward, 
Introduction,  vol.  I,  pp.  xliv,  xlv. 

Touched  by  his  hand,  the  wayside  weed 
Becomes  a  flower ;  the  lowliest  reed 

Beside  the  stream 
Is  clothed  with  beauty;  gorse  and  grass 
And  heather,  where  his  footsteps  pass, 

The  brighter  seem. 
He  sings  of  love,  whose  flame  illumes 
The  darkness  of  lone  cottage  rooms ; 

He  feels  the  force, 
The  treacherous  undertow  and  stress, 
Of  wayward  passions,  and  no  less 

The  keen  remorse. 
At  moments,  wrestling  with  his  fate, 
His  voice  is  harsh,  but  not  with  hate ; 

The  brush -wood,  hung 
Above  the  tavern  door,  lets  fall 
Its  bitter  leaf,  its  drop  of  gall, 

Upon  his  tongue. 
But  still  the  music  of  his  song 
Rises  o'er  all,  elate  and  strong ; 

Its  master-chords 
Are  Manhood,  Freedom,  Brotherhood, 
Its  discords  but  an  interlude 

Between  the  words. 

—Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  1880,  Robert 
Burns,  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  61,  p.  322 ; 
Ultima  Thule. 

Burns'  poetry  shares  with  all  poetry  of 
the  first  order  of  excellence  the  life  and 
movement  not  of  one  age  but  of  all  ages, 
that  which  belongs  to  what  Wordsworth 
calls  ''the  essential  passions"  of  human 
nature.  It  is  the  voice  of  nature  which 
we  hear  in  his  poetry,  and  it  is  of  that 
nature  one  touch  of  which  makes  the  ; 
whole  world  kin.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
any  poet,  ancient  or  modern,  has  evoked 
as  much  personal  attachment  of  a  fervid 
and  perfervid  quality  as  Burns  has  been 
able  to  draw  to  himself.  It  is  an  attach- 
ment the  amount  and  the  quality  of  which 
are  not  to  be  explained  by  anything  in  the 
history  of  the  man,  anything  apart  from 
the  exercise  of  his  genius  as  a  poet.  His 
misfortunes,  though  they  were  great,  do 
not  account  for  it — these  are  cancelled  by 
his  faults,  from  which  his  misfortunes  are 
not  easily  separated.  What  renders  it  at 
all  intelligible  is  that  human  nature,  in  its 
most  ordinary  shapes,  is  more  poetical 


ROBERT  BURNS 


261 


than  it  looks,  and  that  exactly  at  those 
moments  of  its  consciousness  in  which  it 
is  most  truly  because  most  vividly  and 
powerfully  and  poetically  itself,  Burns  has 
a  voice  to  give  to  it.— Service,  John, 
1880,  English  Poets,  ed.  Ward,  vol.  iii, 
p.  515. 

In  no  respect  do  the  poems  of  Words- 
worth more  strongly  contrast  with  those 
of  Burns  than  in  what  I  would  call,  with 
strict  meaning,  historical  value.  The 
first  book  of  Homer's  "Iliad"  makes  the 
life  of  old  heroic  Greece  visible  to  us. 
We  see  it  and  know  it  in  a  sense  in  which 
no  mere  statistical  information  could  place 
it  before  us.  In  this  sense  Burns  is  the 
Scottish  historian  of  his  day  and  genera- 
tion. His  Tam  o'  Shanter,  his  Duncan 
Gray,  his  Doctor  Hornbrook,  his  lads  and 
lasses  frolicking  at  Halloween,  his  peasant 
opening  the  Bible  and  reverently  reading 
it  to  his  household  in  the  evening,  are  as 
true  to  the  Ayrshire  of  his  time  as  the 
weeping  Achilles  and  his  divine  mother, 
the  mourning  Priam  and  his  dead  Hector, 
are  to  that  old  Homeric  world ;  and  the 
same  ring  and  shout  of  human  laughter 
makes  ancient  and  modern  kin,  when  the 
preternatural  potent  of  Halloween  turns 
out  to  be  "grumphy,  asteer  that  night,'' 
and  when  Ajax,  clearing  from  mouth  and 
nostril  the  mud  into  which  he  had  flopped, 
complains  that,  he  had  been  tripped  up  in 
the  race  by  Pallas,  and  the  surrounding 
Achaians  ''laugh  sweetly"  at  the  notion. 
Now  Wordsworth's  poems,  as  compared 
with  those  of  Keats  and  Shelley,  are  racy 
of  the  soil.  There  is  a  good  deal  of 
Cumberland  in  them.  But,  compared  with 
those  of  Burns,  they  are  outside  Cumber- 
land life. — Bayne,  Peter,  1881,  Essay 
on  Poetry y  Two  Great  Englishwomen,  p Axil. 

His  humour  comes  from  him  in  a  stream 
so  deep  and  easy  that  I  will  venture  to  call 
him  the  best  of  humourous  poets. — Stev- 
enson, Robert  Louis,  1882,  Soms  Aspects 
of  Robert  Burns,  Familiar  Studies  of  Men 
and  Books  p.  85. 

We  praised  the  "Lass  o'  Ballochmyle," 
We  talked  of  Mary,  loved  and  lost, 
Until  our  spirits  touched  and  crossed, 

And  melted  into  tears,  the  while; 

We  drank  to  "Nell,"  and  "Bonnie  Jean," 
To  "Chloris,"  and  the  "Banks  o'  Cree"— 

Blest  hour! — I  keep  its  mem'ry  green, 
The  night  you  quoted  Burns  to  me. 

—Matthews,  James  Newton,  1883,  The 
Night  you  Quoted  Burns  to  Me. 


He  was  the  final  product  of  a  long-con- 
tinued tendency  in  one  direction,  and 
not  a  miraculous  phenomenon. — Perry, 
Thomas  Sergeant,  1883,  English  Liter- 
ature  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  431. 

He  found  his  idea,  not  in  the  remote  and 
conventional,  but  in  the  familiar  and  near- 
at-hand ;  and,  without  rant  or  trick,  with 
genuine  feeling,  gave  it  articulate  voice — • 
a  voice  not  from  the  university,  but  from 
the  heart  of  Nature.  Thus  we  may  under- 
stand why  no  poetry  was  ever  more  instan- 
taneously and  more  widely  popular ;  why 
in  the  rural  circle  he  was  a  delight  and  an 
admiration,  and  in  cultured  Edinburgh  a 
phenomenon.  ...  A  playmate  to 
Nature  and  to  Man. — Welsh,  Alfred  H., 
1883,  Development  of  English  Literature 
and  Language,  vol.  ii,  pp.  235,  237. 
We  saw  again  the  plowman  lad, 

As  by  the  banks  of  Ayr  he  wandered, 
With  burning  eyes  and  eager  heart, 

And  first  on  Song  and  Scotland  pondered ; 
We  saw  him,  as  from  Nature's  soul 

His  ow^n  drew  draughts  of  joy  o'erflowing: 
The  plower's  voice,  the  brier-rose, 

The  tiny  harebell  lightly  growing, 
The  wounded  hare  that  passed  him  by, 

The  timorous  mousie's  ruined  dwelling, 
The  cattle  cowering  from  the  blast, 

The  dying  sheep  her  sorrows  telling, — 
All  touched  the  heart  that  kept  so  strong 

Its  sympathy  with  humbler  being, 
And  saw  in  simplest  things  of  life 

The  poetry  that  waits  the  seeing ! 

— Machar,  Agnes  Maule,  1884,  An 
Evening  with  Burns,  The  Century,  vol.  27, 
p.  479. 

Criticism  of  Burns  is  only  permitted  to 
Scotchmen  of  pure  blood.  Admirable 
appreciations  may  be  found  in  the  essays 
of  Carlyle  and  Nichol.  Yet  it  may  be 
said  that,  if  there  are  more  elegant  and 
subtle  song-writers  in  the  language,  no 
one  even  approaches  Burns  in  masculine 
strength  or  concentrated  utterance  of 
passion.  Though  all  his  writings  are  occa- 
sional, he  reflects  every  mood  of  the  na- 
tional character,  its  tenderness,  its  sensu- 
ous vigour,  and  its  patriotic  fervour.  Like 
Byron,  he  always  wrote  at  a  white  heat, 
but,  unlike  Byron,  he  had  the  highest 
lyrical  power,  and,  if  he  sometimes  fails, 
he  does  not  fail  by  excessive  dilution.  He 
is  only  insipid  when  he  tries  to  adopt  the 
conventional  English  of  his  time,  in  obedi- 
ence to  foolish  advice  from  Dr.  Moore 
and  others. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1886, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol.  vii. 


262 


ROBERT  BURNS 


A  quiet  life  of  song.fallentis  semita  vitce, 
was  not  to  be  yours.  Fate  otherwise  de- 
creed it.  The  touch  of  a  lettered  society, 
the  strife  with  the  Kirk,  discontent  with 
the  State,  poverty  and  pride,  neglect  and 
success,  were  needed  to  make  your  Genius 
what  it  was,  and  to  endow  the  world  with 
^'Tam  o'  Shanter,''the  ''Jolly  Beggars," 
and  "Holy  Willie's  Prayer."  Who  can 
praise  them  too  highly — who  admire  in 
them  too  much  the  humour,  the  scorn, 
the  wisdom,  the  unsurpassed  energy  and 
courage  ?— Lang,  Andrew,  1886,  Letters 
to  Dead  Authors,  p.  202. 

Dear  Rob !  Manly,  witty,  fond,  friendly, 
full  of  weak  spots  as  well  as  strong  ones — ■ 
essential  type  of  so  many  thousands — 
perhaps  the  average,  as  just  said,  of  the 
decent-born  young  men  and  the  early  mid- 
aged,  not  only  of  the  British  Isles,  but 
America,  too,  North  and  South,  just  the 
same.  I  think,  indeed,  one  best  part  of 
Burns  is  the  unquestionable  proof  he  pre- 
sents of  the  perennial  existence  among 
the  laboring  classes,  especially  farmers, 
of  the  finest  latent  poetic  elements  in  their 
blood.  (How  clear  it  is  to  me  that  the 
common  soil  has  always  been,  and  is  now, 
thickly  strewn  with  just  such  gems.)  He 
is  well  called  the  Ploughman.  .  .  . 
There  is  something  about  Burns  peculiarly 
acceptable  to  the  concrete,  human  points 
of  view.  He  poetizes  work-a-day  agricul- 
tural labor  and  life  (whose  spirit  and 
sympathies,  as  well  as  practicalities,  are 
much  the  same  everywhere),  and  treats 
fresh,  often  coarse,  natural  occurrences, 
loves,  persons,  not  like  many  new  and 
some  old  poets  in  a  genteel  style  of  gilt 
and  china,  or  at  second  or  third  removes, 
but  in  their  ov;n  born  atmosphere,  laugh- 
ter, sweat,  unction.  Perhaps  no  one  ever 
sang  "lads  and  lassies" — that  universal 
race,  mainly  the  same,  too,  all  ages,  all 
lands — down  on  their  own  plane,  as  he 
has.  He  exhibits  no  philosophy  worth 
mentioning ;  his  morality  is  hardly  more 
than  parrot-talk — not  bad  or  deficient,  but 
cheap,  shopworn,  the  platitudes  of  old  aunts 
and  uncles  to  the  youngsters  (be  good  boys 
and  keep  your  noses  clean.)  Only  when 
he  gets  at  Poosie  Nansie's,  celebrating  the 
"barley  bree,"  or  among  tramps,  or  demo- 
cratic bouts  and  drinking  generally, 

("Freedom  and  wliiskey  ^^ang  thes'ither,") 
we  have,  in  his  own  unmistakable  color 
and  warmth,  those  interiors  of  rake-helly 


life  and  tavern  fun — the  cantabile  of  jolly 
beggars  in  highest  jinks — lights  and 
groupings  of  rank  glee  and  brawny  amor- 
ousness, outvying  the  best  painted  pictures 
of  the  Dutch  school,  or  any  school.  .  .  . 
Never  indeed  was  there  truer  utterance  in  a 
certain  range  of  idiosyncrasy  than  by  this 
poet.  Hardly  a  piece  of  his,  large  or  small, 
but  has  "snap"  and  raciness.  .  .  .  Finally, 
in  any  summing-up  of  Burns,  though  so 
m.uch  is  to  be  said  in  the  way  of  fault- 
finding, drawing  black  marks, and  doubtless 
severe  literary  criticism — (in  the  present 
outpouring  I  have  "kept  myself  in,"  rather 
than  allow'd  any 'free  flow) — after  full 
retrospect  of  his  work  and  life,  the  afore- 
said "odd-kind  chiel"  remains  to  my  heart 
and  brain  as  almost  the  tenderest,  manliest, 
and  (even  if  contradictory)  dearest  flesh- 
and-blood  figure  in  all  the  streams  and 
clusters  of  by-gone  poets. — Whitman, 
Walt,  1886-88,  Robert  Burns  as  Poet 
and  Person,  November  Boughs,  pp.  59, 
60,  63,  64. 

The  books  that  have  most  influenced  me 
are  inaccessible  to  the  general  reader, 
Horace,  Pindar,  and  Dante,  for  instance ; 
but  these  following  are  good  for  every- 
body:— Scott's  "Lady  of  the  Lake"  and 
"Marmion"  (the  "Lady"  first  for  me, 
though  not  for  Scott).  Pope's  "Homer's 
Iliad"  Byron,  all,  but  most  "Corsair," 
"Bride  of  Abydos,"  and  the  "Two  Fos- 
cari. "  Coleridge  and  Keats,  in  my  youth. 
Burns,  as  I  grew  older  and  wiser. — Rus- 
KiN,  John,  1887,  Books  which  Have  In- 
fluenced Me,  p.  43. 

It  has  always  been  a  mystery  to  me  why 
Walter  Scott  stands  so  low  in  the  estima- 
tion of  the  present  race  of  Scotsmen  all 
over  the  world,  and  why  Robert  Burns,  a 
greatly  inferior  genius,  stands  so  high. 
Is  it  because  the  majority  of  the  Scotch 
people  are  so  ultra-democratic  that  they 
cannot  forgive  Scott  for  being  an  aristo- 
crat ;  and  that  they  almost  worship  Burns 
because  he  was  born  and  nurtured  and  died 
in  poverty,  because  he  was  an  ultra- 
plebeian,  earning  his  scanty  and  pre- 
carious bread  by  the  sweat  of  his  brDW  ? 
Or  do  the  multitude,  in  all  countries,  love 
their  heroes  all  the  more  because  of  their 
conspicuous  human  frailties,  and  have 
nothing  but  cold  respect  for  the  great  men 
who  are  only  virtuous  and  respectable? 
— Mackay,  Charles,  1887,  Through  the 
Long  Day,  vol.  i,  p.  147. 


ROBERT  BURNS 


263 


But  more  than  all  fend  memory  turns 
And  rests  on  Ayr,  the  home  of  Burns. 
For  there  the  "Daisy"  was  up  torn, 

To  blossom  on  a  wider  field ; 
And  there  the  "Mousie,"  kindred  born. 

Was  first  to  iwesie  revealed. 
The  land  of  "Auld  Lang  Syne"  is  there, 
The  cotter's  home,  the  evening  prayer: 
To  these,  in  truth,  the  memory  turns — 
To  these,  which  make  the  Land  of  Burns. 


It  seemed  his  mission  to  bestow 

On  humble  things  the  highest  worth ; 

The  streams  that  by  his  "shieling"  flow 
Ripple  in  song  o'er  all  the  earth. 

The  little  Kirk  of  Alloway 

Shines  forth  immortal  in  his  lay, 

And,  filled  with  witches,  takes  its  stand, 

The  ruin  of  his  storied  land. 


His  "Scots  wha  hae"  rings  out  more  clear 

Than  any  song  in  field  or  camp ; 
And  others  rise  more  true  and  dear — 

"The  rank  is  but  the  guinea-stamp." 
For  there  are  grander  fields  to  fight, 
Where  man  proclaims  his  brother's  right; 
And  Burns  of  poets  leads  the  van 
In  simple  truth — that  man  is  man. 

— Bruce,  Wallace,  1887,  The  Land  of 
Burns,  Old  Homestead  Poems,  pp.  100, 
101,  103. 

It  is  not  chiefly  the  romantic  side  of  the 
Scotch  character  which  was  represented 
to  Burns — its  imagination,  its  patriotism, 
its  zealous  affectionateness,  its  love  of  the 
legendary,  the  marvelous  and  the  ancient, 
that  part,  in  fact,  which  belongs  most  to  the 
highlands ;  he  was  more  amply  furnished 
with  the  stronger  lowland  qualities,  sense, 
independence,  courageous  perseverance, 
shrewdness,  and  humour,  a  retentive  heart, 
and  a  mind  truthful  alike  when  fully  ex- 
pressed or  when  partially  reserved^  These 
qualities  were  united  in  his  abundant 
nature ;  and  his  poetic  temperament  freed 
them  from  the  limitations  which  belonged 
to  every  character  formed  upon  a  local 
type.  The  consequence  is  that  his  songs 
are  sung  at  the  hearth  and  on  the  moun- 
tain-side ;  his  pathos  is  felt  and  his  humour 
applauded  by  the  village  circle ;  his  sharp 
descriptions  and  shrewd  questions  on  grave 
matters  are  treated  as  indulgently  by 
ministers  of  the  "National  Assembly," 
the  "Free  Kirk,"  and  "orthodox  dis- 
senters," as  Boccaccio's  stories  once  were 
by  the  Italian  clergy ;  and  for  the  lonely 
traveller  from  the  South  the  one  small 
volume  which  contains  his  works  is  the 
best  of  guide-books,  not  indeed  to  noted 


spots,  legendary  or  famed  for  beauty, — 
but  to  the  manners,  the  moral  soul,  and 
the  heart  of  the  Scotch  people.  Burns  is 
emphatically  the  most  national  of  poets. 
— De  Vere,  Aubrey,  1887,  Essays  Chiefly 
on  Poetry,  vol.  11,  p,  121. 

Those  who  hold  that  poetry  should  move 
in  a  realm  apart  from  the  actual  world 
find  little  to  enchant  or  interest  them  in 
Burns,  for  it  was  with  the  actual  world 
alone  that  he  sought  to  deal.  The  sphere 
of  his  observation  was  narrov/  in  com- 
parison with  that  of  most  great  poets. 
The  only  class  he  knew  thoroughly  were 
the  Scottish  peasantry,  a  class  born  to  a 
life  of  labour  and  anxiety,  with  few  excite- 
ments to  break  the  monotony  of  their  toil. 
Burns  had  no  wish  to  transform  them  into 
idyllic  figures;  he  was  content  to  take 
them  as  they  were,  and  in  their  simple 
lives  he  found  all  the  experiences  which, 
when  touched  by  imagination,  move  man- 
kind to  laughter  or  to  tears. — Sime, 
James,  1887,  Robert  Burns,  English  Il- 
lustrated Magazine,  vol.  4,  p.  339. 

The  Voice  of  a  wondrous  Seer ! 

The  voice  of  a  soul  that  is  strong ! 
As  true  as  Love,  and  as  swift  as  Fear 

In  the  mazes  of  marvellous  song. 
Far  over  the  mountains  bare, 

Red  heather,  and  ridges  of  sea. 
It  flows  in  the  pulse  of  the  living  air, 

And  throbs  in  the  veins  of  the  free. 
It  whispers  in  Summer's  breath, 

It  lisps  on  the  creamy  shore. 
It  sings  in  the  lips  that  smile  at  death, 

In  the  storm  and  cataract's  roar. 
It  murmurs  in  brae  and  birk, 

It  pleads  in  the  daisy's  eye, 
Where  hands  are  toughened  by  honest  work, 

And  bairns  in  their  cradles  lie ; 
In  cottage,  in  kirk,  and  bower. 

In  hall,  in  court,  and  in  mart. 
In  the  chirp  of  the  mavis,  and  hawthorn 
flower. 

And  the  maiden's  simple  heart. 
It  croons  in  the  blaze  of  the  inn, 

Where  the  droughty  neighbors  bide. 
It  shrieks  in  the  ghastly  glare  and  din, 

Where  the  witches  dance  and  ride. 
Its  mirth  is  a  tempest  of  glee. 

Its  grief  is  the  smart  of  fire, 
Its  solemn  strain  is  the  trump  of  the  sea, 

Its  chorus  the  world's  desire! 
I  listen,  and  brooklet  and  wold. 

Wild  bird  and  the  darkling  wood 
And  breathing  secrets  before  untold 

Of  the  perfect  and  passionless  Good. 

—Powers,  Horatio  Nelson,  1887,  Ten 
Years  of  Song. 


264 


ROBERT  BURNS 


The  one  immortal  bard  of  humanit3^ 
—Russell,  A.  P.,  1888,  A  Club  of  One, 
p.  150. 

To-night  amid  Canadian  snows, 

In  lordly  hall  and  cottage  home, 
Where'er  the  blood  of  Scotsmen  flows, 

Where'er  the  feet  of  Scotsmen  roam ; 
One  name  upon  the  lips  grows  sweet, 

More  rich  than  wine  from  purple  urns, 
With  thrill  electric  flashing  fleet, 

The  name  o/" Robert  Burns. 
—  Macfarland,   John,    1888,  Robert 
Burns,  Jan.  25. 

The  love  poetry  of  Burns  affords  an 
abundant  exemplification  of  nearly  all  the 
known  devices  peculiar  to  the  theme. 
Consisting  of  short  effusions,  mainly  songs, 
it  almost  entirely  excludes  plot-interest ; 
occasionally  there  is  a  slight  use  of  nar- 
rative, as  in  *'The  Soldier's  Return"  and 
''There  was  a  lass  and  she  was  fair."  In 
regard  to  description  of  the  object  of  love. 
Burns  usually  depends  on  a  few  unsystem- 
atic touches,  expressive  of  the  emotion 
excited.  Sometimes,  however,  he  does 
enter  on  a  regular  enumeration  of  the 
qualities  that  charm  ;  but  his  method  even 
then  is  rather  to  elevate  the  object  by 
comparisons,  both  figurative  and  literal, 
than  to  give  any  distinct  impression  of  the 
personal  appearance. — Bain,  Alexander, 
1888,  English  Composition  and  Rhetoric, 
Part  Second,  p.  157. 

In  respect  of  genius,  I  think  it  is  now 
universally  admitted  that  our  Ayrshire 
bard  has  gained  for  himself,  by  the  number, 
the  variety,  and  the  brilliancy  of  his  pro- 
ductions, a  place  in  the  first  rank  of  the 
great  singers  of  the  intellectual  world, — 
Pindar,  Chaucer,  Horace,  Hafiz,  Goethe, 
Beranger,  Moore,  and  if  there  be  any  others 
who  enjoy  an  equally  wide  recognition. 
.  .  .  If  ever  there  was  a  song-writer 
who  could  say  with  the  most  catholic  com- 
prehensiveness in  the  words  of  the  old 
comedian,  *7  am  a  man,  and  all  things 
human  are  kin  to  me,"  it  v/as  Robert  Burns. 
In  this  respect  he  is  the  Shakespeare  of 
lyric  poetry.  ...  If  inferior  to  Cole- 
ridge in  ideal  speculation,  to  Wordsworth 
in  harmonious  contemplation,  and  to 
Southey  in  book-learning,  in  all  that  con- 
cerns living  men  and  human  life  and  human 
society  he  was  extremely  sharp-sighted 
and  not  only  wise  in  penetrating  to  the 
inmost  springs  of  human  thought  and  sen- 
timent, but  in  the  judgment  of  conduct 
eminently  shrewd  and  sagacious ;  gifted, 


in  the  highest  degree,  with  that  funda- 
mental virtue  of  all  sound  Scotsmen, 
common-sense,  without  which  great  genius 
in  full  career  is  apt  to  lead  a  man  astray 
from  his  surroundings, and  make  him  most 
a  stranger  to  that  with  which  in  common 
life  he  ought  to  be  most  familiar. — 
Blackie,  John  Stuart,  1888,  Life  of 
Robert  Burns(Great  Writers),  pp.  157,160. 
[Song]  drooped  and  fell,  and  one  'neath  north- 
ern skies. 

With  southern  heart, who  tilled  his  father's 
field. 

Found  Poesy  a-dying,  bade  her  rise 
And  touch  quick  nature's  hem  and  go 
forth  healed. 

On  life's  broad  plain  the  ploughman's  con- 
quering share 
Upturned  the  fallow  lands  of  truth  anew. 

And  o'er  the  formal  garden's  trim  parterre 
The  peasant's  team  a  ruthless  furrow  drew. 

— Watson,  W^illiam,  1890,  Wordsworth's 

Grave. 

To  Burns  the  very  air  was  charged  with 
poetry,  and  his  heart  responded  to  every 
appeal  made  to  his  imagination.  He  saw 
Nature  with  a  clear  and  penetrating  vision ; 
his  emotions  and  experiences  were  blended 
with  the  world  about  him,  and  in  a  single 
line  a  whole  landscape  flashes  into  view. 
Burns  spoke  of  Nature  without  a  touch 
of  self-consciousness  and  with  the  intimacy 
of  one  born  to  the  soil ;  he  loved  with 
infinite  tenderness  every  living  thing  that 
made  its  home  in  the  fields.  His  early 
familiarity  with  field  and  sky,  the  solitude 
that  came  with  that  intercourse,  the  sensi- 
tiveness of  his  imagination,  and  the  passion 
of  his  nature  gave  his  poetry  a  thrill  and 
rapture  born  only  of  the  deepest  emotion. 
The  commonest  wild-flower,  in  the  verse  of 
this  passionate  singer,  has  its  roots  beside 
the  fountain  of  tears,  and  not  a  leaf  stirs 
or  falls  but  its  image  is  caught  in  the 
tumultuous  sweep  and  current  of  life. — 
Mabie,  Hamilton  Wright,  1891-93,  Short 
Studies  in  Liter ature^  p.  101. 

It  is  for  his  service  to  Scotland  in  the 
matter  of  songs  that  we  specially  delight 
to  honour  him.  It  was  he,  more  than  all 
else  put  together,  who  made  Scottish  song 
the  glorious  thing  that  it  is.  Prior  to 
Burns's  appearance  on  the  stage  of  human 
existence  what  was  the  condition,  Sir,  of 
our  national  minstrelsy  ?  We  had  a  popu- 
lar song-book  polluted  on  every  page. 
Such  of  the  popular  songs  of  the  time — if 
you  except  a  dozen  or  so,  **The  Flower  o' 


ROBERT  BURNS 


265 


the  Forest,"  '*Auld  Robin  Gray,"  ''Nae 
luck  about  the  hoose,"  "Logie  o'  Bu- 
chan,"  ''Johnnie  Cope,"  ''Maggie  Lau- 
der," and  "Down  the  burn,  Davie,"  and 
one  or  two  more — such  of  them,  I  say,  with 
these  few  exceptions,  as  were  not  tainted 
with  vulgarity  and  vile  innuendo,  were 
the  most  puerile  and  feckless  doggerel. 
Burns  set  himself  to  purify  these  old  songs, 
and  gave  us  a  song-book  which  is  like  a 
human  psalter  by  comparison.  It  is  when 
we  take  up  Ramsay's  "Evergreen"  and 
the  "Tea-Table  Miscellany,"  or  Herd's 
collection  of  old  songs  and  ballads,  and 
look  at  the  original  of  "Dainty  Davie," 
"She  rose  and  loot  me  in,"  and  "John 
Anderson  my  jo,"  and  some  more  that  we 
discover  the  noble— the  God's  work — 
which  he  performed.  It  is  for  the  purifi- 
cation of  these  old  songs,  and  for  the 
hundred  and  more  original  gems  which  he 
added  to  our  song-book,  that  we  regard 
Robert  Burns  as  a  gift  from  the  gods. 
It  is  for  this  that  we  can  overlook  so  many 
of  his  faults  and  failings.  It  is  for  this 
that  we  delight  to  honour  his  memory — 
for  this  we  are  "a'  sae  prood  o'  Robin." 
— Ford,  Robert,  1893,  Address  Delivered 
Before  the  Barlinnie  Burns  Club,  Jan.  25 ; 
Burnsiana,  vol.  iv,  p.  87. 

And  the  natural  greatness  of  mind  that 
prompted  this  ambition  was  not  without 
special  influences  to  keep  the  flame  alive. 
Had  Burns  been  educated  as  other  iQcal 
rhymers  were,  he  might  have  remained, 
like  them,  content  with  local  fame,  ignor- 
ant of  the  great  world  outside,  hungering 
for  no  applause  beyond  his  own  small 
circle,  because  he  was  unaware  of  anything 
more  to  be  desired.  But  the  education  of 
Burns  was  different  from  that  of  other 
local  rhymers,  and  had  carried  him  to 
spiritual  altitudes,  the  views  from  which 
were  bounded  by  a  much  wider  horizon. 
In  common  with  all  the  other  young  men 
of  the  time,  rich  and  poor,  Burns  had  the 
advantage  for  a  poet  of  living  in  a  poetical 
atmosphere ;  but  he  had  the  further  special 
advantage  of  coming  under  personal  influ- 
ences that  helped  powerfully  to  give  his 
work  the  quality  of  greatness. — MiNTO, 
William,  1894,  The  Literature  of  the 
Georgian  Era,  ed.  Knight,  p.  160. 

The  collective  poems  of  Robert  Burns 
have  been  reprinted  on  a  great  number 
of  occasions,  and  in  every  variety  of  form. 
It  is  calculated  that  by  the  end  of  1816 


no  less  than  22  editions  had  appeared  in 
London,  19  in  Edinburgh,  16  in  the  United 
States,  4  in  Dublin,  4  in  Belfast,  3  in 
Glasgow,  2  in  Berwick-upon-Tweed,  1  at 
Kilmarnock,  1  at  Paisley,  and  9  in  other 
towns  scattered  about  England  and  Scot- 
land. The  original  edition  appeared  at 
Kilmarnock  in  1786,  and  for  eighty-four 
years  from  that  date,  say  up  to  1870, 
only  two  years  are  recorded  (1791  and 
1795),  in  which  at  least  one  edition  of 
Burns'  works  was  not  published.  This 
record  of  continuous  publication  is  only 
surpassed  in  the  case  of  three  other  books, 
viz.,  the  Bible,  the  works  of  Shakespeare, 
and  the  "De  Imitatione  Christi."  .  .  . 
The  most  extensive  collection  of  Burnsiana 
in  existence  is  probably  that  in  the 
museum  at  Kay  Park,  Kilmarnock.  It  con- 
sists of  nearly  1000  volumes,  a  large  pro- 
portion of  which  comprise  various  editions 
of  the  poet's  works  published  in  the  United 
Kingdom,  and  the  remainder  of  books 
touching  on  his  life  or  writing  or  the 
scenes  with  which  he  was  associated. 
.  .  .  In  March,  1888,  at  the  sale  of 
the  second  portion  of  the  extensive  library 
of  the  late  Mr.  Gibson-Craig,  a  good  copy 
of  the  Kilmarnock  edition  of  "Poems 
chiefly  in  the  Scottish  Dialect,"  sold  for 
£111,  and  on  another  occasion  a  rebound 
copy  brought  £86.— Slater,  J.  H.,  1894, 
Early  Editions,  pp.  56,  57,  58. 

Not  his  the  light  of  Shakespeare's  line, 

Nor  Milton's  massive  splendour; 
But  Scotland  rich  in  Auld  Langsyne 

Needs  naething  mair  to  mend  her. 
And  while  a  "Daisy"  decks  the  soil, 

And  while  a  wrang  needs  rightin', 
The  rough,  strong-hearted  sons  of  toil, 

Shall  still  his  songs  delight  in. 

— Murdoch,  Alexander  G.  ,  1894,  Rhymin' 
Robin,  Burnsiana,  vol.  iv,  p.  24. 

It  has  been  the  common  responsibility 
of  his  biographers  to  point  out  how  differ- 
ently he  might  have  lived,  how  much  more 
wisely  he  might  have  ordered  his  days. 
More  wisely,  perhaps,  but  not  so  well. 
There  is  a  diviner  economy  in  these  things 
than  we  have  come  to  allow.  —  Rhys, 
Ernest,  1895,  ed..  The  Lyrical  Poems  of 
Burns. 

There  is  perhaps  only  one  poet  of  real 
po\Yer  who  ever  has  been  in  modern 
times  popular, — Robert  Burns. — Walker, 
Henry  L.,  1895,  The  Greater  Victorian 
Poets,  p.  47. 


266 


ROBERT  BURNS 


John  Barleycorn 
Prepared  his  sweetest  rose  and  sharpest 
thorn ; 

The  witches  set  their  heads  and  hoofs  to 
work, 

To  hunt  O'Shanter  from  the  ancient  kirk; 
The  hills  began  to  put  themselves  in  tune 
To  voice  the  care  that  lurked  in  "Bonnie 
Doon ; ' ' 

The  world  would  soon  a  world  of  love  en- 
shrine 

Within  the  golden  bars  of  ' '  Auld  Lang  Syne ; ' ' 
The  cotter's  home  produced  its  greatest  grief, 
But  fame  and  glory,  far  beyond  belief — 
When  Burns  was  born ! 

—Carleton,  Will,  1895,  Rhymes  of  our 
Planet,  p.  32. 

All  the  same,  this  disability  weighs  me 
down  with  a  sense  of  hopeless  obtuseness 
when  1  consider  the  deportment  of  the 
average  intelligent  Scot  at  a  Burns  ban- 
quet, or  a  Burns  conversazione,  or  a  Burns 
festival,  or  the  unveiling  of  a  Burns  statue, 
or  the  putting  up  of  a  pillar  on  some  spot 
made  famous  by  Burns.  All  over  the 
world — and  all  under  it,  too,  when  their 
time  comes — Scotsmen  are  preparing 
after-dinner  speeches  about  Burns.  The 
great  globe  swings  round  out  of  the  sun 
into  the  dark;  there  is  always  midnight 
somewhere;  and  always  in  this  shifting 
region  the  eye  of  imagination  sees  orators 
gesticulating  over  Burns;  companies  of 
heated  exiles  with  crossed  arms  shouting 
''Auld  Lang  Syne;"  lesser  groups— if 
haply  they  be  lesser — reposing  under 
tables,  still  in  honour  of  Burns.  And  as  the 
vast  continents  sweep  ''eastering  out  of 
the  high  shadow  which  reaches  beyond  the 
moon,"  and  as  new  nations,  with  their 
cities  and  villages,  their  mountains  and 
seashores,  rise  up  on  the  morning-side, 
lo!  fresh  troops,  and  still  fresh  troops, 
and  yet  again  fresh  troops,  wend  or  are 
carried  out  of  action  with  the  dawn. 
None  but  a  churl  would  wish  this  enthu- 
siasm abated.  But  why  is  it  all  lavished 
on  Burns?  That  is  what  gravels  the 
Southron.  Why  Burns?  Why  not  Sir 
Walter?  Had  I  the  honor  to  be  a  fellow- 
countryman  of  Scott,  and  had  I  command 
of  the  racial  tom-tom,  it  seems  to  me 
that  I  would  tune  upon  it  in  honor  of  that 
great  man  until  I  dropped.— Quiller- 
CouCH,  A.  T.,  1896,  Adventures  in  Criti- 
cism, p.  109. 

A  man  of  Burns's  temperament,  born 
in  the  middle  of  that  (the  18th)  century, 
was  almost  bound  to  combine  rationalism 


in  theology  with  a  genuine  religious  sen- 
timent. It  is  unnecessary  to  search  very 
particularly  in  his  actual  theological  en- 
vironment for  the  origins  of  his  religion. 
He  had  the  same  bias  in  reasoning — 
towards  materialism,  empiricism,  ''com- 
mon-sense,"— as  most  of  the  leading  intel- 
lect of  the  age.  .  .  .  It  would  be  a  mis- 
take to  try  to  trace  any  very  close  con- 
nection between  the  thought  of  Burns,  so 
far  it  was  dogmatic,  and  the  doctrines 
held  by  the  New  Light  ministers  who  took 
the  young  farmer  by  the  hand,  and  eulo- 
gised the  satires  which  he  wrote  for  their 
side.  The  doctrine  spread  by  Auld,  Rus- 
sell and  their  kind  disgusted  him ;  but  his 
polemic  against  them  was  purely  neg- 
ative and  destructive.  .  .  .  The  con- 
sciousness of  the  living  presence  of  God 
in  nature  was  always  stronger  in  him  than 
any  theory  of  redemption.  An  intellectual 
sceptic,  he  was  not  really  interested  in 
theological  dogma,  though  moral  and 
emotional  causes  preserved  in  him  certain 
relics  of  more  or  less  inter-dependant 
doctrines. — Wallace,  William,  1896, 
rev.  The  Life  and  Works  of  Robert  Burns, 
ed.  by  Robert  Chambers. 

Rare  as  was  the  poetic  gift  of  Burns, 
and  unique  in  their  quality  of  pure  ele- 
mental passion  as  were  his  bursts  of 
song,  the  poet  himself  has  no  place  in 
what  is  mainly  a  history  of  influences 
and  tendencies.  Writing  as  he  did — so 
long  at  least  as  he  wrote  poetry  and  not 
somewhat  inferior  verse — in  the  Lowland 
Scottish  vernacular,  he  naturally  could 
not  contribute  anything  directly  to  the 
development  of  English  poetic  literature. 
Nor  does  it  even  appear  that  he  directly 
influenced  those  who  were  the  main  con- 
tributors to  this  work. — Traill,  Henry 
Duff,  1896,  Social  England,  vol.  v,  p.  445. 

His  ideas  are — to  use  the  rough  old 
Lockian  division — ideas  of  sensation,  not 
of  reflection;  and  when  he  goes  beyond 
them  he  is  sensible,  healthy,  respectable, 
but  not  deep  or  high.  In  his  own  range 
there  are  few  depths  or  heights  to  w^hich 
he  has  not  soared  or  plunged.  ...  In 
the  expression  of  the  triumph  and  despair 
of  love,  not  sicklied  over  with  any  thought 
as  inmost  modern  poets, only  Catullus  and 
Sappho  can  touch  Burns. — Saintsbury, 
George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  pp.  15,  16. 

Always  a  poet,  he  was  more,  much 


ROBERT  BURNS 


267 


more  than  a  poet.  He  was  a  student  of 
man, — of  all  sorts  of  men  ;  caring  much, 
as  a  student,  for  the  baser  sort  which 
reveled  in  Poosie  Nansie's  dram-shop, 
and  which  he  celebrated  in  '*The  Jolly 
Beggars;''  but  caring  more  as  a  man,  for 
the  better  sort  which  languished  in  huts 
w^here  poor  men  lodged,  and  which  he 
was  the  voice  of  lamentation  in  "Man 
was  Made  to  Mourn."  He  was  a  student 
of  manners,  which  he  painted  with  a  sure 
hand,  his  masterpiece  being  that  reveren- 
tial reproduction  of  the  family  life  at 
Lochlea  "The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night." 
He  was  a  student  of  nature, — his  love  of 
which  was  conspicuous  in  his  poetry,flush- 
ing  his  words  with  picturesque  phrases 
and  flooding  his  lines  with  the  feeling  of 
outdoor  life.  He  was  a  student  of  animal 
life, — a  lover  of  horses  and  dogs,  observ- 
ant of  their  habits  and  careful  of  their 
comfort.  He  felt  for  the  little  mouse 
which  his  plowshare  turned  out  of  its  nest, 
and  he  pitied  the  poor  hare  which  the 
unskillful  fowler  could  only  wound.  The 
commoners  of  the  earth  and  air  were  dear 
to  him ;  and  the  flower  besides  his  path, 
the  gowan  wet  with  dew,  was  precious  in 
his  eyes.  His  heart  was  large,  his  mind 
was  comprehensive,  and  his  temper  singu- 
larly sweet  and  sunny. — Stoddard,  Rich- 
ard Henry,  1896,  Library  of  the  World's 
Best  Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol.  v,  p.  2839. 

Burns  is  one  of  the  Immortals.  What 
a  fortunate  thing  for  us  that  he  was  not 
educated,  let  us  say  at  Eton  and  Balliol ! 
There  are  many  of  Burns's  poems  (humor- 
ous and  pathetic)  which  are  superb. — 
Locker-Lampson,  Frederick,  1896,  My 
Confidences,  p.  178. 

Other  poets  may  be  the  favourites  of  a 
class  or  a  clique ;  Burns  is  the  favorite  of 
the  whole  world.  The  secret  of  this  uni- 
versal favor  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
he  was  born  in  a  lowly  condition  of  life, 
close  to  our  mother  earth,  and  gave 
utterance  to  the  rudimentary  sentiments, 
the  abiding  sorrows,  and  the  constant 
yearnings  of  human  nature. — Austin, 
Alfred,  1898,  Address  at  the  Unveiling 
of  the  Statue  to  Burns  at  Irvine,  July. 

In  his  love  songs  we  hear  again,  even 
more  simply,  more  directly  the  same  nat- 
ural music  which  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth 
enchanted  the  world.  ...  It  was  the 
strength  of  his  passions  an.d  the  weakness 
of  his  moral  will  which  made  his  poetry 


and  spoilt  his  life.— Brooke,  Stopford 
A.,  1896,  English  Literature,  p.  226. 

I  come  here  as  a  loyal  burgess  of  Dum- 
fries to  do  honour  to  the  greatest  burgess 
of  Dumfries.  .  .  .  Mankind  owes  him 
a  general  debt.  But  the  debt  of  Scotland 
is  special.  For  Burns  exalted  our  race, 
he  hallowed  Scotland  and  the  Scottish 
tongue.  Before  his  time  we  had  for  a 
long  period  been  scarcely  recognised,  we 
had  been  falling  out  of  the  recollection  of 
the  world.  From  the  time  of  the  union 
of  the  Crowns,  and  still  more  from  the 
time  of  the  legislative  union,  Scotland 
has  lapsed  into  obscurity.  Except  for  an 
occasional  riot  or  a  Jacobite  rising,  her 
existance  was  almost  forgotten.  She  had, 
indeed,  her  Robertsons  and  her  Humes 
writing  history  to  general  admiration,  but 
no  trace  of  Scottish  authorship  was  dis- 
coverable in  their  works;  indeed,  every 
flavour  of  national  idiom  was  carefully 
excluded.  The  Scottish  dialect,  as  Burns 
called  it,  was  in  danger  of  perishing. 
Burns  seemed  at  this  juncture  to  start  to 
his  feet  and  re-assert  Scotland's  claim  to 
national  existence;  his  Scottish  notes 
rang  through  the  world,  and  he  thus  pre- 
served the  Scottish  language  forever ;  for 
mankind  will  never  allow  to  die  that  idiom 
in  which  his  songs  and  poems  are  en- 
shrined. That  is  a  part  of  Scotland's 
debt  to  Burns. — Rosebery,  Archibald 
Philip  Primrose  Lord,  1896,  Address  at 
Dumfries,  July  21. 

No  poet,  probably,  excepting  Shake- 
speare, ever  owed  more  than  Burns  to  the 
suggestions  of  predecessors  in  his  art. 
Hardly,  indeed,  is  there  anything  in  his 
work,  down  even  to  details,  for  which  the 
example  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  pages 
of  some  earlier  Scottish  poet — Dunbar, 
Lyndsay,  Semple,  Ramsay,  Fergusson, 
and  countless  unnamed  song  and  ballad 
writers.  With  the  works  of  all  these  he 
was  closely  familiar.  At  the  same  time 
no  poet,  excepting  Shakespeare,  ever 
proved  himself  so  capable  of  transmuting 
the  rude  ore  of  earlier  suggestion  into 
the  fine  gold  of  immortal  song.  It  is 
difficult  at  the  present  day,  when  all  its 
effects  are  a  common  possession,  to  ap- 
preciate the  native  strength  and  original- 
ity of  Burns's  work.  This,  however,  may 
be  ventured,  that  what  the  Revolution 
at  that  time  did  for  France  at  a  cost  of 
untold  horror  and  streams  of  blood,  the 


268 


ROBERT  BURNS 


poetry  of  Burns  did  for  Scotland.  Who 
will  reckon  the  clearing  of  the  air  that 
has  been  made,  the  shams  and  affectations 
and  cruel  tyrannies  that  have  been  killed, 
and  the  courage  and  stamina  which  have 
been  built  into  the  nation's  character  by 
a  single  poem  like  ''Scots  wha  ha'e"  or 
"  A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that"? — Eyre- 
ToDD,  George,  1896,  Scottish  Poetry  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  172. 
The  daisy  by  his  ploughshare  cleft, 
The  lips  of  women  loved  and  left, 
'The  griefs  and  joys  that  weave  the  weft 

Of  human  time, 
With  craftsman's  cunning,  keen  and  deft, 

He  carved  in  rhyme. 


But  never,  since  bright  earth  was  born 
In  rapture  of  the  enkindling  morn , 
Might  godlike  wrath  and  sunlike  scorn 

That  was  and  is 
And  shall  be  while  false  weeds  are  worn 

Find  word  like  his. 
Above  the  rude  and  radiant  earth 
That  heaves  and  glows  from  firth  to  firth 
In  vale  and  mountain,  bright  in  dearth 

And  warm  in  wealth, 
Which  gave  his  fiery  glory  birth 

By  chajice  and  stealth, 
Above  the  storms  of  praise  and  blame 
That  blur  with  mist  his  lustrous  name, 
His  thunderous  laughter  went  and  came, 

And  lives  and  flies ; 
The  roar  that  follows  on  the  flame 

When  lightning  dies. 
Earth,  and  the  snow-dimmed  heights  of  air. 
And  water  winding  soft  and  fair 
Through  still  sweet  places,  bright  and  bare. 

By  bent  and  byre, 
Taught  him  what  hearts  within  them  were : 

But  his  was  fire. 

—Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  1896, 
Robert  Burns,  The  Nineteenth  Century,  vol'. 
39,  pp.  183,  184. 

By  virtue  of  his  ardent  and  undisci- 
plined temperament,  by  his  peasant  origin 
and  his  experience  of  the  sufferings  of 
the  poor,  by  that  pride  of  manhood  and 
of  genius  which  made  him  feel  himself 
an  equal  of  prince  or  peer,  by  the  zeal  of 
his  humanitarian  sympathies,  by  his 
sentimental  Jacobitism  and  his  imaginative 
enthusiasm  for  the  traditions  of  Scottish 
independence,  by  the  fact  that  he  belonged 
to  the  democratic  Presbyterian  Church  and 
sympathized  with  the  party  of  spiritual 
revolt,  Burns  was  fitted  to  be  a  spokesman 
of  the  passions  of  the  time. — Dowden, 
Edward,  1897,  The  French  Revolution 
and  English  Literature,  p.  146. 


Not  only  does  he  take  whatever  the 
Vernacular  School  can  give  in  such  matters 
as  tone,  sentiment,  method,  diction  phrase ; 
but  also,  he  is  content  to  run  in  debt  to  it 
for  suggestions  as  regards  ideas  and  for 
models  in  style.  ...  It  was  fortunate 
for  him  and  for  his  book,  as  it  was  fortu- 
nate for  the  world  at  large — as,  too,  it 
was  afterwards  to  be  fortunate  for  Scots 
song — that  he  was  thus  imitative  in  kind 
and  thus  traditional  in  practice.  He  had 
the  sole  ear  of  the  Vernacular  Muse ;  there 
was  not  a  tool  in  her  budget  of  which  he 
was  not  master ;  and  he  took  his  place,  the 
moment  he  moved  for  it,  not  so  much, 
perhaps,  by  reason  of  his  uncommon  capac- 
ity as,  because  he  discovered  himself  to 
his  public  in  the  very  terms — of  diction 
form,  style,  sentiment  even — with  which 
that  public  was  familiar  from  of  old,  and 
in  which  it  was  waiting  and  longing  to  be 
addressed. —  Henley,  William  Ernest, 
1897,  LifCy  GeniuSy  Achievement,  The  Poetry 
of  Robert  Burns,  vol.  iv,  pp.  270,  272. 

Burns  rides  the  ways  of  literature  hedged 
by  a  numerous  and  terrible  guard  of  de- 
voted Scots,  and  if  .any  hat  is  not  doffed  as 
he  passes  the  irreverent  offender  is  a 
marked  man.  Who  dares  lay  hands  on  a 
poet  guarded  by  a  nation  ?  .  .  .  Burns, 
like  Homer,  is  not  merely  a  poet,  but  a 
literature.  He  has  succeeded  in  fulfilling 
the  old  savage  ideal — he  has  eaten  up  all 
his  predecessors,  and  become  possessed  of 
their  united  powers.  It  is  useless  to 
haggle  over  much  about  what  he  borrowed : 
one  can  only  envy  the  gigantic  luck  of  his 
chance.  Such  vamps  as  the  one  I  have 
analysed  from  Mr.  Henley's  notes  can  only 
be  credited  to  him  as  brilliant  luck  bril- 
liantly used.  But  the  pieces  I  enumerated 
of  the  third  class  proved  that  he  could 
write  charming  songs  without  such  luck ; 
though  I  think,  on  the  whole,  they  prove 
that  he  wrote  still  better  when  he  bor- 
rowed. .  .  .  Taking  him,  borrowings 
and  all,  the  merit  of  his  songs  lies  in  the 
partly  dramatic  kind ;  they  display,  vividly 
and  pictorially,  the  life  of  a  whole  peas- 
antry, as  it  has  not  been  displayed  in  Eng- 
lish literature.  —  Thompson,  Francis, 
1897,  Mr.  Henley's  Burns,  The  Academy, 
vol.  51,  pp.  273,  274. 

No  poet,  not  even  Shakespeare,  has  been 
so  minutely,  lovingly  studied  as  Burns. — 
Davidson,  James,  1897,  New  Light  on 
Burns,  The  Scottish  Review,  vol  29,  p.  306. 


ROBERT  BURNS 


269 


A  stranger  freak  of  burgess  criticism  is 
every-day  fare  in  the  odd  world  peopled 
by  the  biographers  of  Robert  Burns.  The 
nature  of  Burns,  one  would  think,  was 
simplicity  itself ;  it  could  hardly  puzzle  a 
ploughman,  and  two  sailors  out  of  three 
would  call  him  brother.  But  he  lit  up  the 
whole  of  that  nature  by  his  marvellous 
genius  for  expression,  and  grave  person- 
ages have  been  occupied  ever  since  in  dis- 
cussing the  dualism  of  his  character,  and 
professing  to  find  some  dark  mystery  in 
the  existence  of  this,  that,  or  the  other 
trait — a  love  of  pleasure,  a  hatred  of 
shams,  a  deep  sense  of  religion.  It  is  com- 
mon human  nature,  after  all,  that  is  the 
mystery,  but  they  seem  never  to  have  met 
with  it,  and  treat  it  as  if  it  were  the  poet's 
eccentricity.  They  are  all  agog  to  wor- 
ship him,  and  when  they  have  made  an 
image  of  him  in  their  own  likeness,  and 
given  it  a  tin-pot  head  that  exactly  hits 
their  taste,  they  break  into  noisy  lamenta- 
tion over  the  discovery  that  the  original 
was  human,  and  had  feet  of  clay.  They 
deem  "Mary  in  Heaven"  so  admirable  that 
they  could  find  it  in  their  hearts  to  regret 
that  she  was  ever  on  earth. — Raleigh, 
Walter,  1897,  Style,  p.  76. 

It  is  of  importance  that  we^  recognize 
the  fact  that  in  Burns  the  tWo  literary 
estates,  English  and  Scottish,  were  united. 
Until  his  time  there  was  a  sharp  distinc- 
tion between  Scottish  and  English  litera- 
ture ;  but  after  him  the  literature  of  the 
two  countries  became  one,  bo^h  in  nature 
and  in  name.  This  was  but  natural,  when 
we  consider  that  something  of  the  original 
impulse  which  moved  Burns' s  gehius  was 
English.  When  the  riches  of  this  noble 
Scottish  house,  and  of  that  sister  house  of 
Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  Mil- 
ton, awaited  union  in  a.  royil  heir,  there 
came  a  peasant  lad  from  i;ihe  "auld  clay 
biggin'  "  in  Ayrshire,  who,  with  the 
simple  and  graceful  dignity  of  one  of 
nature's  noblemen,  claimed  his  own,  and 
there  was  added  a  new  hereditary  peer  to 
the  House  of  Fame. — George,  Andrew 
J.,  1897,  Carlyle's  Essay  on  Burns,  p.  114. 

Burns. — The  most  amazing  price  ever 
realised  for  a  modern  book  was  that  of 
£572  for  "Poems  chiefly  in  the  Scottish 
dialect.  By  Robert  Burns.  Kilmarnock, 
1786."  The  original  price  of  this  octavo 
volume  was  three  shillings.  The  history 
of  the  very  fine  copy  sold  in  Edinburgh  in 


February  1898  is  traced  back  about  eighty 
years  by  a  writer  in  Literature.  In  1870 
it  was  sold  for  six  guineas  to  G.  B.  Simp- 
son, of  Dundee,  who  sold  it  in  1879,  with 
some  other  books,  to  A.  C.  Lamb  for  £124. 
The  price  of  the  Kilmarnock  Burns  has 
steadily  advanced  from  £3,  10s.  in  1858  to 
£111  in  1888,  and  then  it  made  the  im- 
mense leap  to£572.— Wheatley,  Henry 
B.,  1898,  Prices  of  Books,  p.  257. 

In  his  relation  to  Nature  there  was  this  - 
great  difference  between  Burns  and  his  ^ 
literary  contemporaries  and  immediate  ' 
pedecessors,  that  whereas  even  the  best  of 
them  wrote  rather  as  pleased  spectators 
of  the  country,  with  all  its  infinite  variety 
of  form  and  colour,  of  life  and  sound,  of 
calm  and  storm,  he  sang  as  one  into  whose 
very  inmost  heart  the  power  of  these 
things  had  entered.  For  the  first  time  in- 
English  literature  the  burning  ardour  of  a 
passionate  soul  went  out  in  tumultuous  joy 
towards  Nature.  The  hills  and  woods,  the 
streams  and  dells  were  to  Burns  not  merely 
enjoyable  scenes  to  be  visited  and  de- 
scribed. They  became  part  of  his  very 
being.  In  their  changeful  aspects  he  found 
the  counterpart  of  his  own  variable  moods ; 
they  ministered  to  his  joys,  they  soothed 
his  sorrows.  They  yielded  him  a  com- 
panionship that  never  palled,  a  sympathy 
that  never  failed.  They  kindled  his  poetic 
ardour,  and  became  themselves  the  sub- 
jects of  his  song.  He  loved  them  with  all 
the  overpowering  intensity  of  his  aflfection- 
ate  nature,  and  his  feelings  found  vent  in 
an  exuberance  of  appreciation  which  had 
never  before  been  heard  in  verse. — Geikie, 
Sir  Archibald,  1898,  Types  of  Scenery 
and  their  Influence  on  Literature,  p.  26. 

I  venture  to  assume  that  I  have  advanced 
enough  to  vindicate  my  postulate,  that 
throughout  Fergusson's  poems  saturated 
the  mind,  heart,  imagination,  aflPection, 
and  memory,  and  imposed  subjects  and 
forms  and  elect  words  on  Robert  Burns. 
That,  when  all  is  said,  Robert  Burns  still 
stands  by  head  and  shoulders  above  Robert 
Fergusson  and  beyond  all  possible  com- 
parison Scotland's supremest  singer;  that 
his  was  the  larger,  stronger  soul,  the  richer 
imagination,  the  more  inspired  utterance, 
the  more  seeing  eyes,  the  broader  intel- 
lect, does  not  alter  the  fact  of  wide,  deep; 
and  pervasive  obligations  to  his  precursor. 
Mentally  as  physically  he  was  stalwart 
where  Fergusson  was  fragile;   he  was 


« 


270 


BURNS— MACPHERSON 


dowered  with  immeasurable  resources 
where  Fergusson  was  soon  exhausted ;  he 
was  master  of  all  moods  and  passions  where 
Fergusson  was  only  their  victim ;  he  was 
possessor  of  Elisha's  wished-for  ''double 
portion"  of  poetic  inspiration  where 
Fergusson  was  at  best  fitfully  and  briefly 
fired  and  inspired.  But  with  every  limita- 
tion of  genius  and  range,  it  abides  that  it 
was  a  happy  day  for  Robert  Burns,  and  a 
still  happier  day  for  the  immortal  in  Scot- 
tish poetry,  whereon  he  fell  in  with  Robert 
Fergusson's  volume  of  1773-79. — Gro- 
SART,  Alexander  B.,  1898,  Robert  Fer- 
gusson (Famous  Scots  Series) ,  p.  147. 

When  the  tom-tit  patronises  the  eagle, 
one  realises  how  small  the  little  bird  is. 
But  though  Burns  is  gone,  his  immortal 
poems  live  and  burn  themselves  into  our 
heart  of  hearts.  When  we  feel  disgusted 
with  the  little  peddling  thoughts  of  little 
people ;  when  we  feel  sick  to  the  soul  of 
the  conventional  cant  of  the  time,  of  the 
false  gods  in  art  and  literature  and  music ; 


we  should  turn  for  inspiration  to  the  glow- 
ing rapture,  the  blazing  patriotism,  the 
all-conquering  humour,  and  the  biting  wit 
and  overwhelming  irony  of  Robert  Burns. 
The  glorious  fire  of  that  mighty  genius 
will  warm  the.  coldest  heart. — Forster, 
Joseph,  1898,  Great  Teachers,  p.  3. 

The  very  high  rank  of  Burns  depends, 
in  great  part,  on  the  fact  that  he  could 
command  a  wider  range  of  emotion  than 
most  lyrists;  humour  in  almost  all  its 
varieties  save  the  cynical,  pathos  in  several 
forms,  love  when  young  and  passionate, 
personal  independence  and  the  competence 
of  the  individual,  patriotism — Burns  has 
sung  them  all. — Winchester,  C.  T., 
1899,  Some  Principles  of  Literary  Criti- 
cism, p,  99. 

The  genius  of  Burns  was  breathing  into 
the  Scottish  Muse  a  fire  and  a  vigour  that 
were  to  be  the  harbingers  of  new  feelings 
and  new  impulses  far  beyond  her  borders. 
— Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Century 
of  Scottish  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  125. 


James  Macpherson 

1736-1796 

Born,  at  Kingussie,  Invernesshire,  27  Oct.  1736.  Early  education  at  parish  school. 
Matric,  King's  Coll.,  Aberdeen,  Feb.  1753.  To  Marischal  Coll.,  1755.  Probably 
studied  at  Edinburgh  Univ.,  winter  of  1755-56.  After  leaving  Edinburgh,  was  master 
in  school  at  Ruthven ;  and  afterwards  private  tutor.  Contrib.  to  ''Scots  Mag.,"  1758. 
Friendship  with  Home  and  Dr.  Carlyle,  who  encouraged  him  in  publication  of  transla- 
tions of  Gaelic  poems.  Travelled  in  Highlands,  1760,  collecting  material.  To  London, 
1761.  Sec.  to  Governor  of  Pensacola,  West  Florida,  1764.  Returned  to  England,  1766. 
Employed  by  Government  to  write  on  political  questions.  Agent  to  Nabob  of  Arcot, 
1780.  M.  P.  for  Camelford,  1780-96.  Died,  at  Badenoch,  Invernesshire,  17  Feb. 
1796.  Buried  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Works :  ''The  Highlander"  (anon.),  1758 ;  ''Frag- 
ments of  Ancient  Poetry,  collected  in  the  Highlands"  (anon.),  1760;  Ossian's 
"Fingal,"  translated  from  the  Gaelic,  1762;  Ossian's  "Temora,"  translated,  1763; 
"Introduction  to  the  History  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,"  1771;  translation  of 
Homer's  "Iliad,"  1773;  "A  History  of  Great  Britain,  from  the  Restoration  to  the 
Accession  of  the  House  of  Hanover"  (2  vols.),  1775;  "Original  Papers,  containing 
the  Secret  History  of  Great  Britain"  (2  vols.),  1775;  "The  Rights  of  Great  Britain 
asserted  againsl^the  claims  of  America"  (anon.),  1776;  "A  Short  History  of  the  Op- 
position during  the  last  Session"  (anon.),  1779;  "The  History  and  Management  of  the 
East  India  Company"  (anon.),  1779.  Ee edited:  "Letters from  Mahommed  Ali  Chang, 
Nabob  of  Arcot,  to  the  Court  of  Directors,"  1779.  Collected  Works:  "Poetical 
Works,"  1802.  Life:  by  T.  B.  Saunders,  1894.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A 
Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  181. 


PERSONAL 

I  received  your  foolish  and  impudent 
note.  Whatever  insult  is  ofi:'ered  me,  I 
will  do  my  best  to  repel,  and  what  I  cannot 
do  for  myself,  the  law  shall  do  for  me. 
I  will  not  desist  from  detecting  what  I 


think  a  cheat,  from  any  fear  of  the 
menaces  of  a  Ruffian.  What  would  you 
have  me  retract  ?  I  thought  your  book  an 
imposture ;  I  think  it  an  imposture  still. 
For  this  opinion  I  have  given  my  reasons  to 
the  public,  which  I  here  dare  you  to  refute. 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


271 


Your  rage  I  defy.  Your  abilities,  since 
your  Homer,  are  not  so  formidable;  and 
what  I  hear  of  your  morals  inclines  me  to 
pay  regard,  not  to  what  you  shall  say,  but 
to  what  you  shall  prove,  l^ou  may  print 
this  if  you  will.*  —  Johnson,  Samuel, 
1775,  Letter  to  Macpherson,  Jan.  20. 

''Why  dost  thou  build  the  tower,  son  of 
the  winged  days  ?  Soon  will  thou  depart 
with  thy  fathers.  The  blast  from  the 
desert  shall  rush  through  thy  hall,  and 
sound  upon  the  bossy  shield."  Do  you 
recollect,  dear  Madam,  when  I  stopped 
with  you  at  the  gate  of  Belleville,  1  re- 
peated those  lines,  and  observed  what  a 
suitable  inscription  they  might  prove  for 
the  front  of  poor  James  Macpherson's  new 
house.  It  would  appear  I  was  moved  by  a 
prophetic  impulse  when  I  predicted  that 
he  never  would  see  it  finished.  ...  He 
felt  the  approaches  of  death,  and  hoped 
no  relief  from  medicine,  though  his  life 
was  not  such  that  one  would  like  to  look 
back  on  at  that  awful  period :  indeed 
whose  is?  It  pleased  the  Almighty  to 
render  his  last  scene  most  affecting  and 
exemplary.  He  died  last  Tuesday  evening ; 
and,  from  the  minute  he  was  confined,  till 
a  very  little  before  he  expired,  never  ceased 
imploring  the  Divine  mercy  in  the  most 
earnest  and  pathetic  manner.  People 
about  him  were  overawed  and  melted  at  the 
fervour  and  bitterness  of  his  penitence ; 
he  frequently  and  earnestly  entreated  the 
prayers  of  good  serious  people  of  the  lower 
class  w^ho  were  admitted.  He  was  a  very 
good-natured  man;  and  now,  that  he  had 
got  all  his  schemes  of  interest  and  ambi- 
tion fulfilled,  he  seemed  to  reflect  and  grow 
domestic,  and  showed,  of  late,  a  great  in- 
clination to  be  an  indulgent  landlord,  and 
very  liberal  to  the  poor ;  of  which  I  could 
relate  various  instances,  more  tender  and 
interesting  than  flashy  or  ostentatious. 
His  heart  and  temper  were  orignally  good ; 
his  religious  principles  were,  I  fear,  un- 
fixed, and  fluctuating.  But  the  primary 
cause  that  so  much  genius,  taste,  benevo- 
lence and  prosperity,  did  not  produce  or 
diffuse  more  happiness,  was  his  living  a 
stranger  to  comforts  of  domestic  life, 
from  which  unhappy  connexions  excluded 
him. — Grant,  Mrs.  Anne,  1796,  To  Mrs. 
Macintosh,  Feb.  20 ;  Letters  from  the  Moun- 
tains, vol.  II. 

*The  original  of  this  weU-known  letter  -was  sold  by 
auction  in  1875,  for  £30.— Saunders,  Batlet,  1894, 
The  Life  and  Letters  of  James  Macj)herson,  p.  250. 


A  Scottish  Chatterton  of  maturer 
growth  who  did  not  commit  suicide. — 
Collier,  William  Francis,  1861,  A  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  p.  353. 

As  an  original  writer  Macpherson  be- 
came more  and  more  discredited,  but  as 
an  individual  more  and  more  wealthy  ;  and, 
to  prove  that  no  honour  lies  beyond  the 
grasp  of  unprincipled  mediocrity,  he  was 
buried  in  Poet's  Corner. — Gosse,  Ed- 
mund, 1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury Literature,  p.  336. 

He  went  up  to  London — was  appointed 
to  go  with  Governor  Johnston  to  Florida, 
in  America ;  remained  there  at  Pensacola, 
a  year  or  more ;  but  quarrelled  with  his 
chief  (he  had  rare  aptitude  for  quarrelling) 
and  came  back  in  1766.  Some  English 
historical  work  followed ;  but  with  little 
success  or  profit.  Yet  he  was  a  canny 
Scotchman,  and  so  laid  his  plans  that  he 
became  agent  for  some  rich  nabob  of  India 
(from  these  pickings  winning  a  great 
fortune  eventually) ;  entered  Parliament 
in  1780 ;  had  a  country  house  at  Putney, 
where  he  entertained  lavishly ;  and  at  last 
built  a  great  show  place  in  the  highlands 
near  to  his  birth-place — v/hich  one  may  see 
to-day — with  an  obelisk  to  his  memory, 
looking  down  on  the  valley  of  the  Spey ; 
and  not  so  far  away  from  the  old  coach- 
road,  that  passes  through  Killiecrankie, 
from  Blair  Athol  to  Inverness,  but  the 
coach  man  can  show  it — as  he  did  to  me — 
with  his  whip.  .  .  .  Yet  if  his  bock 
of  Ossianic  poems  was  ten-fold  better  than 
it  is,  it  would  hardly  give  an  enduring,  or 
a  brilliant  gloss  to  the  memory  of  James 
Macpherson.  —  Mitchell,  Donald  G., 
1895,  English  Lands  Letters  and  Kings, 
Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges,  pp.  224,  228. 

If  none  but  the  great  deserved  a  biog- 
raphy, this  book  would  not  have  been 
written.  For  Macpherson  was  in  no  sense 
a  great  man  :  he  was  a  miscellaneous  writer 
of  considerable  talent,  a  busy  journalist, 
a  member  of  Parliament,  an  agent  for  an 
Indian  prince,  a  popular  and  prosperous 
citizen;  and,  beyond  the  fact  that  he 
brought  out  the  Ossianic  poems  at  the  age 
of  twenty-five,  he  did  little  in  the  si^^ty 
years  of  his  life  that  would  entitle  him  to 
permanent  remembrance.  This  work  of 
his  youth  was,  as  he  declared,  translated 
from  Gaelic  fragments  found  in  the  Scot- 
tish Highlands.  By  its  wonderful  success, 
and  its  no  less  wonderful  influence  on 


272 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


literature,  both  in  England  and  on  the 
Continent,  it  gave  him,  in  his  own  day,  a 
world-wide  reputation.  Literary  fashions 
have  suffered  many  c«hanges  in  the  century 
that  has  passed  since  his  death,  and  Mac- 
pherson's  reputation  no  longer  exists ;  but 
his  work  retains  an  historical  interest  of  a 
curious  and  unique  character.  .  .  . 
While  I  believe  that,  on  the  whole,  he  has 
been  greatly  slandered,  he  is  certainly  no 
hero ;  and  I  hope  that  I  am  not  afflicted, 
in  regard  to  him,  with  what  has  been  called 
the  lues  boswelliana,  or  the  disease  of  ad- 
miration.— Saunders,  Bailey,  1894,  The 
Life  and  Letters  of  James  MacphersoUy 
Preface,  pp.  v,  vii. 

The  big,  burly  politician  lived  in  society. 
.  .  .  As  he  grew  elderly,  rich,  and  pros- 
perous, Macpherson's  heart  yearned  for 
his  old  Highland  district,  and  he  turned 
his  eyes  to  Badenoch ;  there  he  resolved 
to  buy  land  and  build  a  home  within 
sight  of  his  native  mountains.  Two  or 
three  small  farms  were  bought  on  the 
banks  of  the  Spey  and  soon  a  villa,  bear- 
ing the  cockney  title  of  "Belleville,'* 
which  had  been  designed  by  his  friend 
Adam,  the  architect,  rose  in  the  wilds, 
two  miles  from  Kingussie.  People  long 
remembered  the  great  man  from  London, 
who  came  every  year,  bedizened  with  rings 
and  gold  seals,  and  clad  in  fur-edged  coat. 
They  told  stories  of  the  grand  state  he 
kept  up  as  a  Highland  chief,  his  splendid 
table,  his  home  filled  with  guests ;  of  his 
sallying  forth  in  the  morning  and  bringing 
bibulous  lairds  from,  houses  far  and  near, 
who  in  the  dining-room,  from  whose  walls 
portraits  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  looked 
down,  kept  high  revelry  till  they  and  the 
nights  were  far  spent.  But  good  things, 
too,  were  told  of  Macpherson,  pleasant 
to  remember ;  of  his  refusing  from  a  grate- 
ful Government  the  forfeited  estate  of 
Cluny  Macpherson,  which  was  thereupon 
restored  to  its  rightful  owner ;  his  gener- 
osity to  the  poor,  whom  he  employed  at 
high  wages,  which  no  Badenoch  man  had 
ever  dreamed  of;  his  kindly  remembrance 
of  all  about  his  native  Ruthven.  Now  that 
his  ambition  was  satisfied,  now  that  his 
struggle  with  poverty  and  obscurity  was 
over  he  could  be  the  pleasant,  affable  man, 
the  kindly  landlord,  and  the  genial  host. 
— Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  238. 


POEMS  OF  OSSIAN 
Several  gentlemen  of  the  Highlands  and 
Isles,  generously  gave  me  all  the  assistance 
in  their  power,  and  it  was  by  their  means 
I  was  enabled  to  complete  the  Epic  Poem. 
How  far  it  comes  up  to  the  rules  of  the 
Epopoeia  is  the  province  of  criticism  to 
examine.  It  is  only  my  business  to  lay  it 
before  the  reader  as  I  have  found  it.  .  .  . 
A  man  diffident  of  his  abilities  might 
ascribe  his  own  compositions  to  a  person 
whose  remote  antiquity  and  whose  situa- 
tion when  alive  might  well  answer  for 
faults  which  would  be  inexcusable  in  a 
writer  of  this  age.  .  .  .  But  of  this 
I  am  persuaded  .  .  .  that  some  will 
think,  notwithstanding  the  disadvantages 
with  which  the  works  ascribed  to  Ossian 
appear,  it  would  be  a  very  uncommon  in- 
stance of  self-denial  in  me  to  disown  them, 
were  they  really  of  my  composition. — 
Macpherson,  James,  1762,  Fm^aZ,  Preface. 

It  is  as  beautiful  as  Homer. — Grimm, 
Friedrich  Melchior,  1762,  Correspond- 
dnce  Litter  aire,  April. 

There  we  find  the  fire  and  enthusiasm 
of  the  most  early  times,  combined  with  an 
amazing  degree  of  regularity  and  art. 
We  find  tenderness,  and  even  delicacy  of 
sentiment,  greatly  predominant  over 
fierceness  and  barbarity.  Our  hearts  are 
melted  with  the  softest  feelings,  and  at  the 
same  time  elevated  with  the  highest  ideas 
of  magnanimity,  generosity,  and  true 
heroism. — Blair,  Hugh,  1763,  Critical 
Dissertation  on  the  Poems  of  Ossian. 

Ossian,  sublimest,  simplest  bard  of  all 
Whom  English  infidels  Macpherson  call. 
— Churchill,  Charles,  1763,  The  Proph- 
ecy of  Famine. 

I  never  was  able  to  discover  in  his  most 
unguarded  moments  that  he  was  any  other 
than  the  collector  and  translator  of  the 
works  of  Ossian,  or  assumed  any  other 
merit  that  might  be  derived  from  thence. 
But  I  have  heard  him  express  the  greatest 
contempt  and  disdain  for  those  who 
thought  him  the  fabricator  of  them.  If 
there  was  any  person  who  asserted  that 
Macpherson  had  owned  it  to  himself,  even 
that  would  not  shake  my  faith ;  for  I  knew 
him  to  be  of  a  temper,  when  he  was  teased 
and  fretted,  to  carry  his  indignation  that 
far. — Carlyle,  Alexander,  1769-70, 
Report  of  the  Highland  Society,  App.  p.  68. 

I  have  no  less  zeal  for  the  ''Poems  of 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


273 


Ossian,"  than  if  I  had  been  born  on  one  of 
his  favourite  mountains;  and  I  shall  be 
very  glad  to  see  history  confirm  all  that 
his  poetry  has  set  forth. — Montagu,  Eliz- 
abeth, 1771,  Letter  to  Lord  Karnes,  Oct.  3. 

Homer  has  been  superseded  in  my  heart 
by  the  divine  Ossian.  Through  what  a 
world  does  this  angelic  bard  carry  me ! 
With  him  I  wander  over  barren  wastes  and 
frightful  wilds ;  surrounded  by  whirlwinds 
and  hurricanes,  trace  by  the  feeble  light 
of  the  moon  the  shades  of  our  noble  ances- 
tors ;  hear  from  the  mountainous  heights, 
intermingled  with  the  roaring  of  waves 
and  cataracts,  their  plaintive  tones  steal- 
ing from  cavernous  recesses;  while  the 
pensive  monody  of  some  love-stricken 
maiden,  who  heaves  her  departing  sighs 
over  the  moss-clad  grave  of  the  warrior 
by  whom  she  was  adored,  makes  up  the 
inarticulate  concert.  I  trace  this  bard, 
with  his  silver  locks,  as  he  wanders  in  the 
valley  and  explores  the  footsteps  of  his 
fathers.  Alas!  no  vestige  remains  but 
their  tombs.  His  thought  then  hangs  on 
the  silver  moon,  as  her  sinking  beams  play 
upon  the  rippling  main ;  and  the  remem- 
brance of  deeds  past  and  gone  recurs  to  the 
hero's  mind — deeds  of  times  when  he 
gloried  in  the  approach  of  danger,  and 
emulation  nerved  his  whole  frame ;  when 
the  pale  orb  shone  upon  his  bark,  laden 
with  the  spoils  of  his  enemy,  and  illumi- 
nated his  triumphant  return.  When  I  see 
depicted  on  his  countenance  a  bosom  full 
of  woe ;  when  I  behold  his  heroic  great- 
ness sinking  into  the  grave,  and  he  ex- 
claims, as  he  throws  a  glance  at  the  cold 
sod  which  is  to  lie  upon  him:  ''Hither 
will  the  traveler  who  is  sensible  of  my 
worth  bend  his  weary  steps,  and  seek  the 
soul-enlivening  bard,  the  illustrious  son  of 
Fingal ;  his  foot  will  tread  upon  my  tomb, 
but  his  eyes  shall  never  behold  me;''  at 
this  time  it  is,  my  dear  friend,  that,  like 
some  renowned  and  chivalrous  knight,  I 
could  instantly  draw  my  sword ;  rescue 
my  prince  from  a  long,  irksome  existence 
of  langour  and  pain;  and  then  finish  by 
plunging  the  weapon  into  my  own  breast, 
that  I  might  accompany  the  demi-god 
whom  my  hand  had  emancipated. — 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang,  1774,  Sor- 
rows of  Werther,  Letter  Ixviii. 

Doctor  Johnson  having  asserted  in  his 
late  publication  that  the  Translator  of 
Ossian' s  Poems  ''never  could  show  the 

18  G 


original,  nor  can  it  be  shown  by  any  other," 
J.  hereby  declare  that  the  originals  of  "Fin- 
gal" and  other  poems  of  Ossian  lay  in  my 
shop  for  many  months  in  the  year  1762,  for 
the  inspection  of  the  curious.  The  public 
were  not  only  apprised  of  their  lying  there 
for  inspection,  but  even  proposals  for 
publishing  the  originals  of  the  poems  of 
Ossian  were  dispersed  through  the  king- 
dom, and  advertised  in  the  newspapers. 
Upon  finding  that  a  number  of  subscribers 
sufficient  to  bear  the  expenses  were  not 
likely  to  appear,  I  returned  the  manu- 
script to  the  proprietor,  in  whose  hands 
they  still  remain. — Becket,  Thomas,  1775, 
To  the  Public,  Jan.  19. 

I  see  you  entertain  a  great  doubt  with 
regard  to  the  authenticity  of  the  poems  of 
Ossian.  You  are  certainly  right  in  so 
doing.  It  is  indeed  strange  that  any  men 
of  sense  could  have  imagined  it  possible, 
that  above  twenty  thousand  verses,  along 
with  numberless  historical  facts,  could 
have  been  preserved  by  oral  tradition 
during  fifty  generations,  by  the  rudest, 
perhaps,  of  all  the  European  nations,  the 
most  necessitous,  the  most  turbulent,  and 
the  most  unsettled.  Where  a  supposition 
is  so  contrary  to  common  sense,  any  posi- 
tive evidence  of  it  ought  never  to  be  re- 
garded. Men  run  with  great  avidity  to 
give  their  evidence  in  favour  of  what 
flatters  their  passions  and  their  natural 
prejudices.  You  are  therefore  over  and 
above  indulgent  to  us  in  speaking  of  the 
matter  with  hesitation. — Hume,  David, 

1776,  Letter  to  Gibbon,  March  18;  Gib- 
bon's Memoirs,,  ed.  Hill,  p.  197. 

Mr.  Tyrrwhit  has  at  last  published  the 
Bristol  poems.  He  does  not  give  up  the 
antiquity,  yet  fairly  leaves  everybody  to 
ascribe  them  to  Chatterton,  if  they  please, 
which  I  think  the  internal  evidence  must 
force  every  one  to  do,  unless  the  amazing 
prodigy  of  Chatterton's  producing  them 
should  not  seem  a  larger  miracle  than 
Rowley's  and  Canning's  anticipation  of 
the  style  of  very  modern  poetry.  Psalm- 
anazar  alone  seems  to  have  surpassed  the 
genius  of  Chatterton,  and  when  that  lad 
could  perform  such  feats,  as  he  certainly 
did,  what  difficulty  is  there  in  believing 
that  Macpherson  forged  the  cold  skeleton 
of  an  epic  poem,  that  is  more  insipid 
than  "Leonidas?" — Walpole,  Horace, 

1777,  To  Rev.  William  Mason,  Feb.  17; 
LetterSf  ed,  Cunningham,  vol.  vi,  p,  412. 


274 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


Mr.  Macpherson  is  by  many  supposed  to 
be  the  sole  and  original  author  of  the  com- 
positions which  he  has  published  as  trans- 
lations of  the  works  of  Ossian ;  this  charge 
I  am  enabled  to  refute,  at  least  in  part, 
having  fortunately  met  with  the  originals 
of  some  of  them.  Mr.  Macpherson,  I 
acknowledge,  has  taken  very  great  liberties 
with  them ;  retrenching,  adding,  and  alter- 
ing as  he  judged  proper:  but  we  must 
admit  that  he  has  discovered  great  ingenu- 
ity in  these  variations. — Young,  Matthew, 
1784,  Ancient  Gaelic  Poems  respecting  the 
Race  of  the  Fians:  Transactions  of  the 
Royal  Irish  Academy,  vol.  I,  Autiq.  p.  43. 

I  look  upon  M'Pherson's  "Fingal"  to  be 
as  gross  an  imposition  as  ever  the  world 
was  troubled  with.  Had  it  been  really  an 
ancient  work,  a  true  specimen  how  men 
thought  at  that  time,  it  would  have  been 
a  curiosity  of  the  first  rate.  As  a  mod- 
ern production,  it  is  nothing. — Johnson, 
Samuel,  1785,  The  Journal  of  the  Tour  to 
the  Hebrides,  by  Boswell. 

I  was  the  first  person  who  brought  out 
to  the  notice  of  the  world,  the  poems  of 
Ossian:  first,  by  the  Fragments  of 
Ancient  Poetry"  which  I  published,  and 
afterwards,  by  my  setting  on  foot  the 
undertaking  for  collecting  and  publishing 
the  "Works  of  Ossian and  I  have  always 
considered  this  as  a  meritorious  action  of 
my  life. — Blair,  Hugh,  1787,  Letter  to 
Robert  Burns,  May  4. 

Mr.  Macpherson  must  not  only  be 
esteemed  as  one  of  the  first  poets,  but  as 
exhibiting  an  attention  and  skill  in  the 
preservation  of  costume  hitherto  unpar- 
alleled. Ancient  or  modern,  however, 
these  poems  must  be  viewed  as  pregnant 
with  beauties  of  the  highest  rank;  uni- 
formly mild  and  generous  in  manners  and 
sentiment,  uniformly  simple,  pathetic,  and 
sublime,  vivid  and  picturesque  in  imagery, 
in  diction  rapid,  nervous,  and  concise,  they 
are  alike  calculated  to  melt  and  meliorate 
the  heart,  to  elevate  and  fire  the  imagina- 
tion. I  do  not  hesitate  to  affirm  that,  if 
in  sublimity  the  palm  must  be  allowed, 
and  I  think  it  must,  to  our  great  country- 
man, yet  in  the  pathetic  the  Caledonian  is 
far  superior,  not  only  to  Milton,  but  to 
every  other  poet.  Conceiving,  therefore, 
as  I  firmly  do,  that  Finpal  and  Temora  are 
solely  indebted  to  Mr.  Macpherson  for 
their  form,  and  for,  probably,  a  very  con- 
siderable portion  of  their  matter,  and  as 


the  bard  under  whose  name  they  are  now 
published  was  totally  unknown  till  within 
these  forty  years,  I  have  placed  them,  and 
wish  indeed  there  to  place  the  whole  col- 
lection, which  is  in  fact  truly  epic,  at  the 
head  of  the  first  department,  where  I  am 
confident  they  need  not  fear  comparison 
with  any  specimens  of  our  elder  poetry. — 
Drake,  Nathan,  1798-1820,.  Literary 
Hours,  vol.  u.  No.  xxix,  p.  102. 

After  a  long  interval  the  poetical  genius 
of  the  Scots  was  revived  in  the  tender  and 
luxuriant  Thomson ;  butthe  spurious  poems 
of  Ossian,  a  recent  forgery,  still  continue 
to  pollute  their  history,  and  to  corrupt 
their  taste. — Laing,  Malcolm,  1800-4, 
The  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  iv,  p.  390. 

The  Phantom  was  begotten  by  the  snug 
embrace  of  an  impudent  Highlander  upon 
a  cloud  of  tradition.  It  traveled  south- 
ward, where  it  was  greeted  with  acclama- 
tion, and  the  thin  consistence  took  its 
course  through  Europe  upon  the  breath  of 
popular  applause.  .  .  .  Open  this 
far-famed  book !  I  have  done  so  at  ran- 
dom, and  the  beginning  of  the  ''Epic  Poem 
Temora,"  in  eight  books,  presents  itself. 
.  .  .  Having  had  the  good  fortune  to 
be  born  and  reared  in  a  mountainous  coun- 
try, from  my  very  childhood  I  have  felt 
the  falsehood  that  pervades  the  volumes 
imposed  upon  the  world  under  the  name  of 
Ossian.  From  what  I  saw  with  my  own 
eyes,  I  knew  that  the  imagery  was  spuri- 
ous. In  nature  everything  is  indistinct, 
yet  nothing  defined  into  absolute,  inde- 
pendent singleness.  In  Macpherson's 
work  it  is  exactly  the  reverse :  everything 
(that  is  not  stolen)  is  in  this  manner  de- 
fined, insulated,  dislocated,  deadened,  yet 
nothing  distinct.  It  will  always  be  so 
when  words  are  substituted  for  things. 
To  say  that  the  characters  never  could 
exist;  that  the  manners  are  impossible; 
and  that  a  dream  has  more  substance  than 
the  whole  state  of  society,  as  there 
depicted,  is  doing  nothing  more  than 
pronouncing  a  censure  which  Macpherson 
defied.  .  .  .  Yet,  much  as  these  pre- 
tended treasures  of  antiquity  have  been 
admired,  they  have  been  wholly  uninfluen- 
tial  upon  the  literature  of  the  country. 
No  succeeding  writer  appears  to  have 
caught  from  them  a  ray  of  inspiration ;  no 
author  in  the  least  distinguished  has  ven- 
tured formally  to  imitate  them,  except  the 
boy,  Chatterton,on  their  first  appearance. 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


275 


.  .  .  This  incapability  to  amalgamate 
with  the  literature  of  the  Island  is,  in 
my  estimation,  a  decisive  proof  that  the 
book  is  essentially  unnatural ;  nor  should 
I  require  any  other  to  demonstrate  it  to 
be  a  forgery,  audacious  as  worthless. 
Contrast,  in  this  respect,  the  effect  of 
Macpherson's  publication  with  the  ''Re- 
liques"  of  Percy,  so  unassuming,  so  modest 
in  their  pretensions. — Wordsworth,  Wil- 
liam, 1800,  Lyrical  Ballads,  Second  Edi- 
tion, Essay  Supplementary  to  Preface. 

Under  a  cloudy  sky,  on  the  coast  of  that 
sea  whose  tempests  were  sung  by  Ossian, 
their  Gothic  architecture  has  something 
grand  and  somber.  Seated  on  a  shattered 
altar  in  the  Orkneys,  the  traveler  is  aston- 
ished at  the  dreariness  of  those  places: 
sudden  fogs,  vales  where  rises  the  sepul- 
chral stone,  streams  flowing  through  wild 
heaths,  a  few  reddish  pine  trees,  scattered 
over  a  naked  desert  studded  with  patches 
of  snow ;  sach  are  the  only  objects  which 
present  themselves  to  his  view.  The  wind 
circulates  among  the  ruins,  and  their 
innumerable  crevices  become  so  many 
tubes,  which  heave  a  thousand  sighs. 
Long  grasses  wave  in  the  apertures  of  the 
domes,  and  beyond  these  apertures  you 
behold  the  flitting  clouds  and  the  soaring 
sea-eagle.  .  .  .  Long  will  those  four 
stones  which  mark  the  tombs  of  heroes  on 
the  moors  of  Caledonia,  long  will  they  con- 
tinue to  attract  the  contemplative  traveler. 
Oscar  and  Malvina  are  gone,  but  nothing 
is  changed  in  their  solitary  country.  'Tis 
no  longer  the  hand  of  the  bard  himself 
that  sweeps  the  harp ;  the  tones  we  hear 
are  the  slight  trembling  of  the  strings, 
produced  by  the  touch  of  a  spirit,  when 
announcing  at  night,  in  a  lonely  chamber, 
the  death  of  a  hero.  ...  So  when 
he  sits  in  the  silence  of  noon  in  the  valley 
of  his  breezes  is  the  murmur  of  the  moun- 
tain to  Ossian's  ear :  the  gale  drowns  it 
often  in  its  course,  but  the  pleasant  sound 
returns  again. — Chateaubriand,  Fran- 
gois  Rene  Vicomte  de,  1802,  Genie  du 
Christianisme,  bk.  ii,  ch.  vii,  pt.  iv. 

You  recall  me  to  some  very  pleasant 
feelings  of  my  boyhood  when  you  ask  my 
opinion  of  Ossian.  .  .  .  Ossian  and 
Spenser  were  two  books  which  the  good 
old  bard  [Dr.  Blacklock]  put  into  my 
hands,  and  which  I  devoured  rather  than 
perused.  Their  tales  were  for  a  long  time 
so  much  my  delight,  that  I  could  repeat 


without  remorse  whole  Cantos  of  the  one 
and  Duans  of  the  other;  and  wo  to  the 
unlucky  wight  who  undertook  to  be  my 
auditor,  for  in  the  height  of  my  enthu- 
siasm I  was  apt  to  disregard  all  hints  that 
my  recitations  became  tedious.  .  .  . 
Ossian's  poems,  in  particular,  have  more 
charms  for  youth  than  for  a  more  advanced 
stage.  .  .  .  After  making  every 
allowance  for  the  disadvantages  of  a  literal 
translation,  and  the  possible  debasement 
which  those  now  collected  may  have  suf- 
fered in  the  great  and  violent  change 
which  the  Highlands  have  undergone  since 
the  researches  of  Macphercon,  1  am  com- 
pelled to  admit  that  incalculably  the 
greater  part  of  the  English  Ossian  must 
be  ascribed  to  Macpherson  himself,  and 
that  his  whole  introductions,  notes,  &c., 
&c.,  are  an  absolute  tissue  of  forgeries. — 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1805,  Letter  to  Miss 
Seward,  Lockharfs  Life  of  Scott. 

Little  as  we  participate  in  the  unquali- 
fied enthusiasm  expressed  by  some  admir- 
ers of  Ossian,  still  the  influence  exercised 
by  these  poems  on  the  public  taste  is  cer- 
tainly very  remarkable.  ...  My  obser- 
vations of  these  Ossianic  poems  have  been 
founded  on  the  principle  of  conceding  to 
them  the  highest  possible  antiquity,  which 
is  at  all  consistent  with  historical  truth, 
and  at  the  same  time  acquiescing  at  once 
in  their  relative  authenticity.  Certainly, 
unless  the  contrary  be  proved  by  extrane- 
ous circumstances,  no  internal  evidence 
militates  against  the  supposition  that  such 
a  hero-race  as  that  of  Fingal  existed  on 
the  northwest  coast  of  Scotland  in  the 
ninth  and  tenth  centuries ;  that  it  actually 
produced  an  Ossian,  who,  as  bard  and  hero, 
celebrated  his  own  exploits  and  those  of 
his  race.  If  his  constant  recurrence  to 
the  melancholy  remembrance  of  departed 
ancestors,  and  the  earlier  period  of  their 
glory,  become  by  frequent  repetition 
monotonous  and  wearying,  still  the  con- 
tinual interweaving  of  the  person  of  the 
bard  into  the  history  narrated,  affords  a 
happy  poetical  and  universal  point  of 
union,  and  greatly  contributes  to  enhance 
that  fascinating  interest  with  which  the 
poems  have  inspired  so  many  readers  and 
hearers.  This  circumstance  is,  indeed,  so 
peculiarly  propitious,  that  many  succeed- 
ing bards  have  adopted  the  form  once 
suggested,  and  written  and  sung  as  if  in 
Ossian's  person. — Schlegel,  Frederick, 


276 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


1812,  On  the  Poetry  of  the  North,  Esthetic 
and  Miscellaneous  Works,  tn  Millington, 
pp.  248,  256. 

Hail,  Bards  of  mightier  grasp!  on  you 
I  chiefly  call,  the  chosen  Few, 
Who  cast  not  off  the  acknowledged  guide, 
Who  falter'd  not,  nor  turn'd  aside ; 
Wliose  lofty  genius  could  survive 
Privation,  under  sorrow  thrive; 
In  whom  the  fiery  Muse  revered 
The  symbol  of  a  snow-white  beard, 
Bedew'd  with  meditative  tears 
Dropp'd  from  the  lenient  cloud  of  years. 

— Wordsworth,  William,  1824,  Lines 
written  in  a  blank  leaf  of  Macpherson's 
Ossian. 

They  are  utterly  worthless,  except  as 
an  edifying  instance  of  the  success  of  a 
story  without  evidence,  and  of  a  book 
without  merit.  They  are  a  chaos  of  words 
which  present  no  image,  of  images  which 
have  no  archetype: — they  are  without 
form  and  void ;  and  darkness  is  upon  the 
face  of  them.  Yet  how  many  men  of 
genius  have  panegyrised  and  imitated 
them! — Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington, 
1824,  Criticisms  Upon  the  Principal  Italian 
Writers,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

Homer  and  Virgil,  though  the  gods  of 
our  young  idolatry, — sunbright  both,  in  the 
golden  morn  of  our  imagination — were  not 
greater  or  more  glorious  ''orbs  of  song" 
than  our  own  Ossian.  Was  that  belief 
delusion  all  ?  Are  the  songs  of  Selma  but 
unmeaning  words, — idle  as  the  inarticulate 
winds,  the  murmurs  of  the  Harp  and  the 
Voice  of  Cona  ?  Let  us  return,  if  we  can, 
to  our  old  creed — let  us  abjure,  if  we 
can,  the  folly  of  wisdom. — Wilson,  John, 
1839,  Have  You  Read  Ossian?  Black- 
wood's Magazine,  vol.  46,  p.  693. 

It  is  many  years  ago  since  I  looked  at 
Ossian,  and  I  never  did  much  delight  in 
him,  as  that  fact  proves.  Since  your  letter 
came  I  have  taken  him  up  again,  and  have 
just  finished  "Carthon."  There  are 
beautiful  passages  in  it,  the  most  beauti- 
ful beginning,  I  think,  ''Desolate  is  the 
dwelling  of  Moina,"  and  the  next  place 
being  filled  by  that  address  to  the  sun  you 
magnify  so  with  praise.  But  the  charm 
of  these  things  is  the  only  charm  of  all  the 
poems.  There  is  a  sound  of  wild  vague 
music  in  a  monotone — nothing  is  articu- 
late, nothing  individual,  nothing  various. 
Take  away  a  few  poetical  phrases  from 
these  poems,  and  they  are  colourless  and 


bare.  Compare  them  with  the  old  burn- 
ing ballads,  with  a  wild  heart  beating  in 
each.  How  cold  they  grow  in  the  com- 
parison! Compare  them  with  Homer's 
grand  breathing  personalities,  with  ^Eschy- 
ius's — nay,  but  I  cannot  bear  upon  my  lips 
or  finger  the  charge  of  the  blasphemy  of 
such  comparing,  even  for  religion's  sake. 
.  .  .  And  that  reminds  me  of  a  distinction 
you  suggest  between  Ossian  and  Homer. 
I  fashion  it  in  this  way :  Homer  sometimes 
nods,  but  Ossian  makes  his  readers  nod. — 
Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1843, 
To  H.  S.  Boyd ;  Letters,  ed.  Kenyon,  vol. 
I,  pp.  118,  119. 

You  ask  me  about  Ossian — now  here  is 
truth — the  first  book  I  ever  bought  in  my 
life  was  Ossian.  .  .  .  It  is  now  in 
the  next  room.  And  years  before  that, 
the  first  composition  I  ever  was  guilty  of 
was  something  in  imitation  of  Ossian,  whom 
I  had  not  read,  but  conceived,  through  two 
or  three  scraps  in  other  books — I  never 
can  recollect  not  writing  rhymes  .  .  . 
but  I  knew  they  were  nonsense  even  then ; 
this,  however,  I  thought  exceedingly  well 
of,  and  laid  up  for  posterity  under  the 
cushion  of  a  great  armchair.  "And  now 
my  soul  is  satisfied'^ — so  said  one  man 
after  killing  another,  the  death  being 
suggested,  in  its  height  of  honour,  by 
stars  and  stars  (****).  I  could  not 
have  been  five  years  old,  that's  one  con- 
solation. Years  after,  when  1  bought  this 
book,  I  found  a  vile  dissertation  of  Laing 
...  all  to  prove  Ossian  was  not  Ossian. 
.  .  .  I  would  not  read  it,  but  could 
not  help  knowing  the  purpose  of  it,  and  the 
pith  of  the  hatefully — irresistible  argu- 
ments. The  worst  came  in  another  shape, 
though  ...  an  after-gleaning  of 
real  Ossianic  poems,  by  a  firm  believer 
whose  name  I  forget — "if  this  is  thereat* 
— I  thought !  Well,  to  this  day  I  believe 
in  a  nucleus  for  all  that  haze,  a  founda- 
tion of  truth  to  Macpherson's  fanciful 
superstructure — and  I  have  been  long  in- 
tending to  read  once  again  those  Fingals 
and  Malvinas. — Browning,  Robert,  1846, 
To  Elizabeth  Barrett,  Aug.  25 ;  The  Letters 
of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett, 
vol.  II,  p.  466. 

The  history  of  Celtic  poetry  in  Scotland 
has  been  invested  with  a  false  brilliancy, 
which  time  is  gradually  impairing.  The 
poems  ascribed  to  Ossian,  whatever  may 
be  their  intrinsic  merit,  have  been  chiefly 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


277 


admired  as  the  productions  of  a  remote 
age,  and  of  a  nation  which,  if  not  utterly 
barbarous,  was,  at  all  events,  very  imper- 
fectly civilized ;  and  when  this  charm  of 
antiquity  is  completely  dissolved,  they 
cannot  be  perused  with  the  same  degree 
of  enthusiasm.— Irving,  David,  1861, 
History  of  Scotish  Poetry y  ed.  Carlyle^  p.  1. 

One  circumstance,  which  has  con- 
tributed to  keep  up  the  dispute  about 
Ossian  so  much  longer  than  that  about 
Rowley,  no  doubt,  is,  that  there  was  some 
small  portion  of  truth  mixed  up  with  Mac- 
pherson's  deception,  whereas  there  was 
none  at  all  in  Chatterton's.  But  the 
Ossianic  poetry,  after  all  that  has  been 
said  about  its  falsehood  of  style  and  sub- 
stance as  well  as  of  pretention,  making  it 
out  to  be  thus  a  double  lie,  must  still  have 
some  qualities  wonderfully  adapted  to 
allure  the  popular  taste.  Both  Chatterton 
and  Macpherson  wrote  a  quantity  of 
modern  English  verse  in  their  own  names ; 
but  nothing  either  did  in  this  way  was 
worth  much :  they  evidently  felt  most  at 
ease  in  their  masks. — Craik,  George  L., 
1861,  A  Compendious  History  of  English 
Literature  and  of  the  English  Language, 
vol.  II,  p,  309. 

When  the  Gaelic  *'Fingal,''  published 
in  1807,  is  compared  with  any  one  of  the 
translations  which  purport  to  have  been 
made  from  it,  it  seems  to  me  incomparably 
superior.  It  is  far  simpler  in  diction.  It 
has  a  peculiar  rhythm  and  assonance  which 
seem  to  repel  the  notion  of  a  mere  transla- 
tion from  English  as  something  almost 
absurd.  It  is  impossible  that  it  can  be  a 
translation  from  MacPherson's  English, 
unless  there  was  some  clever  Gaelic  poet 
then  alive,  able  and  willing  to  write  what 
Eton  schoolboys  call  ''full  sense  verses.^' 
—  Campbell,  J.  P.,  1862-93,  Popular 
Tales  of  the  West  Highlands,  vol.  iv,  p.  132. 

The  Celts  are  the  prime  authors  of  this 
vein  of  piercing  regret  and  passion,  of 
this  Titanism  in  poetry.  A  famous  book, 
Macpherson's  ''Ossian,"  carried,  in  the 
last  century,  this  vein  like  a  flood  of  lava 
through  Europe.  I  am  not  going  to  criti- 
cise Macpherson's  "Ossian"  here.  Make 
the  part  of  what  is  forged,  modern,  tawdry, 
spurious  in  the  book  as  large  as  you  please ; 
strip  Scotland,  if  you  like,  of  every  feather 
of  borrowed  plumes  which,  on  the  strength 
of  Macpherson's  "Ossian,"  she  may  have 
stolen  from  that  vetus  et  major  Scotia, 


the  true  home  of  the  Ossianic  poetry, 
Ireland ;  I  make  no  objection.  But  there 
will  still  be  left  in  the  book  a  residue  with 
the  very  soul  of  the  Celtic  genius  in  it , 
and  which  has  the  proud  distinction  of 
having  brought  this  soul  of  the  Celtic 
genius  into  contact  with  the  nations  of 
modern  Europe,  and  enriched  all  our  poetry 
by  it.  Woody  Morven,  and  echoing  Sora, 
and  Selma  with  its  silent  halls !  We  all 
owe  them  a  debt  of  gratitude,  and  when 
we  are  unjust  enough  to  forget  it,  may  the 
Muse  forget  us !  Choose  any  one  of  the 
better  passages  in  Macpherson's ' '  Ossian, ' ' 
and  you  can  see,  even  at  this  time  of 
day,  what  an  apparition  of  newness  and 
power  such  a  strain  must  have  been  to  the 
eighteenth  century.— Arnold,  Matthew, 
1867,  On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature, 
p.  152, 

MacPherson  got  much  from  Mss.  and 
much  from  oral  recitation.  It  is  most 
probable  that  he  has  given  the  minor  poems 
exactly  as  he  found  them.  He  may  have 
made  considerable  changes  in  the  larger 
ones  in  giving  them  their  present  form, 
although  I  do  not  believe  that  he,  or  any 
of  his  assistants,  added  much,  even  in  the 
way  of  connecting-links  between  the 
various  episodes. — Clerk,  Archibald, 
1870,  Poems  of  Ossian  in  the  Original 
Gaelic,  with  a  literal  translation  into 
English,  vol.  i,  p.  1. 

A  Scotchman,  a  man  of  wit,  of  over- 
much wit,  having  written  to  his  cost  an 
unsuccessful  rhapsody,  wished  to  recover 
himself,  went  amongst  the  mountains  of 
his  country,  gathered  picturesque  images, 
collected  fragments  of  legends,  plastered 
over  the  whole  an  abundance  of  elo- 
quence and  rhetoric,  and  created  a  Celtic 
Homer,  Ossian,  who,  with  Oscar,  Malvina, 
and  his  whole  troop,  made  the  tour  of 
Europe,  and,  about  1830,  ended  by  furnish- 
ing baptismal  names  for  French  grisettes 
and  perruquiers.  Macpherson  displayed 
to  the  world  an  imitation  of  primitive 
manners,  not  overtrue,  for  the  extreme 
rudeness  of  barbarians  would  have  shocked 
the  people,  but  yet  well  enough  preserved 
or  portrayed  to  contrast  with  modern 
civilisation,  and  persuade  the  public  that 
they  were  looking  upon  pure  nature.  A 
keen  sympathy  with  Scotch  landscape,  so 
grand,  so  cold,  so  gloomy,  rain  on  the 
hills,  the  birch  trembling  to  the  wind,  the 
mist  of  heaven  and  the  vagueness  of  the 


278 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


soul,  so  that  every  dreamer  found  there 
the  emotions  of  his  solitary  walks  and  his 
philosophical  glooms;  chivalric  exploits 
and  magnanimity,  heroes  who  set  out  alone 
to  engage  an  army,  faithful  virgins  dying 
on  the  tomb  of  their  betrothed ;  an  im- 
passioned, coloured  style,  affecting  to  be 
abrupt,  yet  polished;  able  to  charm  a 
disciple  of  Rousseau  by  its  warmth  and 
elegance :  here  was  something  to  transport 
the  young  enthusiasts  of  the  time,  civilised 
barbarians,  scholarly  lovers  of  nature, 
dreaming  of  the  delights  of  savage  life, 
whilst  they  shook  off  the  powder  which 
the  hairdresser  had  left  on  their  coats. — 
Taine,  H.  a.,  1871,  History  of  English 
Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun,  vol.  ii,  bk.  iii, 
ch.  vii,  p.  220. 

The  fate  of  a  poem  which  excited  the 
enthusiasm  of  Goethe  and  Napoleon,  and 
which  nobody  can  read  at  the  present  day, 
certainly  suggests  some  curious  problems. 
Briefly,  we  may  assume  that  its  vague  and 
gigantesque  scenery,  its  pompous  mouth- 
ing of  sham  heroics,  its  crude  attempts  to 
represent  a  social  state  when  great  men 
stalked  through  the  world  in  haughty 
superiority  to  the  narrow  conventions  of 
modern  life,  were  congenial  to  men  grow- 
ing weary  of  an  effete  formalism.  Men 
had  been  talking  under  their  breath  and 
in  a  mincing  dialect  so  long  that  they  were 
easily  gratified,  and  easily  imposed  upon, 
by  an  affectation  of  vigorous  and  natural 
sentiment. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  His- 
tory of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  447. 

Above  all,  Ossian,  that  poet  of  the 
vague — that  northern  Dante,  as  great,  as 
majestic,  as  supernatural  as  the  Dante  of 
Florence,  and  who  draws  often  from  his 
phantoms  cries  more  human  and  more 
heart-rending  than  those  of  the  heroes  of 
Homer. — Van  Laun,  Henri,  1877,  His- 
tory of  French  Literature,  vol.  iii,  p.  333. 

The  appearance  of  this  poetry  gave  to 
the  English-speaking  mind  the  thrill  of  a 
new  and  strange  emotion  about  mountain 
scenery.  Whether  the  poetry  was  old,  or 
the  product  of  last  century,  it  describes, 
as  none  other  does,  the  desolation  of 
dusky  moors,  the  solemn  brooding  of  the 
mists  on  the  mountains,  the  occasional 
looking  through  them  of  sun  by  day,  of 
moon  and  stars  by  night,  the  gloom  of  dark 
cloudy  Bens  or  cairns,  with  flashing 
cataracts,  the  ocean  with  its  storms  as  it 


breaks  on  the  West  Highland  shores  or  on 
the  headlands  of  the  Hebrides. — Shairp, 
John  Campbell,  1877,  On  Poetic  Inter- 
pretation of  Nature,  p.  232. 

Not  into  literature  only  did  MacPher- 
son's  book  pour  a  new  lava-steam,  but  it 
initiated,  in  the  domain  of  Historical 
Science,  the  most  fruitful  new  researches. 
Directly  springing  from,  or  indirectly 
stimulated  by,  the  enthusiasm  excited  by 

Ossian,"  researches  were  instituted  into 
the  antiquities  of  all  the  three  great  races 
of  Europe — not  of  the  Kelts  only,  but  of 
the  Teutons,  and  of  the  Slavs — and  col- 
lections were  made,  or  edited,  of  their 
ancient  poesies.  It  is  unnecessary  to  re- 
call the  dates  of  the  several  publications. 
Only  this  general  fact  we  need  here  note, 
that  if,  in  very  various  degrees,  propter 

Ossian, in  every  case  post  Ossian, 
were  such  works  as  the  Welsh  My vyrian 
Archaeology' '  and ' '  Mabinogion ;' '  Miiller 's 

Collection  of  German  Poems  from  the 
12th,  13th  and  14th  Centuries,"  and 
Grimm's  ''Teutonic  Mythology;"  and  the 
numberless  Slavonic  Folk-lore  collections 
which  were  the  antiquarian  bases  of  the 
great  political  fact  of  Panslavonic  aspira- 
tions. And  considering  this,  we  see  that 
by  no  means  was  the  scope  and  bearing  of 
the  researches  springing  from,  or  stimu- 
lated by,  MacPherson's*' Ossian"  confined 
to  the  sphere  of  historical  theory,  and 
religious  belief.  Few  things  are,  in  the 
last  hundred  years,  more  remarkable  than 
the  direct  transformation  of  historical 
theories  into  political  forces.  Political 
aspirations  of  nationalities  or  races  to 
union  or  re-union  are  but  the  transference 
into  the  sphere  of  practical  endeavour  of 
the  theories  of  antiquaries  and  historians. 
Yet  no  forces  have  in  Europe,  in  this 
century,  shown  themselves  more  powerful. 
And  more  particularly  events  are  now 
indicating,  with  almost  daily  increasing 
clearness,  that  the  Keltic  Revival,  directly, 
initiated  by  MacPherson's  Ossian,"  will 
show  itself  hardly  less  important  as  a 
political  force  than  the  Slavonic  Revival, 
indirectly  stimulated  by  "Ossian." — Stu- 
art-Glennie,  J.  S.,  1880,  MacPherson, 
Burns,  and  Scott  in  their  Relation  to  the 
Modern  Revolution,  Eraser's  Magazine,  voL 
101,  p.  521. 

Addison  had  already  directed  attention 
to  the  English  ballad-poetry,  and  Kl  op- 
stock,  Gleim  and  others  had  profited  by 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


279 


his  example.  Bishop  Percy's  collection 
of  English  ballads  was,  therefore,  received 
with  general  rapture  in  Germany,  and  the 
sentimental  heroic  poetry  of  Celtic  origin, 
which  Macpherson  sent  forth  under  the 
name  of  Ossian,  was  greeted  with  enthus- 
iastic applause  by  a  race  of  poets  full 
of  sentiment  and  warlike  sympathies. — 
ScHERER,  WiLHELM,  1883-86,  A  History 
of  German  Literature^  tr.  Conybeare,  vol. 
II,  p.  56. 

Space  (fortunately)  does  not  permit  a 
discussion  of  the  Ossianic  question.  That 
fragments  of  Ossianic  legend  (if  not  of 
-  Ossianic  poetry)  survive  in  oral  Gaelic 
traditions,  seems  certain.  How  much 
Macpherson  knew  of  these,  and  how  little 
he  used  them  in  the  bombastic  prose  which 
Napoleon  loved  (and  spelled  ''Ocean"), 
it  is  next  to  impossible  to  discover. — 
Lang,  Andrew,  1886,  Books  and  Book- 
men, p.  27. 

Curiously  enough,  although  Macpherson 
died  suddenly,  his  papers  were  searched 
in  vain  for  a  scrap  of  evidence  for  or 
against  his  culpability.  In  these  days  few 
will  be  credulous  enough  to  pin  their  faith 
to  the  misty  songs  of  Ullin ;  but  there  are 
probably  some  persons  of  intelligence, 
especially  north  of  the  Tay,  who  still  "in- 
dulge the  pleasing  supposition  that  Fingal 
fought  and  Ossian  sang." — GossE,  Ed- 
mund, 1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury Literature,  p.  337. 

It  has  been  seen  that  among  his  con- 
temporaries and  fellow-countrymen  there 
were  some  who  showed  signs  of  the  com- 
ing romantic  movement ;  but  he  was  the 
first  in  the  English  language  who  power- 
fully and  decisively  expressed  it.  And 
this  must  be  set  down  as  his  signal  merit. 
Far  from  being  a  mere  translator,  he  was 
peculiarly  original.  Not  that  Macpherson 
created  the  spirit  of  romance.  .  .  . 
It  does  not  follow  that  Macpherson  was  a 
man  of  great  genius.  On  the  contrary, 
the  range  of  his  ideas  was  so  narrow  that 
to  read  any  one  of  his  poems  is  to  become 
master  of  almost  all  that  he  had  to  say. 
The  same  expressions,  the  same  images, 
and  almost  identical  situations  recur  again 
and  again.  Repetition  was  affected  no 
doubt  partly  to  give  an  aspect  of  antiquity ; 
but  in  Macpherson  it  goes  deeper  and  dis- 
closes poverty  of  mind.  Still,  to  deny 
him  the  praise  of  having  w^ell  expressed 
his  few  thoughts  is  unjust.    There  is  much 


fustian  in  his  style,  and  it  speedily  palls 
upon  the  ear ;  but  the  peculiar  poetic  prose 
which  he  formed  for  himself  has,  in  little 
bits,  a  powerful  charm.  His  descriptions  of 
scenery  and  of  aspects  of  nature  are  often 
very  beautiful.  We  ask  again  and  again 
why  they  are  there,  but  he  who  can  forget 
their  incongruity  with  a  poem  of  the  third 
century  must  feel  their  truth. — Walker, 
Hugh,  1893,  Three  Centuries  of  Scottish 
Literature,  vol.  ii,  pp.  127,  128. 

Ossian  points  as  directly  to  Byron  as  the 
chivalry  and  ballad  revivals  point  to  Scott. 
These  indicate  the  two  great  streams  in 
the  Romantic  movement.  In  Byron's 
poetry — sincere  or  feigned — we  see  con- 
stantly manifest  the  Ossian  feeling.  What 
Byron  himself  thought  of  Ossian  I  have 
had  a  good  opportunity  to  observe  by  pe- 
rusing Byron's  own  manuscript  notes  in  a 
copy  of  the  Ossian  poems.  The  following 
notes  I  copied  directly  from  Byron's  hand- 
writing: "The  portrait  which  Ossian  has 
drawn  of  himself  is  indeed  a  masterpiece. 
He  not  only  appears  in  the  light  of  a  dis- 
tinguished warrior— generous  as  well  as 
brave — and  possessed  of  exquisite  sensi- 
bility— but  of  an  aged  venerable  bard 
— subjected  to  the  most  melancholy  vicis- 
situdes of  fortune — weak  and  blind — the 
sole  survivor  of  his  family — the  last  of 
the  race  of  Fingal.  The  character  of 
Fingal — the  poet's  own  father — is  a  highly 
finished  one.  There  is  certainly  no  hero 
in  the  Iliad — or  the  Odyssey — who  is  at 
once  so  brave  and  amiable  as  this  renowned 
king  of  Morven.  It  is  well  known  that 
Hector — whose  character  is  of  all  the 
Homeric  heroes  the  most  complete — 
greatly  sullies  the  lustre  of  his  glorious 
actions  by  the  insult  over  the  fallen 
Patroclus.  On  the  other  hand  the  conduct 
of  Fingal  appears  uniformly  illustrious 
and  great — without  one  mean  or  inhuman 
action  to  tarnish  the  splendour  of  his 
fame — He  is  equally  the  object  of  our  ad- 
miration esteem  and  love. "  Speaking  of 
Ossian's  skill  in  depicting  female  charac- 
ters, he  writes,  "How  happily,  for  in- 
stance, has  he  characterized  his  own  mis- 
tress— afterwards  his  wife — by  a  single 
epithet  expressive  of  that  modesty — soft- 
ness— and  complacency— which  consti- 
tute the  perfection  of  feminine  excellence 
— 'the  mildly  blushing  Everallin.'  ...  I 
am  of  opinion  that  though  in  sublimity  of 
sentiment — in  vivacity  and  strength  of 


280 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


description— Ossian  may  claim  a  full 
equality  of  merit  with  Homer  himself — yet 
in  the  invention  both  of  incidents  and 
character  he  is  greatly  inferior  to  the 
Grecian  bard."  These  quotations  are  in- 
teresting as  showing  how  seriously  Byron 
took  Ossian  and  how  carefully  and  thought- 
fully he  read  him.  The  influence  of  Ossian 
lasted  long  after  the  immediate  excite- 
ment caused  by  its  novelty  and  professed 
antiquity  had  passed  away. — Phelps, 
William  Lyon,  1893,  The  Beginnings  of 
the  English  Romantic  Movement^  p.  153. 

The  problem  of  Macpherson's  true 
character  must  now  be  regarded  as  de- 
pending, not  upon  any  question  as  to  the 
survival  of  ancient  Celtic  poetry  in  the 
Highlands — for  of  the  existence  there,  in 
Macpherson's  day,  of  even  a  considerable 
body  of  such  traditionary  remains  there 
seems  no  longer  any  room  to  doubt — but 
rather  upon  the  particular  degree  of  fidel- 
ity and  conscientious  care  displayed  in  his 
arrangement  and  translation  of  the  several 
* 'fragments"  recovered  by  him  from  the 
Highlanders,  and  declared  by  him  to  be 
none  other  than  the  disjecta  membra  of  the 
long-lost  epic  of  'Tingal." — Hutchinson, 
T.,  1894,  The  Academy,  vol.  46,  p.  205. 

Ossian  was  translated  into  Italian  by 
Cesarotti ;  there  were  two  versions  of  him 
in  Spanish,  several  in  German,  one  in 
Swedish,  one  in  Danish,  and  two  in  Dutch, 
of  which  one  was  by  Bilderdyk.  In  Ger- 
many, especially,  he  created  a  furor. 
The  true  originator  of  Northern  poetry  was 
found  at  last;  ''Thou,  too,  Ossian,"  cried 
/  Klopstock,  "wert  swallowed  up  in  oblivion ; 
but  thou  has  been  restored  to  thy  position ; 
behold  thee  now  before  us,  the  equal  and 
the  challenger  of  Homer  the  Greek." 
"What  need,"  wrote  Voss  to  Briickner, 
"of  natural  beauty?  Ossian  of  Scotland 
is  a  greater  poet  than  Homer  of  Ionia." 
Lerse,  in  a  sonorous  discourse  at  Stras- 
burg,  acknowledged  three  guides  of  the 
"sacred  art  of  poetry:"  Shakespeare, 
Homer,  and  Ossian — two  Northern  poets 
to  a  single  classic.  Herder  wrote  a  com- 
parison between  the  Homeric  and  the 
Ossianic  epics,  spoke  of  Ossian  as  "the 
man  I  have  sought,"  and  contemplated  a 
joiWey  to  Scotland  in  order  to  collect  the 
songs  of  the  bards.  Biirger  imitated  him, 
and  Christian  Heyne  constituted  himself 
champion  at  the  University  of  Gottingen. 
js/  Lastly,  Goethe,  need  we  remind  the  reader. 


drew  inspiration  from  him  in  "Werther" 
and  elsewhere.  When  his  spirits  are  high 
Werther's  taste  is  for  Homer,  but  in  sor- 
row he  feeds  upon  Ossian,  and  when  "it 
is  autumn  within  and  about  him, "  he  cries : 
"Ossian  has  completely  banished  Homer 
from  my  heart!" — Texte,  Joseph,  1895- 
99,  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  and  the  Cosmo- 
politan Spirit  in  Literature^  tr,  Matthews, 
p.  319. 

In  his  former  works  M.  d'Arboiss  had 
already  drawn  up  a  catalogue  of  Irish 
epics ;  he  had  examined  them  and  briefly 
defined  their  character  and  their  literary 
importance;  he  had  taught  us  how  to  dis- 
tinguish the  cycle  of  Ulster,  which  crystal- 
lised in  the  North  of  Ireland  around  the 
heroic  figure  of  KingConchobar  or  Conor ; 
the  cycle  of  Leinster,  which  celebrated  in 
the  east  of  Ireland  the  deeds  of  Osson,  or 
Ossian,  as  the  moderns  have  it ;  and  finally 
the  mythological  cycle,  formed  in  earth, 
sea  and  sky,  around  the  conceptions  of  a 
religious  imagination.  He  showed  us  how 
the  two  Epics  of  the  North  and  the  East, 
artificially  combined  and  quite  transformed 
from  their  rude,  barbarous  and  fierce 
antiquity,  were  idealised  out  of  all  sem- 
blance by  the  rhetorical  Macpherson  till 
they  condensed  anew  into  those  pale, 
vague,  nebulous  poems  of  Ossian  which 
appeared  so  tremendous  a  revelation  of 
nature  to  the  earlier  Romantics.  A  whole 
generation  found  in  this  mutilated  para- 
phrase a  joy  for  ever.  Napoleon,  Goethe, 
Lamartine  read  and  raved  of  Ossian,  as 
Valso  Baour-Lormian.  And  Werther  was 
to  write:  "Ossian  has  supplanted  Homer 
in  my  heart."  M.  d'Arbois  and  his  col- 
laborators. Mm.  Dottin,  Duvau  and  Ferdi- 
nand Grammont  give,  in  the  present 
volume,  numerous  specimens  of  these 
various  epochs,  which  dwell,  still  unpub- 
lished, in  the  dusty  seclusion  of  libraries 
and  archives.  It  is  interesting  to  study 
them,  to  turn  from  Macpherson  to  his 
models.  Despite  his  inferior  value — for 
the  copy  is  far  below  the  original — his 
versions  merit  our  attention,  not  only  on 
their  own  merits  and  as  the  testimony, 
however  ill-reported,  of  a  forgotten  world, 
but  for  the  indirect  and  latent  action 
which  during  more  than  fifty  years  they 
continued  to  exercise  upon  the  imaginative 
literature  of  Europe.  In  two  of  the 
episodes  selected:  the  death  of  Derdrin 
and  the  death  of  Cuchulain,  the  editors 


JAMES  MACPHERSON 


281 


give,  side  by  side  with  the  version  of 
Ossian,  a  literal  translation  from  the 
original  epic.  One  knows  not  which  is 
the  more  surprising,  the  audacity  with 
which  Macpherson  has  drowned  the  brutal, 
savage,  old  legends  in  a  vapour  of  vague 
exclamations,  or  the  innocent  good  faith 
with  which  our  romantic  fore-fathers 
accepted  these  tricked-out  ecstasies  and 
insipid,  tame  tirades  which  we  have  not 
the  patience  to  read  to  the  end  of,  as 
the  unsophisticated  voice  of  Nature.  It 
is  a  matter  to  give  pause  to  the  advocates 
of  an  absolute  standard  in  criticism,  a 
shaft  the  more  in  the  quiver  of  the  impres- 
sionists, chi  oggi  han  il  grido,  till  a  new 
mode  arise. — Darmesteter,  James,  1894 
— 96,  Celtica,  English  Studies,  tr,  Mrs. 
Darmesteter,  p.  183. 

The  imposture  (for  that  in  the  main  it 
was  imposture  is  certain)  of  Macpherson 
is  more  interesting  as  a  matter  of  ten- 
dency than  of  essence.  The  world  wanted 
romance;  it  wanted  ''the  Celtic  vague ;" 
it  wanted  anything  but  what  it  had  had : 
Macpherson  met  it  with  a  sort  of  clumsy 
genius.  All  the  others  named  catered  for 
the  same  want,  not  with  the  intelligent 
scoundrelism  of  the  adulterator,  but  with 
the  honest  attempt  of  the  still  unqualified 
artist. — Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  Social 
England,  ed.  Traill,  vol.  v,  p.  262. 

We  do  not  acquit  a  man  of  dishonesty 
because  he  passes  a  few  good  half-crowns 
amid  hundreds  of  his  own  coinage.  We 
know  that  this  is  a  necessary  trick  of  the 
game,  and  part  of  the  prudential  wisdom 
of  knavery.  .  .  .  We  certainly  believe 
that  many  men,  and  many  women,  given 
a  few  Gaelic  names  and  a  tale  to  tell  about 
them,  could,  after  one  perusal  of ''Fingal'* 
or  ''Temora,"  turn  out  a  poem  which, 
bating  perhaps  the  felicities  which  appear 
at  very  rare  intervals  in  Macpherson' s  com- 
pilation, and  prove  that  he  had  some 
poetic  gift,  would  pass  for  Macpherson- 
Ossianic. — Tovey,  Duncan  C.,  1897,  Os- 
sian and  his  Maker,  Reviews  and  Essays 
in  English  Literature,  pp.  138,  144. 

In  studying  the  landscape  of  Macpher- 
son's  ''Ossian"  we  soon  learn  that  it  be- 
longs unmistakably  to  Western  Argyle- 
shire.  Its  union  of  mountain,  glen,  and 
sea  removes  it  at  once  from  the  interior 
to  the  coast.  Even  if  it  had  been  more 
or  less  inaccurately  drawn,  its  prominence 
and  consistency  all  through  the  poems 


would  have  been  remarkable  in  the  pro- 
ductions of  a  lad  of  four-and-twenty,  who 
had  spent  his  youth  in  the  inland  region 
of  Badenoch,  where  the  scenery  is  of 
another  kind.  But  when  we  discover  that 
the  endless  allusions  to  topographical 
features  are  faithful  delineations,  which 
give  the  very  spirit  and  essence  of  the 
scenery,  we  feel  sure  that  whether  they 
were  written  in  the  eighteenth  century  or 
in  the  third,  they  display  a  poetic  genius 
of  no  mean  order.  The  grandeur  and 
gloom  of  the  Highland  mountains,  the 
spectral  mists  that  sweep  round  the  crags, 
the  roar  of  the  torrents,  the  gleams  of 
sunlight  on  moor  and  lake,  the  wail  of 
the  breeze  among  the  cairns  of  the  dead, 
the  unspeakable  sadness  that  seems  to 
brood  over  the  landscape  whether  the  sky 
be  clear  or  clouded — these  features  of 
west  Highland  scenery  were  first  revealed 
by  Macpherson  to  the  modern  world. 
This  revelation  quickened  the  change  of 
feeling,  already  begun,  in  regard  to  the 
prevailing  horror  of  mountain-scenery. 
It  brought  before  men's  eyes  some  of  the 
fascination  of  the  mountain-world,  more 
especially  in  regard  to  the  atmospheric 
effects  that  play  so  large  a  part  in  its 
landscape.  It  showed  the  titanic  forces 
of  storm  and  tempest  in  full  activity. 
And  yet  there  ran  through  all  the  poems 
a  vein  of  infinite  melancholy.  The  pathos 
of  life  manifested  itself  everywhere,  now 
in  the  tenderness  of  unavailing  devotion, 
now  in  the  courage  of  hopeless  despair. — 
Geikie,  Sir  Archibald,  1898,  Types  of 
Scenery  and  their  Influence  on  Literature, 
p.  44. 

GENERAL 
His* 'History"  is  pronounced  by  Fox  to 
be  full  of  "impudent"  falsehoods;  it  has 
long  sunk  from  public  notice,  and  had  no 
charm  either  of  style  or  thought  to  relieve 
it  from  neglect.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  be- 
lieve, that  one  who  wrote  so  dull  a  his- 
tory could  have  produced  so  wild  and 
imaginative  a  poem  as  that  which  the 
world  has  generally  attributed  to  him. — 
Lawrence,  Eugene,  1855,  Lives  of  the 
British  Historians,  vol.  ii,  p.  238. 

Though  he  never  could  have  become  so 
important  a  figure  as  he  thought  himself, 
we  are  convinced  that  he  would  have 
achieved  a  fame  in  literature  quite  as 
great  and  much  less  sinister  if  he  had  been 
more  honest. — Tovey,  Duncan  C,  1897, 


282 


MA  CPHERSON—REID 


Ossian  and  his  Maker,  Reviews  and  Essays 
in  English  Liter ature,  p.  152. 

That  a  writer  of  the  stamp  of  James 
Macpherson  should  have  been  destined  to 
approach  history  at  all  was,  I  think,  a  re- 
markable freak  of  nature.  That  it  should 
be  reserved,  however,  for  the  author  of 
the  ''Ossian"  fraud  to  discover  and  give 
to  the  world  important  facts,  tearing  to 
shreds  the  character  of  one  of  the  great- 
test  men  that  this  country  has  ever  pro- 
duced, is,  I  submit,  a  little  too  hard  for 
belief  by  rational  beings.  Is  it  reasona- 
ble to  suppose  that  "Original  Papers" 
on  English  history  produced  by  the  in- 
ventor of  the  Gaelic ' '  Originals' '  of  the  Os- 
sian poems  are  likely  to  be  genuine  ?  The 


point  is,  indeed,  virtually  settled  at  the 
outset  by  the  fact  which  I  have  mentioned 
that  the  manuscripts  in  question,  imput- 
ing such  fearful  crimes  to  Marlborough, 
Godolphin,  and  their  associated  helpers  in 
the  work  of  the  Revolution,  are  not  origi- 
nal. I  must  ask  my  readers  to  keep  this 
steadily  in  view;  for  the  whole  gist  of 
the  position  taken  up  by  Dalrymple,  Hal- 
lam,  Macaulay,  and  all  more  recent  follow- 
ers of  Macpherson  lies  in  the  assumption 
that  the  Nairne  papers  in  the  Bodleian 
library  are  original  state  documents,  and 
therefore  not  to  be  gainsaid. — Parnell, 
Arthur,  1897,  Macpherson  and  the  Nairne 
Papers,  English  Historical  Review,  vol.  12, 
p.  274. 


Thomas  Reid 

1710-1796 

Born,  at  Strachan,  Kincardineshire,  26  April  1710.  Early  education  at  Kincardine 
parish  school.  To  Marischal  College,  Aberdeen,  1722;  B.  A.,  1726.  Studied  for 
Presbvterian  ministry.  Licensed  preacher,  Sept.  1731.  Librarian  of  Marischal  Coll., 
1733-36.  Minister  of  New  Machar,  Aberdeen,  1737.  Married  Elizabeth  Reid,  1740. 
''Regent"  (afterwards  Prof,  of  Philosophy)  at  King's  Coll.,  Aberdeen,  Oct.  1751  to 
May  1764.  Founded  Philosophical  Society,  1758;  it  existed  till  1773.  Hon.  D.  D., 
Marischal  Coll.,  18  Jan.  1762.  Prof,  of  Moral  Philosophy,  Glasgow  Univ.,  May  1764 
to  Oct.  1796 ;  deputed  active  duties  of  professorship  to  an  assistant,  1780.  Died,  in 
Glasgow,  7  Oct.  1796.  Works:  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind  on  the  Principles 
of  Common  Sense, "  1764;  "Essays  on  the  Intellectual  Powers  of  Man,"  1785;  "Essays 
on  the  Active  Powers  of  Man,"  1788;  (He  contributed:  "An  Essay  on  Quantity"  to 
the  "Philosophical  Transactions"  for  1748;  "A  Brief  Account  of  Aristotle's  Logic" 
to  "Kame's  Sketches  of  the  History  of  Man,"  vol.  ii.,  1774;  "A  Statistical  Account 
of  the  University  of  Glasgow"  to  Sinclair's  "Statistical  Account  of  Scotland,"  1799.) 
Collected  Works:  ed.  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton  (2  vols.),  1846-63.Li/e;  by  Dugald  Stewart, 
1803. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  238. 


PERSONAL 

Reid  was  below  the  middle  size,  but 
had  great  athletic  power.  His  portrait, 
painted  by  Raeburn  during  his  last  visit  to 
Edinburgh,  belongs  to  Glasgow  Univer- 
sity ;  and  a  medallion  by  Tassie,  taken  in 
his  eighty-first  year,  in  the  National  Por- 
trait Gallery,  Edinburgh,  is  said  to  be  a 
very  good  likeness.  Reid's  obvious  char- 
acteristic was  the  strong  and  cautious 
"common  sense"  which  also  dictated  his 
philosophy.  He  was  thoroughly  independ- 
ent, strictly  economical,  and  uniformly 
energetic  in  the  discharge  of  his  duties. 
He  was  amiable  in  his  family,  delighted  in 
young  children,  some  of  whom,  it  is  said, 
"noticed  the  peculiar  kindness  of  his  eye ;" 
and  was  as  charitable  as  his  means  per- 
mitted.   Stewart  mentions  a  gift  to  his 


former  parishioners  of  New  Machar,  dur- 
ing the  scarcity  of  1782,  which  would 
have  been  out  of  proportion  to  his  means 
had  it  not  been  for  his  rigid  economy,  and 
of  which  he  endeavoured  to  conceal  the 
origin.  From  the  few  letters  preserved, 
he  appears  to  have  been  remarkable  for 
the  warmth  and  steadiness  of  his  friend- 
ships.— Stephen,  Leslie,  1896,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  XLvn, 
p.  438. 

There  was  a  fine  simplicity,  a  sterling 
honesty  in  the  old  philosophical  student, 
who  in  controversy  was  the  model  of  cour- 
tesy shocking  thereby  Dr.Beattie,who  was 
grieved  that  a  controversialist  who  pro- 
fessed to  be  a  Christian  should  write  like  a 
gentleman.  As  he  grew  aged  he  became 
very  deaf,  but  not  less  shrewd ;  as  active 


THOMAS  REID 


283 


at  eighty-seven  years  as  at  sixty,  with 
his  short,  sturdy  frame,  busy  in  his  gar- 
den, keen  over  botany,  physiology,  or 
physics.  Yet  with  all  his  energy  he  would 
plaintively  say,  with  a  kindly  look  on  his 
good,  plain,  common-sense  face,  which 
looked  like  an  incarnation  of  his  own  phi- 
losophy :  "I  am  ashamed  of  having  lived 
so  long  after  having  ceased  to  be  useful. ' ' 
Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  259. 

His  life  had  been  a  singularly  calm  one, 
and  his  chief  characteristics  had  been  an 
indomitable  faculty  of  patient  thought  and 
a  sincerity  of  purpose  that  never  wavered. 
Such  influence  as  he  possessed  was  gained 
by  quiet  and  persistent  effort ;  and  he  did 
not  affect  his  contemporaries  either  by 
any  marked  originality  of  genius,  or  by  a 
striking  or  eccentric  personality. — Craik, 
Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Century  of  Scottish 
History,  vol.  ii,  p.  209. 

GENERAL 

1  have  been  looking  into  Dr.  Reid's  book 
on  ''The  Active  Powers  of  Man.'^  It  is 
written  with  his  usual  perspicuity  and 
acuteness;  is  in  some  parts  very  enter- 
taining ;  and  to  me,  who  have  been  obliged 
to  think  so  much  on  those  subjects,  is 
very  interesting  throughout.  The  ques- 
tion concerning  Liberty  and  Necessity  is 
very  fully  discussed,  and  very  ably ;  and, 
1  think,  nothing  more  needs  be  said  about 
it.  I  could  have  wished  that  Dr.  Reid  had 
given  a  fuller  enumeration  of  the  passions, 
and  been  a  little  more  particular  in  illus- 
trating the  duties  of  morality.  But  his 
manner  is,  in  all  his  writings,  more  turned 
to  speculation  than  to  practical  philoso- 
phy ;  which  may  be  owing  to  his  having 
employed  himself  so  much  in  the  study  of 
Locke,  Hume,  Berkeley,  and  other  theo- 
rists ;  and  partly,  no  doubt,  to  the  habits 
of  study  and  modes  of  conversation  which 
were  fashionable  in  this  country  in  his 
younger  days.  If  I  were  not  personally 
acquainted  with  the  Doctor,  I  should  con- 
clude, from  his  books,  that  he  was  rather 
too  warm  an  admirer  of  Mr.  Hume.  He 
confutes,  it  is  true,  some  of  his  opinions ; 
but  he  pays  them  much  more  respect  than 
they  are  entitled  to. — Beattie,  James, 
1788,  Letter  to  Sir  William  Forbes,  March 
5;  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of 
Beattie,  ed.  Forbes,  vol.  ill,  p.  37. 

The  merit  of  what  you  are  pleased  to 


call  my  Philosophy,  lies,  I  think,  chiefly,  in 
having  called  in  question  the  common 
theory  of  ideas,  or  images  of  things  in  the 
mind,  being  the  only  objects  of  thought ; 
a  theory  founded  on  natural  prejudices, 
and  so  universally  received  as  to  be  inter- 
woven with  the  structure  of  language. 
Yet,  were  I  to  give  you  a  detail  of  what  led 
me  to  call  in  question  this  theory,  after  I 
had  long  held  it  as  self-evident  and  un- 
questionable, you  would  think,  as  I  do, 
that  there  was  much  of  chance  in  the  mat- 
ter. The  discovery  was  the  birth  of  time, 
not  of  genius;  and  Berkeley  and  Hume 
did  more  to  bring  it  to  light  than  the 
man  that  hit  upon  it.  I  think  there  is 
hardly  any  thing  that  can  be  called  mine 
in  the  philosophy  of  the  mind,  which  does 
not  follow  with  ease  from  the  detection 
of  this  prejudice. — Reid,  Thomas,  1790, 
Letter  to  Dr.  James  Gregory,  Works. 

The  author  of  an  ''Inquiry  into  the 
Mind,"  and  of  subsequent  "Essays  on  the 
Intellectual  and  Active  Powers  of  Man,'' 
has  great  merit  in  the  effect  to  which  he 
has  pursued  this  history.  But,  consider- 
ing the  point  at  which  the  science  stood 
when  he  began  his  inquiries,  he  has  per- 
haps no  less  merit  in  having  removed  the 
mist  of  hypothesis  and  metaphor  with 
which  the  subject  was  enveloped,  and  in 
having  taught  us  to  state  the  facts  of 
which  we  are  conscious,  not  in  figurative 
language,  but  in  the  terms  which  are 
proper  to  the  subject.  In  this  it  will  be 
our  advantage  to  follow  him;  the  more 
that,  in  former  theories,  so  much  atten- 
tion had  been  paid  to  the  introduction  of 
ideas  or  images  as  the  elements  of  knowl- 
edge, that  the  belief  of  any  external  exist- 
ence or  prototype  has  been  left  to  be  in- 
ferred from  the  mere  idea  or  image ;  and 
this  inference,  indeed,  is  so  little  founded, 
that  many  who  have  come  to  examine  its 
evidence  have  thought  themselves  war- 
ranted to  deny  it  altogether.  And  hence 
the  criticism  of  ingenious  men,  who,  not  see- 
ing a  proper  access  of  knowledge  through 
the  medium  of  ideas,  without  considering 
whether  the  road  they  had  been  directed 
to  take  was  the  true  or  a  false  one,  denied 
the  possibility  of  arriving  at  the  end. — 
Ferguson,  Adam,  1792,  Principles  of 
Moral  and  Political  Science,  vol.  I. 

With  respect  to  his  character ;  its  most 
prominent  features  were,  intrepid  and 
inflexible  rectitude;  a  pure  and  devoted 


284 


THOMAS  REID 


attachment  to  truth ;  and  an  entire  com- 
mand, acquired  by  the  unwearied  ex- 
ertions of  a  long  life,  over  all  his  passions. 
■ — Stewart,  Dugald,  1803,  Account  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  Thomas  Reid. 

Dr.  Reid's  great  achievement  was,  un- 
doubtedly, the  subversion  of  the  Ideal 
system,  or  the  confutation  of  that  hy- 
pothesis which  represents  the  immediate 
objects  of  the  mind  in  perception  as  cer- 
tain images  or  pictures  of  external  objects 
conveyed  by  the  senses  to  the  sensorium. 
This  part  of  his  task,  it  is  now  generally 
admitted  that  he  has  performed  with  ex- 
emplary diligence  and  complete  success ; 
but  we  are  by  no  means  so  entirely  satis- 
fied with  the  uses  he  has  attempted  to 
make  of  his  victory. — Jeffrey,  Francis 
Lord,  1804,  Stewart's  Life  of  Dr.  Reid, 
Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  3,  p.  281. 

A  sincere  inquirer  after  Truth,  who 
maintained  indeed  the  existence  of  certain 
principles  of  knowledge,  independent  of 
experience,  but  considered  philosophy  as 
the  science  of  the  human  mind,  which 
must  be  founded  on  the  principles  of  Com- 
mon Sense,  regarding  the  latter  as  species 
of  Intellectual  Instinct.  —  Tennemann, 
William  Gottlieb,  1812-52,  A  Manual 
of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  tr.  Johnson, 
ed.  Morell. 

You  can  read  in  the  translation  of  one 
of  the  best  pupils  of  the  Normal  School, 
,  now  my  colleague  in  this  faculty,  the 
judicious  Reid,  with  the  truly  superior 
commentary  of  M.  Royer-Collard.  The 
Scotch  philosophy  will  prepare  you  for  the 
German  philosophy.  It  is  to  Reid  and  to 
Kant  that  I  refer  in  great  part  the  polem- 
ics which  I  have  instituted  against  empir- 
icism in  the  person  of  Locke. — Cousin, 
Victor,  1828-52,  History  of  Modern  Phi- . 
losophy,  tr.  Wight. 

A  patient,  modest,  and  deep  thinker, 
who  in  his  first  work  (''Enquiry  into  the 
Human  Mind")  deserves  a  commendation 
more  descriptive  of  a  philosopher  than 
that  bestowed  by  Professor  Cousin,  of 
having  made  a  vigorous  protest  against 
scepticism  on  behalf  of  common  sense. 
His  observations  on  suggestion,  on  natural 
signs,  on  the  connection  between  what  he 
calls  sensation  and  conception,  though 
perhaps  occasioned  by  Berkeley,  whose 
idealism  Reid  had  once  adopted,  are 
marked  by  the  genuine  spirit  of  original 


observation. — Mackintosh,  Sir  James, 
1830,  Second  Preliminary  Dissertation, 
Encyclopcedia  Britannica. 

Reid,  who  carried  into  the  recesses  of 
the  human  mind  the  torch  of  reason. — 
Alison,  Sir  Archibald,  1833-42,  His- 
tory of  Europe  During  The  French  Revolu- 
tion, vol.  XIV,  p.  3. 

Dr.  Reid  has  many  merits  as  a  specula- 
tor, but  the  only  merit  which  he  arrogates 
to  himself, — the  principal  merit  accorded 
to  him  by  others, — is,  that  he  was  the  first 
philosopher,  in  more  recent  times,  who 
dared,  in  his  doctrine  of  immediate  per- 
ception, to  vindicate,  against  the  unani- 
mous authority  of  philosophers,  the  uni- 
versal conviction  of  mankind.  But  this 
doctrine  he  has  at  best  imperfectly  de- 
veloped, and,  at  the  same  time,  has  un- 
fortunately obscured  it,  by  errors  of  so 
singular  a  character,  that  some  acute  phi- 
losophers— for  Dr.  Brown  does  not  stand 
alone — have  never  even  suspected  what 
his  doctrine  of  perception  actually  is. 
.  .  .  But  if  all  he  did  was  merely  to 
explode  the  cruder  hypothesis  of  represen- 
tation, and  to  adopt  in  its  place  the  finer, 
— why,  in  the  first  place,  so  far  from  de- 
priving idealism  and  scepticism  of  all 
basis,  he  only  placed  them  on  one  firmer 
and  more  secure ;  and,  in  the  second,  so 
far  from  originating  a  new  opinion,  he 
could  only  have  added  one  to  a  class  of 
philosophers,  who,  after  the  time  of 
Arnauld,  were  continually  on  the  increase, 
and  who,  among  the  contemporaries  of 
Reid  himself,  certainly  constituted  the 
majority.  His  philosophy  would  thus  be  at 
once  only  a  silly  blunder ;  its  pretence  to 
originality  only  in  proclamation  of  ignor- 
ance ;  and,  so  far  from  being  an  honour  to 
the. nation  from  which  it  arose,  and  by 
whom  it  was  respected,  it  would,  in  fact, 
be  a  scandal  and  a  reproach  to  the  philos- 
ophy of  any  country  in  which  it  met 
with  any  milder  treatment  than  derision. 
...  I  then  detailed  to  you  the  grounds 
on  which  it  ought  to  be  held  that  Reid's 
doctrine  of  Perception  is  one  of  Natural 
Realism,  and  not  a  form  of  Cosmothetic 
Idealism,  as  supposed  by  Brown.  .  .  . 
Having  concluded  the  argument  by  which 
I  endeavoured  to  satisfy  you  that  Reid's 
doctrine  is  Natural  Realism,  I  should  now 
proceed  to  show  that  Natural  Realism 
is  a  more  philosophical  doctrine  than 
Hypothetical  Realism.  —  Hamilton,  Sir 


THOMAS  REID 


285 


William,  1836-56,  Lectures  on  Metaphys- 
ics, Lectures y  xiii,  xxiv. 

It  may  be  here  remarked  that  what 
Malebranche  has  properly  called  the  judg- 
ment of  the  mind  as  to  the  cause  of  its 
sensations,  is  precisely  what  Reid  denom- 
inates perception ;  a  term  less  clear,  and 
which  seems  to  have  led  some  of  his 
school  into  important  errors.  The  lan- 
guage of  the  Scottish  philosopher  appears 
to  imply  that  he  considered  perception  as 
a  distinct  and  original  faculty  of  the  mind, 
rather  than  what  it  is,  a  complex  opera- 
tion of  the  judgment  and  memory,  apply- 
ing knowledge  already  acquired  by  experi- 
ence. Neither  he  nor  his  disciple  Stewart, 
though  aware  of  the  mistakes  that  have 
arisen  in  this  province  of  metaphysics  by 
selecting  our  instances  from  the  phenom- 
ena of  vision  instead  of  the  other  senses, 
have  avoided  the  same  source  of  error. 
— Hall  AM,  Henry,  1837-39,  Introduc- 
tion to  the  Literature  of  Europe^  pt.  iv,  ch, 
iii,  par.  43. 

Reid's  philosophy  made  a  great  stir  at 
first,  but  has  for  some  years  past  been 
sinking  into  merited  neglect.  The  appeal 
to  Common  Sense  as  arbiter  in  Philosophy, 
is  now  pretty  well  understood  to  be  on  a 
par  with  Dr.  Johnson's  kicking  a  stone 
as  a  refutation  of  Berkeley. — Lewes, 
George  Henry,  1845-46,  Biographical 
History  of  Philosophy,  p.  619. 

The  great  aim  of  Reid's  philosophy, 
then,  was  to  investigate  the  true  theory 
of  perception;  to  controvert  the  repre- 
sentationalist  hypothesis,  as  held  in  one 
sense  or  another  by  almost  all  preceding 
philosophers;  and  to  stay  the  progress 
which  scepticism,  aided  by  this  hypothesis, 
was  so  rapidly  making.  .  .  .  That 
Reid  has  done  much  for  the  advancement 
of  mental  science,  is  almost  universally 
admitted:  to  complain  that  he  did  not 
accomplish  more,  or  follow  out  the  track 
which  he  opened  to  its  furthest  results,  is 
perhaps  unreasonable;  since  we  ought 
rather  to  look  for  the  completion  of  his 
labours  from  the  hands  of  his  followers, 
than  demand  from  himself  at  once  the 
foundation  and  the  superstructure.  — 
MORELL,  J.  D.,  1846-7,  An  Historical 
and  Critical  View  of  the  Speculative  Phi- 
losophy of  Europe  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

The  merits  of  Dr.  Reid,  then,  as  a  re- 
former of  philosophy,  amount  in  our  opin- 
ion to  this :  he  was  among  the  first  to  say 


and  to  write  that  the  representative  theory 
of  perception  was  false  and  erroneous,  and 
was  the  fountain  head  of  scepticism  and 
idealism.  But  this  admission  of  his  merits 
must  be  accompanied  by  the  qualification 
that  he  adopted,  as  the  basis  of  his  philos- 
ophy, a  principle  which  rendered  nugatory 
all  his  protestations.  It  is  of  no  use  to 
disclaim  a  conclusion  if  we  accept  the 
premises  which  inevitably  lead  to  it.  Dr. 
Reid  disclaimed  the  representative  theory, 
but  he  embraced  its  premises,  and  thus  he 
virtually  ratified  the  conclusions  of  the 
very  system  which  he  clamorously  de- 
nounced. In  his  language  he  is  opposed  to 
representationism,  but  in  his  doctrine  he 
lends  it  the  strongest  support  by  accept- 
ing as  the  foundation  of  his  philosophy  an 
analysis  of  the  perception  of  matter. — 
Ferrier,  James  Frederick,  1847-66, 
Reid  and  the  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense, 
Lectures,  vol.  ii,  p.  417. 

The  positive  doctrines  of  Reid's  own 
system  could  not  be  understood  without 
much  explanation ;  and  his  own  exposition 
of  them  is  very  imperfect.  Indeed  the 
constant  occurrence  of  polemical  matter, 
and  the  repetitions  which  his  Essays  de- 
rived from  their  original  shape  of  Lec- 
tures, are  the  circumstances  that  chiefly 
injure  the  literary  value  of  the  work.  He 
is  a  bald  and  dry,  but  very  clear  and  log- 
ical writer ;  and  never  was  there  a  more 
sincere  lover  of  truth,  or  a  more  candid 
and  honourable  disputant.  His  slow  and 
patient  thinking,  notwithstanding  a  strong 
aversion  to  close  analysis,  led  him  to  some 
very  striking  results,  out  of  which  his 
whole  scheme  is  developed.  The  origi- 
nality of  these  is  much  greater  than  his 
own  manner  of  expounding  them  would 
lead  us  to  suppose ;  and  their  importance 
in  the  history  of  philosophy  may  be  esti- 
mated from  this  fact,  that  Reid's  meta- 
physical creed  does  really  coincide  with 
the  first  and  most  characteristic  step  in 
that  of  his  German  contemporary  Kant.  — 
Spalding,  William,  1852-82,  A  History 
of  English  Literature,  p.  352. 

Since  the  first  edition  of  this  work.  Sir 
W.  Hamilton  has  published  an  edition  of 
Reid,  illustrated  and  enriched  by  notes 
and  dissertations  of  incomparable  erudi- 
tion and  acuteness.  Respecting  the  inter- 
pretation Sir  William  gives  to  Reid's  doc- 
trines, I  will  only  say  that  he  has  shown 
what  a  subtle  mind  can  read  into  the 


286 


THOMAS  REID 


philosophy  of  common  sense ;  but  he  has  not 
in  the  least  produced  the  conviction  in  me 
of  Reid's  having  meant  what  the  illustrious 
successor  supposed  him  to  have  meant. 
At  the  same  time,  I  will  add  that,  the 
limits  of  my  work  having  restricted  me  to 
the  consideration  of  Reid's  contributions 
to  Philosophy,  (in  the  narrow  sense  of 
the  term),  I  have  not  done  justice  to  his 
many  excellent  qualities  as  a  teacher. 
His  works  are  well  worthy  of  diligent 
study,  and  their  spirit  is  eminently  scien- 
tific.— Lewes,  George  Henry,  1857,  Bio- 
graphical History  of  Philosophy,  p.  629, 
note. 

Reid  is  a  bold,  dry,  but  very  clear  and 
logical  writer,  a  sincere  lover  of  truth, 
and  a  candid  and  honorable  disputant ;  his 
system  is  original  and  important  in  the 
history  of  philosophy. — BoTTA,  Anne  C. 
Lynch,  1860,  Hand-Book  of  Universal 
Literature,  p.  510. 

Was  the  most  eminent  among  the  purely 
speculative  thinkers  of  Scotland,  after 
Hume  and  Adam  Smith,  though  in  point  of 
merit,  he  must  be  placed  far  below  them. 
For,  he  had  neither  the  comprehensiveness 
of  Smith,  nor  the  fearlessness  of  Hume. 
The  range  of  his  knowledge  was  not  wide 
enough  to  allow  him  to  be  comprehensive ; 
while  a  timidity,  almost  amounting  to 
moral  cowardice,  made  him  recoil  from 
the  views  advocated  by  Hume,  not  so  much 
on  account  of  their  being  false,  as  on  ac- 
count of  their  being  dangerous.  .  .  . 
With  Reid,  the  main  question  always  is, 
not  whether  an  inference  is  true,  but  what 
will  happen  if  it  is  true.  He  says,  that 
a  doctrine  is  to  be  judged  by  its  fruits ; 
forgetting  that  the  same  doctrine  will 
bear  different  fruits  in  different  ages, 
and  that  the  consequences  which  a  theory 
produces  in  one  state  of  society,  are  often 
diametrically  opposed  to  those  which  it 
produces  in  another.  He  thus  made  his 
own  age  the  standard  of  all  future  ones. 
He  also  trammelled  philosophy  with  prac- 
tical considerations;  diverting  thinkers 
from  the  pursuit  of  truth,  which  is  their 
proper  department,  into  the  pursuit  of 
expediency,  which  is  not  their  department 
at  all.  Reid  was  constantly  stopping  to 
inquire,  not  whether  theories  were  accu- 
rate, but  whether  it  was  advisable  to 
adopt  them ;  whether  they  were  favoura- 
ble to  patriotism,  or  to  generosity,  or  to 
friendship ;  in  a  word,  whether  they  were 


comfortable,  and  such  as  we  should  at 
present  like  to  believe.  Or  else,  he 
would  take  other  ground,  still  lower,  and 
still  more  unworthy  of  a  philosopher. — 
Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  1862-66,  His- 
tory of  Civilization  in  England,  vol.  ni,  ch.Y. 

The  mere  fact  of  his  originating  a 
school  of  philosophy,  even  though  we 
allow  that  his  conclusions  were  supported 
by  popular  feeling,  argues  a  large  measure 
of  intellectual  force,  in  one  direction  or 
another ;  but  very  different  opinions  have 
been  expressed  as  to  his  capacities  for 
mental  analysis.  Various  particulars  in 
his  style  and  his  favourite  studies  indicate 
a  tendency  to  dwell  by  preference  upon 
the  concrete.  He  had  no  great  turn  for 
style ;  his  composition  deserves  the  praise 
of  "ease,  perspicuity,  and  purity;''  it  is, 
besides,  neat  and  finished,  and  often  moves 
with  considerable  spirit :  but  it  has  neither 
the  incisive  vigour  of  Campbell,  the 
copiousness  of  Smith,  nor  the  original 
freshness  of  Tucker. — Minto,  William, 
1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose  Litera- 
ture, p.  471. 

If  he  was  not  the  founder,  he  is  the  fit 
representative  of  the  Scottish  philosophy. 
He  is  in  every  respect,  a  Scotchman  of 
the  genuine  type:  shrewd,  cautious,  out- 
wardly calm,  and  yet  with  a  deep  well  of 
feeling  within,  and  capable  of  enthusi- 
asm ;  not  witty,  but  with  a  quiet  vein  of 
humour.  And  then  he  has  the  truly  philo- 
sophic spirit  seeking  truth  modestly,  hum- 
bly, diligently ;  piercing  beneath  the  sur- 
face to  gaze  on  the  true  nature  of  things ; 
and  not  to  be  caught  by  sophistry,  or  mis- 
lead by  plausible  representations.  He  has 
not  the  mathematical  consecutiveness  of 
Descartes,  the  speculative  genius  of  Leib- 
nitz, the  sagacity  of  Locke,  the  spirituel 
of  Berkeley,  or  the  detective  skill  of  Hume ; 
but  he  has  a  quality  quite  as  valuable  as 
any  of  these,  even  in  philosophy  he  has  in 
perfection  that  common-sense  which  he  so 
commends,  and  this  saves  him  from  the 
extreme  positions  into  which  these  great 
men  have  been  tempted  by  the  soaring 
nature  of  their  inexorable  logic. — Mc- 
CosH,  James,  1874,  The  Scottish  Philoso- 
phy, p.  192. 

Reid's  appeal  to  the  common-sense  of 
men,  was  taken  without  sufficient  analysis, 
and  hence  bears  a  dogmatic  character. 
He  has  left  it  uncertain,  whether  he  re- 
garded sensation  itself  as  a  direct  contract 


REID— BURKE  287 


with  the  external  world,  or  whether  it  is 
instantly  completed  by  an  intuitive  action 
of  the  mind,  and  the  reference  of  effects 
to  causes  becomes  the  medium  by  which 
this  union  is  effected.  We  suppose  him 
to  have  obscurely  held  this  last  view. 
Hamilton  ascribes  to  him  the  first. — Bas- 
COM,  John,  1874,  Philosophy  of  English 
Literature^  p.  315. 

The  ethical  speculations  of  Reid,  the 
most  eminent  writer  of  the  Common-Sense 
school,  are  contained  in  his  ''Essays  on 
the  Active  Powers,"  but  would  scarcely 
justify  a  prolonged  analysis.  They  may 
be  described  briefly  as  a  combination  of 
the  views  of  Clarke  and  Shaftsbury,  though 
most  resembling  those  of  Butler.  Recog- 
nising the  nugatory  character  of  Clarke's 
theory,  he  also  thinks  that  to  adopt 
Shaftesbury's  theory  would  be  to  make 
morality  arbitrary,  as  dependent  upon  a 
''natural  or  acquired  taste."  The  con- 
science, therefore,  which  guides  our  moral 
judgments,  is  at  once,  in  his  language, 
an  intellectual  and  an  active  power,  and 
its  supremacy  is,  as  with  Butler,  an  ulti- 
mate and  self-evident  fact.  This  power, 
which  is  simply  common  sense  applied  to 
moral  questions,  is,  of  course,  capable  of 
laying  down  as  many  first  principles  as 
may  be  required.  Here,  as  elsewhere, 
the  difficulty  of  finding  an  ultimate  justi- 
fication for  axioms  is  evaded  by  simply 


declaring  that  no  justification  is  needed ; 
but  there  is  nothing  in  Reid's  ethical 
doctrine  which  has  not  been  more  articu- 
lately worked  out  by  his  predecessors, 
except  that  his  facility  in  multiplying  first 
principles  is,  perhaps,  more  marked  and 
his  philosophy  proportionally  weaker. — 
Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History  of  English 
Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century^  vol.  II, 
p.  62. 

The  principles  which  Reid  insists  upon 
as  every  where  present  in  experience  evi- 
dently correspond  pretty  closely  to  the 
Kantian  categories  and  the  unity  of  apper- 
ception.—Seth,  Andrew,  1886,  Encyclo- 
pcedia  Brittanica,  vol.  XX. 

The  works  of  Reid,  from  his  "Enquiry 
into  the  Human  Mind"  (1763),  to  his 
"Active  Powers  of  Man"  (1788),  show  a 
great  clearness  of  intellect  and  strictly 
logical  habit,  but  no  great  enthusiasm  or 
originality. — Gosse,  Edmund,  1888,  A 
History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature, 
p.  295. 

The  father  of  Scottish  or  common-sense 
philosophy. — Robertson,  J.  Logie,  1894, 
A  History  of  English  Literature,  p.  252. 

On  the  study  of  psychology,  it  is  ad- 
mitted by  some  who  do  not  think  very 
highly  of  his  general  philosophy,  Reid  had 
a  favourable  influence. — Whittaker,  T., 
1896,  Social  England,  ed.  Traill,  vol.  v, 
p.  413. 


Edmund  Burke 

1729-1797 

Born,  in  Dublin,  12  Jan.  (?)  1729.  Educated  at  a  school  at  Ballitore,  1741-43; 
at  Trinity  Coll.,  Dublin,  1743-48;  scholarship,  1746;  B.  A.,  1748.  To  Middle  Tem- 
ple to  study  Law,  1750.  Never  called  to  Bar ;  gave  up  legal  studies  by  1755.  Took 
to  literary  work.  Married  Jane  Nugent,  1756  (or  1757?).  Edited  "Annual  Register, " 
1759-88.  Gradually  became  known  by  literary  work.  Private  Sec.  to  William 
Gerard  Hamilton,  1759-64.  To  Ireland  with  Hamilton,  1761.  Annual  pension  of 
£300,  1763.  Threw  up  pension,  April  1764.  Private  Sec.  to  Lord  Rockingham,  July 
1765.  M.  P.  for  Wendover,  Dec.  1765.  First  speech  made,  27  Jan.  1766.  To 
Ireland,  summer  of  1766;  received  freedom  of  city  of  Galway.  Purchased  estate 
near  Beaconsfield,  1768.  Appointed  Agent  to  the  Province  of  New  York,  1771.  Visit 
to  Paris,  Feb.  to  March  1773.  M.  P.  for  Malton  after  dissolution  of  Parliament  in 
Sept.  1774 ;  again  after  dissolution  in  Sept.  1780 ;  and  again  in  Nov.  1790.  Intimacy 
with  Fox  begun.  Appointed  Paymaster  of  the  Forces,  1782.  Lord  Rector  of  Glasgow 
University,  1784  and  1785.  Impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings,  10  May  1787 ;  trial 
begun,  13  Feb.  1788.  Grace  for  conferring  Hon.  LL.D.  degree  passed,  Dublin  Univ., 
11  Dec.  1790.  Burke  apparently  never  attended  to  take  the  degree.  Again  elected 
M.  P.  for  Malton,  Nov.  1790.  Rupture  with  Fox,  1791.  Retired  from  Parliament, 
July  1794.  Two  pensions  of  £1,200  and  £2,500  granted  him,  Aug.  1794.  Inter- 
ested in  foundation  of  Maynooth  Catholic  College,  1795.  Established,  at  Beaconsfield, 
school  for  sons  of  French  emigrants,  1796.    Died  at  Beaconsfield,  6  July  1797. 


288 


EDMUND  BURKE 


Buried  in  Beaconsfield  parish  church.  Works:  Burke's  chief  literary  works  are: 
"A  Vindication  of  Natural  Society"  (anon.),  1756;  ''A  Philosophical  Inquiry  into 
the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  of  the  Sublime  and  the  Beautiful"  (anon.),  1757;  *'An  Account 
of  the  European  Settlements  in  America"  (anon,  probably  edited  by  Burke,  and  written 
by  himself  and  his  cousin,  William  Burke),  1757;  "A  Short  Account  of  a  Short  Ad- 
ministration" (anon.),  1766 ;  ''Observations  on  a  late  Publication  intituled  'The  Present 
State  of  the  Nation'  "  (anon.),  1769 ;  "Thoughts  on  the  Causes  of  the  Present  Discon- 
tents" (anon.),  1770;  "Political  Tracts  and  Speeches,"  1777;  "Reflections  on  the 
Revolution  in  France,"  1790  (2nd  edn.  same  year) ;  "Appeals  from  the  New  to  the 
Old  Whigs"  (anon.),  1791  (2nd  edn.  same  year);  "Thoughts  on  the  Prospect  of  a 
Regicide  Peace"  (anon),  1796  (11th  edn.  same  year).  [Burke  published  a  number  of 
his  speeches,  also  of  political  pamphlets  and  letters,  beween  1774  and  1791,  and  many 
were  published  posthumously.  A  complete  collection  is  the  "Works  and  Correspond- 
ence" (8  vols.),  London,  1852].  Posthumous:  "Correspondence  with  Dr.  Laurence," 
1827;  "Letters,  1744-97"  (4 vols.),  1844;  "Speeches,  withMemoir,"  1854 ;  "Letters, 
Speeches,  and  Tracts  on  Irish  Affairs,"  1881.  Collected  Works:  in  8  vols.,  1792- 
1827;  in  8  vols.,  1852.  Life:  by  MacCormick,  1798;  by  Bisset,  1798;  by  Sir  James 
Prior,  5th  edn.  1854;  by  MacKnight,  1858;  by  Morley  ("English  Men  of  Letters" 
series),  1879.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  39. 


PERSONAL 

It  is  time  I  should  say  who  my  friend  is. 
His  name  is  Edmond  Burke.  As  a  liter- 
ary man  he  may  possibly  be  not  quite  un- 
known to  you.  He  is  the  author  of  a 
piece  which  imposed  on  the  world  as  Lord 
Bolingbroke's,  called,  "The  Advantages 
of  Natural  Society,"  and  of  a  very  ingen- 
ious book  published  last  year,  called,  "A 
Treatise  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful." 
I  must  farther  say  of  him,  that  his  chief 
application  has  been  to  the  knowledge  of 
public  business,  and  our  commercial  in- 
terests; that  he  seems  to  have  a  most 
extensive  knowledge,  with  extraordinary 
talents  for  business,  and  to  want  nothing 
but  ground  to  stand  upon  to  do  his  coun- 
try very  important  services.  — Markham, 
W.,  1759,  Letter  to  the  Duchess  of  Queens- 
bury,  Sep.  25;  Chatham  Correspondence, 
vol.  I,  p.  432. 

An  Irishman,  Mr.  Burke,  is  sprung  up, 
in  the  House  of  Commons  who  has  aston- 
ished every  body  with  the  power  of  his 
eloquence,  and  his  comprehensive  knowl- 
edge in  all  our  exterior  and  internal  poli- 
tics, and  commercial  interests.  He  wants 
nothing  but  that  sort  of  dignity  annexed 
to  rank  and  property  in  England  to  make 
him  the  most  considerable  man  in  the 
Lower  House.— Lee,  Arthur,  1766,  To 
the  Prince  Royal  of  Poland,  Life,  p.  290. 

At  Beaconsfield,  Mr.  Burke  is  an  indus- 
trious farmer,  a  polite  husband,  a  kind 
master,  a  charitable  neighbour,  and  a 
most  excellent  companion.  The  demons 
of  ambition  and  party  who  hover  about 


Westminster  do  not  extend  their  influ- 
ences as  far  as  the  villa.  I  know  not  why 
it  is,  but  these  busy  spirits  seem  more 
tranquil  and  pleased  in  their  days  of  re- 
treat than  the  honest,  dull  justice  of  the 
quorum,  who  never  stretched  forth  his 
hand  to  snatch  the  sceptre  of  power,  or 
raised  his  voice  in  publick  to  fill  the  trum- 
pet of  fame.  —  Montagu,  ELizABEfn, 
1772,  Letters,  Aug.  9 ;  A  Lady  of  the  Last 
Century,  ed.  Doran,  p.  175. 

Here  lies  our  good  Edmund,  whose  genius 
was  such, 

We  scarcely  can  praise  it,  or  blame  it  too 
much; 

Who,  born  for  the  universe,  narrow 'd  his 
mind, 

And  to  party  gave  up  what  was  meant  for 
mankind ; 

Though  fraught  with  all  learning,  yet  strain- 
ing his  throat 

To  persuade  Tommy  Townshend  to  lend  him 
a  vote ; 

Who,  too  deep  for  his  hearers,  still  went  on 
refining, 

And  thought  of    convincing,  while  they 

thought  of  dining ; 
Though  equal  to  all  things,  for  all  things 

unfit. 

Too  nice  for  a  statesman,  too  proud  for  a  wit; 
For  a  patriot,  too  cool;  for  a  drudge,  dis- 
obedient ; 

And  too  fond  of  the  right  to  pursue  the  ex- 

pedient. 

In  short,  'twas  his  fate,  unemploy'd,  or  in 
place,  sir, 

To  eat  mutton  cold,  and  cut  blocks  with  a 
razor. 

— Goldsmith,  Oliver,  1774,  The  Retali- 
ation. 


EDMUND  BURKE 


289 


No  expectation  that  I  had  formed  of 
Mr.  Burke,  either  from  his  works,  his 
speeches,  his  character,  or  his  fame,  had 
anticipated  to  me  such  a  man  as  1  now 
met.  He  appeared,  perhaps,  at  this 
moment,  to  the  highest  possible  advantage 
in  health,  vivacity,  and  spirits.  Removed 
from  the  impetuous  aggravations  of  party 
contentions,  that,  at  times,  by  inflaming 
his  passions,  seem,  momentarily  at  least, 
to  disorder  his  character,  he  was  lulled 
into  gentleness  by  the  grateful  feelings 
of  prosperity ;  exhilarated,  but  not  intoxi- 
cated, by  sudden  success :  and  just  risen, 
after  toiling  years  of  failures,  disappoint- 
ments, fire  and  fury,  to  place,  affluence, 
and  honours ;  which  were  brightly  smiling 
on  the  zenith  of  his  powers.  He  looked, 
indeed,  as  if  he  had  no  wish  but  to  diffuse 
philanthropy,  pleasure,  and  genial  gaiety 
all  around.  His  figure,  when  he  is  not 
negligent  in  his  carriage,  is  noble;  his 
air  commanding;  his  address  graceful; 
his  voice  clear,  penetrating,  sonorous,  and 
powerful ;  his  language  copious,  eloquent, 
and  changefully  impressive ;  his  manners 
are  attractive ;  his  conversation  is  past  all 
praise.  You  will  call  me  mad,  I  know ; — ■ 
but  if  I  wait  till  I  see  another  Mr.  Burke 
for  such  another  fit  of  extasy — I  may  be 
long  enough  in  my  very  sober  good  senses ! 
— D'Arblay,  Madame  (Fanny  Burney), 
1782,  Letter  to  Samuel  Crisp ^  Memoirs  of 
Doctor  Burney,  p.  172. 

Fox  never  talks  in  private  company; 
not  from  any  determination  not  to  talk, 
but  because  he  has  not  the  first  motion. 
A  man  who  is  used  to  the  applause  of  the 
House  of  Commons  has  no  wish  for  that  of 
a  private  company.  A  man  accustomed  to 
throw  for  a  thousand  pounds,  if  set  down 
to  throw  for  sixpence,  would  not  be  at  the 
pains  to  count  his  dice.  Burke's  talk  is 
the  ebullition  of  his  mind.  He  does  not 
talk  from  a  desire  of  distinction,  but  be- 
cause his  mind  is  full. — Johnson,  Sam- 
uel, 1783,  Life  by  Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol. 
IV,  p.  192. 

So  lively,  and  so  foolish,  and  so  good- 
humoured  was  he,  and  so  like  the  agreea- 
ble Mr.  Burke  I  once  knew  and  admired, 
•  that  I  soon  forgot  his  malefactions,  and 
how  often  I  had  been  in  a  passion  with  him 
for  some  of  his  speeches. — More,  Han- 
nah, 1784,  Letter  jto  her  Sister,  Memoirs^ 
ed.  Roberts. 

He  must  again  repeat  that  all  he  ever 

19  0 


knew  of  men,  that  all  he  ever  read  in 
books,  that  all  his  reasoning  faculties  in- 
formed him  of,  or  his  fancy  suggested  to 
him,  did  not  impart  that  exalted  knowl- 
edge, that  superior  information,  which  he 
had  acquired  from  the  lessons  of  his  right 
honourable  friend.  To  him  he  owed  all 
his  fame,  if  fame  he  had  any.  And  if  he 
(Mr.  Fox)  should  now,  or  at  any  time,  pre- 
vail over  him  in  discussion,  he  could  ac- 
knowledge his  gratitude  for  the  capabil- 
ity and  pride  of  the  conquest  in  telling 
him  "Hoc  ipsum  quod  vincit  id  esttuum." 
— Fox,  Charles  James,  1791,  Speech  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  occasion  of 
his  rupture  with  Mr.  Burke. 
We  trust  thy  liberal  views,  thy  generous 
heart ; 

We  think  of  those  who,  naked,  pale,  and 
poor, 

Relieved  and  blessed,  have  wandered  from 
thy  door ; 

We  see  thee  with  unwearied  step  explore 
Each  track  of  bloodshed  on  the  farthest  shore 
Of  injured  Asia,  and  thy  swelling  breast 
Harrowing  the  oppressor,  mourning  for  the 
oppressed. 

—Bowles,  William  Lisle,  1792?  The 
Right  Honourable  Edmund  Burke. 

Burke  is,  indeed,  a  young  man  of  his 
years.  But  the  reason  I  take  to  be,  that 
if  age  should  deprive  him  of  one  half  of 
his  ideas  he  would  have  still  more  left 
him  than  any  man  of  five-and-twenty. — ■ 
Charlemont,  Lord,  1792,  Letter  to  Ed- 
mond  MalonCy  Aug.  20;  Life  by  Prior, 
p.  196. 

As  late  I  lay  in  Slumber's  shadowy  vale, 
With  wetted  cheek  and  in  a  mourner's 
guise, 

I  saw  the  sainted  form  of  Freedom  rise : 
She  spake !  not  sadder  moans  the  autumnal 
gale — 

''Great  Son  of  Genius !  sweet  to  me  thy  name, 
Ere  in  an  evil  hour  with  altered  voice 
Thou  badst  Oppression's  hireling  crew  re- 
joice, 

Blasting  with  wizard  spell  my  laurelled  fame. 

Yet  never,  Burke!  thou  drank'st  Corrup- 
tion's bo  wd! 
Thee  stormy  Pity  and  the  cherish'd  lure 
Of  Pomp,  and  proud  precipitance  of  soul 

Wildered  with  meteor  fires.   Ah  spirit  pure ! 

That  error's  mist  had  left  thy  purged  eye: 

So  might  I  clasp  thee  with  a  Mother's  joy!" 

—Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1794, 
Sonnet  to  Burke,  Dec.  9. 

Mrs.  Burke  presents  her  compliments 
to  Mr.  Fox,  and  thanks  him  for  his  oblig- 
ing inquiries.    Mrs.  Burke  communicated 


290 


EDMUND  BURKE 


his  letter  to  Mr.  Burke,  and,  by  his  desire, 
has  to  inform  Mr.  Fox  that  it  has  cost 
Mr.  Burke  the  most  heart-felt  pain  to 
obey  the  stern  voice  of  his  duty  in  render- 
ing asunder  a  long  friendship,  but  that  he 
deemed  his  sacrifice  necessary;  that  his 
principles  remained  the  same ;  and  that  in 
whatever  his  life  yet  remained  to  him,  he 
conceives  that  he  must  live  for  others  and 
not  for  himself.  Mr.  Burke  is  convinced 
that  the  principles  which  he  has  endeav- 
oured to  maintain  are  necessary  to  the 
welfare  and  dignity  of  his  country,  and 
that  these  principles  can  be  enforced  only 
by  the  general  persuasion  of  his  sincerity. 
For  herself,  Mrs.  Burke  has  again  to  ex- 
press her  gratitude  to  Mr.  Fox  for  his  in- 
quiries.— Burke,  Mrs.  Edmund,  1797, 
Letter  to  C.  J.  Fox 

His  end  was  suited  to  the  simple  great- 
ness of  his  mind,  which  he  displayed 
through  life,  every  way  unaffected,  without 
levity,  without  ostentation,  full  of  natural 
grace  and  dignity.— Laurence,  French, 
1797,  Gentleman's  Magazine,  vol.  67. 

There  never  was  a  more  beautiful  alli- 
ance between  virtue  and  talents.  All  his 
conceptions  were  grand,  all  his  sentiments 
generous.  The  great  leading  trait  of  his 
character,  and  that  which  gave  it  all  its 
energy  and  its  colour,  was  that  strong 
hatred  of  vice  which  is  no  other  than  the 
passionate  love  of  virtue.  It  breathes  in 
all  his  writings ;  it  was  the  guide  of  all 
his  actions.  But  even  the  force  of  his 
eloquence  was  sufficient  to  transfuse  it 
into  the  weaker  or  perverted  minds  of 
his  contemporaries.  This  has  caused 
much  of  the  miseries  of  Europe ;  this  has 
rendered  of  no  effect  towards  her  salva- 
tion the  sublimest  talents,  the  greatest  and 
rarest  virtues  that  the  beneficence  of 
Providence  ever  concentrated  in  a  single 
character  for  the  benefit  of  mankind.  But 
Mr.  Burke  was  too  superior  to  the  age  in 
which  he  lived.  His  prophetic  genius  only 
astonished  the  nation  which  it  ought  to 
have  governed.— Cazales,  M.,  1797,  On 
the  Death  of  Edmund  Burke. 

Had  a  long  and  interesting  conversation 
with  Mr.  Mackintosh,  turning  principally 
on  Burke  and  Fox.  Of  Burke  he  spoke 
with  rapture,  declaring  that  he  was,  in  his 
estimation,  without  any  parallel,  in  any  age 
or  country,  except,  perhaps.  Lord  Bacon 
and  Cicero:  that  his  works  contained 
an  ampler  store  of  political  and  moral 


wisdom  than  could  be  found  in  any  other 
writer  whatever ;  and  that  he  was  only  not 
esteemed  the  most  severe  and  sagacious  of 
reasoners,  because  he  was  the  most  elo- 
quent of  men,  the  perpetual  force  and 
vigour  of  his  arguments  being  hid  from 
vulgar  observation  by  the  dazzling  glories 
in  which  they  were  enshrined.  In  taste 
alone  he  thought  himself  deficient ;  but  to 
have  possessed  that  quality  in  addition  to 
his  other,  would  have  been  too  much  for 
man. — Passed  the  last  Christmas  (of  Mr. 
Burke's  Life)  with  Burke  at  Beaconsfield, 
and  described,  in  glowing  terms  the  as- 
tonishing effusions  of  his  mind  in  con- 
versation :  perfectly  free  from  all  taint  of 
afl^ectation ;  would  enter,  with  cordial  glee, 
into  the  sports  of  children,  rolling  about 
with  them  on  the  carpet,  and  pouring  out, 
in  his  gambols,  the  sublimest  images, 
mingled  with  the  most  wretched  puns. — 
Anticipated  his  approaching  dissolution 
with  due  solemnity  but  perfect  composure ; 
— minutely  and  accurately  informed,  to  a 
wonderful  exactness,  with  respect  to  every 
fact  relative  to  the  French  Revolution. 
.  .  .  Of  Gibbon,  Mackintosh  neatly 
remarked  that  he  might  have  been  cut 
out  of  a  corner  of  Burke's  mind  without  his 
missing  it. — Green,  Thomas,  1797-1810, 
Diary  of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 

near  this  place  lies  interred  all 
that  was  mortal  of  the 

right  honourable  edmund  burke, 

WHO  DIED  ON  THE  9tH  OF  JULY,  1797, 
AGED  68  YEARS. 
IN  THE  SAME  GRAVE  ARE  DEPOSITED 
THE  REMAINS  OF  HIS  ONLY  SON,  RICHARD 

BURKE,  ESQ., 
REPRESENTATIVE  IN  PARLIAMENT  FOR  THE 
BOROUGH  OF  MALTON, 
WHO  DIED  THE  2ND  OF  AUGUST,  1794, 
AGED  35. 

OF  HIS  BROTHER,  RICHARD  BURKE,  ESQ., 

BARRISTER-AT-LAW, 
AND  RECORDER  OF  THE  CITY  OF  BRISTOL, 
WHO  DIED  ON  THE  4tH  OF  FEBRUARY,  1794  : 
AND  OF  HIS  WIDOW,  JANE  MARY  BURKE, 
WHO  DIED  THE  2nD  OF  APRIL,  1812, 
AGED  78. 

—Tablet  to  the  Burke  Family,  1812, 
Beaconsfield  Church. 

Burke's  conversation  was  rambling,  but 
splendid,  rich  and  instructive  beyond  com- 
parison.—Butler,  Charles,  1822,  Remin- 
iscences, vol.  I,  p.  168. 

In  person,  he  was  five  feet  ten  inches 


EDMUND  BURKE 


291 


high,  erect,  well-formed,  never  very  ro- 
bust; when  young,  expert  in  the  sports 
of  his  country  and  time,  active  in  habits 
suited  to  his  years  until  his  last  illness,  and 
always,  it  scarcely  need  be  added,  particu- 
larly active  in  mind,  having  nothing  of 
what  he  called  ''the  master-vice, sloth,"  in 
his  composition.  His  countenance  in  early 
life  possessed  considerable  sweetness, 
and  by  his  female  friends  was  esteemed 
handsome.  At  a  later  period,  it  did  not 
appear  to  be  marked,  particularly  when 
in  a  state  of  quiescence,  by  that  striking 
expression  which,  from  the  well-known 
qualities  of  his  mind,  many  persons  ex- 
pected to  see;  but  the  lines  of  thought 
were  evident,  and  when  excited  by  discus- 
sion, there  was  an  occasional  working  of 
the  brow,  occasioned  partly  by  being  near- 
sighted, which  let  the  attentive  observer 
into  the  secret  of  the  powerful  workings 
within.  From  this  defective  state  of 
vision,  he  almost  constantly,  from  about 
the  year  1780,  wore  spectacles.  .  .  . 
Like  Mr.  Fox,  Mr.  Burke  was  somewhat 
negligent  in  common  dress,  being  latterly 
distinguished  by  a  tight  brown  coat,  which 
seemed  to  impede  all  freedom  of  motion, 
and  a  little  bob-wig  with  curls,  which,  in 
addition  to  his  spectacles,  made  his  per- 
son be  recognized  by  those  who  had  never 
previously  seen  him,  the  moment  he  rose 
to  speak  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
.  .  .  His  address  in  private  life  pos- 
sessed something  of  a  chivalrous  air — ■ 
noble,  yet  unaffected  and  unreserved,  im- 
pressing upon  strangers  of  every  rank, 
imperceptibly  and  without  effort,  the 
conviction  of  his  being  a  remarkable  man. 
— Prior,  Sir  James,  1824,  Memoir  of  the 
Life  and  Character  of  the  Right  Hon.  Ed- 
mund Burke,  vol.  ii,  jpp.  374,  377,  378. 

It  was  a  great  pity  that  Burke  accepted 
a  pension,  because  as  he  turned  out  so 
right  about  the  Revolution  it  dimmed  the 
glory  of  genius.  Lord  Mulgrave  said: 
*'Mr.  Fox  acknowledged  afterwards  that 
Burke  was  right  too  soon."  It  was  cruel 
to  break  up  his  friendship  with  Sheridan 
and  Fox,  but  Burke  had  no  other  way  of 
becoming  again  an  isolated  object  of  pub- 
lic astonishment.  Sheridan  and  Fox  had 
rather  dulled  his  fame,  and  his  only 
chance  of  self -applause,  the  only  chance 
of  soothing  his  wounded  vanity  left  him, 
was  to  burst  like  a  fiery  star  from  his 
regular  orbit,  and  become  the  object  of 


wonder  and  abuse,  enthusiasm  and  admi- 
ration, which  he  was  no  longer  in  the 
ordinary  progress.  Love  of  power  was  at 
the  bottom  of  his  heart,  depend  upon  it ; 
to  be  sure,  the  weakness  of  the  greatest 
minds.  To  think  that  Burke  was  always 
giving  Barry  caution  about  his  temper, 
while  he  was  such  a  signal  instance  of  vio- 
lence himself.— Haydon,  Benjamin  Rob- 
ert, 1825,  To  Miss  Mitford,  Dec.  10;  Life, 
Letters  and  Table  Talk,  ed.  Stoddard,  p.  227. 

I  saw  a  letter  or  two  of  Burke's  in 
which  there  is  an  epanchement  du  coeur 
not  visible  in  those  of  Pitt,  who  writes 
like  a  Premier  to  his  colleague.  Burke 
was  under  the  strange  hallucination  that 
his  son,  who  predeceased  him,  was  a  man 
of  greater  talents  than  himself.  On  the 
contrary,  he  had  little  talent  and  no  reso- 
lution.—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1828,  Jour- 
nal, May  24. 

What  a  guardian  angel  he  proved  to  the 
nation.  There  are  two  individuals  who 
have  adorned  and  benefited  our  country, 
whom  it  is  a  pleasure  to  trace  into  the 
very  recesses  of  private  life:  there  are 
no  discoveries  to  make; — all  is  so  fair, 
so  clear,  so  honourable — the  milk  of 
human  kindness  flows  forth  so  abundantly. 
I  speak  of  Edmund  Burke  and  Walter 
Scott.  How  delightful  it  is  to  find  those 
diamonds  without  a  flaw. — Grant,  Anne, 
1834,  Letters,  Apr.  17 ;  Memoir  and  Cor- 
respondence, ed.  Grant,  vol.  iii,  p.  237. 

It  is  strange,  considering  the  eminence 
of  the  man,  and  how  early  his  biographers 
were  in  the  field,  what  an  impenetrable 
cloud  hangs  over  the  life  of  Edmund  Burke, 
from  the  time  when  he  left  college  to  his 
avowed  entrance  into  a  public  career. 
The  same  observation  was  made  long 
years  since  by  one  who  knew  him  person- 
ally and  well.  ' 'It  always  appeared  to  Mr. 
West  ('Life  of  West')  that  there  was 
about  Mr.  Burke  a  degree  of  mystery  con- 
nected with  his  early  life  which  their  long 
intercourse  never  tended  to  explain." 
This  mystery  was  not  only  maintained  dur- 
ing life,  but  prepared  for  after  death. 
There  is  not  in  existence,  as  far  as  we  know 
or  have  a  right  to  infer  from  the  silence  of 
the  biographers,  one  single  letter,  paper, 
or  document  of  any  kind,  — except  a  mys- 
terious fragment  of  one  letter, — relating 
to  the  domestic  life  of  the  Burke.'s,  until 
long  after  Edmund  Burke  became  an  illus- 
trious and  public  man, — from  brothers  to 


292 


EDMUND  BURKE 


brother,  or  brothers  to  sister.  Such  let- 
ters could  not,  of  course,  find  a  place  in 
the  formal  "Correspondence  of  the  Right 
Honourable," — but  they  were  the  best 
possible  material  for  the  biographer — for 
the  man  Burke  must  grow  in  and  out  of 
them.  These  letters  and  documentary- 
evidence  must  have  been  intentionally  col- 
lected and  destroyed ;  and  the  probabili- 
ties are,  that  they  were  destroyed  by  Ed- 
mund himself,  for  he  was  the  last  sur- 
vivor of  the  family. — Dilke,  Sir  Charles 
Went  WORTH,  1853,  Burke,  The  Papers  of 
a  Critic,  vol.  n,  p.  330. 

I  confess  that  he  does  not  interest  me 
chiefly  as  either  statesman,  essayist,  or 
orator— that  1  should  not  care  for  him  in 
any  of  these  characters  if  I  did  not  per- 
ceive that  he  was  first  of  all  a  Man.  I 
may  disagree  with  a  number  of  his  opin- 
ions ;  1  shall  not  tell  you  with  how  many  1 
agree  or  disagree.  But  he  himself,  I 
think,  is  a  subject  worthy  of  all  study, 
and  of  very  sincere  affection. — Maurice, 
Frederick  I>Em^o^,l'^bl, Edmund  Burke, 
The  Friendship  of  Books  and  Other  Lec- 
tures, ed.  Hughes,  p.  305. 

A  few  months  after  her  [Mrs.  Burke] 
death,  the  house  which  she  had  occupied 
to  the  last  was  destroyed  by  fire.  All 
that  was  pleasant  and  beautiful  in  the 
abode  became  a  dream  of  the  past.  Some 
blackened  walls  and  charred  timbers  alone 
remained  to  tell  the  tale  of  desolation. 
Perhaps  it  was  better  so.  No  stranger 
was  long  to  inhabit  the  mansion  which 
had  been  the  scene  of  so  much  pure  enjoy- 
ment, so  much  domestic  affection,  so  many 
noble  aspirations.  Its  fate  was  symbol- 
ical of  the  sad  family  history  of  which  it 
had  been  the  scene.  The  blackened  ruins 
were  a  fitting  memorial  of  blighted  hopes, 
and  of  a  broken  heart. — Macknight, 
Thomas,  1860,  History  of  the  Life  and 
Times  of  Edmund  Burke,  vol.  ill,  p.  718. 

He  was  well  versed  in  Greek  and  Latin 
literature,  was  familiar  with  the  great 
masters  of  his  own  language,  and  had 
read  the  best  models  of  the  French. 
Ancient  and  modern  history  he  had  deeply 
studied ;  he  was  an  admirable  connoisseur 
in  art;  and  he  was  not  unfamiliar  with 
some  of  the  natural  sciences.  To  theology 
and  philosophy  he  paid  considerable  at- 
tention. His  acquaintance  with  English 
law  astonished  professional  men  them- 
selves, while  from  the  Roman  jurisprudence 


he  not  unfrequently  drew  happy  illustra- 
tions; and,  as  is  said  of  Shakespeare, 
he  loved  to  converse  with  laborers  and 
mechanics  about  their  trades.  He  was 
a  skilful,  practical  agriculturist ;  in  mat- 
ters of  conimerce  and  finance  he  was 
exceedingly  well  versed,  and  in  the  whole 
science  of  economics  he  was  far  beyond 
his  age. — Robertson,  J.  B.,  1875,  Lec- 
tures on  the  Life  of  Burke. 

He  sits  erect  and  firm,  his  head  thrown 
somewhat  back  as  if  conscious  of  his  in- 
tellectual strength.  His  face  is  one  that 
a  painter  would  find  it  hard  adequately  to 
portray,  for  its  expression  is  constantly 
varying,  but  full  of  benevolence;  now 
darkened  by  the  shadow  of  deep  thought, 
now  marked  by  vigorous  intellect,  softened 
by  sensibility.— Waller,  J.  F.,  1881, 
Boswell  and  Johnson,  Their  Companions 
and  Contemporaries,  p.  7. 

There  is  no  public  man  whose  character 
is  more  clearly  reflected  in  his  life  and  in 
his  intimate  correspondence ;  and  it  may 
be  confidently  said  that  there  is  no  other 
public  man  whose  character  was  in  all 
essential  respects  more  transparently 
pure.  Weak  health,  deep  and  fervent 
religious  principles,  and  studious  habits, 
saved  him  from  the  temptations  of  youth ; 
and  amid  all  the  vicissitudes  and  corrup- 
tion of  politics  his  heart  never  lost  its 
warmth,  or  his  conscience  its  sensitive- 
ness. There  were  faults  indeed  which 
were  only  too  apparent  in  his  character 
as  in  his  intellect — an  excessive  violence 
and  irritability  of  temper;  personal  antip- 
athies, which  were  sometimes  carried 
beyond  all  the  bounds  of  reason ;  party 
spirit,  which  was  too  often  suffered  to 
obscure  his  judgment,  and  to  hurry  him 
into  great  intemperance  and  exaggeration 
of  language.  But  he  was  emphatically  a 
good  man ;  and  in  the  higher  moral  quali- 
ties of  public  as  of  private  life  he  has  not 
often  been  surpassed. — Lecky,  William 
Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A  History  of 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol. 
Ill,  ch.  xi,  p.  201. 

So  wide  and  various  are  the  genius  and 
career  of  Burke  that  you  might  as  well 
attempt  to  exhaust  the  character  of 
Shakespeare  in  a  speech  of  this  kind  as 
attempt  to  deal  adequately  with  the  genius 
of  Burke.  .  .  .  There  was  no  stronger 
party  man  than  Burke.  He  was  a  Whig 
of  the  Whigs.    He  glorified  Whigs.  He 


EDMUND  BURKE 


293 


inspired  Whigs.  He  was,  if  I  may  so  ex- 
press myself,  the  prose  Poet  Laureate  of 
Whiggery.  And  yet,  without  hesitation 
or  murmur,  he  forsook  all  and  followed 
what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth.  He 
loved  Charles  Fox  and  all  his  other  polit- 
ical associates.  His  eulogy  on  Charles 
Fox  in  his  speech  on  his  Indian  Bill  is  per- 
haps the  noblest  tribute  ever  paid  in  elo- 
quence by  one  politician  to  another.  But 
he  forsook  them  all,  Charles  Fox  and  all, 
to  follow  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth. 
The  wrench  was  terrible.  It  brought 
tears  to  the  eyes  of  all  who  witnessed  it. 
But  Burke  never  flinched  and  never 
blenched.  He  went  home  to  his  lonely 
country  home.  He  went  home  to  see  his 
son  die,  and  all  his  hopes  and  future  die 
with  that  son,  and  then  to  die  in  solitude 
and  sorrow  himself.  And  what  of  him? 
Is  he  a  shadow  ?  No,  he  is,  in  my  opinion, 
the  one  figure  of  the  time  which  is  likely 
never  to  be  a  shadow.  He  brightens  on 
the  historic  canvas — as  the  other  figures 
fade — by  his  speeches,  which,  as  I  have 
said,  were  read  and  not  listened  to.  He 
will  be  remembered  as  long  as  there  are 
readers  to  read,  when  those  orators  on 
whose  lips  Parliaments  and  people  hung 
enthralled  are  forgotten  with  the  tongue 
that  spoke  and  the  ears  that  listened  to 
them.— RosEBERY,  Lord  Archibald  P.  P., 
1894-1900,  Life  and  Speeches,  ed.  Coates, 
vol  II,  pp.  1010,  1013. 

He  became  a  statesman  and  great 
Parliamentary  orator,  so  to  speak,  in  spite 
of  himself.  But  he  must  have  early  dis- 
covered the  great  barrier  to  complete  suc- 
cess created  by  his  poverty.  He  may  be 
said  to  have  passed  his  life  in  pecuniary 
embarrassment.  This  alone  might  not 
have  shut  him  out  from  the  Whig  official 
Paradise,  for  the  same  thing  might  have 
been  said  of  Pitt  and  Fox :  but  they  had 
connections ;  they  belonged  by  birth  and 
association  to  the  Whig  class.  Burke's 
relatives  were  no  help  or  credit  to  him. 
In  fact,  they  excited  distrust  of  him. 
They  offended  the  fastidious  aristocrats 
with  whom  he  associated,  and  combined 
with  his  impecuniousness  to  make  him 
seem  unsuitable  for  a  great  place.  These 
aristocrats  were  very  good  to  him.  They 
lent  him  money  freely,  and  settled  a  pen- 
sion on  him,  and  covered  him  with  social 
adulation;  but  they  were  never  willing 
to  put  him  beside  themselves  in  the 


government.  His  latter  years  therefore 
had  an  air  of  tragedy.  He  was  unpopular 
with  most  of  those  who  in  his  earlier  years 
had  adored  him,  and  was  the  hero  of  those 
whom  in  earlier  years  he  had  despised. 
His  only  son,  of  whose  capacity  he  had 
formed  a  strange  misconception,  died 
young,  and  he  passed  his  own  closing 
hours,  as  far  as  we  can  judge,  with  a 
sense  of  failure.  But  he  left  one  of  the 
great  names  in  English  history.  There  is 
no  trace  of  him  in  the  statue  book,  but  he 
has,  it  is  safe  to  say,  exercised  a  profound 
influence  in  all  succeeding  legislation,  both 
in  England  and  America.  He  has  inspired 
or  suggested  nearly  all  the  juridical 
changes  which  distinguish  the  England  of 
to-day  from  the  England  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, and  is  probably  the  only  British 
politician  whose  speeches  and  pamphlets, 
made  for  immediate  results,  have  given 
him  immortality. — GODKIN,  E.  L.,  1896, 
Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature,  ed. 
Warner,  vol.  v,  p.  2787. 

The  genius  of  Burke  is  platonically  dem- 
ocratic in  its  multifariousness.  .  .  .  While 
the  mind  is  fascinated  by  the  mere 
enumeration  of  the  attributes  of  his  pro- 
digal genius,  curiosity  and  controversy, 
have  been  ceaselessly  attracted  to  such 
questions  as  to  the  reason  why  his  youth 
is  so  enveloped  in  obscurity,  to  the  inter- 
minable dispute  as  to  whether  or  not  he 
was  Junius,  and  how  he  managed  to  pur- 
chase the  Beaconsfield  estate.  Many  of  the 
rumours  on  these  subjects  are,  no  doubt, 
mere  contes  en  Vair.  Some  thirty  years 
ago,  according  to  Mr.  Lecky,the  last  word 
was  said  about  the  purchase  of  Beacons- 
field  estate,  and  the  same  eminent  authority 
considers  that  the  account  rendered  was 
satisfactory  enough,  and  that  it  is  idle  to 
pursue  the  subject.  Mr.  Morley  even 
takes  the  trouble  to  deny  the  rumour  that 
Burke  ever  went  to  America,  or  that  he 
was  a  cavaliere  servente  of  Peg  Woffington. 
The  evidence  that  Burke  paid  a  visit  to 
America  seems,  perhaps,  wwth  a  little 
more  consideration  than  Mr.  Morley  gives 
it,  since  it  rests  on  the  highly  respectable 
evidence  of  Benjamin  West,  a  President 
of  the  Royal  Academy,  who  was  himself 
an  American.— Sibley,  N.  W.,  1897, 
Edmund  Burke,  The  Westminster  Review, 
vol.  148,  p.  496. 

Edmund  Burke  gave  the  most  striking 
proofs  of  his  character  and  genius  in  the 


294 


EDMUND  BURKE 


evil  days  in  which  his  life  ended — not 
when  he  was  a  leader  in  the  Commons,  but 
when  he  was  a  stricken  old  man  at  Beacons- 
field.  That  Burke  was  a  great  states- 
man, no  thinking  man  could  read  his  pam- 
phlets and  speeches  can  deny ;  but  a  man 
may  be  a  great  statesman  and  yet  fall  very 
short  of  being  a  great  man.  Burke  makes 
as  deep  an  impression  upon  our  hearts  as 
upon  our  minds.  We  are  taken  captive, 
not  so  much  by  his  reasoning,  strongly  as 
that  moves  to  its  conquest,  as  by  the 
generous  warmth  that  steals  out  of  him 
into  our  hearts.  There  is  a  tonic  breatli 
of  character  and  of  generous  purpose  in 
which  he  writes — the  fine  sentiment  of  a 
pure  man ;  and  we  are  made  aware  that 
he  who  could  write  thus  was  great,  not  so 
much  by  reason  of  what  he  said  or  did,  as 
by  reason  of  what  he  was.  What  a  man 
was  you  may  often  discover  in  the  rec- 
ords of  his  days  of  bitterness  and  pain 
better  than  in  what  is  told  of  his  seasons 
of  cheer  and  hope ;  for  if  the  noble  quali- 
ties triumph  then  and  show  themselves 
still  sound  and  sweet,  if  his  courage  sink 
not,  if  he  show  himself  still  capable  of 
self-forgetfulness,  if  he  still  stir  with  a 
passion  for  the  service  of  causes  and 
policies  which  are  beyond  himself,  his 
stricken  age  is  even  greater  than  his  full- 
pulsed  years  of  manhood.  This  is  the  test 
which  Burke  endures — the  test  of  fire. 
It  has  not  often  been  judged  so,  I  know ; 
but  let  any  man  of  true  insight  take  that 
extraordinary  "Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord," 
which  was  written  in  1796,  and  which  is 
Burke's  apologia  -pro  vita  sua,  consider  the 
circumstances  under  which  it  was  written, 
its  tone,  its  scope,  its  truth,  its  self-revela- 
tions,  and  the  manner  of  man  revealed, 
and  say  whether  this  be  not  the  real  Burke, 
undaunted,  unstained,  unchanged  in  pur- 
pose and  in  principle. — Wilson,  Wood- 
row,  1901,  Edmund  Burke  and  the  French 
Revolution,  The  Century  Magazine,  vol.  62, 
p.  784. 

SPEECHES  AND  ORATORY 
Burke  also  abounds  with  these  fine  pas- 
sages, and  he  soars  also  as  much  out  of 
the  lower  regions  of  discourse  and  in- 
finitely further  into  those  of  imagination 
and  fancy;  but  no  man  could  ever  per- 
ceive in  him  the  least  trace  of  prepara- 
tion, and  he  never  appears  more  incontest- 
ably  inspired  by  the  moment  and  trans- 
ported with  the  fury  of  the  god  within  him 


than  in  those  finished  passages  which  it 
would  cost  Shakespeare  long  study  and 
labour  to  produce. — Elliot,  Sir  Gilbert, 
1751-1806,  Life  of  Elliot  by  Lady  Minto, 
vol,  I,  p,  215. 

His  performance  Conciliation  with 
America"]  was  the  best  I  have  heard 
from  him  in  the  whole  winter.  He  is 
always  brilliant  to  an  uncommon  degree, 
and  yet  I  believe  it  would  be  better  he 
were  less  so.  I  don't  mean  to  join  with 
the  cry  which  will  always  run  against 
shining  parts,  when  I  say  that  I  sincerely 
think  it  interrupts  him  so  much  in  argu- 
ment that  the  House  are  never  sensible 
that  he  argues  as  well  as  he  does.  Fox 
gives  a  strong  proof  of  this,  for  he  makea 
use  of  Burke's  speech  as  a  repertory,  and 
by  stating  crabbedly  two  or  three  of  those 
ideas  which  Burke  has  buried  under 
flowers,  he  is  thought  almost  always  to 
have  had  more  argument. — Flood,  Henry, 
1775,  Letter  to  Charlemont. 

While  we  are  waiting  at  Trinity  Lodge 
for  the  deputation  from  the  Senate  to 
conduct  the  Chancellor,  I  had  a  conversa- 
tion with  Lord  Erskine  upon  the  qualifica- 
tions of  Burke  as  an  orator.  Lord  Erskine 
said  that  his  defect  was  episode.  **A 
public  speaker,"  said  he,  "should  never 
be  episodical — it  is  a  very  great  mistake. 
I  hold  it  to  be  a  rule  respecting  public 
speaking,  which  ought  never  to  be  vio- 
lated, that  the  speaker  should  not  intro- 
duce into  his  oratory  insular  brilliant 
passages — they  always  tend  to  call  off  the 
minds  of  his  hearers,  and  to  make  them 
wander  from  what  ought  to  be  the  main 
business  of  his  speech.  If  he  wish  to  in- 
troduce brilliant  passages,  they  should  run 
along  the  line  of  his  subject-matter,  and 
never  quit  it.  Burke's  episodes  were 
highly  beautiful— I  know  nothing  more 
beautiful,  but  they  were  his  defects  in 
speaking."  .  .  .  Lord  Erskine  also 
told  me  that  Burke's  manner  was  some- 
times bad — 'Ht  was  like  that  of  an  Irish 
chairman."  ''Once,"  said  he,  *'I  was  so 
tired  of  hearing  him  in  a  debate  upon 
the  India  Bill,  that  not  liking  he  should 
see  me  leave  the  House  of  Commons  while 
he  was  speaking,  I  crept  along  under  the 
benches  and  got  out,  and  went  to  the  Isles 
of  Wight.  Afterwards  that  very  speech 
of  his  was  published,  and  I  found  it  to  be 
so  extremely  beautiful  that  I  actually  wore 
it  into  pieces  by  reading  it." — Clarke,  E. 


EDMUND  BURKE 


295 


D.,  1819,  Jonrnaly  July  5;  Prior's  Life 
of  Burke,  voL  ii,  j9.  431. 

The  variety  and  extent  of  his  power  in 
debate  was  greater  than  that  of  any  other 
orator  in  ancient  or  modern  times.  No 
one  ever  poured  forth  such  a  flood  of 
thought — so  many  original  combinations 
of  inventive  genius;  as  much  knowledge 
of  man  and  the  working  of  political 
systems;  so  many  just  remarks  on  the 
relation  of  government  to  the  manners, 
the  spirit,  and  even  the  prejudices  of  a 
people;  so  many  wise  maxims  as  to  a 
change  in  constitutions  and  laws ;  so  many 
beautiful  effusions  of  lofty  and  generous 
sentiment ;  such  exuberant  stores  of  illus- 
tration, or  ornament,  and  apt  allusion ;  all 
intermingled  with  the  liveliest  sallies  of 
wit  or  the  boldest  flights  of  a  sublime 
imagination.  In  actual  debate,  as  a  con- 
temporary informs  us,  he  passed  more 
rapidly  from  one  exercise  of  his  powers  to 
another,  than  in  his  printed  productions. 
During  the  same  evening,  sometimes  in 
the  space  of  a  few  moments,  he  would  be 
pathetic  and  humorous,  acrimonious  and 
conciliating,  now  giving  vent  to  his  in- 
dignant feelings  in  lofty  declamation,  and 
again,  almost  in  the  same  breath,  con- 
vulsing his  audience  by  the  most  laugh- 
able exhibitions  of  ridicule  or  burlesque. 
—Goodrich,  Chauncey  A.,  1852,  ed., 
Select  British  Eloquence,  p.  237. 

Burke  always  dissappointed  me  as  a 
speaker.  I  have  heard  him,  during  his 
speeches  in  the  House,  make  use  of  the 
most  vulgar  expressions,  such  as  ''three 
nips  of  a  straw, "  "  three  skips  of  a  louse, ' ' 
&c. ;  and,  on  one  occasion  when  I  was 
present,  he  introduced,  as  an  illustration, 
a  most  indelicate  story  about  a  French 
king,  who  asked  his  physician  why  his 
natural  children  were  so  much  finer  than 
his  legitimate.— Maltby,  William,  1854, 
In  The  Recollections  of  the  Table-Talk  of 
Samuel  Rogers,  p.  79. 

Sheridan  once  said  to  me,  ''When  pos- 
terity read  the  speeches  of  Burke,  they 
will  hardly  be  able  to  believe  that,  during 
his  life-time,  he  was  not  considered  as  a 
first-rate  speaker,  not  even  as  a  second- 
rate  one."— Rogers,  Samuel,  1855, Table- 
Talk,  p.  66. 

Burke  is  rescued  from  the  usual  doom 
of  orators,  because  his  learning,  his  ex- 
perience, his  sagacity  are  rimmed  with  a 
halo  by  this  bewitching  light  behind  the 


intellectual  eye  from  the  highest  heaven 
of  the  brain.— Lowell,  James  Russell, 
1871,  Carlyle,  My  Study  Windows,  p.  118. 

His  speeches  on  the  Stamp  Acts  and  the 
American  War  soon  lifted  him  into  fame. 
The  heavy  Quaker-like  figure,  the  little 
wig,  the  round  spectacles,  the  cumbrous 
roll  of  paper  whichloaded  Burke's  pocket, 
gave  little  promise  of  a  great  orator  and 
less  of  the  characteristics  of  his  oratory — 
its  passionate  ardor,  its  poetic  fancy,  its 
amazing  prodigality  of  resources;  and 
dazzling  succession  in  which  irony,  pathos, 
invective,  tenderness,  and  the  most  bril- 
liant word-pictures,  the  coolest  argument 
followed  each  other.  It  was  an  eloquence 
indeed  of  a  wholly  new  order  in  English 
experience.  .  .  .  The  philosophical 
cast  of  Burke's  reasoning  was  unaccom- 
panied by  any  philosophical  coldness  of 
tone  or  phrase.  The  groundwork,  indeed, 
of  his  nature  was  poetic.  His  ideas,  if 
conceived  by  the  reason,  took  shape  and 
color  from  the  splendor  and  fire  of  his 
imagination.  A  nation  was  to  him  a  great 
living  society,  so  complex  in  its  relations, 
and  whose  institutions  were  so  interwoven 
with  glorious  events  in  the  past,  that  to 
touch  it  rudely  was  a  sacrilege. — Green, 
John  Richard,  1874,  A  Short  History  of 
the  English  People,  pp.  761,  762. 

Burke,  before  the  spectre  of  the  French 
Revolution  shot  across  his  path,  was 
listened  to  as  a  seer  by  the  House  of 
Commons;  but,  after  that  event,  his 
Cassandra-like  croakings  bored  his  hear- 
ers, and  his  rising  to  speak  was  a  signal 
for  a  stampede  from  the  benches.  .  .  . 
Greater  as  a  thinker  than  Chatham  or 
Fox,  but  inferior  as  an  orator,  was  Edmund 
Burke,  who,  in  the  variety  and  extent  of 
his  powers,  surpassed  every  other  orator 
of  ancient  or  modern  times.  He  was 
what  he  called  Charles  Townshend,  "a 
prodigy,"  and  ranks  not  merely  with  the 
eloquent  speakers  of  the  world,  but  with 
the  Bacons,  Newtons,  and  Shakespeares. 
His  speeches  and  pamphlets  are  saturated 
with  thought ;  they  absolutely  swarm,  like 
an  ant-hill,  with  ideas,  and,  in  their 
teeming  profusion,  remind  one  of  the 
"myriad-minded"  author  of  Hamlet.  To 
the  broadest  sweep  of  intellect,  he  added 
the  most  surprising  subtlety,  and  his 
almost  oriental  imagination  was  fed  by  a 
vast  and  varied  knowledge, — the  stores  of 
a  memory  that  held  everything  in  its 


^96 


EDMUND  BURKE 


graspo  The  only  man  who,  according  to 
Adam  Smith,  at  once  comprehended  the 
total  revolution  the  latter  proposed  in 
political  economy,  he  was  at  the  same 
time  the  best  judge  of  a  picture  that  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  ever  knew;  and  while 
his  knowledge  was  thus  boundless,  his 
vocabulary  was  as  extensive  as  his  knowl- 
edge. Probably  no  orator  ever  lived  on 
whose  lips  language  was  more  plastic  and 
ductile.— Mathews,  William,  1878,  Ora- 
tory and  Orators,  pp.  134,  268. 

There  is  much  in  the  oratory  of  Edmund 
Burke  to  suggest  the  amplitude  of  mind 
and  the  power  and  scope  of  intellectual 
grasp  that  characterized  Shakespeare. 
He  surveyed  every  subject  as  if  standing 
on  an  eminence  and  taking  a  view  of  it  in 
all  its  relations,  however  complex  and  re- 
mote. United  with  this  remarkable  com- 
prehensiveness was  also  a  subtlety  of  intel- 
lect that  enabled  him  to  penetrate  the 
most  complicated  relations  and  unravel 
the  most  perplexed  intricacies.  Why? 
Whence?  For  what  end?  With  what 
results?  were  the  questions  that  his 
mind  seemed  always  to  be  striving  to 
answer.  The  special  objects  to  which 
he  applied  himself  were  the  workings 
of  political  institutions,  the  principles 
of  wise  legislation,  and  the  sources 
of  national  security  and  advancement. 
Rerum  cognoscere  causas, — to  know  the 
causes  of  things — in  all  the  multiform  re- 
lations of  organized  society,  was  the  con- 
stant end  of  his  striving.  More  than  any 
other  one  that  has  written  in  English  he 
was  a  political  philosopher.  But  he  was 
far  more  than  that.  He  had  a  memory  of 
extraordinary  grasp  and  tenacity;  and 
this,  united  with  a  tireless  industry,  gave 
him  an  affluence  of  knowledge  that  has 
rarely  been  equalled.  He  had  the  fancy 
of  a  poet,  and  his  imagination  surveyed 
the  whole  range  of  human  experience  for 
illustrations  with  which  to  enrich  the  train 
of  his  thought.— Adams,  Charles  Ken- 
dall, 1884,  ed.  Representative  British 
Orations,  p.  172. 

Tall  and  vigorous,  of  dignified  deport- 
ment, with  massive  brow  and  stern  ex- 
pression, he  had  an  air  of  command.  His 
voice  was  of  great  compass;  his  words 
came  fast,  but  his  thoughts  seemed  almost 
to  overcome  even  his  powers  of  utterance. 
Invective,  sarcasm,  metaphor,  and  argu- 
ment followed  hard  af tet*  one  another ;  his 


powers  of  description  were  gorgeous,  his 
scorn  was  sublime,  and  in  the  midst  of  a 
discussion  of  some  matter  of  ephemeral 
importance  came  enunciations  of  political 
wisdom  which  are  for  all  time,  and  which 
illustrate  the  opinion  that  he  was,  Bacon 
alone  excepted,  the  greatest  political 
thinker  who  has  ever  devoted  himself  to  the 
practice  of  English  politics"  (Buckle,  "Civ- 
ilization in  England,"  c.  VII).  Although 
he  spoke  with  an  Irish  accent,  with 
awkward  action,  and  in  a  harsh  tone,  his 
"imperial  fancy"  and  commanding  elo- 
quence excited  universal  admiration.  No 
parliamentary  orator  has  ever  moved  his 
audience  as  he  now  and  again  did.  His 
speech  on  the  employment  of  the  Indians 
in  war,  for  example,  is  said  at  one  time  to 
have  almost  choked  Lord  North,  against 
whom  it  was  delivered,  with  laughter,  and 
at  another  to  have  drawn  ''iron  tears 
down  Barre's  cheek. ' '  ( Walpole  to  Mason, 
12  Feb.,  1778,  Letters,  vii,  29.)  Unfor- 
tunately, his  power  over  the  house  did  not 
last ;  his  thoughts  were  too  deep  for  the 
greater  part  of  the  members,  and  were 
rather  exhaustive  discussions  than  direct 
contributions  to  debate  (Morley,  Life, 
209),  while  the  sustained  loftiness  of  his 
style  and  a  certain  lack  of  sympathy  with 
his  audience  marred  the  effect  of  his 
oratory. — Hunt,  William,  1886,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  vii,  p.  348. 

Burke's  prose  is  as  prominent  an  ex- 
ample as  there  is  in  English  Letters  of  the 
oratorical  style,  in  the  best  sense  of  that 
term.  The  reported  speeches  of  Fox  and 
Grattan,  Pitt  and  Sheridan — his  great 
contemporaries,  evince  occasional  pas- 
sages of  equal  excellence,  but  as  to  the 
entire  body  of  oratorical  prose  produced, 
Burke  is  the  superior  of  any  one  of  them 
and  marks  the  highest  point  as  yet  at- 
tained in  England  in  forensic  prose. — 
Hunt,  Theodore  W.,  1887,  Representa- 
tive English  Prose  and  Prose  Writers, 
p.  342. 

To  Burke  has  already  been  assigned  the 
honour  of  being  the  first  statesman  and 
orator  who  used  the  Platform  at  election 
time  as  a  real  instrument  in  political 
power.  The  occasions  on  which  he  so 
used  it  were  few,  but  his  speeches  at 
Bristol  in  1774  and  1780  recognised 
clearly  the  claims  of  constituents  to  the 
fullest  explanation  of  the  conduct  of  their 
representative,  and  his  full  accountability 


EDMUND  BURKE 


297 


to  them.  That  was  the  most  important 
matter  to  have  put  so  prominently  on  rec- 
ord. Though  taking  part  in  the  Economy 
Agitation  he  does  not  appear  to  have 
actually  spoken  from  the  Platform  in  its 
support,  but  in  the  crisis  of  the  struggle 
between  Pitt  and  the  Coalition  he  had 
recourse  to  the  Platform  at  Aylesbury  in 
1784.  After  that,  however,  his  voice 
from  the  Platform  was  silent. — Jephson, 
Henry,  1891,  The  Platform,  Its  Rise  and 
Progress,  vol.  i,  p.  223. 

It  is  in  his  oratory  that  Burke's  para- 
graphs are  remarkable.  He  exhibits  here 
such  qualities  as  make  him  the  best  para- 
grapher  our  literature  produced  before  the 
present  century.  His  unity  is  simple  (as 
opposed  to  that  of  compound  paragraphs) 
and  organic.  His  paragraph  bears  the 
test,  as  Wendell  has  pointed  out,  of  hav- 
ing its  substance  expressed  in  one  organic 
sentence.  For  purposes  of  oratorical 
emphasis  and  oratorical  rhythm,  he  has 
completely  mastered  the  short  sentence. 
His  percentage  of  sentences  of  less  than 
fifteen  words  is  higher  than  the  highest 
yet  reached.  .  .  .  The  great  orator 
had,  to  a  degree  uncommon  even  in  the 
most  eminent  orators,  the  power  of 
marshalling  his  propositions  in  a  specious 
order.  His  emotion  never  ran  away  with 
him;  he  drove  straight  at  his  hearer's  in- 
tellect— did  so  too  constantly  for  his 
highest  immediate  success.  There  is 
always  the  impression  of  a  convincing 
chain  of  logic.  In  short,  Burke  is  the 
earliest  great  master  of  the  paragraph, 
and  in  impassioned  prose  he  still  remains 
a  master  of  the  paragraph.  But  for  his 
lingering  sense  of  the  prime  importance 
of  balancing  and  rounding  the  sentence  he 
is  a  nineteenth  century  paragrapher,  and 
one  of  the  best.— Lewis,  Edwin  Herbert, 
1894,  The  History  of  the  English  Para- 
graph, pp.  122,  123. 

A  VINDICATION  OF  NATURAL 
SOCIETY 

1756 

The  book  is  a  parody  upon  the  style  and 
manner  of  Lord  Bolingbroke.  .  .  . 
The  wit  of  Burke's  essay  is  that  he  sup- 
poses this  very  aristocratic  man  to  main- 
tain the  advantage  of  a  purely  natural 
society  upon  the  very  same  ground  upon 
which  he  had  maintained  the  advantages 
of  a  purely  natural  religion.  The  imita- 
tion of  style  was  so  skilful,  that  many  are 


said  to  have  been  deceived  by  it.  I  cannot 
understand  how  such  a  mistake  could  have 
been  possible  for  any  who  had  the  very 
slightest  acquaintance  with  the  designs  or 
character  of  Bolingbroke.  The  outside 
resemblance  only  makes  the  internal  con- 
trast more  striking.  .  .  .  Burke  did 
not  appear  in  his  first  conspicuous  work 
merely  or  chiefly  as  a  successful  jester.  A 
parody  may  be  very  amusing ;  but  he  had 
as  distinct  and  serious  a  purpose  in  this 
as  in  any  of  his  writings. — Maurice, 
Frederick  Deniso}^,  ISbl,  Edmund  Burke, 
The  Friendship  of  Books  and  Other  Lec- 
tures, ed.  Hughes,  p.  311. 

Intended  as  a  parody  of  Bolingbroke's 
reasonings  on  religion,  is  sometimes 
praised  as  a  successful  piece  of  mimicry ; 
but  it  contains  more  of  the  real  Burke 
than  of  the  sham  Bolingbroke.  It  may  be 
viewed  as  an  exercise  in  the  style  that  the 
author  ultimately  adopted  as  his  habitual 
manner  of  composition.  The  "Essay  on 
the  Sublime  and  Beautiful"  has  much  less 
glow  and  sweep  of  style; the  writer's  flow 
of  words  seems  to  be  painfully  embarrassed 
by  the  necessity  of  observing  order  and 
proportion  of  statement. — Minto,  Wil- 
liam, 1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose 
Literature,  p.  437. 

From  the  very  beginning  Burke  was 
drawn  to  the  deepest  of  all  the  currents 
in  the  thought  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
.  .  .  What  is  remarkable  in  Burke's  first 
performance  is  his  discernment  of  the  im- 
portant fact,  that  behind  the  intellectual 
disturbances  in  the  sphere  of  philosophy, 
and  the  noisier  agitations  in  the  sphere  of 
theology,  there  silently  staked  a  force 
that  might  shake  the  whole  fabric  of  civil 
society  itself.  In  France,  as  all  students 
of  its  speculative  history  are  agreed,  there 
came  a  time  in  the  eighteenth  century 
when  theological  controversy  was  turned 
into  political  controversy.  Innovators 
left  the  question  about  the  truth  of 
Christianity,  and  busied  themselves  with 
questions  about  the  ends  and  means  of 
government.  The  appearance  of  Burke's 
''Vindication  of  Natural  Society"  coin- 
cides in  time  with  the  beginning  of  this 
important  transformation.  Burke  foresaw 
from  the  first  what,  if  rationalism  were 
allowed  to  run  an  unimpeded  course, 
would  be  the  really  great  business  of  the 
second  half  of  his  century. —  Morley, 
John,  1879,  Burke  (English  Men  of  Letters). 


298 


EDMUND  BURKE 


THE  SUBLIME  AND  BEAUTIFUL 

1757 

I  began  to-day,  as  a  natural  supplement 
to  Longinus,  a  philosophical  inquiry  into 
the  nature  of  our  ideas  of  the  sublime  and 
beautiful,  and  read  the  introduction  upon 
Taste,  p.  1-40,  which,  like  all  other 
researches  into  our  primary  ideas,  is 
rather  loose  and  unsatisfactory.  The 
division,  however,  of  the  passive  impres- 
sion which  is  common  to  all  men,  and 
relates  chiefly  to  positive  beauty  or  faulti- 
ness,  and  the  active  judgment  which  is 
founded  on  knowledge,  and  exercised 
mostly  on  comparison,  pleased  me ;  per- 
haps because  very  like  an  idea  of  my  own. 
.  .  .  The  author  writes  with  ingenuity, 
perspicuity,  and  candour. — Gibbon,  Ed- 
ward, 1762,  Journal,  Nov.  1,  4. 

As  I  walked  out  before  breakfast  with 
Mr.  B.,  I  proposed  to  him  to  revise  and 
enlarge  his  admirable  book  on  the  "Sub- 
lime and  Beautiful,''  which  the  experi- 
ence, reading,  and  observation  of  thirty 
years  could  not  but  enable  him  to  improve 
considerably.  But  he  said  the  train  of 
his  thoughts  had  gone  another  way,  and 
the  whole  bent  of  his  mind  turned  from 
such  subjects;  that  he  was  much  fitter 
for  such  speculations  at  the  time  he  pub- 
lished that  book  (about  1758)  than  now. 
Besides,  he  added,  the  subject  was  then 
new,  but  several  writers  have  since  gone 
over  the  same  ground.  Lord  Kames  and 
others.  The  subject  he  said  had  been 
long  rolling  in  his  thoughts  before  he 
wrote  his  book,  he  having  been  used  from 
the  time  he  was  in  college  to  speculate  on 
the  topics  which  form  the  subjects  of  it. 
He  was  six  or  seven  years  employed  on  it, 
and  when  it  was  produced  he  was  about 
28  or  29  years  old — a  prodigious  work  for 
such  a  period  of  life. — Malone,  Edmond, 
1789,  Maloniana,  ed.  Prior ,  July  28, 
p.  154. 

Burke's  "Essay  on  the  Sublime  and 
Beautiful"  seems  to  me  a  poor  thing; and 
what  he  says  upon  Taste  is  neither  pro- 
found nor  accurate. — Coleridge,  Samuel 
Taylor,  1827,  Table  Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  July 
12,  p.  54. 

The  essay  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful 
fell  in  with  a  set  of  topics,  on  which  the 
curiosity  of  the  better  minds  of  the  age, 
alike  in  France,  England,  and  Germany, 
was  fully  stirred.  In  England  the  essay 
has  been   ordinarily  slighted;    it  has 


perhaps  been  overshadowed  by  its  author's 
fame  in  weightier  matters.  The  nearest 
approach  to  a  full  and  serious  treatment 
of  its  main  positions  is  to  be  found  in 
Dugald  Stewart's  lectures.  The  great 
rhetorical  art-critic  of  our  own  day  refers 
to  it  in  words  of  disparagement,  and  in 
truth  it  has  none  of  the  flummery  of 
modern  criticism.  It  is  a  piece  of  hard 
thinking,  and  it  has  the  distinction  of 
having  interested  and  stimulated  Lessing, 
the  author  of  "Laokoon"  (1766),  by  far 
the  most  definitely  valuable  of  all  the  con- 
tributions to  aesthetic  thought  in  an  age 
which  was  not  poor  in  them. — Morley, 
John,  1879,  Burke  {English  Men  of  Let- 
ters), p.  17. 

In  the  great  Mr.  Burke's  "Essay  on  the 
Sublime  and  the  Beautiful" — a  singularly 
modern  book,  considering  how  long  ago  it 
was  wrote  (as  the  great  Mr.  Steele  would 
have  written  the  participle  a  little  longer 
ago),  and  full  of  a  certain  well-mannered 
and  agreeable  instruction.  In  some 
things  it  is  of  that  droll  little  eighteenth- 
century  world,  when  philosophy  had  got 
the  neat  little  universe  into  the  hollow  of 
its  hand,  and  knew  just  what  it  was,  and 
what  it  was  for ;  but  it  is  quite  without 
arrogance.— HowELLS,  William  Dean, 
1891,  Criticism  and  Fiction,  p.  6. 

REFLECTIONS  ON  THE  REVOLUTION 
IN  FRANCE 

1790 

Waving  all  discussion  concerning  the 
substance  and  general  tendency  of  this 
printed  letter,  1  must  declare  my  opinion, 
that  what  I  have  seen  of  it  is  very  loosely 
put  together.  In  point  of  writing,  at 
least,  the  manuscript  you  showed  me  first 
was  much  less  objectionable.  Remember 
that  this  is  one  of  the  most  singular,  that 
it  may  be  the  most  distinguished,  and 
ought  to  be  one  of  the  most  deliberate 
acts  of  your  life.  Your  writings  have 
hitherto  been  the  delight  and  instruction 
of  your  own  country.  You  now  undertake 
to  correct  and  instruct  another  nation,  and 
your  appeal,  in  effect,  is  to  all  Europe.  Al- 
lowing you  the  liberty  to  do  so,  in  an  ex- 
treme case,  you  cannot  deny  that  it  ought 
to  be  done  with  special  deliberation  in  the 
choice  of  the  topics,  and  with  no  less  care 
and  circumspection  in  the  use  you  make  of 
them.  Have  you  thoroughly  considered 
whether  it  be  worthy  of  Mr.  Burke— of  a 
privy-counsellor — of  a  man  so  high  and 


EDMUND  BURKE 


299 


considerable  in  the  House  of  Commons  as 
you  are — and  holding  the  station  you  have 
obtained  in  the  opinion  of  the  world,  to 
enter  into  a  War  of  pamphlets  with  Dr. 
Price  ?  If  he  answered  you,  as  assuredly 
he  will  (and  so  will  many  others),  can 
you  refuse  to  reply  to  a  person  whom  you 
have  attacked?  If  you  do,  you  are  de- 
feated in  a  battle  of  your  own  provoking, 
and  driven  to  fly  from  ground  of  your  own 
choosing.  If  you  do  not,  where  is  such  a 
contest  to  lead  you,  but  into  a  vile  and 
disgraceful,  though  it  was  ever  so  victo- 
rious, an  altercation?  ''Di  meliora."  But 
if  you  will  do  it,  away  with  all  jest,  and 
sneer,  and  sarcasm ;  let  every  thing  you 
say  be  grave,  direct,  and  serious.  In  a 
case  so  interesting  as  the  errors  of  a 
great  nation,  and  the  calamities  of  great 
individuals,  and  feeling  them  so  deeply  as 
you  profess  to  do,  all  manner  of  insinua- 
tion is  improper,  all  gibe  and  nickname 
prohibited. — Francis,  Sir  Philip,  1790, 
To  Edmund  Burke,  Feb,  19 ;  The  Francis 
Letters,  ed.  Francis  and  Keary,  vol.  ii, 
p.  378. 

I  wish  Mr.  Burke  would  publish  what  he 
intended  on  the  present  state  of  France. 
He  is  a  man  of  principle,  and  a  friend  to 
religion,  to  law,  and  to  monarchy,  as  well 
as  to  liberty. — Beattie,  James,  1790, 
Letter  to  Robert  Arbuthnot,  April  25. 

His  pamphlet  came  out  this  day  se'n- 
night,  and  is  far  superior  to  what  was  ex- 
pected, even  by  his  warmest  admirers.  I 
have  read  it  twice ;  and  though  of  three 
hundred  and  fifty  pages,  I  wish  I  could 
repeat  every  page  by  heart.  It  is  sublime, 
profound,  and  gay.  The  wit  and  satire 
are  equally  brilliant;  and  the  whole  is 
wise,  though  in  some  points  he  goes  too 
far :  yet  in  general  there  is  far  less  want 
of  judgment  than  could  be  expected  from 
him.  If  it  could  be  translated, — which, 
from  the  wit  and  metaphors  and  allusions, 
is  almost  impossible, — I  should  think  it 
would  be  a  classic  book  in  all  countries, 
except  in  present  France.  To  their 
tribunes  it  speaks  daggers ;  though,  unlike 
them,  it  uses  none.  Seven  thousand 
copies  have  been  taken  off  by  the  book- 
sellers already,  and  a  new  edition  is  pre- 
paring. I  hope  you  will  see  it  soon. — 
Walpole,  Horace,  1790,  To  the  Miss 
BerrySy  Nov.  8 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham, 
vol.  IX,  p.  260. 

Burke's  book  is  a  most  admirable 


medicine  against  the  French  disease,  which 
has  made  too  much  progress  even  in  this 
happy  country.  I  admire  his  eloquence, 
I  approve  his  politics,  I  adore  his  chivalry, 
and  I  can  forgive  even  his  superstition. — 
Gibbon,  Edward,  1791,  To  Lord  Sheffield ; 
Private  Letters,  ed.  Brother o,  vol.  ii,  p.  237. 

The  Revolution  of  France  does  not 
astonish  me  as  much  as  the  Revolution  of 
Mr.  Burke.  I  wish  I  could  believe  the 
latter  proceeded  from  as  pure  motives  as 
the  former.  But  what  demonstration 
could  scarcely  have  established  before, 
less  than  the  hints  of  Dr.  Priestley  & 
Mr.  Paine  established  firmly  now.  How 
mortifying  that  this  evidence  of  the  rotten- 
ness of  his  mind  must  oblige  us  now  to 
ascribe  to  wicked  motives  those  actions  of 
his  life  which  wore  the  mark  of  virtue  & 
patriotism. — Jefferson,  Thomas,  1791, 
To  Benjamin  Vaughan,  May  11 ;  Writings, 
ed.  Ford,  vol.  v,  p.  333. 

An  author  whose  splendid  and  un- 
equalled powers  have  given  a  vogue  and 
fashion  to  certain  tenets  which  from  any 
other  pen  would  have  appeared  abject  and 
contemptible.  In  the  field  of  reason  the  en- 
counter would  not  be  difficult,  but  who  can 
withstand  the  fascination  and  magic  of  his 
eloquence  ?  The  excursions  of  his  genius 
are  immense.  His  imperial  fancy  has  laid 
all  nature  under  tribute,  and  has  collected 
riches  from  every  scene  of  the  creation 
and  every  walk  of  art.  His  eulogium  on 
the  Queen  of  France  is  a  masterpiece  of 
pathetic  composition ;  so  select  are  its 
images,  so  fraught  with  tenderness,  and 
so  rich  with  colours  "dipt  in  heaven," 
that  he  who  can  read  it  without  rapture 
may  have  merit  as  a  reasoner,  but  must 
resign  all  pretentions  to  taste  and  sensi- 
bility. His  imagination  is,  in  truth,  only 
too  prolific;  a  world  of  itself,  where  he 
dwells  in  the  midst  of  chimerical  alarms, 
is  the  dupe  of  his  own  enchantments,  and 
starts,  like  Prospero,  at  the  spectres  of 
his  own  creation.  His  intellectual  views 
in  general,  however,  are  wide  and  varie- 
gated, rather  than  distinct ;  and  the  light 
he  has  let  in  on  the  British  constitution 
in  particular,  resembles  the  coloured 
eflPulgence  of  a  painted  medium,  a  kind  of 
mimic  twilight,  solemn  and  soothing  to  the 
senses,  but  better  fitted  for  ornament 
than  use. — Hall,  Robert,  1796,  An 
Apology  for  the  Freedom  of  the  Press. 

I  conceive  there  is  not  to  be  found  in  all 


300 


EDMUND  BURKE 


the  writings  of  my  day,  perhaps  I  may  say 
not  in  the  English  language,  so  brilliant  a 
cluster  of  fine  and  beautiful  passages  in 
the  declamatory  style,  as  we  are  presented 
with  in  Edmund  Burke's  inimitable  tract 
upon  the  French  Revolution.  It  is  most 
highly  coloured  and  most  richly  orna- 
mented, but  there  is  elegance  in  its  splen- 
dour, and  dignity  in  its  magnificence.  The 
orator  demands  attention  in  a  loud  and 
lofty  tone,  but  his  voice  never  loses  its 
melody,  nor  his  periods  their  sweetness. 
— When  he  has  aroused  us  with  the 
thunder  of  his  eloquence,  he  can  at  once, 
Timotheus-like,  chuse  a  melancholy  theme, 
and  melt  us  into  pity :  there  is  grace  in 
his  anger;  for  he  can  inveigh  without 
vulgarity ;  he  can  modulate  the  strongest 
bursts  of  passion,  for  even  in  his  madness 
there  is  music.  I  was  so  charmed  with 
the  style  and  matter  of  his  pamphlet,  that 
I  could  not  withstand  the  pleasure  of 
intruding  upon  him  with  a  letter  of  thanks. 
— Cumberland,  Richard,  1806,  Memoirs 
Written  by  Himself,  vol.  ii,  p.  271. 

This  was  Dodsley's  book  for  authors' 
receipts;  in  that  he  showed  me  William 
Burke's  receipt  for  6Z.  6s.  on  account  of 
Edmund  Burke,  for  the  copy  of  the ''Vin- 
dication of  Natural  Society. ' '  That  book, 
said  Nicoll,  was  so  much  admired  in  France 
by  d'Alembert,  Diderot,  &c.,  &c.,  that  it 
made  them  mad,  and  really  produced  the 
Revolution.  ''And  now"  (he  added)  "I 
have  shown  you  what  Burke  had  for  kin- 
dling the  Revolution,  let  me  also  show  you 
what  he  had  for  putting  it  out, ' '  and  then 
he  pointed  out  his  (Burke's)  own  receipt 
for  1,000/.  for  the  profits  of  his  famous 
volume. — Young,  Arthur,  1806,  Auto- 
biography, Feb,  25,  ed.  Betham-Edwards, 
p.  428. 

The  publication  proved  one  of  the  re- 
markable events  of  the  year,  perhaps  of 
the  century ;  for  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
any  previous  political  production  ever  ex- 
cited so  much  attention,  so  much  discus- 
sion, so  much  praise  from  one  party,  so 
much  animadversion  from  another,  but 
ultimately,  among  the  great  majority  of 
persons,  such  general  conviction  of  the 
correctness  of  his  views,  as  to  have  fully 
succeeded  in  turning  the  stream  of  public 
opinion  to  the  direction  he  wished,  from 
the  channel  in  which  it  had  hitherto 
flowed.  .  .  .  The  interest  which  it 
excited  did  not  cease  with  the  moment. 


for  it  was  sought  after  then  and  since  by 
persons  little  prone  to  political  discussion, 
for  the  wisdom  of  the  lessons  it  taught ; 
by  many  for  its  literary  beauties ;  by  many 
in  order  to  retrace  the  outline  of  fearful 
and  extraordinary  events  there  in  great 
measure  foretold;  and  it  will  ever  be  a 
source  of  deep  interest  to  the  practical 
statesman,  and  of  unfeigned  admiration 
to  the  man  of  taste  and  genius. — Prior, 
Sir  James,  1824,  Memoir  of  the  Life  and 
Character  of  the  Right  Hon.  Edmund 
Burke,  vol.  ii,  pp.  91,  92. 

The  very  greatest  writers  write  best 
when  calm,  and  exerting  themselves  upon 
subjects  unconnected  with  party.  Burke 
rarely  shows  all  his  powers,  unless  where 
he  is  in  a  passion.  The  French  Revolu- 
tion was  alone  a  subject  fit  for  him. — 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1823,  Table 
Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  Jan.  4,  p.  22. 

The  merits  of  his  production  are,  we 
think,  greatly  enhanced  by  the  simplicity 
of  the  vehicle  in  which  its  thoughts  ride. 
The  book  is  a  letter ;  but  such  a  letter ! 
In  this  simplest  shape  of  literature,  we 
find  philosophy  the  most  subtle ;  invective 
the  most  sublime;  speculation  the  most 
farstretching ;  Titantic  ridicule,  like  the 
cachinnation  of  a  Cyclops ;  piercing  pathos ; 
powerful  historic  painting ;  and  eloquence 
the  most  dazzling  that  ever  combined 
depth  with  splendor.— Gilfill an,  George, 
1855,  A  Third  Gallery  of  Portraits,  p.  308. 

Not  a  single  weak  point  in  the  position 
of  the  French  Revolutionists  escaped  his 
glance.  We  doubt  whether  modern  critics 
have  discovered  a  single  revolutionary 
error  or  fallacy  which  he  overlooked,  but 
to  the  good  or  the  better  side  of  the  rev- 
olutionary movement  he  was  as  blind  as 
the  stupidest  of  Tory  squires. — Dicey, 
A.  v.,  1879,  Morley's  Burke,  The  Nation, 
vol.  29,  p.  245. 

When  Mr.  Windham  received  his  copy 
of  Burke's  "Reflections,"  and  came  to 
read  it,  he  pronounced  the  work  to  be 
"capable  of  overturning  the  National 
Assembly,  and  turning  the  stream  of  opin- 
ion throughout  Europe. ' '  So  thought  very 
many  worthy  persons  who  had  hoped  much 
from  the  first  prospects  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution, but,  ignorant  of  the  signs  of  the 
times,  had  at  length  become  thoroughly 
scared.  Mr.  Burke,  indeed,  "turned  the 
stream"  of  opinion ;  for  the  stream,  which 
had  hitherto  flowed  with  at  least  some 


EDMUND  BURKE 


301 


aspect  of  peacefulness,  as  over  a  flat  allu- 
vial basin,  was  at  once  diverted  into  two 
opposite  channels  of  torrent-like  charac- 
ter. Mr.  Burke  may  be  credited  with 
having  evoked  one  of  the  most  violent 
conflicts  of  opinion  in  English  history; 
and,  of  the  rival  parties,  those  who  had 
expected  much  from  the  early  stages  of 
the  Revolution,  and  had  become  frightened 
at  its  later,  untoward  aspects,  who  forgot 
that  a  too  sudden  disruption  must,  under 
any  circumstances,  leave  a  certain  amount 
of  wreck,  were  perhaps  the  most  unreason- 
able.—Smith,  Edward,  1881,  The  Story 
of  the  English  Jacobins,  p.  11. 

This  extraordinary  book  was  published 
near  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion and  justly  takes  rank  as  one  of  the 
master-pieces  of  English  literature.  It  is 
at  once  a  condemnation  of  the  Revolution, 
and  a  prophecy  of  the  evils  the  Revolution 
would  produce.  As  a  specimen  of  denun- 
ciatory writing,  it  is  probably  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  ever  produced  in  any 
language.  It  pours  out  torrent  after 
torrent,  Niagara  after  Niagara.  But 
though  it  is  repetitious,  and  therefore 
somewhat  monotonous,  it  abounds  in 
shrewd  judgments,  in  brilliant  pictures, 
and  in  prophecies  that  seem  inspired.  At 
times  it  is  so  unfair  and  so  unjust  that 
some  have  attempted  to  explain  its  ex- 
cesses by  the  presumption  that  Burke  had 
lost  his  reason.  There  is  no  need,  how- 
ever, of  resorting  to  this  violent  hypoth- 
esis. Burke's  mind  was  always  essen- 
tially denunciatory  in  its  nature ;  and  he 
was  never  able  to  be  quite  just  either  to 
men  or  to  political  methods  he  disliked. 
Moreover,  though  he  was  a  passionate 
friend  of  liberty,  he  never  believed  liberty 
was  to  be  secured  or  preserved  by  sub- 
mitting political  affairs  to  the  control  of 
masses  of  ignorant  men.  These  charac- 
teristics of  his  mind  and  of  his  political 
doctrines  are  quite  suflicient  to  account 
for  the  peculiarities  of  what,  with  all  its 
drawbacks,  must  probably  be  considered 
the  greatest  work  of  the  greatest  writer 
of  English  prose. — Adams,  Charles  Ken- 
dall, 1882,  A  Manual  of  Historical  Lit- 
erature, p.  363. 

Burke  though  of  all  rhetoricians  the 
most  philosophic  was  still  a  rhetorician 
and  presented  only  one  side  of  a  case. 
Of  this  his  essay  on  the  French  Revolution 
is  the  memorable  and  disastrous  proof. 


Though  he  goes  deep  into  everything  he 
seldom  goes  to  the  bottom. — Smith,  Gold- 
win,  1893,  The  United  States,  an  Outline 
of  Political  History,  p.  69. 

Because  Burke  broke  away  in  the  ''Re- 
flections" from  the  judicial  self-restraint 
which  usually  characterized  him  we  are 
apt  to  forget  that,  in  that  wonderful  com- 
position, he  deviates  again  and  again  into 
his  earlier  and  better  manner,  and  rewards 
the  persevering  reader  with  passages  of 
calm  wisdom  and  solid,  fruitful  specula- 
tion.—Power,  J.  O'Connor,  1897,  Ed- 
mund Burke  and  His  Abiding  Influence^ 
North  American  Review,  vol.  165,  p.  677. 

GENERAL 

The  most  eloquent  and  rational  mad- 
man that  1  ever  knew. — Gibbon,  Edward, 
1791,  To  Lord  Sheffield,  May  31 ;  Private 
Letters,  ed.  Prothero,  vol.  ii,  p.  251. 

With  Mr.  Burke's  book  I  do  not  mean 
to  find  fault,  but  to  distinguish  between 
what  delights  me,  and  what  I  only  respect. 
I  adore  genius ;  to  judgment  I  pull  off  my 
hat,  and  make  it  a  formal  bow ;  but  as  I 
read  only  to  amuse  myself,  and  not  to  be 
informed  or  convinced,  I  had  rather  (for 
my  private  pleasure)  that  in  his  last  pam- 
phlet he  had  flung  the  reins  on  the  neck 
of  his  boundless  imagination,  as  he  did  in 
the  first.  Genius  creates  enthusiasts  or 
enemies;  judgment  only  cold  friends; 
and  cold  friends  will  sooner  go  over  to 
your  enemies  than  to  your  bigots.  — Wal- 
POLE,  Horace,  1791,  To  the  Countess  of 
Ossory,  Aug.  22 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham, 
vol.  IX,  p.  338. 

Burke's  pamphlets  and  speeches  have 
lost  nothing  of  their  attraction  by  time. 
— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1793, 
Autobiography,  vol.  i,  p.  168. 

When  I  have  revolved  the  various 
labours  of  Edmund  Burke  and  the  cause 
HE  has  maintained  (as  it  generally  re- 
gards government,  religion,  and  society, 
not  the  details  of  the  war  and  its  con- 
duct), I  say,  with  this  allowance  for  the 
feverous  frailties  of  the  passions,  and 
the  taint  of  mortality  in  all  our  best 
actions,  I  could  record  in  lasting  char- 
acters, and  in  our  holiest  and  most 
honourable  temple,  the  departed  Orator 
of  England,  the  Statesman,  and  the  Chris- 
tian, Edmund  Burke  !   "Remuneratio  ejus 

CUM     ALTISSIMO!"  — MaTHIAS,  ThOMAS 

James,  1797,  The  Pursuits  of  Literature, 
Eighth  ed.,  p.  423. 


302 


EDMUND  BURKE 


Eloquent  statesman  and  sage,  who,  though 

late,  broke  loose  from  his  trammels, 
Giving  then  to  mankind  what  party  too 

long  had  diverted. 
— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1821,  A  Vision  of 
Judgment,  x. 

I  have  been  assured  by  a  person  who  had 
the  best  means  of  knowing,  that  the  "Let- 
ter to  a  Noble  Lord''  (the  most  rapid, 
impetuous,  glancing,  and  sportive  of  all 
his  works)  was  printed  off,  and  the  proof 
sent  to  him ;  and  that  it  was  returned  to 
the  printing-office  with  so  many  altera- 
tions and  passages  interlined,  that  the 
compositors  refused  to  correct  it  as  it 
was — took  the  whole  matter  in  pieces, 
and  re-set  the  copy.  This  looks  like 
elaboration  and  after-thought. — Hazlitt, 
William,  1821-22,  Table  Talk. 

To  our  imperfect  notice  of  some  of  the 
benefits,  not  less  durable  than  numerous, 
which  Burke  achieved  for  the  civil  liber- 
ties, the  national  welfare  of  his  country, 
we  cannot  neglect  to  add — and  to  rank  in 
the  highest  degree — the  marked  and  still 
living  influence  of  his  writings, — an  influ- 
ence derived  not  only  from  the  personal 
character,  and  the  earnest  and  impressive 
language  of  the  writer,  but  from  the 
gradual  and  conclusive  testimony  of 
events.  If  we  supposed  their  value  to 
be  confined  to  the  refutation  of  the  doc- 
trines, and  the  exposure  of  the  tendency 
of  the  French  Revolution,  we  should  under- 
rate the  matter  most  unjustly.  Great  and 
useful  as  may  be  this  merit,  the  works  of 
Burke  would  possess,  if  entirely  stripped 
of  it,  undoubted  claims  to  the  gratitude 
of  Englishmen.  The  honesty  of  his 
alarms  at  the  danger  of  the  contagion  of 
French  doctrines,  and  of  jacobinical  an- 
archy, has  been,  and  will  continue  to  be, 
questioned ;  but  it  can  scarcely  be  disputed 
that,  in  pursuing  his  purpose  of  denounc- 
ing the  influence  of  revolutionary  France, 
he  did  profoundly  examine  the  true  prin- 
ciples of  the  British  constitution,  and 
explain  its  genuine  excellence  with  a  force 
of  argument  and  a  wealth  of  illustration 
of  which  our  preceding  political  literature 
had  exhibited  no  example.  He  made  it 
an  object  of  affection  and  of  reverence  on 
the  higher  grounds  of  reason  and  of  phi- 
losophy ;  and  by  displaying  in  the  strongest 
light  the  value  of  the  possession,  he  ren- 
dered the  possible  loss  of  it  a  more  active 
and  more  general  cause  of  apprehension. 
.    .    .    Henceforth  it  was  as  easy  to 


disprove  the  existence  of  that  constitution, 
as  its  value ;  and  in  the  merit  of  having 
rooted  this  principle  of  national  faith  and 
personal  devotion  more  firmly  in  the  hearts 
of  his  countrymen.  Burke  stands  alone 
and  far  above  all  competition. — Croker, 
John  Wilson,  1826,  Priofs  Life  of  Burke, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  34,  pp.  480,  481. 

Burke  was,  indeed,  a  great  man.  No 
one  ever  read  history  so  philosophically 
as  he  seems  to  have  done.  Yet,  until  he 
could  associate  his  general  principles 
with  some  sordid  interest,  panic  of  prop- 
erty. Jacobinism,  &c.,  he  was  a  mere 
dinner  bell.  Hence  you  will  find  so  many 
half  truths  in  his  speeches  and  writings. 
Nevertheless,  let  us  heartily  acknowledge 
his  transcendent  greatness.  He  would 
have  been  more  influential  if  he  had  less 
surpassed  his  contemporaries,  as  Fox  and 
Pitt,  men  of  much  inferior  minds  in  all 
respects. — Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor, 
1833,  Table  Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  Apr.  8,  p.  207. 

Yesterday  I  read  Burke's  appeal  from 
the  new  to  the  old  Whigs,  which  contains 
astonishing  coincidences  with  the  present 
times.  His  definition  of  the  people  is 
somewhat  tumid  and  obscure,  and  involved 
in  a  splendid  confusion  of  generalities 
and  abstruse  doctrine ;  but  it  is  a  wonder- 
ful monument  of  his  genius,  and  exhibits 
that  extent  of  knowledge  and  accuracy  of 
insight  into  the  nature  of  parties  and  the 
workings  of  political  ambition  which  make 
him  an  authority  for  all  times,  and  show 
him  to  be  in  the  political  what  Shake- 
speare was  in  the  moral  world.  But  his 
writings,  however  as  objects  of  study 
they  may  influence  the  opinions  or  form 
the  judgment  of  young  men,  would  have 
no  more  power  than  a  piece  of  musty 
parchment  to  arrest  the  tide  of  present 
violence,  and  superinduce  reflection  and 
calmness.  A  speech  of  Tom  Buncombe's 
would  produce  far  greater  effect  than  the 
perusal  of  a  discourse  of  Burke's. — Grev- 
ILLE,  Charles  C.  F.,  1835,  A  Journal  of 
the  Reigns  of  King  George  IV.  and  King 
William  IV.,  Feb.  17,  vol.  ii,  p.  349. 

He  was  a  writer  of  the  first  class,  and 
excelled  in  almost  every  kind  of  prose 
composition.  Possessed  of  most  extensive 
knowledge,  and  of  the  most  various  de- 
scription; acquainted  alike  with  what 
different  classes  of  men  knew,  each  in  his 
own  province,  and  with  much  that  hardly 
any  one  ever  thought  of  learning;  he 


EDMUND  BURKE 


303 


could  either  bring  his  masses  of  informa- 
tion to  bear  directly  upon  the  subjects  to 
which  they  severally  belonged — or  he 
could  avail  himself  of  them  generally  to 
strengthen  his  faculties  and  enlarge  his 
views — or  he  could  turn  any  portion  of 
them  to  account  for  the  purpose  of  illus- 
trating his  theme  or  enriching  his  diction. 
Hence,  when  he  is  handling  any  one  matter, 
we  perceive  that  we  are  conversing  with 
a  reasoner  or  a  teacher,  to  whom  almost 
every  other  branch  of  knowledge  is  famil- 
iar. His  views  range  over  all  the  cognate 
subjects ;  his  reasonings  are  derived  from 
principles  applicable  to  other  matters  as 
well  as  the  one  in  hand ;  arguments  pour 
in  from  all  sides,  as  well  as  those  which 
start  up  under  our  feet,  the  natural 
growth  of  the  path  he  is  leading  us  over ; 
while  to  throw  light  round  our  steps,  and 
either  explore  its  darker  places  or  serve 
for  our  recreation,  illustrations  are  fetched 
from  a  thousand  quarters ;  and  an  imag- 
ination marvellously  quick  to  descry 
unthought-of-resemblances  pours  forth 
the  stores  which  a  lore  yet  more  marvel- 
lous has  gathered  from  ali  ages  and  nations 
and  arts  and  tongues. — Brougham,  Henry 
Lord,  1839-43,  Historical  Sketches  of 
Statesmen  who  Flourished  in  the  Time  of 
George  III.,  vol.  i,  p.  231. 

His  oratorical  impressiveness  was 
strongly  connected  with  the  weight  of 
those  maxims  which  he  had  formed  from  a 
long  and  profound  study  of  the  heart  of 
man.  And  it  is  the  force  and  abundance 
of  those  fine  reflections  which  give  an  im- 
mortal value  to  his  works  on  topics  of  the 
most  temporary  nature. — Croly,  George, 
1840,  The  Political  Life  of  Burke. 

A  sufficiently  poetical  politician  to  in- 
terest one  just  when  one^s  sonnetteering 
age  is  departing,  but  before  one  has  come 
down  quite  to  arid  fact. — Fitzgerald, 
Edward,  1841,  Letters,  vol.  i,  p.  72. 

Burke's  words  are  continually  practising 
the  broad-sword  exercise,  and  sweeping 
down  adversaries  with  every  stroke. — 
Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  1845,  Words, 
Essays  and  Reviews. 

His  most  universal  charm  is  a  style  so 
copious  as  to  enrich  the  student's  vocabu- 
lary by  the  aptitude  and  flow  of  words,  to 
gratify  the  taste  by  its  elegance,  and  the 
ear  by  its  musical  periods.  Withal  it  is 
a  manly  style.  Burke  is  not  fastidious  in 
his  choice  of  epithets  or  illustrations  to 


the  extent  of  weakening  his  force  of  state- 
ment. He  can  use  the  most  homely  as 
well  as  the  most  classic  phrases  and  fig- 
ures. He  does  not  sacrifice  truth  to 
beauty,  but  aims  to  render  them  mutually 
illustrative.  Few  English  writers  boast 
passages  that  exhibit  so  clearly  the  dignity 
of  the  language,  its  facility  of  application, 
and  its  persuasive  grace.— Tuckerman, 
Henry  T.,  1849,  Characteristics  of  Litera- 
ture, p.  225. 

On  the  subject  of  Irish  Catholic  free- 
dom he  wrote  fully  in  letters  to  Sir  Her- 
cules Langrishe  and  others.  He  also  dealt 
with  this  important  theme  in  the  defence 
of  his  parliamentary  conduct,  which  will 
be  found  in  this  volume  amongst  his 
speeches  delivered  at  Bristol.  His  sup 
port  of  the  Catholic  side  of  the  question 
was  one  of  the  causes  of  his  unpopularity 
with  the  electors  of  that  city.  Respect- 
ing the  liberty  of  the  press  he  was  in  ad- 
vance of  his  age.  ...  On  the  subject  of 
the  toleration  of  Dissenters,  Burke  was 
large-minded  and  liberal,  and  supported 
the  principle  on  several  occasions.  .  .  . 
On  questions  connected  with  Irish  Trade 
and  with  Irish  Parliamentary  freedom. 
Burke  took  the  side  of  his  native  country. 
— Burke,  James,  1853,  ed.,  The  Speeches 
of  Edmund  Burke,  Memoir,  pp.  xxii,  xxiii. 

I  have  now  finished  reading  again  most 
of    Burke's    works.    Admirable!  The 
greatest  man  since  Milton. — Macaulay,  ^ 
Thomas  Babington,  1854,  Journal,  Feb. ' 
6 ;  Life  and  Letters,  ed.  Trevelyan. 

The  contrast  between  the  manner  of 
his  characteristic  writings  and  their  mat- 
ter is  very  remarkable.  He  too  threw 
over  the  detail  of  business  and  of  politics 
those  graces  and  attractions  of  manner 
which  seems  in  some  sort  inconsistent  with 
them ;  which  are  adapted  for  topics  more 
intrinsically  sublime  and  beautiful.  It  was 
for  this  reason  that  Hazlitt  asserted  that 
no  woman  ever  cared  for  Burke's  writ- 
ings: the  matter,  he  said,  was  "hard  and 
dry," and  no  superficial  glitter  or  eloquence 
could  make  it  agreeable  to  those  who 
liked  what  is  in  its  very  nature  fine  and 
delicate.  .  .  .  His  mind  was  the  re- 
verse of  historical :  although  he  had  rather 
a  coarse,  incondite  temperament,  not  finely 
susceptible  to  the  best  influences,  to  the 
most  exquisite  beauties  of  the  world  in 
which  he  lived,  he  yet  lived  in  that  world 
thoroughly  and  completely.    He  did  not 


304 


EDMUND  BURKE 


take  an  interest,  as  a  poet  does,  in  the 
sublime  because  it  is  sublime,  in  the  beau- 
tiful because  it  is  beautiful :  but  he  had 
the  passions  of  more  ordinary  men  in 
a  degree,  and  of  an  intensity,  which  ordi- 
nary men  may  be  most  thankful  that 
they  have  not.  In  no  one  has  the  intense 
faculty  of  intellectual  hatred — the  hatred 
which  the  absolute  dogmatist  has  for  those 
in  whom  he  incarnates  and  personifies  the 
opposing  dogma — been  fiercer  or  stronger ; 
in  no  one  has  the  intense  ambition  to  rule 
and  govern — in  scarcely  any  one  has  the 
daily  ambition  of  the  daily  politician — been 
fiercer  and  stronger :  he,  if  any  man,  cast 
himself  upon  his  time. — Bagehot,  Wal- 
ter, 1856,  Thomas  Babinqton  Macaulay, 
Works,  ed.  Morgan,  vol.  ii,  pp.  83,  84. 

The  slightest  sketch  of  the  reign  of 
George  III.  would  indeed  be  miserably  im- 
perfect if  it  were  to  omit  the  name  of 
Edmund  Burke.  The  studies  of  this  ex- 
traordinary man  not  only  covered  the 
whole  field  of  political  inquiry,  but  ex- 
tended to  an  immense  variety  of  subjects, 
which,  though  apparently  unconnected 
with  politics, do  in  reality  bear  upon  them 
as  important  adjuncts ;  since,  to  a  philo- 
sophic mind,  every  branch  of  knowledge 
lights  up  even  those  that  seem  most  re- 
mote from  it.  The  eulogy  passed  upon 
him  by  one  who  was  no  mean  judge  of 
men,  might  be  justified,  and  more  than 
justified  by  passages  from  his  works,  as 
well  as  by  the  opinions  of  the  most  eminent 
of  his  contemporaries.  Thus  it  is,  that 
while  his  insight  into  the  philosophy  of 
jurisprudence  has  gained  the  applause  of 
lawyers,  his  acquaintance  with  the  whole 
range  and  theory  of  the  fine  arts  has  won 
the  admiration  of  artists ;  a  striking  com- 
bination of  two  pursuits,  often,  though 
erroneously,  held  to  be  incompatible  with 
each  other.  At  the  same  time,  and  not- 
withstanding the  occupations  of  political 
life,  we  know  on  good  authority,  that  he 
had  paid  great  attention  to  the  history 
and  filiation  of  languages,  a  vast  subject, 
which  within  the  last  thirty  years  has  be- 
come an  important  resource  for  the  study 
of  the  human  mind,  but  the  very  idea  of 
which  had,  in  its  large  sense,  only  begun 
to  dawn  upon  a  few  solitary  thinkers. 
And,  what  is  even  more  remarkable,  when 
Adam  Smith  came  to  London  full  of  those 
discoveries  which  have  immortalized  his 
name,  he  found  to  his  amazement  that 


Burke  had  anticipated  conclusions  the 
maturing  of  which  cost  Smith  himself  many 
years  of  anxious  and  unremitting  labour. 
— Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  1857,  His- 
tory of  Civilization  in  England,  vol.  i. 

Burke's  acknowledged  writings  I  had 
studied  diligently  many  years  before  I 
thought  of  writing  anything  on  his  career. 
They  have  ever  appeared  to  me  as  a  treas- 
ure in  English  literature,  only  second  in 
genius  and  worth  to  Shakespeare's  Plays; 
and  it  is  through  the  noble  arch-way  they 
afliord,  that  all  men  must,  as  an  indispen- 
sable condition,  enter  into  the  spirit  of  his 
life.  Until  we  can  raise  ourselves  to  the 
elevation  of  his  mind,  and  accustom  our- 
selves to  look  at  the  events  of  his  time 
through  his  own  medium,  any  criticism  on 
his  character  or  political  career  can  be  of 
little  worth.  We  may  otherwise  compla- 
cently remonstrate  with  him,  rebuke  him, 
wonder  at  him,  and  misjudge  him ;  but  we 
shall  certainly  not  understand  him. — 
Macknight,  Thomas,  1858,  History  of  the 
Life  and  Times  of  Edmund  Burke,  vol.  i. 
Preface  p.  xii. 

All  hail  to  Edmund  Burke,  the  supreme 
writer  of  his  century,  the  man  of  the 
largest  and  finest  understanding!  Upon 
that  word  understanding,  we  lay  a  stress : 
for,  oh !  ye  immortal  donkeys  who  have 
written  ''about  him  and  about  him,"  with 
what  an  obstinate  stupidity  have  ye  brayed 
away  for  one-third  of  a  century  about  that 
which  ye  are  pleased  to  call  his  "fancy." 
Fancy  in  your  throats,  ye  miserable  twad- 
dlers !  As  if  Edmund  Burke  were  the  man 
to  play  with  his  fancy  for  the  purpose  of 
separable  ornament !  He  was  a  man  of 
fancy  in  no  other  sense  than  as  Lord  Bacon 
was  so,  and  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  as  all  large 
and  discursive  thinkers  are  and  must  be ; 
that  is  to  say,  the  fancy  which  he  had  in 
common  with  all  mankind,  and  very  prob- 
ably in  no  eminent  degree,  in  him  was 
urged  into  unusual  activity  under  the 
necessities  of  his  capacious  understanding. 
His  great  and  peculiar  distinction  was 
that  he  viewed  all  objects  of  the  under- 
standing under  more  relations  than  other 
men,  and  under  more  complex  relations. 
— De  Quince y,  Thomas,  1859,  Rhetoric, 
Collected  Writings,  ed.  Masson,  vol.  x, 
p.  114. 

The  freedom  of  Burke's  style  in  all  ins 
more  characteristic  writings  would  be  al- 
together strange  and  startling  in  a  writer 


EDMUND  BURKE 


805 


of  the  present  day.— Craik,  George  L., 
1861,  A  Compendious  History  of  English 
Literature  and  of  the  English  Language, 
vol.  II,  p.  565. 

Burke  has  not  only  loftier  qualities  of 
the  mind  than  Bolingbroke  —a  knowledge 
of  books,  though  not  of  men,  more  accu- 
rate, comprehensive,  and  profound — a  rea- 
soning more  subtle,  an  imagination  more 
splendid — but  this  superiority  in  gifts  and 
acquirements  is  accompanied  by  an  equal 
superiority  over  Bolingbroke  in  the  very 
beauties  for  which  Bolingbroke  is  most 
remarkable.  He  excels  him  in  luxury 
and  pomp  of  language ;  he  excels  him  in 
discipline  and  art  of  style.  The  most 
sovereign  genius  will  be  always  that, 
whether  in  prose  or  verse,  which  unites  in 
the  highest  degree  the  faculty  of  reason- 
ing with  the  faculty  of  imagination ;  the 
most  beautiful  writing,  either  in  prose  or 
verse,  will  be  that  which  unites  the  logical 
arrangement  that  satisfies  our  reason  with 
the  splendour  of  language  that  delights 
our  imagination.  And  it  appears  to  me 
that,  in<  this  f elicitious  union,  we  have  no 
prose-writer  who  is  the  equal  of  Burke. 
— Lytton,  Edward  Bulwer  Lord,  1863- 
68, Caxtoniana,  Miscellaneous ProseWorks, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  98. 

Burke  is  so  great  because,  almost 
alone  in  England,  he  brings  thought  to 
bear  upon  politics,  he  saturates  politics 
with  thought ;  it  is  his  accident  that  his 
ideas  were  at  the  service  of  an  epoch  of 
concentration,  not  of  an  epoch  of  expan- 
sion; it  is  his  characteristic  that  he  so 
lived  by  ideas,  and  had  such  a  source  of 
them  welling  up  within  him,  that  he  could 
float  even  an  epoch  of  concentration  and 
English  Tory  politics  with  them.  It  does 
not  hurt  him  that  Dr.  Price  and  the  Lib- 
erals were  enraged  with  him ;  it  does  not 
even  hurt  him  that  George  the  Third  and 
the  Tories  were  enchanted  with  him.  His 
greatness  is  that  he  lived  in  a  world  which 
neither  English  Liberalism  nor  English 
Toryism  is  apt  to  enter, — the  world  of 
ideas,  not  the  world  of  catch  words  and 
party  habits. — Arnold,  Matthew,  1865, 
The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present 
Time,  Essays  in  Criticism,  p.  14. 

With  a  fertility  of  fancy  sufficient  to 
make  a  poet  of  the  rank  of  Milton,  and  a 
power  of  general  reasoning  which  might 
have  furnished  a  philosopher  of  the  rank 
of  Bacon,  he  devoted  these  rare  gifts  to 

20  C 


political  pursuits.  He  was  not  indeed  the 
ivory  paper-knife  which  Swift  considers 
as  the  true  measure  of  sharpness  of  in- 
tellect for  a  practical  statesman,  and  was 
rather  the  razor  to  which  Goldsmith  com- 
pares him. — Russell,  John  Lord,  1866, 
The  Life  and  Times  of  Charles  James  Fox, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  122. 

Read  him  only  several  pages  at  a  time : 
only  thus  he  is  great ;  otherwise  all  that 
is  exaggerated,  commonplace,  and  strange 
will  arrest  and  shock  you;  but  if  you  give 
yourself  up  to  him,  you  will  be  carried 
away  and  captivated.  The  vast  amount 
of  his  work  rolls  impetuously  in  a  current 
of  eloquence.  Sometimes  a  spoken  or 
written  discourse  needs  a  whole  volume  to 
unfold  the  train  of  his  multiplied  proofs 
and  courageous  anger. — Taine,  H.  A., 
1871,  History  of  English  Literature,  tr. 
Van  Laun,  vol.  ii,  bk.  iii,  ch.  iii,  p.  82. 

Considered  simply  as  a  master  of  English 
prose.  Burke  ^  has  not,  in  my  judgment, 
been  surpassed  in  any  period  of  our  lit- 
erature. Critics  may  point  to  certain 
faults  of  haste;  the  evolution  of  his 
thought  is  sometimes  too  slow ;  his  ma- 
jestic march  is  trammeled  by  the  sweep 
of  his  gorgeous  rhetoric ;  or  his  imagina- 
tion takes  fire,  and  he  explodes  into  fierce 
denunciations  which  shock  the  reader  when 
the  excitement  which  prompted  them  has 
become  unintelligible.  But,  whatever 
blemishes  may  be  detected,  Burke's  mag- 
nificent speeches  stand  absolutely  alone  in 
the  language.  They  are,  literally  speak- 
ing, the  only  English  speeches  which  may 
still  be  read  with  profit  when  the  hearer 
and  the  speaker  have  long  been  turned  to 
dust.  His  pamphlets,  which  are  written 
speeches,  are  marked  by  a  fervour,  a  rich- 
ness, and  a  flexibility  of  style  which  is 
but  a  worthy  incarnation  of  the  wisdom 
which  they  embod5\  It  matters  little  if 
we  dissent  from  his  appreciations  of  cur- 
rent events,  for  it  is  easy  to  supply  the 
corrective  for  ourselves.  The  charge 
of  over-refinement  sometimes  brought 
against  him  is  in  great  part  nothing  more 
than  the  unconscious  testimony  of  his 
critics  that  he  could  see  farther  than  them- 
selves. To  a  certain  degree  it  is,  perhaps, 
well  founded.— Stephen,  Leslie,  1876, 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  219. 

The  varieties  of  Burke's  literary  or 
rhetorical  method  are  very  striking.  It 


306 


EDMUND  BURKE 


is  almost  incredible  that  the  superb  im- 
aginative amplication  of  the  description  of 
Hyder  All's  descent  upon  the  Carnatic 
should  be  from  the  same  pen  as  the  grave, 
simple,  unadorned  ''Address to  the  King'' 
(1777),  where  each  sentence  falls  on  the 
ear  with  the  accent  of  some  golden- 
tongued  oracle  of  the  wise  gods.  His 
stride  is  the  stride  of  a  giant,  from  the 
sentimental  beauty  of  the  picture  of  Marie 
Antoinette  at  Versailles,  or  the  red  horror 
of  the  tale  of  Debi  Sing  in  Rungpore,  to 
the  learning,  positiveness,  and  cool  judicial 
mastery  of  the  ''Report  on  the  Lord's 
Journals"  (1794),  which  Phillip  Francis, 
no  mean  judge,  declared  on  the  whole  to 
be  the  "most  eminent  and  extraordinary" 
of  all  his  productions.  Even  in  the  coolest 
and  dryest  of  his  pieces  there  is  the  mark 
of  greatness,  of  grasp,  of  comprehension. 
In  all  its  varieties  Burke's  style  is  noble, 
earnest,  deep-flowing,  because  his  senti- 
ments were  lofty  and  fervid,  and  went  with 
sincerity  and  ardent  disciplined  travail  of 
judgment.  .  .  .  Burke  will  al- 
ways be  read  with  delight  and  edification, 
because  in  the  midst  of  discussions  on  the 
local  and  the  accidential,  he  scatters 
apophthegms  that  take  us  into  the  regions 
of  lasting  wisdom.  In  the  midst  of  the 
torrent  of  his  most  strenuous  and  pas- 
sionate deliverances,  he  suddenly  rises 
aloof  from  his  immediate  subject,  and  in 
all  tranquility  reminds  us  of  some  per- 
manent relation  of  things,  some  enduring 
truth  of  human  life  or  society.  We  do 
not  hear  the  organ  tones  of  Milton,  for 
faith  and  freedom  had  other  notes  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  There  is  none  of 
the  complacent  and  wise-browed  sagacity 
of  Bacon,  for  Burke's  were  days  of 
eager  personal  strife  and  party  fire  and 
civil  division.  .  .  .  The  only  great 
English  writer  of  that  age  whom  we  can 
name  along  with  Burke  in  the  literature 
of  enduring  power,  is  Wordsworth,  that 
great  representative  in  another  and  a 
higher  field,  and  with  many  rare  elements 
added  that  were  all  his  own,  of  those  har- 
monising and  conciliatory  forces  and  ideas 
that  make  man's  destiny  easier  to  him 
through  piety  in  its  oldest  and  best  sense ; 
through  reverence  for  the  past,  for  duty, 
for  institutions. — Morley,  John,  1879, 
Burke  (English  Men  of  Letters),  pp.  210, 
211,  212. 

Except  when  dealing  with  American 


questions  (as  to  which  Burke  has  the 
calmness  which  arises  from  the  sense  of 
being  absolutely  in  the  right),  he  never 
entirely  carries  even  his  admirers  with 
him.  You  feel  that  an  unknown  something 
spoils  what  would  otherwise  be  perfect. 
This  "something"  is  a  want  of  justness 
of  mind.  Burke  was  an  enthusiast  for 
justice.  He  would  have  sacrificed  every- 
thing on  earth  to  put  an  end  to  any  act 
of  oppression,  but  he  was  not  a  just  man. 
The  calmness  requisite  to  balance  one  side 
against  another,  the  attempt  to  realize 
what  were  the  strong  points  of  an  op- 
ponent's case,  the  faculty  even  of  showing 
that  kind  of  appreciation  of  an  enemy's 
position  which  is  requisite  if  one  is  fully 
to  expose  its  w^eakness,  was  the  one  moral 
or  intellectual  gift  which  Burke  did  not 
possess.  Hence  the  persons  he  assailed 
suffered  from  a  sense  of  unfairness  which 
was  the  greater  because  of  the  indubitable 
force  of  the  assault. — Dicey,  Ao  V., 
1879,  Morley's  Burke,  The  Nation,  vol.  29, 
p.  245. 

The  most  distinguished  of  warriors,  the 
great  Burke,  the  most  eloquent  and  potent 
champion  against  whom  a  young  assailant 
ever  tried  his  powers. — Oliphant,  Mar- 
garet 0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History  of 
England,  XVIII  and  XIX  Centuries,  voL 
III,  p,  270. 

In  one  of  his  elaborated  sentences  you 
will  sometimes  find  words  and  clauses  se- 
lected and  multiplied  and  arranged  and 
compacted  and  qualified  and  defined  and 
repeated,  for  the  very  purpose  of  extend- 
ing and  limiting  the  truth  to  its  exact  and 
undoubted  measure.  He  obviously  labors 
to  say  just  what  he  means,  no  more,  no 
less,  no  other.  Still,  on  the  whole,  he 
fails,  because  he  is  so  elaborately  precise  in 
details.  The  thought  is  suffocated  by  the 
multitude  of  words  employed  to  give  it  life. 
It  is  buried  alive.  To  change  the  figure, 
you  can  divide  and  subdivide  a  field  into 
so  many,  so  small,  so  regular,  and  so  exact 
patches,  that  the  chief  impression  it  shall 
leave  on  your  eye  is  that  of  the  fences. 
Similar  is  the  impression  of  an  excessively 
precise  style.— Phelps,  Austin,  1883, 
English  Style  in  Public  Discourse,  p.  91. 

To  my  mind  Burke  looms  up,  after  the 
lapse  of  a  century,  as  a  prodigy  of  thought 
and  knowledge,  devoted  to  the  good  of  his 
country;  an  unselfish  and  disinter^s cl 
patriot,  as  wise  and  sagacious  as  he  '  as 


EDMUND  BURKE 


307 


honest ;  a  sage  whose  moral  wisdom  shines 
brighter  and  brighter,  since  it  was  based 
on  the  immutable  principles  of  justice  and 
morality.  One  can  extract  more  profound 
and  striking  epigrams  from  his  speeches 
and  writings  than  from  any  prose  writer 
that  England  has  produced,  if  we  except 
Francis  Bacon.  And  these  writings  and 
speeches  are  still  valued  as  among  the 
most  precious  legacies  of  former  genera- 
tions ;  they  form  a  thesaurus  of  political 
wisdom  which  statesmen  can  never  ex- 
haust. Burke  has  left  an  example  which 
all  statesmen  will  do  well  to  follow.  He 
was  not  a  popular  favorite,  like  Fox  and 
Pitt ;  he  was  not  born  to  greatness,  like 
North  and  Newcastle ;  he  was  not  liked  by 
the  king  or  the  nobility ;  he  was  generally 
in  the  ranks  of  the  opposition ;  he  was  a 
new  man,  like  Cicero,  in  an  aristocratic 
age,  — yet  he  conquered  by  his  genius  the 
proudest  prejudices;  he  fought  his  way 
upward,  inch  by  inch^;  he  was  the  founder 
of  a  new  national  policy,  although  it  was 
bitterly  opposed ;  and  he  died  universally 
venerated  for  his  integrity,  wisdom  and 
foresight.  He  was  the  most  remarkable 
man,  on  the  whole,  who  has  taken  part  in 
public  affairs,  from  the  Revolution  to  our 
times.  Of  course,  the  life  and  principles 
of  so  great  a  man  are  a  study.  If  history 
has  any  interest  or  value,  it  is  to  show  the 
influence  of  such  a  man  on  his  own  age  and 
the  ages  which  have  succeeded,  — to  point 
out  his  contribution  to  civilization. — 
Lord,  John,  1885,  Beacon  Lights  of  His- 
tory, vol.  IV,  p.  288. 

Burke  spoke  well  but  wrote  better,  and 
his  political  writing  has,  in  the  grand 
style,  few  equals. — Saintsbury,  George, 
1886,  Specimens  of  English  Prose  Style, 
p.  226. 

It  was  Burke's  peculiarity  and  his  glory 
to  apply  the  imagination  of  a  poet  of  the 
first  order  to  the  facts  and  the  business 
of  life.    Arnold  says  of  Sophocles — ■ 

"He  saw  life  steadily,  and  saw  it  whole." 
Substitute  for  the  word  **life''  the  words 

organised  society,"  and  you  get  a  peep 
into  Burke's  mind.  .  o  .  Wordsworth 
has  been  called  the  High  Priest  of  Nature. 
Burke  may  be  called  the  High  Priest  of 
Order — a  lover  of  settled  ways,  of  justice, 
peace,  and  security.  His  writings  are  a 
storehouse  of  wisdom,  not  the  cheap 
shrewdness  of  the  mere  man  of  the  world, 
but  the  noble,  animating  wisdom  of  one 


who  has  the  poet's  heart  as  well  as  the 
statesman's  brain.— Birrell,  Augustine, 
1887,  Obiter  Dicta,  Second  Series,  pp, 
188,  194. 

With  all  due  enthusiasm  for  the  majestic 
merit  of  his  style,  that  extremity  of  praise 
will  not  be  reached  here.  Notwithstanding 
all  its  magnificence  it  appears  to  me  that 
the  prose  of  Burke  lacks  the  variety,  the 
delicacy,  the  modulated  music  of  the  very 
finest  writers.  When  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen 
applauds  the  "flexibility"  of  Burke's  style, 
he  attributes  to  him  the  very  quality  which 
to  my  ear  he  seems  most  to  lack.  A  robe 
of  brocaded  damask  is  splendid,  sumptu- 
ous, and  appropriate  to  noble  public  occa- 
sions, but  it  is  scarcely  flexible.  To  be 
a  perfect  prose-writer,  a  man  must  play 
sometimes  upon  thrilling  and  soul-sub- 
duing instruments,  but  Burke  never  takes 
the  trumpet  from  his  lips.  To  those  few 
who  may  think  him  humorous,  I  resign 
him  in  despair ;  and  surely  still  fewer  will 
be  found  to  think  him  pathetic.  The 
greatest  of  English  prose-writers,  we 
may  be  sure,  would  be  found  to  have  some 
command  over  laughter  and  tears,  but 
Burke  has  none— Gosse,  Edmund,  1888, 
A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  365. 

The  writer  of  a  prose  illumined  as 
with  fire ;  enthusiastic  and  yet  supremely 
logical ;  fearless  and  yet  absolutely  obedi- 
ent to  order  and  to  law;  eloquent  and 
yet  restraint;  stirred  by  every  papular 
movement,  and  yet  suggestive  and  philo- 
sophical. More  completely  than  any  man 
he  showed,  in  style  no  less  perfectly  than 
in  spirit  and  in  sympathy,  all  that  was 
most  typical  of  the  best  genius  of  his 
age — its  restraint,  its  philosophy,  its  obe- 
dience to  order  and  to  law,  and  its  gift  to 
literary  instinct — removed  as  far  from  the 
exaggeration  and  pedantry  of  what  had 
gone  before,  as  from  the  vulgar  platitude 
and  superficial  complacency  of  what  was 
to  follow. — Craik,  Henry,  1895,  ed., 
English  Prose,  Introduction,  vol.  iv,  p.  ii. 

How  much  of  the  artist  dwelt  in  the 
brains  of  the  statesman  the  record  of  his 
indefatigable  toil  in  composition  is  witness. 
In  answer  to  the  assertion  that  he  is  the 
greatest  of  English  prose  writers  it  is 
often  said  that  his  style  lacks  restraint 
and  the  dignity  that  accompanies  reserve. 
His  temper  rather  than  any  lack  of  taste 
made  him  too  eager-voiced ;  he  grasped  at 


308 


EDMUND  BURKE 


much  that  did  not  fall  naturally  within 
his  reach,  lost  chiaroscuro  in  unrelieved 
emphasis,  and  attained  the  massive  at  the 
expense  of  the  beautiful.  But  genius  like 
Burke's  declines  the  selective  economy  of 
weaker  artists  compelled  to  a  choice  of 
material  easily  handled.  He  swept  into 
his  service  all  that  his  excursive  imagina- 
tion took  captive,  and  frequently  marshals 
an  unequal  array  of  arguments.  But  if 
his  touch  fails  at  times  to  transmute  the 
baser  metal  into  gold,  amid  such  profu- 
sion as  his  we  cannot  feel  ourselves  the 
poorer. —Dixon,  W.  Macneile,  1895, 
English  Prose,  ed.  Craik,  vol.  IV,  p.  377. 

Political  writers  both  sagacious  and 
eloquent  have  flourished  at  all  periods  of 
modern  English  history.  The  thought  and 
the  expression  were  often  united  in  the 
same  person,  and  in  some  instances  with 
a  profundity  in  the  one  gift  matched 
worthily  with  distinction  in  the  other. 
But  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  any 
writer  on  politics  and  the  philosophy  of 
politics  has  ever  combined  sagacity  and 
eloquence  in  such  measure,  or  anything 
approaching  to  such  measure,  as  that  in 
which  they  are  combined  by  Burke. — 
Traill,  Henry  Duff,  1896,  Social  Eng- 
land, vol.  V,  p.  451. 

Burke  is  the  prince  of  pamphleteers. 
His  great  speeches  are  in  reality  pam- 
phlets, manifestly  written  and  cast  in  the 
pamphlet  form.  He  is  a  politician  among 
philosophers,  a  profound  philosopher 
among  politicians.  He  is  at  his  best  in  the 
speeches  on  the  American  question  and  the 
letter  on  the  same  question  to  the  sherilfs 
of  Bristol.  Here  our  reason  and  our  moral 
sense  are  with  him  throughout.  The  eleva- 
tion of  sentiment  is  noble ;  the  style  is 
superb ;  with  all  its  fervour  and  force  it 
retains  the  calmness,  the  sobriety,  the  dig- 
nity of  truth.  He  hardly  ever  became 
declamatory,he  is  never  vituperative.  Only 
once  or  twice  does  he  lapse  into  the  taste- 
less extravagant  metaphor  which  defaced 
his  later  style.  Political  writing  grander 
or  more  full  of  instruction,  moral  and  pru- 
dential, there  is  none.— Smith,  Gold  win, 
1896,  Burke,  Cornhill,  Magazine,  vol.  74, 
p.  18. 

Steeped  as  we  are  to-day  in  evolution- 
ary conceptions,  Burke's  thought  speaks 
to  us  in  the  language  we  understand  best ; 
it  speaks  besides  with  a  power  that 
makes  it  more  than  simply  parallel  to 


already  existing  influences.  Modern  evo- 
lutionary philosophy  has  produced  no 
master  of  political  science  worthy  to  be 
compared  for  a  moment  to  Burke,  in  depth 
of  thought,  wealth  of  observation,  experi- 
ence, and  research ;  and  above  all,  in  that 
primal  energy  of  mind  which,  baffling  all 
explanation  or  formulation,  in  its  mighty 
outflow  bears  along  with  it  the  minds  and 
feelings  of  men  in  enforced  but  willing 
subdual. — Claghorn,  Kate  Holladay, 
1897,  Burke,  A  Centenary  Perspective, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  80,  p.  93. 

No  account  of  the  great  writers  of  our 
country  could  be  written  without  a  mention 
of  Edmund  Burke  and  his  works.  .  .  . 
Nearly  all  he  wrote  he  wrote  well,  and 
few  men  did  more  to  teach  and  guide  the 
people  of  his  time  than  Edmund  Burke. 
— Forster,  H.  0.  Arnold,  1897,  A  His- 
tory of  England,  p.  791. 

In  no  part  of  the  world  should  his  name 
be  held  more  in  honor  than  in  this  country. 
He  was  among  the  earliest,  as  he  was 
the  greatest,  of  the  defenders  of  the  rights 
of  the  American  colonies.  He  gave  to 
,  the  cause  of  the  colonies  all  the  powers 
of  his  intellect  and  the  resources  of  his 
peculiar  and  unapproachable  knowledge  of 
their  affairs  and  the  interests  of  the  em- 
pire. No  one  in  England  knew  the 
colonial  side  of  the  question  as  he  did ; 
few  understood  as  he  did  the  dangers  and 
difficulties  of  a  vast  colonial  empire ;  no 
one  could  unite  as  he  could  the  interests 
of  the  colonies  and  of  the  mother  country 
in  one  comprehensive  view,  in  which  rights 
upon  the  one  hand  and  duties  upon  the 
other  would  be  harmoniously  blended. 
The  War  of  Independence  vindicated  his 
statesmanship.  —  McDermot,  George, 
1897,  Edmund  Burke  the  Friend  of  Human 
Liberty,  Catholic  World,  vol.  65,  p.  473. 

In  a  well-known  canon  of  style  Burke 
lays  it  down  that  the  master  sentence  of 
every  paragraph  should  involve,  first,  a 
thought,  secondly,  an  image,  and,  thirdly, 
a  sentiment.  The  rule  is  certainly  not 
one  of  universal  application ;  it  is  one  not 
always  followed  by  Burke  himself,  but  it 
expresses  the  character  of  his  mind.  A 
thought,  an  image,  a  sentiment,  and  all 
bearing  upon  action, — it  gives  us  an  inti- 
mation that  the  writer  who  set  forth  such 
a  canon  was  a  complete  nature,  no  frag- 
ment of  a  man,  but  a  full-formed  human 
spirit,  and  that  when  he  came  to  write  or 


« 


OF  THt 

UNIVERSITY  (^^LUNO\S. 


: 


BURKE— WALPOLE 


309 


speak,  he  put  his  total  manhood  into  his 
utterance.  This  is,  indeed,  Burke's  first 
and  highest  distinction. — Dowden,  Ed- 
ward, 1897,  The  French  Revolution  and 
English  Literature,  p.  94. 

In  the  whole  scope  of  political  literature 
there  is  no  writer  so  often  read  or  so  fre- 
quently quoted  in  the  present  day,  and 
none  whose  influence  has  been  so  deep  and 
lasting,  as  that  of  Edmund  Burke.  .  .  . 
He  never  touched  a  subject  without  adorn- 
ing it  with  reflections  that  go  to  the 
root  of  the  principles  of  government  in  all 
ages  and  all  nations. — Pollard,  A.  F., 


1897,  ec?.,  Political  Pamphlets,  Introduction, 
p,  23. 

The  times  were  seeking  the  man  of 
large  and  liberal  ideas.  There  existed  a 
reading  public.  Parliamentary  speeches 
were  now  allowed  to  be  published.  The 
press  was  practically  free  to  praise  or 
blame.  The  post  carried  the  pamphlet 
and  the  newspaper  to  the  villages,  and 
thus  the  English  people  became  the  audi- 
ence. At  length  the  man  was  found,  and 
that  man  was  Edmund  Burke.— George, 
Andrew  J.,  1898,  From  Chaucer  to  Ar- 
nold, Types  of  Literary  Art,  p.  642. 


Horace  Walpole 

Earl  of  Orford 
1717-1797 

Born,  in  London,  24  Sept.  1717.  Educated  at  Eton,  April  1727  to  Sept.  1734. 
Entered  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  27  May  1731.  To  King's  Coll.,  Camb.,  March  1735.  In- 
spector of  Imports  and  Exports,  1737-38 ;  Usher  of  the  Exchequer,  1738 ;  Comptroller 
of  the  Pipe,  1738;  Clerk  of  the  Estreats,  1738.  Left  Cambridge,  March  1739. 
Travelled  on  Continent,  1739-41.  M.  P.  for  Callington,  1741-44.  Settled  at  Straw- 
berry Hill,  1747.  M.  P.  for  Castle  Rising,  1754-57;  for  King's  Lynn,  1757-68. 
Succeeded  to  Earldom  of  Orford,  Dec.  1791.  Unmarried.  Died,  in  London,  2  March 
1797.  Buried  at  Houghton.  IForA:s; ''Lessons  for  the  Day"  (anon.),  1742 ;  ''Epilogue 
to  Tamerlane"  (1746);  "^des  Walpolian^,"  1747;  "Letter  from  Xo-Ho,"  1757 
(5th  edn.  same  year);  "Fugitive  Pieces  in  Verse  and  Prose,"  1758;  "Catalogue  of 
the  Royal  and  Noble  Authors  of  England"  (2  vols.),  1758;  "Observations  on  the 
Account  given  of  the  Catalogue  .  .  .  in  .  .  .  the  Critical  Review,"  1759; 
"Reflections  on  the  Different  Ideas  of  the  French  and  English  in  regard  to  Cruelty" 
(anon.),  1759;  "A  Counter-Address  to  the  Public"  (anon.),  1764;  "The  Castle  of 
Otranto"  (anon.),  1765  (2nd  edn.  same  year) ;  "An  Account  of  the  Giants  lately  dis- 
covered," 1766;  "The  Mysterious  Mother"  (priv.  ptd.),  1768;  "Historic  Doubts  of 
the  Life  and  Reign  of  King  Richard  the  Third,"  1768  (2nd  edn.  same  year) ;  "Miscel- 
laneous Antiquities"  (anon.),  1772 ;  "Description  of  the  Villa  .  .  .  at  Strawberry 
Hill,"  1772;  "Letter  to  the  Editor  of  the  Miscellanies  of  Thomas  Chatterton,"  1779; 
"To  Lady  H.  Waldegrave"  (anon.),  (1779);  "Hieroglyphick  Tales"  (anon.),  1785; 
"Essay  on  Modern  Gardening,"  1785;  "The  Press  at  Strawberry  Hill  to  .  .  . 
the  Duke  of  Clarence"  (anon.),  (1790?) ;  "Hasty  Productions."  1791.  Posthumous: 
"Letters  to  .  .  .  Rev.  W.  Cole  and  others,"  1818;  "Letters  to  G.  Montagu," 
1819;  "Private  Correspondence"  (4  vols.),  1820;  "Memoirs  of  the  Last  Ten  Years 
of  the  Reign  of  King  George  II.,"  ed.  by  Lord  Holland  (2  vols.),  1822;  "Letters  to 
Sir  H.  Mann"  (7  vols.),  1833-44;  "Letters,"  ed.  by  J.  Wright  (6  vols.),  1840; 
"Memoirs  of  the  Reign  of  King  George  III.,"  ed.  by  Sir  D.Le  Marchant  (4  vols.), 
1845;  "Letters  to  the  Countess  of  Ossory"  (2  vols.),  1848;  "Correspondence  with 
W.  Mason,"  ed.  by  J.  Mitford  (2  vols.),  1851 ;  "Letters,"  ed.  by  P.  Cunningham  (9 
vols.),  1857-58;  "Journal  of  the  Reign  of  King  George  the  Third  .  .  .  being  a 
Supplement  to  his  Memoirs,"  ed.  by  Dr.  Doran  (2  vols.),  1859;  "Supplement  to  the 
Historic  Doubts,"  ed.  by  Dr.  Hawtrey  (priv.  ptd.),  1860-61.  He  edited:  P. 
Hentzner's  "A  Journey  into  England,"  1757;  G.  Vertue's  "Anecdotes  of  Painting  in 
England,"  1762;  and  "Catalogue  of  Engravers,"  1763,  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury's 
Life,  1764;  Count  de  Grammont's  "Memoires,"  1772.  Collected  Works:  in  9  vols., 
1798-1825.  Life:  by  Austin  Dobson,  1890.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A 
Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p,  291. 


310 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


PERSONAL 

I  find  Mr.  Walpole  then  made  some 
mention  of  me  to  you ;  yes,  we  are  together 
again.  It  is  about  a  year,  I  believe,  since 
he  wrote  to  me,  to  offer  it,  and  there  has 
been  (particularly  of  late), in  appearance, 
the  same  kindness  and  confidence  almost 
as  of  old.  What  were  his  motives,  I  can- 
not yet  guess.  What  were  mine,  you  will 
imagine  and  perhaps  blame  me.  However 
as  yet  I  neither  repent,  nor  rejoice  over- 
much, but  I  am  pleased. — Gray,  Thomas, 
1750,  Letter  to  John  CJiute,  Oct.  12. 

I  was  well  acquainted  with  Mr.  Walpole 
at  Florence,  and  indeed  he  was  particularly 
civil  to  me.  I  am  encouraged  to  ask  a 
favor  of  him,  if  I  did  not  know,  that  few 
people  have  so  good  memories  as  to  re- 
member, so  many  years  backwards  as 
have  passed  since  I  have  seen  him.  If 
he  has  treated  the  character  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  with  disrespect,  all  the  women 
should  tear  him  in  pieces,  for  abusing  the 
glory  of  her  sex.— Montagu,  Lady  Mary 
WoRTLEY,  1758,  To  the  Countess  of  Bute, 
Oct.  10 ;  WorkSy  ed.  Dallaway^  vol.  v,  p.  62. 

I  am  certainly  the  greatest  philosopher 
in  the  world,  without  ever  having  thought 
of  being  so :  always  employed,  and  never 
busy ;  eager  about  trifles,  and  indifferent 
to  ever  thing  serious.  Well,  if  it  is  not 
philosophy,  at  least  it  is  content. — Wal- 
pole, Horace,  1774,  To  Hon.  H.  S.  Con- 
way, Aug.  18;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham, 
vol.  VI,  p.  109. 

When  Mr.  Horace  Walpole  came  from 
abroad  about  the  year  1746,  he  was  much 
of  a  Fribble  in  dress  and  manner.  Mr. 
Colman,  at  that  time  a  schoolboy,  had 
some  occasion  to  pay  him  a  visit.  He  told 
me  he  has  a  strong  recollection  of  the 
singularity  of  his  manner;  and  that  it 
was  then  said  that  Garrick  had  him  in 
thought  when  he  wrote  the  part  of  Fribble, 
in  ' '  Miss  in  her  Teens. ' '  But  I  doubt  this 
much ;  for  there  is  a  character  in  a  play 
called  ''Tunbridge  Wells,"  in  which  that 
of  Fribble  seems  to  be  evidently  formed. 
However,  Garrick  might  have  had  Mr. 
Walpole  in  his  thoughts.  This  gentleman 
(Mr.  Walpole)  is  still  somewhat  singular 
in  manner  and  appearance ;  but  it  seems 
only  a  singularity  arising  from  a  very  del- 
icate and  weak  constitution,  and  frorh 
living  quite  retired  among  his  books, 
and  much  with  ladies.  He  is  always 
lively  and  ingenious ;  never  very  solid  or 


energetic.  He  appears  to  be  very  fond  of 
French  manners,  authors,  &c.,  &c.,  and  I 
believe  keeps  up  to  this  day  a  correspond- 
ence with  many  of  the  people  of  fashion  in 
Paris.  His  love  of  French  manners,  and 
his  reading  so  much  of  their  language, 
have  I  think  infected  his  style  a  little, 
which  is  not  always  so  entirely  English  as 
it  ought  to  be.  He  is,  I  think,  a  very 
humane  and  amiable  man. — Malone,  Ed- 
MOND,  1782  ?  Maloniana,  ed.  Prior,  p.  86. 

The  letter  you  sent  me  of  Horace  Wal- 
pole's  is  brilliant,  and,  from  its  subject, 
inevitably  interesting ;  but  do  not  expect 
that  I  can  learn  to  esteem  that  fastidious 
and  unfeeling  being,  to  whose  insensibility 
we  owe  the  extinction  of  the  greatest 
poetic  luminary  Chatterton,  if  we  may 
judge  from  the  brightness  of  its  dawn, 
that  ever  rose  in  our,  or  perhaps  any  other 
hemisphere.  This  fine  wit  of  Strawberry 
Hill,  is  of  that  order  of  mortals  who 
swarm,  alv/ays  swarmed,  and  always  will 
swarm  in  refined  states;  whose  eyes  of 
admiration  are  in  their  backs,  and  who, 
consequently,  see  nothing  worthy  their  at- 
tention before,  or  on  either  side  of  them ; 
and  who,  therefore,  weary,  sicken,  and 
disgust  people  whose  sensibilities  are 
strong  and  healthy,  by  their  eternal  cant 
about  the  great  have  beens,  and  the  little 
are's.— Seward,  Miss,  1787,  Letter  to 
Hardinge,  Nov.  21. 

Poor  Lord  Orford!  I  could  not  help 
mourning  for  him  as  if  I  had  not  expected 
it.  But  twenty  years'  unclouded  kindness 
and  pleasant  correspondence  cannot  be 
given  up  without  emotion.  I  am  not  sorry 
now  that  I  never  flinched  from  his  ridicule 
or  attacks,  nor  suffered  them  to  pass  with- 
out rebuke.  At  our  last  meeting  I  made 
him  promise  to  buy  Law's  ''Serious  Call." 
His  playful  wit,  his  various  knowledge,  his 
polished  manners,  alas!  what  avail  they 
now?  The  most  serious  thoughts  are 
awakenfed.  0  that  he  had  known  and  be- 
lieved the  things  that  belonged  to  his 
peace.  My  heart  is  much  oppressed  with 
this  reflection.— More,  Hannah,  1797, 
Letters. 

When  viewed  from  behind,  he  had  some- 
what of  a  boyish  appearance,  owing  to  the 
forna  of  his  person,  and  the  simplicity  of 
his  dress.  .  .  . '  His  laugh  was  forced 
and  uncouth,  and  even  his  smile  not  the 
most  pleasing.  His  walk  was  enfeebled 
by  the  gout ;  which,  if  the  editor's  memory 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


311 


do  not  deceive,  he  mentioned  that  he  had 
been  tormented  with  since  the  a^e  of 
twenty-five ;  adding,  at  the  same  time, 
that  it  was  no  hereditary  complaint,  his 
father.  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  who  always 
drank  ale,  never  having  known  that  dis- 
order, and  far  less  his  other  parent.  This 
painful  complaint  not  only  affected  his 
feet,  but  attacked  his  hands  to  such  a  de- 
gree that  his  fingers  were  always  swelled 
and  deformed,  and  discharged  large  chalk- 
stones  once  or  twice  a  year  :  upon  which 
occasions  he  would  observe,  with  a  smile, 
that  he  must  set  up  an  inn,  for  he  could 
chalk  up  a  score  with  more  ease  and 
rapidity  than  any  man  in  England. — 
PiNKERTON,  John,  1799,  Walpoliana. 

The  whole  spirit  of  this  man  was  penury. 
Enjoying  an  afl^luent  income  he  only  ap- 
peared to  patronise  the  arts  which  amused 
his  tastes, — employing  the  meanest  art- 
ists, at  reduced  prices,  to  ornament  his 
own  works,  an  economy  which  he  bitterly 
reprehends  in  others  who  were  compelled 
to  practise  it.  He  gratified  his  avarice 
at  the  expense  of  his  vanity ;  the  strongest 
passion  must  prevail.  It  was  the  simplic- 
ity of  childhood  in  Chatterton  to  imagine 
Horace  Walpole  could  be  a  patron — but  it 
is  melancholy  to  record  that  a  slight  pro- 
tection might  have  saved  such  a  youth. 
Gray  abandoned  this  man  of  birth  and  rank 
in  the  midst  of  their  journey  through 
Europe ;  Mason  broke  with  him ;  even  his 
humble  correspondent  Cole,  this  ''friend 
of  forty  years,"  was  often  sent  away  in 
dudgeon ;  and  he  quarrelled  with  all  the 
authors  and  artists  he  had  ever  been  ac- 
quainted with.  The  Gothic  castle  at 
Strawberry-hill  was  rarely  graced  with 
living  genius — there  the  greatest  was 
Horace  Walpole  himself.  — ■  Disraeli, 
Isaac,  1812-13,  The  Pain  of  Fastidious 
Egotism,  Calamities  of  Authors. 

He  certainly  was  proud  of  being  con- 
sidered as  a  sort  of  patron  of  literature, 
and  a  friend  to  literary  men,  but  he  did 
not  choose  to  purchase  the  pre-eminence 
at  a  higher  price  than  a  little  flattery  and 
praise,  and  a  pudding  neither  over  large 
nor  over  solid.  ...  On  his  first  in- 
vitation to  dinner  with  his  Lordship,  he 
accompanied  Mr.  K.  There  were  no  other 
guests.  The  Sexagenarian  presumed  that 
he  should  for  once  enjoy  the  luxury  of  a 
splendid  dinner,  and  prepared  himself  ac- 
cordingly.   Dinner  was  served,  when  to 


the  poor  author's  astonishment,  one  dish 
only  smoked  upon  the  noble  board,  and 
that  too,  as  ill  luck  would  have  it,  was  a 
species  of  fish  not  very  agreeable  to  the 
palate  of  the  guest.  He  waited,  however, 
in  patience,  and  the  fish  was  succeeded  by 
a  leg  of  mutton.  Wae  worth  the  man, 
who,  in  the  pride  and  haughtiness  of  his 
heart,  presumes  to  say  anything  to  the 
disparagement  of  a  leg  of  mutton.  The 
author,  however,  thought  that  he  might 
have  a  leg  of  mutton  at  home,  and  taking 
it  for  granted,  that  at  a  nobleman/s  table, 
a  second  course  would  succeed,  where 
there  would  be  some  tit-bit  to  pamper  his 
appetite,  he  was  very  sparingly  helped. 
Alas !  nothing  else  made  its  appearance. 
''Well  then,"  exclaimed  the  disappointed 
visitor,  "I  must  make  up  with  cheese." 
His  Lordship  did  not  eat  cheese.  So  to 
the  great  amusement  of  his  companion, 
the  poor  author  returned  hungry,  discon- 
certed, and  half  angry.  —  Beloe,  Wil- 
liam, 1817,  The  Sexagenarian,  vol.  I, 
pp.  277,  278. 

His  figure  was,  as  every  one  know^s,  not 
merely  tall,  but  more  properly  long,  and 
slender  to  excess;  his  complexion,  and 
particularly  his  hands,  of  a  most  unhealthy 
paleness.  I  speak  of  him  before  the  year 
1772.  His  eyes  were  remarkably  bright 
and  penetrating,  very  dark  and  lively :  his 
voice  was  not  so  strong;  but  his  tones 
were  extremely  pleasant,  and  (if  I  may  so 
say)  highly  gentlemanly.  I  do  not  remem- 
ber his  common  gait :  he  always  entered  a 
room  in  that  style  of  affected  delicacy 
which  fashion  had  then  made  almost 
natural ;  chapeau  bras  between  his  hands, 
as  if  he  wished  to  compress  it,  or  under 
his  arm ;  knees  bent ;  and  feet  on  tiptoe, 
as  if  afraid  of  a  wet  floor.  His  dress  in 
visiting  was  most  usually  (in  summer  when 
I  most  saw  him)  a  lavender  suit ;  the  waist- 
coat embroidered  with  a  little  silver,  or 
of  white  silk  worked  in  the  tambour; 
partridge  silk  stockings;  and  gold 
buckles ;  ruffles  and  frill,  generally  lace. 
I  remember,  when  a  child,  thinking  him 
very  much  under-dressed  if  at  any  time, 
except  in  mourning,  he  wore  hemmed 
cambric.  In  summer,  no  powder ;  but  his 
wig  combed  straight,  and  showing  his 
smooth  pale  forehead,  and  queued  behind ; 
in  winter,  powder.  —  Hawkins,  Letitia 
Matilda,  1823,  Anecdotes,  Biographical 
Sketches  and  Memoirs,  vol.  i. 


312 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


That  cold  and  false-hearted  Frenchified 
coxcomb,  Horace  Walpole.  —  Words- 
worth, William,  1833,  Letters,  Memoirs 
by  C.  Wordsworth,  ed.  Reed,  vol.  ii,  p,  277. 

He  was,  unless  we  have  formed  a  very 
erroneous  judgment  of  his  character,  the 
most  eccentric,  the  most  artificial,  the 
most  fastidious,  the  most  capricious  of 
men.  His  mind  was  a  bundle  of  inconsist- 
ent whims  and  affectations.  His  features 
were  covered  by  mask  within  mask.  When 
the  outer  disguise  of  obvious  affectation 
was  removed,  you  were  still  as  far  as  ever 
from  seeing  the  real  man.  He  played  in- 
numerable parts,  and  overacted  them  all. 
When  he  talked  misanthropy,  he  out- 
Timoned  Timon.  When  he  talked  philan- 
thropy, he  left  Howard  at  an  immeasurable 
distance.  He  scoffed  at  courts,  and  kept 
a  chronicle  of  their  most  trifling  scandal ; 
at  society,  and  was  blown  about  by  its 
slightest  veerings  of  opinions ;  at  literary 
fame,  and  left  fair  copies  of  his  private 
letters,  with  copious  notes,  to  be  pub- 
lished after  his  decease;  at  rank,  and 
never  for  a  moment  forgot  that  he  was  an 
honourable ;  at  the  practice  of  entail,  and 
tasked  the  ingenuity  of  conveyancers  to 
tie  up  his  villa  in  the  strictest  settlement. 
The  conformation  of  his  mind  was  such, 
that  whatever  was  little,  seemed  to  him 
great,  and  whatever  was  great  seemed  to 
him  little.  Serious  business  was  a  trifle 
to  him,  and  trifles  were  his  serious  busi- 
ness. To  chat  with  blue-stockings;  to 
write  little  copies  of  complimentary  verses 
on  little  occasions;  to  superintend  a 
private  press;  to  preserve  from  natural 
decay  the  perishable  topics  of  Ranelagh 
and  White's;  to  record  divorces  and  bets. 
Miss  Chudleigh's  absurdities  and  George 
Selwyn's  good  sayings;  to  decorate  a 
grotesque  house  with  piecrust  battle- 
ments; to  procure  rare  engravings  and 
antique  chimney-boards;  to  match  odd 
gauntlets;  to  lay  out  a  maze  of  walks 
within  five  acres  of  ground — these  were 
the  grave  employments  of  his  long  life. 
From  these  he  turned  to  politics  as  to  an 
amusement.  After  the  labours  of  the 
print-shop  and  the  auction-room,  he  unbent 
his  mind  in  the  House  of  Commons.  And, 
having  indulged  in  the  recreation  of  mak- 
ing laws  and  voting  millions,  he  returned 
to  more  important  pursuits — to  researches 
after  Queen  Mary's  comb,  Wolsey's  red 
hat,  the  pipe  which  Van  Tromp  smoked 


during  his  last  sea-fight,  and  the  spur 
which  King  William  struck  into  the  flank 
of  Sorrel.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babing- 
TON,  1833,  Walpole's  Letters  to  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  58 ;  Critical 
and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

Mr.  Walpole 's  affection  for  his  mother 
was  so  much  the  most  amiable  point  in  his 
character,  and  his  expressions  whenever 
he  names  or  alludes  to  her  are  so  touching, 
come  so  directly  and  evidently  from  the 
heart,  that  one  would  very  fain  think  of 
her  as  he  did,  and  believe  she  had  every 
perfection  his  partiality  assigns  to  her. 
But,  in  truth,  there  was  a  contrary  version 
of  the  matter,  not  resting  solely,  nor  yet 
principally,  upon  the  authority  of  Lady 
Mary  Wortley.  It  filled  so  prominent  a 
place  in  the  scandalous  history  of  the 
time,  that  the  world  knew  as  well  which 
way  Captain  Lemuel  Gulliver  was  glancing 
when  gravely  vindicating  the  reputation 
of  my  Lord  Treasurer  Flimnap's  excellent 
lady,  as  what  he  meant  by  the  red,  green, 
and  blue  girdles  of  the  Lilliputian  gran- 
dees, or  the  said  Flimnap's  feats  of  agility 
on  the  tight-rope.  Those  ironical  lines 
also,  where  Pope  says  that  Sir  Robert 
Walpole 

"Had  never  made  a  friend  in  private  life, 
And  was  besides  a  tyrant  to  his  wife.''^ 

are  equally  well  understood  as  conveying 
a  sly  allusion  to  his  good-humoured  uncon- 
cern about  some  things  which  more  strait- 
laced  husbands  do  not  take  so  coolly. 
Openly  laughing  at  their  nicety,  he  pro- 
fessed it  his  method  "to  go  his  own  way, 
and  let  madam  go  hers."  .  .  .  That  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  had  been  the  chief  friend 
and  protectress  of  his  step-mother,  was 
alone  enough  to  make  him  bitter  against 
her. — Stuart,  Lady  Louisa,  1837,  The 
Letters  and  Works  of  Lady  Mary  Wortley 
Montagu,  ed.  Lord  Wharncliffe,  Introduc- 
tory Anecdotes,  vol.  i,  pp.  72,  73. 

A  vile,  malignant,  and  unnatural  wretch, 
though  a  very  clever  writer  of  Letters. — 
Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1838,  Selec- 
tions from  the  Correspondence  of  the  Mac- 
vey  Napier,  Letter  July  4. 

The  affections  of  his  heart  were  bestowed 
on  few ;  for  in  early  life  they  had  never 
been  cultivated,  but  they  were  singularly 
warm,  pure,  and  constant;  characterised 
not  by  the  ardour  of  passion,  but  by  the 
constant  preoccupation  of  real  affection. 
He  had  lost  his  mother,  to  whom  he  was 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


313 


fondly  attached,  early  in  life;  and  with 
his  father,  a  man  of  coarse  feelings  and 
boisterous  manners,  he  had  few  sentiments 
in  common.  Always  feeble  in  constitu- 
tion, he  was  unequal  to  the  sports  of  the 
field,  and  to  the  drinking  which  then  ac- 
companied them;  so  that  during  his 
father's  retreat  at  Houghton,  however 
much  he  respected  his  abilities  and  was 
devoted  to  his  fame,  he  had  little  sympathy 
in  his  tastes,  or  pleasure  in  his  society. 
To  the  friends  of  his  own  selection  his  de- 
votion was  not  confined  to  professions  or 
words :  on  all  occasions  of  difficulty,  of 
whatever  nature,  his  active  affection  came 
forward  in  defence  of  their  character,  or 
assistance  in  their  affairs. — Berry,  Mary, 
1840,  Advertisement  to  the  Letters  Ad- 
dressed to  the  Misses  Berry. 

A  wit  he  was  of  the  first  water ;  effemin- 
ate too,  no  doubt,  though  he  prided  him- 
self on  his  open-breasted  waistcoats  in  his 
old  age,  and  possessed  exquisite  good  sense 
and  discernment,  where  party -feelings  did 
not  blind  him.  But  of  the  charge  of  heart- 
lessness,  his  zeal  and  painstaking  in  behalf 
of  a  hundred  people,  and  his  beautiful  let- 
ter to  his  friend  Conway  in  particular, 
offering,  in  a  way  not  to  be  doubted,  to 
share  his  fortune  with  him,  ought  to  acquit 
him  by  acclamation. — Hunt,  Leigh,  1849, 
A  Book  for  a  Corner. 

It  is  said  that,  latterly,  Sir  Robert  Wal- 
pole  and  his  wife  did  not  live  happily 
together,  and  that  Horace,  the  youngest, 
was  not  the  son  of  the  great  Prime  Minis- 
ter of  England,  but  of  Carr,  Lord  Hervey, 
elder  brother  of  Pope's  antagonist,  and 
reckoned,  as  Walpole  records,  of  superior 
parts  to  his  celebrated  brother,  John. 
The  story  rests  on  the  authority  of  Lady 
Louisa  Stuart,  daughter  of  the  minister 
Earl  of  Bute,  and  grand-daughter  of  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu.  She  has  related 
it  in  print  in  the  Introductory  Anecdotes 
to  Lady  Mary's  Works ;  and  there  is  too 
much  reason  to  believe  that  what  she  says 
is  true. — Cunningham,  Peter,  1858,  ed. 
Walpole' s  Letters. 

As  for  Horace  Walpole,  he  was  only  a 
link  in  the  chain  of  ignoble  circumstances 
that  led  up  to  the  suicide  [of  Chatterton] 
— for  which  act,  however,  it  is  absurd  to 
make  any  one  so  responsible  as  the  boy 
himself.  Why  should  this  conceited  liter- 
ary sybarite  have  been  so  very  forward  to 
befriend  a  sucking  author  vVho  had  hoaxed 


him?  It  is  all  fair  for  a  nobleman  to 
amuse  himself  by  elaboratly  concocting  a 
series  of  gossipy  letters  to  be  passed  off 
as  the  offspring  of  unpremeditated  friendly 
intercourse — and  to  tell  lies  about  a 
trumpery  ''Otranto,"  writing  when  he  is 
detected,  *'the  author  flatters  himself  he 
shall  appear  excusable" — but  when  a  poor 
attorney's  clerk  plays  similar  pranks  in  a 
work  of  stupendous  genius,  then  the  noble 
* 'forger"  bethinks  him  that  ''all  of  the 
house  of  forgery  are  relations, ' '  and  that 
his  younger  brother  in  "Forgery"  '^must 
be  a  consummate  villain." — Noel,  Roden, 
1872-86,  Chatterton,  Essays  on  Poetry  and 
Poets,  p.  46. 

"'The  Autocrat  of  Strawberry  Hill." 
' '  The  Frenchified  Coxcomb. "  "  Lying  Old 
Fox."  "A  Parasite  of  Genius."  "The 
Puck  in  Literature."  "Trifler  in  Great 
Things. "  "  Ty  deus. "  "  Ul  timus  Roman- 
orum." — Frey,  Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobri- 
quets and  Nicknames,  p.  476. 

The  student  of  English  literature  can 
neither  overlook  Walpole  nor  treat  him  as 
a  person  of  little  consequence.  He  has  a 
marked  individuality.  If  not  a  great  man 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  he  had  lived 
among  those  who  were  in  the  first  rank, 
and  he  reflected  some  of  their  light.  His 
was  a  complex  character  which  it  is  easier 
to  criticise  than  to  comprehend.  He  ex- 
hibited in  his  person  a  strange  compound 
of  foppery  and  shrewdness,  of  excessive 
vanity  and  of  indubitable  good  sense.  He 
ridiculed  and  sneered  at  the  follies  of  his 
countrymen,  and  he  was  the  most  affected 
and  conceited  Englishman  of  note  in  his 
day. — Rae,  W.  Fraser,  1890,  Horace 
Walpole's  Letters,  Temple  Bar,  vol.  88, 
p.  188. 

Here,  at  last,  we  have  the  prince  of 
letter- writers  drawn  for  us  with  a  sure  and 
graceful  touch.  Here  is  the  petted  child, 
who,  humored  in  a  foolish  whim,  was 
carried  privately  to  court  at  night,  to  kiss 
King  George's  hand.  Here  is  the  clever 
schoolboy,  who  preferred  reading  to  fight- 
ing ;  whose  friends  were  lads  as  precocious 
as  himself,  and  who,  in  most  unboyish 
fashion,  dubbed  his  play-fellows  Oromasdes 
and  Plato  instead  of  plain  Ashton  and 
Gray.  Here  is  the  one  undergraduate  of 
Cambridge  who  frankly  confesses  (for 
which  we  love  him  much)  that  he  never 
mastered  even  his  multiplication  table. 
Here  is  the  young  gentleman  of  leisure 


314 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


who  drew  a  handsome  income  from  sine- 
cures, and  who  was  of  real  service  to  his 
country  by  traveling  abroad,  and  writing 
admirable  letters  home.  Here  is  the 
valued  friend  of  so  many  brilliant  and  dis- 
tinguished people,  who  has  left  us  in  his 
vivacious  pages  those  matchless  portraits 
that  time  can  never  fade.  Here,  in  a 
word,  is  Horace  Walpole,  whom  some  loved 
and  not  a  few  hated,  whose  critics  have 
dealt  him  heavy  censure  and  faint  praise, 
and  who  now,  from  a  snug  corner  in  the 
Elysian  fields,  must  secretly  rejoice  at  find- 
ing himself  in  hands  at  once  sympathetic, 
tolerant  and  impartial.— Repplier,  Agnes, 
1893,  Horace  Walpole,  A  Memoir  by  Aus- 
tin Dobson,  The  Cosmopolitan,  vol.  16,  p.  250. 

He  was  eleven  years  younger  than  the 
rest  of  his  father's  children,  a  circum- 
stance which,  taken  in  connection  with  his 
dissimilarity,  both  personally  and  mentally, 
to  the  other  members  of  the  family,  has 
been  held  to  lend  some  countenance  to  the 
contemporary  suggestion,  first  revived  by 
Lady  Louisa  Stuart  (Introduction  to  Lord 
Wharncliffe's  edition  of  the  Works  of 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu")*  that  he 
was  the  son  not  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
but  of  Carr,  lord  Hervey,  the  ''Sporus" 
of  Pope.  His  attachment  to  his  mother 
and  his  life-long  reverence  for  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  of  whom  he  was  invariably  the 
strenuous  defender,  added  to  the  fact  that 
there  is  nowhere  the  slightest  hint  in  his 
writings  of  any  suspicion  on  his  own  part 
as  to  his  parentage,  must  be  held  to  dis- 
credit this  ancient  scandal.  —  Dobson, 
Austin,  1899,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  Lix,  p.  170. 

STRAWBERRY  HILL 

Whether  Horace  Walpole  conferred  a 
benefit  upon  the  public  by  setting  of  apply- 
ing the  Gothic  style  of  architecture  to 
domestic  purposes,  may  be  doubtful;  so 
greatly  has  the  example  he  gave  been 
abused  in  practice  since.  But,  at  all 
events,  he  thus  led  the  professors  of  archi- 
tecture to  study  with  accuracy  the  princi- 
ple of  the  art,  which  has  occasioned  the 
restoration  and  preservation  in  such  an  ad- 
mirable manner  of  so  many  of  our  finest 
cathedrals,  colleges,  and  ancient  Gothic 
and  conventual  buildings.  This,  it  must 
be  at  least  allowed,  was  the  fortunate  re- 
sult of  the  rage  for  Gothic,  which  suc- 
ceeded the  building  at  Strawberry  Hill. 
For  a  good  many  years  after  that  event. 


every  new  building  was  pinnacled  and 
turreted  on  all  sides,  however  little  its 
situation,  its  size,  or  its  uses  might  seem  to 
fit  it  for  such  ornaments.  Then,  as  fashion 
is  never  constant  for  any  great  length  of 
time,  the  taste  of  the  public  rushed  at 
once  upon  castles;  and  loop-holes,  and 
battlements,  and  heavy  arches,  and  but- 
resses  appeared  in  every  direction.  Now 
the  fancy  of  the  time  has  turned  as  madly 
to  that  bastard  kind  of  architecture,  pos- 
sessing, however,  many  beauties,  which, 
compounded  of  the  Gothic,  Castellated,  and 
Grecian  or  Roman,  is  called  the  Elizabethan, 
or  Old  English.  No  villa,  no  country- 
house,  no  lodge  in  the  outskirts  of  Lon- 
don, no  box  of  a  retired  tradesman,  is  now 
built,  except  in  some  modification  of  this 
style.— Dover,  Lord,  1833,  ed.  Walpole's 
Letters  to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  Life. 

In  his  multitudinous  collection  nothing 
was  incongruous,  nothing  out  of  place; 
every  thing  was  well  arranged,  every  thing 
was  complete  in  its  way.  Some  things 
might  be  finical,  some  trifling;  yet  all 
gave  evidence  of  good  taste,  of  refined 
intellect,  and  of  a  range  of  thought,  of 
occupation,  of  amusement,  far,  far  higher 
than  could  be  challenged  by  any  other 
votarist  of  fashion  of  that  time.  Horace 
Walpole  was  himself  a  living  specimen  of 
the  rarity  which  he  prized.  Strawberry 
Hill  and  its  master  were  alike  unique. — 
Stone,  Elizabeth,  1845,  English  Society, 
Chronicles  of  Fashion. 

The  fate  of  Strawberry  was  still  more 
lamentable.  For  four  and  twenty  days 
the  apartments,  sacred  to  the  Horatian 
pleasantries,  echoed  with  the  hammer  of 
the  auctioneer.  Circumstances,  that 
need  not  be  more  particularly  alluded  to, 
rendered  this  degradation  unavoidable, 
and  it  was  only  with  difficulty  that  the 
most  sacred  of  the  family  possessions 
could  be  preserved  from  the  relentless  or- 
deal of '  'a  public  sale !' ^  The  shrine  which 
had  been  visited  with  so  much  interest  and 
veneration,  was  now  overrun  by  a  well 
dressed  mob,  who  glanced  at  its  treasures, 
and  at  the  copious  catalogue  in  which  they 
were  enumerated,  apparently  with  a  like 
indifference.  But  at  the  sale  this  indiffer- 
ence, whether  feigned  or  real,  changed  to 
the  most  anxious  desire  to  obtain  posses- 
sion of  some  relic  of  the  man  whose  name 
was  invested  \yith  so  many  pleasant  as- 
sociations;   and  the  more  interesting 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


315 


portion  of  "the  thousand  trifles"  created  a 
degree  of  excitement  which  would  almost 
have  reconciled  their  proprietor  to  such  a 
distribution.— Warburton,  Eliot,  1852, 
ed.y  Memoirs  of  Horace  Walpole  and  His 
Contemporaries,  vol.  ii,  p.  568. 

If  in  the  history  of  British  art  there  is 
one  period  more  distinguished  than 
another  for  its  neglect  of  Gothic,  it  was 
certainly  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  ...  An  author  appeared 
.  .  .  to  whose  writings  and  to  whose 
influence  as  an  admirer  of  Gothic  art  we 
believe  may  be  ascribed  one  of  the  chief 
causes  which  induced  its  present  revival. 
.  .  .  It  is  impossible  to  peruse  either 
the  letters  or  the  romances  of  this  re- 
markable man  without  being  struck  by  the 
unmistakable  evidence  which  they  contain 
of  his  Mediaeval  predilections.  .  .  . 
The  position  which  he  occupies  with  re- 
gard to  art  resembles  in  many  respects 
that  in  which  he  stands  as  a  man  of  letters. 
His  labours  were  not  profound  in  either 
field.  But  their  result  was  presented  to 
the  public  in  a  form  which  gained  him 
rapid  popularity  both  as  an  author  and  a 
dilettante.  As  a  collector  of  curiosities 
he  was  probably  influenced  more  by  a  love 
of  old  world  associations  than  by  any  sound 
appreciation  of  artistic  design. — East- 
lake,  Charles  Lock,  1871,  History  of 
the  Gothic  Revival,  pp.  42,  43. 

Strawberry  Hill  .  .  .  stands  on  a 
gentle  elevation  about  three  hundred  yards 
from,  and  overlooking,  the  Thames  im- 
mediately above  Twickenham.  .  . 
When  Walpole  rented  the  house  it  was 
little  more  than  a  cottage,  and  the  grounds 
were  of  narrow  compass.  As  soon  as  he 
became  its  owner,  he  began  to  enlarge  the 
house  and  extend  the  grounds.  The  cot- 
tage grew  into  a  villa,  the  villa  into  a 
mansion.  .  .  .  Strawberry  Hill,  when 
completed,  was  a  Gothic  building,  but 
Gothic  of  no  particular  period,  class,  or 
style.  Windows,  doorways,  and  mouldings 
of  the  thirteenth  century  stood  side  by  side 
with  others  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth. 
Ecclesiastical  were  co-mingled  with  secu- 
lar features,  collegiate  with  baronial  or 
military.  Next  to  an  Abbey  Entrance  was 
the  oriel  of  an  Elizabethan  Manor-house,  or 
the  keep  of  a  Norman  Castle,  while  battle- 
ments and  machicolation  frowned  over  the 
wide  bay  windows  that  opened  on  to  the 
lawn.  .  .  .  Walpole  was  in  his  thirtieth 


year  when  he  took  Strawberry  Hill ;  and  he 
spent  fifty  summers  in  it,  improving  the 
house,  adding  to  his  collections,  and  en- 
joying the  lilacs  and  nightingales  in  his 
grounds.  ...  As  it  now  stands. 
Strawberry  Hill  is  a  renewal  of  Walpole's 
house,  with  modern  sumptuousness  super- 
added. All  the  old  rooms  are  there, 
though  the  uses  of  many  have  been 
changed.  .  .  .  The  grounds  and  gardens 
are  as  beautiful  and  attractive  as  of  old, 
the  trees  as  verdant,  the  rosary  as  bright, 
the  lawn  as  green,  and  in  their  season 
Walpole's  "two  passions,  lilacs  and 
nightingales,"  in  as  full  bloom  and  abun- 
dance as  ever. — Thorne,  James,  1876, 
Strawberry  Hill,  Hand-Book  of  the  Envi- 
rons of  London. 

As  a  virtuoso  and  amateur,  his  position 
is  a  mixed  one.  He  was  certainly  widely 
different  from  that  typical  art  connoisseur 
of  his  day — the  butt  of  Goldsmith  and  of 
Reynolds — who  travelled  the  Grand  Tour 
to  litter  a  gallery  at  home  with  broken- 
nosed  busts  and  the  rubbish  of  the  Roman 
picture-factories.  As  the  preface  to  the 
"iEdes  Walpolianae"  showed,  he  really 
knew  something  about  painting,  in  fact 
was  a  capable  draughtsman  himself,  and 
besides,  through  Mann  and  others,  had  en- 
joyed exceptional  opportunities  for  pro- 
curing genuine  antiques.  But  his  collec- 
tion was  not  so  rich  in  this  way  as  might 
have  been  anticipated ;  and  his  portraits, 
his  china,  and  his  miniatures  were  prob- 
ably his  best  possessions.  For  the  rest, 
he  was  an  indiscriminate  rather  than  an 
eclectic  collector ;  and  there  w^as  also  con- 
siderable truth  in  that  strange  "attraction 
from  the  great  to  the  little,  and  from  the 
useful  to  the  odd"  which  Macaulay  has 
noted.  Many  of  the  marvels  at  Straw- 
berry would  never  have  found  a  place  in 
the  treasure-houses — say  of  Beckford  or 
Samuel  Rogers. — Dobson,  Austin,  1890- 
93,  Horace  Walpole,  A  Memoir,  p.  286. 

He  grew  old  there  in  his  gim-crack  of  a 
palace,  cultivating  his  flowers  and  his 
complexion ;  tiptoeing  while  he  could  over 
his  waxed  floors  in  lavender  suit,  with  em- 
broidered waistcoat  and  "partridge  silk 
stockings,"  with  chapeauhas  held  before 
him — very  reverent  to  any  visitor  of  dis- 
tinction— and  afterward  (he  lived  almost 
into  this  century),  when  gout  seizes  him, 
I  seem  to  see  still — as  once  before — the 
fastidious  old  man,  shuffling  up  and  down 


316 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


from  the  drawing-room  to  library — stop- 
ping here  and  there  to  admire  some  newly 
arrived  bit  of  pottery — pulling  out  his 
golden  snuff-box  and  whisking  a  delicate 
pinch  into  his  old  nostrils — then  dusting 
his  affluent  shirt-frills  with  the  tips  of  his 
dainty  fingers,  with  an  air  of  gratitude  to 
Providence  for  having  created  so  fine  a 
gentleman  as  Horace  Walpole,  and  of 
gratitude  to  Horace  Walpole  for  having 
created  so  fine  a  place  as  Strawberry  Hill. 
— Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1895,  English 
Lands  Letters  and  Kings,  Queen  Anne  and 
the  Georges,  p.  87. 

Horace  Walpole's  collections  were  sold 
at  Strawberry  Hill  by  George  Robins  in 
April  and  May  1842,  during  twenty-four 
days.  The  first  six  days  were  devoted  to 
the  sale  of  the  library,  which  consisted  of 
1555  lots,  and  realised  £3900.  It  was 
very  badly  catalogued,  and  the  books  and 
books  of  prints,  collection  of  portraits, 
&c.,  forming  the  seventh  and  eight  days' 
sale,  were  withdrawn,  re-catalogued,  and 
extended  to  a  ten  days'  sale. — Wheat- 
ley,  Henry  B.,  1898,  Prices  of  Books, 
p.  162. 

ROYAL  AND  NOBLE  AUTHORS 

1758 

My  Catalogue  I  intended  should  have 
been  exact  enough  in  style :  it  has  not  been 
thought  so  by  some ;  I  tell  you  that  you 
may  not  trust  me  too  much.  Mr.  Gray,  a 
very  perfect  judge,  has  sometimes  cen- 
sured me  for  parliamentary  phrases,  famil- 
iar to  me  as  your  Scotch  law  is  to  you. — 
Walpole,  Horace,  1759,  To  Dr.  William 
Robertson,  Mar,  4 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  Ill,  p.  213. 

A  caprice  sometimes  mingled  with 
affectation,  and  a  prevalent  desire  of  say- 
ing a  witty  thing  rather  than  a  wise  one, 
will  be  obvious  to  the  considerate  reader : 
but  his  lordship  had  a  liveliness  in  the 
manner  of  conveying  his  sentiments,  an 
intelligent  pertinence  in  his  observations, 
and  a  brilliant  smartness  in  his  mode  of 
passing  critical  judgment,  which  appear  to 
have  compensated  for  many  defects,  in  the 
eye  of  the  fashionable  world.  —  Park, 
Thomas,  1806,  ed.,  A  Catalogue  of  the 
Royal  and  Noble  Authors  of  England,  Scot- 
land and  Ireland,  vol.  iv,  p.  438,  note. 

I  cannot  leave  the  ''Royal  and  Noble 
Authors"  without  exposing  the  extraordin- 
ary chain  of  errors  which  an  examination 


of  the  subject  has  detected  in  that  work. 
—Nichols,  J.  G.,  1833,  London  Gentle- 
man^s  Magazine,  vol.  2,  p.  498. 

CASTLE  OF  OTRANTO 

1765 

Shall  I  even  confess  to  you,  what  was  the 
origin  of  this  romance?  I  waked  one 
morning  in  the  beginning  of  last  June  from 
a  dream,  of  which  all  I  could  recover  was, 
that  I  had  thought  myself  in  an  ancient 
castle  (a  very  natural  dream  for  a  head 
filled,  like  mine,  with  Gothic  story),  and 
that,  on  the  uppermost  banister  of  a  great 
staircase  I  saw  a  gigantic  hand  in  armour. 
In  the  evening  I  sat  down,  and  began  to 
write,  without  knowing  in  the  least  what 
I  intended  to  say  or  relate.  The  work 
grew  on  my  hands.  ...  In  short,  I 
was  so  engrossed  with  my  tale,  which  I 
completed  in  less  than  two  months,  that 
one  evening  I  wrote  from  the  time  1  had 
drunk  my  tea,  about  six  o'clock,  till  half 
an  hour  after  one  in  the  morning. — Wal- 
pole, Horace,  1765,  To  Rev.  William 
Cole,  March  9;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham, 
vol.  IV,  p.  328. 

How  do  you  think  he  has  employed  that 
leisure  which  his  political  frenzy  has 
allowed  of?  In  writing  a  novel,  entitled 
the ''Castle  of  Otranto;"  and  such  a  novel 
that  no  boarding-school  Miss  of  thirteen 
could  get  through  with  without  yawning. 
—Williams,  Gilly,  1765,  Letter  to  George 
Selwyn,  March  19. 

A  series  of  supernatural  appearances, 
put  together  under  the  most  interesting 
form  imaginable.  Let  one  be  ever  so 
much  of  a  philosopher,  that  enormous 
helmet,  that  monstrous  sword,  the  portrait 
which  starts  from  its  frame  and  walks 
away,  the  skeleton  of  the  hermit  praying 
in  the  oratory,  the  vaults,  the  subterranean 
passages,  the  moonshine — all  these  things 
make  the  hair  of  the  sage  stand  on  end, 
as  much  as  that  of  the  child  and  his  nurse : 
so  much  are  the  sources  of  the  marvellous 
the  same  to  all  men.  It  is  true  that 
nothing  very  important  results  at  least 
from  all  these  wonders;  but  the  aim  of 
the  author  was  to  amuse,  and  he  certainly 
cannot  be  reproached  for  having  missed 
his  aim. —  Grimm,  Friedrich  Melchior 
Baron,  1767?  Historical  and  Literary 
Memoirs  and  Anecdotes,  vol.  ii,  p.  218. 

Read  the  "Castle  of  Otranto,"  which 
grievously  disappointed  my  expectations. 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


317 


—Green,  Thomas,- 1779-1810,  Diary  of 
a  Lover  of  Literature. 

Is,  to  my  notion,  dry,  meagre,  and 
without  effect.  It  is  done  upon  false 
principles  of  taste.  The  great  hand  and 
arm  which  are  thrust  into  the  court-yard, 
and  remain  there  all  day  long,  are  the 
pasteboard  machinery  of  a  pantomime; 
they  shock  the  senses,  and  have  no  pur- 
chase upon  the  imagination.  They  are  a 
matter-of-fact  impossibility;  a  fixture, 
and  no  longer  a  phantom. — Hazlitt,  Wil- 
liam, 1818,  Lectures  on  the  English  Comic 
Writers,  Lecture  vi. 

The  actors  in  the  romance  are  strikingly 
drawn,  with  bold  outlines  becoming  the  age 
and  nature  of  the  story.  Feudal  tyranny 
was,  perhaps,  never  better  exemplified 
than  in  the  character  of  Manfred.  .  .  . 
The  applause  due  to  chastity  and  precision 
of  style, — to  a  happy  combination  of  super- 
natural agency  with  human  interest, — to  a 
tone  of  feudal  manners  and  language  sus- 
tained by  characters  strongly  drawn  and 
well  discriminated, — and  to  unity  of  action, 
producing  scenes  alternately  of  interest 
and  of  grandeur ; — the  applause,  in  fine, 
which  cannot  be  denied  to  him  who  can 
excite  the  passions  of  fear  and  of  pity, 
must  be  awarded  to  the  author  of  ''The 
Castle  of  Otranto."— Scott,  Sir  Walter, 
1821,  Horace  Walpole. 

By  way  of  experiment,  in  reviving  the 
more  imaginative  style  of  romance,  Wal- 
pole had  bethought  himself  of  a  mediaeval 
story  of  an  Italian  castle,  the  human 
tenants  of  which  should  act  naturally,  but 
should  be  surrounded  by  supernatural 
circumstances  and  agencies  leading  them 
on  to  their  fate.  I  confess  that  on  repe- 
rusing  the  story  the  other  day,  I  did  not 
find  my  nerves  affected  as  they  were  when 
I  read  it  first.  The  mysterious  knockings 
and  voices,  the  pictures  starting  from  the 
wainscot,  the  subterranean  vaults,  and 
even  the  great  helmet  with  the  nodding 
black  plumes  in  the  courtyard,  had  lost 
their  horror ;  and  Walpole  seemed  to  me 
a  very  poor  master  of  the  Gothic  business, 
or  of  poetic  business  of  any  kind.  The  at- 
tempt, however,  is  interesting  as  a  hark- 
back  to  medigevalism,  at  a  time  when 
mediaevalism  was  but  little  in  fashion.  As 
a  virtuoso  Walpole  had  acquired  a  certain 
artificial  taste  for  the  Gothic;  and  his 
"Gothic  Story,"  as  he  called  it,  did  some- 
thing to  bring  to  the  minds  of  British 


readers,  on  its  first  publication,  the  recol- 
lection that  there  had  been  a  time  in  the 
world,  when  men  lived  in  castles,  believed 
in  the  devil,  and  did  not  take  snuff',  or 
wear  powdered  wigs. — Masson,  David, 
1859,  British  Novelists  and  Their  Styles, 
p.  151. 

There  can,  however,  be  no  doubt  that 
this  story  had  a  very  powerful  effect  on 
the  writers  that  followed ;  nay,  that  it  led, 
amongst  other  things,  to  the  study  of 
architecture,  medisevalism,  the  love  of  the 
Gothic,  the  writing  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
great  romances,  and  even  to  the  revival 
of  the  love  of  colour,  glitter,  show,  and 
pictorial  decoration  observable  in  the 
religious  services  of  a  large  portion  of  the 
people  of  this  land. — Friswell,  James 
Hain,  1869,  Essays  on  English  Writers, 
p.  294. 

This  story  fills  one  of  the  conditions  to 
be  found  in  almost  every  form  of  writing 
that  leaves  its  mark;  its  main  merit  is 
its  novelty ;  it  is  itself  commonplace  and 
nearly  unreadable.— Perry,  Thomas  Ser- 
geant, 1883,  English  Literature  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  362. 

Originality  the  work  may  safely  claim. 
The  mountainous  helmet,  with  its  waving 
sable  plumes,  which  crashes  down  into  the 
courtyard  of  the  Castle  of  Otranto  at  the 
very  beginning  of  the  narrative,  unher- 
alded and  unexplained,  may  be  taken  as  a 
symbol  and  type  of  the  suddenness  with 
which  supernatural  terror  was  reintroduced 
into  English  fiction  by  Horace  Walpole. 
Here,  with  a  decisive  hand,  was  struck  the 
keynote  of  all  those  later  romances  which 
gave  only  too  much  ground  for  Goethe's 
pithy  maxim.  "The  classical  is  health; 
and  the  romance,  disease."  The  very 
violence  and  crudity  of  Walpole's  original- 
ity proved  an  invitation  to  his  imitators  to 
better  the  instruction  he  gave  them. — 
Raleigh,  Walter,  1894,  The  English 
Novel,  p.  223. 

It  is  impossible  at  this  day  to  take  "The 
Castle  of  Otranto"  seriously,  and  hard  to 
explain  the  respect  with  which  it  was  once 
mentioned  by  writers  of  authority.  .  .  . 
Walpole's  master-piece  can  no  longer  make 
anyone  cry  even  a  little ;  and  instead  of 
keeping  us  out  of  bed,  it  sends  us  there — 
or  would,  if  it  were  a  trifle  longer.  For 
the  only  thing  that  is  tolerable  about  the 
book  is  its  brevity,  and  a  certain  rapidity 
in  the  action.    .    .    .    The  book  was 


318 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


not  an  historical  romance,  and  the  manners, 
sentiments,  language,  all  were  modern. 
Walpole  knew  little  about  the  Middle 
Ages  and  was  not  in  touch  with  their 
spirit.  At  bottom  he  was  a  trifler,  a 
fribble;  and  his  incurable  superficiality, 
dilettantism,  and  want  of  seriousness,  made 
all  his  real  cleverness  of  no  avail  when 
applied  to  such  a  subject  as  ''The  Castle 
of  Otranto."— Beers,  Henry  A.,  1898, 
A  History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  pp.  237,  238,  240. 

THE  MYSTERIOUS  MOTHER 

1768 

Though  the  subject  of  this  last  piece  be 
singularly  horrid  and  almost  disgusting, 
yet  the  fable  is  conducted  with  such  inimi- 
table skill,  that  it  may  in  this  respect  be 
considered  as  approximating  nearer  to 
perfection  than  any  other  drama  extant, 
the  (Edipus  Tyrannus  of  Sophocles  even 
not  excepted. — Drake,  Nathan,  1798- 
1820,  Literary  HourSy  vol.  ii.  No.  xxix, 
p.  109. 

He  is  the  ultimus  Romanorum,  the 
author  of  the  "Mysterious  Mother,"  a 
tragedy  of  the  highest  order,  and  not  a 
puling  love  play.  He  is  the  father  of  the 
first  romance,  and  of  the  last  tragedy,  in 
our  language;  and  surely  worthy  of  a 
higher  place  than  any  living  writing,  be 
he  who  he  may. — Byron,  Lord,  1820, 
Marino  Faliero,  Preface. 

*'The  Mysterious  Mother,"  is  a  produc- 
tion of  higher  talent  and  more  powerful 
genius  than  any  other  which  we  owe  to  the 
pen  of  Horace  Walpole. — Dover,  Lord, 
1833,  ed.  Walpole^s  Letters  to  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  Life. 

Lord  Byron,  as  quoted  by  Lord  Dover, 
says,  that  the  ''Mysterious  Mother"  raises 
Horace  Walpole  above  every  author  living 
in  his.  Lord  Byron's,  time.  Upon  which 
I  venture  to  remark,  first,  that  I  do  not 
believe  that  Lord  Byron  spoke  sincerely ; 
for  I  suspect  that  he  made  a  tacit  excep- 
tion in  favour  of  himself  at  least ;  secondly, 
that  it  is  a  miserable  mode  of  comparison 
which  does  not  rest  on  difference  of  kind. 
It  proceeds  of  envy  and  malice  and  detrac- 
tion to  say  that  A.  is  higher  than  B.,  un- 
less you  show  that  they  are  in  pari 
materia; — thirdly,  that  the  "Mysterious 
Mother"  is  the  most  digusting,  vile,  de- 
testable composition  that  ever  came  from 
the  hand  of  man.    No  one  with  a  spark  of 


true  manliness,  of  which  Horace  Walpole 
had  none,  could  have  written  it.  As  to 
the  blank  verse,  it  is  indeed  better  than 
Rowers  and  Thomson's,  which  was  execra- 
bly bad :— any  approach,  therefore,  to  the 
manner  of  the  old  dramatists  was,  of 
course,  an  improvement ;  but  the  loosest 
lines  in  Shirley  are  superior  to  Walpole's 
best. — Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1834, 
Table  Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  March  20,  p.  279. 

A  clever  buckram  tragedy. — GossE, 
Edmund,  1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth 
Century  Literature,  p.  301. 

LETTERS 

Incomparable  letters. — Byron,  Lord, 
1820,  Marino  Faliero,  Preface. 

Read,  if  you  have  not  read,  all  Horace 
Walpole's  letters,  wherever  you  can  find 
them ; — the  best  wit  ever  published  in  the 
shape  of  letters. — Smith,  Sydney,  1820, 
Letter  to  Edw.  Davenport,  Nov.  19 ;  Mem- 
oir of  Rev.  Sydney  Smith. 

The  best  letter-writer  in  the  English 
language. — Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1821, 
Horace  Walpole. 

The  "Letters"  of  Mr.  Walpole  have 
already  attained  the  highest  rank  in  that 
department  of  English  literature,  and 
seem  to  deserve  their  popularity,  whether 
they  are  regarded  as  objects  of  mere 
amusement,  or  as  a  collection  of  anecdotes 
illustrative  of  the  politics,  literature,  and 
manners  of  an  important  and  interesting 
period.— Croker,  John  Wilson,  1825, 
ed..  Letters  from  the  Hon.  Horace  Walpole 
to  the  Earl  of  Hertford  during  his  Lord- 
ship^ s  Embassy  in  Paris:  to  which  are 
added  Mr.  Walpole's  Letters  to  the  Rev. 
Henry  Zouch. 

Walpole's  "Letters"  are  generally  con- 
sidered as  his  best  performances,  and  we 
think,  with  reason.  His  faults  are  far 
less  offensive  to  us  in  his  correspondence 
than  in  his  books.  His  wild,  absurd,  and 
ever  changing  opinions  about  men  and 
things  are  easily  pardoned  in  familiar  let- 
ters. His  bitter,  scoffing,  depreciating 
disposition  does  not  show  itself  in  so  un- 
mitigated a  manner  as  in  his  "Memoirs." 
A  writer  of  letters  must  be  civil  and 
friendly  to  his  correspondent,  at  least,  if 
to  no  other  person. — Macaulay,  Thomas 
Babington,  1833,  Walpole's  Letters  to  Sir 
Horace  Mann,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  58, 
Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


319 


Read  the  new  edition  of  ''Horace  Wal- 
pole's  Letters  to  Sir  Horace  Mann." 
There  is  something  1  don't  like  in  his  style ; 
his  letters  don't  amuse  me  so  much  as  they 
ought  to  do.— Greville,  Charles  C.  F., 
1833,  A  Journal  of  the  Reigns  of  King 
George  IV  and  King  William  IV,  ^  June 
29,  vol.  II,  p.  170. 

The  twenty  or  thirty  volumes  of  Vol- 
taire's correspondence  have  already  fur- 
nished a  signal  example  how  much  a  dis- 
tinguished man  will  sometimes  repeat 
himself.  Yet,  as  compared  with  Walpole, 
he  appears  to  write  rather  from  impulse 
than  meditation,  and  with  the  character- 
istic vivacity  of  his  country.  His  repeat- 
ing seems,  therefore,  to  be  natural,  and 
like  that  of  a  man  in  conversation  upon 
the  same  general  topics  with  the  succes- 
sion of  individuals.  It  is  not  so  with 
Walpole.  His  phrases  are  too  nicely 
picked,  his  anecdotes  too  carefully  told. 
When  they  are  read  the  first  time,  they 
earn  for  him  the  credit  of  ready  wit.  But 
when  seen  to  be  transferred  from  place  to 
place  with  no  essential  change,  they  smack 
something  too  much  of  study.  Neither  do 
we  detect  this  solely  in  his  letters.  He 
often  produces  in  his  ''Memoirs"  the 
counterpart  of  what  he  writes  to  Lord 
Hertford,  or  Mann,  or  Montague.  We 
find  the  same  stories  in  even  the  same 
words.  We  must,  then,  already  begin  to 
deny  him  the  greatest  merit  of  epistolary 
composition,  its  natural  and  spontaneous 
flow.  But  besides  this,  the  repetition  of 
the  same  thing,  however  well  told,  when 
it  is  not  connected  with  important  events, 
soon  becomes  fatiguing. — Adams,  Charles 
F'rancis,  1845,  Horace  Walpole' s  Letters 
and  Memoirs,  North  American  Review, 
vol.  61,  p.  423. 

Of  letter-writers  by  profession  we  have, 
indeed  few,  although  Horace  Walpole, 
bright,  fresh,  quaint,  and  glittering  as  one 
of  his  most  precious  figures  of  Dresden 
china,  is  a  host  in  himself. — Mitford, 
Mary  Russell,  1851,  Recollections  of  a 
Literary  Life,  ch.  xxxii. 

I  refrain  to  quote  from  Walpole  regard- 
ing George,  for  those  charming  volumes 
are  in  the  hands  of  all  who  love  the  gossip 
of  the  last  century.  Nothing  can  be  more 
cheery  than  Horace's  "Letters. ' '  Fiddles 
sing  all  through  them;  wax-lights,  fine 
dresses,  fine  jokes,  fine  plates,  fine  equi- 
pages, glitter  and  sparkle  there ;  never  was 


such  a  brilliant,  jigging,  smirking  Vanity 
Fair  as  that  through  which  he  leads 
us.  Hervey,  the  next  great  authority, 
is  a  darker  spirit.— Thackeray,  William 
Makepeace,  1860,  George  the  Second,  The 
Four  Georges. 

One  evergreen  still  flourishes  among  all 
the  garlands  of  flowers  which  Mudie  hourly 
scatters  in  our  path.  Horace  Walpole  is 
ours,  and  ours  for  ever.  Who  will  ever 
cease  now  and  then  to  dip  into  those 
numerous  volumes,  edited,  and  re-edited, 
and  every  now  and  then  coming  out  with 
new  notes  and  fresh  portraits,  and  new 
prefaces  and  a  new  index? — Thomson, 
Katharine  (Grace  Wharton),  1862, 
The  Literature  of  Society,  vol.  ii,  p.  236. 

As  to  the  upper  classes,  I  know  few 
books  that  leave  a  more  painful  impression 
upon  the  reader  than  the  volumes  which 
contain  the  letters  of  Horace  Walpole,  in 
which  we  see  all  the  froth  and  scum  that 
floated  to  the  surface  of  what  is  called 
Good  Society,  and  can  form  a  tolerable 
idea  of  what  was  fermenting  in  the  mass 
below.  With  all  his  persiflage  and  cyni- 
cism, he  at  all  events  may  be  trusted  as  a 
witness  who  does  not  invent,  but  retails  the 
current  scandals  of  the  day.— Forsyth, 
William,  1871,  The  Novels  and  Novelists 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  19. 

The  affectations  of  Horace  Walpole  sit 
so  gracefully  upon  him,  and  are  so  much 
a  part  of  the  man,  that  they  lend  a  lustre 
and  reality  to  the  pictures  he  is  drawing. 
— Pattison,  Mark,  1872-89,  Pope  and 
His  Editors,  Essays,  ed.  Nettleship,  vol.  ii, 
p.  361. 

His  forte  lay  in  chronicling  the  gossip 
of  Courts,  or  in  transporting  his  readers 
behind  the  scenes  when  a  political  intrigue 
was  in  progress.  He  was  more  of  a  Saint- 
Simon  than  a  Bayard.  Although  he 
counted  a  suit  of  Francis  L's  armour 
amongst  his  choicest  treasures,  he  would 
have  been  more  in  his  element  handing 
Louis  XIV.  a  shirt  at  Versailles  than  in 
helping  Francis  to  a  fresh  horse  at  Pavia. 
— Hayward,  a.,  1876,  Strawberry  Hill, 
Sketches  of  Eminent  Statesmen  and  Writers 
with  other  Essays,  vol.  ii,  p.  283. 

For  variety  of  anecdote  and  scandal, 
malicious  humour,  pleasant  cynicism,  and 
lively  tittle-tattle,  couched  in  a  style  at 
once  piquant  and  graceful,  his  epistles  are 
quite  incomparable.  We  must  bear  in  mind 


320 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


however,  that  Walpole's  aim  in  life  was  to 
be  amused,  and  that  he  gratified  this  pro- 
pensity by  playing  the  part  of  a  fashion- 
able critic  and  thoroughbred  virtuoso. 
His  social  position,  his  wealth,  his  exten- 
sive connection  with  courtiers  and  aristo- 
crats, litterateurs,  and  blue-stockinffs,  and 
his  great  powers  of  observation,  afforded 
him  unequalled  opportunites  for  gratify- 
ing his  whim.  But  he  was  too  unsparing 
a  judge  of  the  vanities  and  foibles  of  his 
own  age  to  escape  being  placed  in  the 
stocks  himself ;  and  Macaulay  has  done  it. 
— ScooNES,  W.  Baptiste,  1880,  Four 
Centuries  of  English  Letters,  p.  259. 

Due  allowance  made  for  the  superiority 
of  French  idiom  and  French  finesse  in  a 
department  where  they  appear  to  most  ad- 
vantage, it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that,  if 
variety  and  interest  of  topics  be  regarded 
as  well  as  style,  Walpole's  letters  are  un- 
rivalled. It  was  only  by  degrees  that 
Horace  attained  to  the  perfection  of  easy 
engaging  writing.  His  earlier  letters  be- 
tray signs  of  considerable  labour.  It  is 
said  that  a  summary  prepared  beforehand 
of  one  of  his  letters  to  Montagu  was  found 
in  looking  over  some  of  his  correspond- 
ence. In  later  days  he  wrote  with  the 
greatest  facility,  even  carrying  on  a  con- 
versation the  while.  But  he  continued  to 
the  last  the  habit  of  putting  down  on  the 
backs  of  letters  or  slips  of  paper,  a  note 
of  facts,  of  news,  of  witticisms,  or  of  any- 
thing he  wished  not  to  forget  for  the 
amusement  of  his  correspondents. — See- 
ley,  L.  B.,  1884,  Horace  Walpole  and 
His  World,  p.  32. 

These  letters  have  always  ranked  high 
since  Byron  and  Scott  said  they  were 
classic.  They  are  excellently  written, 
and  when  the  subject  is  good  they  are 
delightful,  being  vivid,  amiable,  quick, 
seasoned  with  allusion,  point,  and  anecdote. 
But  whether  they  will  keep  their  rank  may 
be  questioned.  .  .  .  The  defect  in 
these  letters,  as  classical  compositions,  is 
their  lack  of  freshness.  They  are  a 
chronicle  of  faded  things — finery,  ambi- 
tions, sentiments,  gossip,  criticisms,  beaux, 
dames,  and  nephews,  all  musty,  and  dry, 
and  rubbishy.  They  do  not  reveal  a 
nature  like  Cowper's,  nor  treasure  up  re- 
finement, sense,  and  scholarly  associations 
like  Gray's.  Invaluable  to  the  historian, 
and  to  lovers  of  old  French  memoirs,  they 
are  not  classic  in  the  sense  that  Cowper's 


and  Graves  letters  are — in  the  sense  of 
being  invaluable  to  the  highly-cultivated 
man.  So  far  as  the  society  they  picture 
is  concerned,  the  candles  were  burnt  out 
and  the  play  was  done  long  ago.  They 
are  the  quintessential  spirit  of  the  world- 
liness— the  form  and  feature  of  the  world 
of  which  it  was  anciently  said  the  fashion 
of  it  passeth  away.  They  belong  to  the 
antiquary;  they  no  longer  touch  life. — 
Woodberry,  George  E.,  1884,  Seeley's 
Walpole,  The  Nation,  vol.  38,  p.  261. 

It  is  as  a  letter-writer  that  he  survives ; 
and  it  is  upon  the  vast  correspondence,  of 
which,  even  now,  we  seem  scarcely  to  have 
reached  the  limits,  that  is  based  his  surest 
claim  volitare  per  ora  virum.  The  quali- 
ties which  are  his  defects  in  more  serious 
productions  become  merits  in  his  corre- 
spondence; or,  rather,  they  cease  to  be 
defects.  .  .  .  Among  the  little  band 
of  those  who  have  distinguished  them- 
selves in  this  way,  Walpole  is  in  the  fore- 
most rank;  nay,  if  wit  and  brilliancy, 
without  gravity  or  pathos,  are  to  rank 
highest,  he  is  first.  It  matters  nothing 
whether  he  wrote  easily  or  with  difficulty ; 
whether  he  did,  or  did  not,  make  minutes 
of  apt  illustrations  or  descriptive  inci- 
dents: the  result  is  delightful.  For 
diversity  of  interest  and  perpetual  enter- 
tainment, for  the  constant  surprises  of  an 
unique  species  of  wit,  for  happy  and  un- 
expected turns  of  phrase,  for  graphic 
characterization  and  clever  anecdote,  for 
playfulness,  pungency,  irony,  persiflage, 
there  is  nothing  in  English  like  his  cor- 
respondence. And  when  one  remembers 
that,  in  addition,  this  correspondence  con- 
stitutes a  sixty-years'  social  chronicle  of 
a  specially  picturesque  epoch  by  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  of  picturesque  chroni- 
clers, there  can  be  no  need  to  bespeak  any 
further  suffrage  for  Horace  Walpole's 
incomparable  letters.  "—Dobson,  Aus- 
tin, 1890-93,  Horace  Walpole,  A  Memoir, 
pp.  293,  294. 

Walpole's  Letters  delight  each  succes- 
sive generation.  Nor,  indeed,  can  one 
imagine  any  abatement  of  their  inextin- 
guishable charm.  No  student  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  however  perfunctorily  he 
may  take  himself,  can  afford  to  neglect 
that  wonderful  canvas  whereon  are  posed, 
in  undress,  so  many  great  personages,  such 
vital  and  terrible  events.  For  that  mat- 
ter, the  philosopher,  the  man  of  affairs, 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


321 


the  politician,  and  the  philanthropist — 
unless  his  philanthropy  shall  have  de- 
prived him  of  his  natural  vision, — may 
find  grave  instruction  in  these  light  pages. 
They  are  instinct  with  the  lessons  of  other 
men's  experience.  —  Thanet,  Octave, 
1890,  The  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole,  The 
Dial,  vol.  11,  p.  66. 

Walpole's  most  heinous  literary  fault 
was  his  absurd  though  not  at  all  remarka- 
ble disposition  to  gauge  his  estimate  of  a 
book  according  to  the  rank  or  gentility  of 
the  author.  He  actually  seemed  to  think 
a  plebeian  incapable  of  meritorious  effort 
in  literature,  and  his  opinion  as  to  any 
performance  anonymously  published  was 
probably  held  in  suspense  until  the  fact  of 
its  authorship  had  been  clearly  established. 
.  .  .  He  makes  few  illusions  to  the 
writers  contemporaneous  with  him  who 
were  making  the  real  literature  of  the 
time ;  they  were  all  too  vulgar  to  engage 
his  pen,  except  when  he  went  out  of  his 
way  to  write  adversely  of  them,  when  he 
perpetrated  some  precious  bits  of  most 
nonsensical  critical  coxcombry. —  Ross- 
man,  Vincent  D.,  1895,  A  Prince  of  Scrib- 
blers, Catholic  World,  vol.  60,  p.  810. 

Is  sprightly,  lively,  intolerant,  even  to 
nervousness,  of  dulness  or  heaviness, 
speaking  the  opinion  or  impression  of  the 
hour,  superficial,  it  is  true,  but  yet  sincere 
in  his  individuality,  and  with  a  certain 
freshness  in  his  freedom  from  convention- 
ality.—Craik,  Henry,  1895,  ed.,  English 
Prose,  Introduction,  vol.  iv,  p.  7. 

The  title  of  coxcomb,  which  has  been 
scornfully  awarded  and  indignantly  re- 
pudiated, is  too  surely  his;  he  had  the 
faults  to  which  those  born  on  the  fringe 
of  the  purple,  as  he  was,  are  more  liable 
than  those  born  in  the  purple  itself ;  he 
was  (chiefly  through  wilfulness)  a  bad 
critic  of  other  men's  work,  and  for  this  or 
other  reasons  not  too  good  a  one  of  his 
own.  But  his  work  is  delightful  as  litera- 
ture and  invaluable  as  history.  Taken 
with  Boswell's  ''Johnson,''  it  supplies 
almost  a  complete  view  of  the  intellectual, 
social,  and  literary  life  of  this  period, 
certainly  an  indispensable  companion  to 
the  due  enjoyment  and  the  due  under- 
standing of  the  *' Ode  on  the  Passions"  and 
the  ''Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard," 
of  "Tom  Jones"  and  "Clarissa,"  and 
''Humphry  Clinker" and  "Tristram  Shandy," 
of  the  "Rambler"  and  the  "Decline  and 

21  C 


Fall,"  of  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer"  and 
the  "School  for  Scandal."— Saixtsbury, 
George,  1896,  Social  England,  ed.  Traill, 
vol.  V,  p.  270. 

It  was  an  out-patient  of  Bedlam  who 
first  suggested  that  Mr.  Walpole's  were 
written  with  an  eye  on  posterity.  .  .  . 
He  did  not  write  his  charming  letters  for 
posterity.  He  wrote  them  because  he  had 
parts  and  was  good-natured,  and  wished 
to  amuse  his  friends.  .  .  .  Horace 
Walpole  is  for  every  humor.  If  you  are 
wise  he  confirms  you  with  a  pleasant 
philosophy,  though  he  hated  the  name ;  if 
you  are  flippant,  he  tells  you  a  comical, 
perhaps  a  wicked  story;  if  you  are  com- 
plaisant, he  charms  you  with  agreeable 
courtesies ;  if  you  would  rail  at  your  age, 
he  turns  you  many  a  contemptuous  text 
from  his.— Street,  G.  S.,  1899,  After 
Reading  Horace  Walpole ;  Fortnightly  Re- 
view, vol.  11,  pp.  124,  128. 

GENERAL 

An  author  who  has  illustrated  many 
passages  in  the  English  History,  and 
adorned  more. —  Robertson,  William, 
1759,  History  of  Scotland,  bk.  viii,  note. 

The  lively  and  curious  acuteness  of  Wal- 
pole.— Gibbon,  Edward,  1762,  Memoirs 
of  my  Life  and  Writings,  July  26. 

I  have  my  fribbles  as  well  as  you.  In 
the  "Anecdotes  of  Painting,"  just  pub- 
lished, the  author,  by  the  most  unprovoked 
malice,  has  a  fling  at  your  friend  obliquely, 
and  puts  him  in  company  where  you  would 
not  expect  to  find  him,  with  Tom  Hearne 
and  Browne  Willis.  It  is  about  Gothic 
edifices,  for  which  I  shall  be  about  his  pots, 
as  Bentley  said  to  Lord  Halifax  of  Rowe. 
But  I  say  it  is  better ;  I  mean  the  galley- 
pots  and  washes  of  his  toilet.  I  know  he 
has  a  fribble-tutor  at  his  elbow,  as  sicklied 
over  with  affectation  as  himself. — War- 
burton,  William,  1762,  Letter  to  Gar- 
rick,  Feb.  17. 

Walpole  had  by  nature  a  propensity, 
and  by  constitution  a  plea,  for  being 
captious  and  querulentiai,  for  he  was  a 
martyr  to  the  gout.  He  wrote  prose  and 
published  it ;  he  composed  verses  and  circu- 
lated them,  and  was  an  author,  who  seemed 
to  play  at  hide-and-seek  with  the  public. 
— There  was  a  mysterious  air  of  conse- 
quence in  his  private  establishment  of 
a  domestic  printing  press,  that  seemed  to 
augur  great  things,  but  performed  little. 


322 


HORACE  W ALP OLE 


— Cumberland,  Richard,  1806,  Memoirs 
Written  by  Himself j  voL  I,  p.  23. 

His  taste  was  highly  polished ;  his  vivac- 
ity attained  to  brilliancy ;  and  his  pictur- 
esque fancy,  easily  excited,  was  soon  ex- 
tinguished ;  his  playful  wit  and  keen  irony 
were  perpetually  exercised  in  his  observa- 
tions on  life,  and  his  memory  was  stored 
with  the  most  amusing  knowledge,  but 
much  too  lively  to  be  accurate ;  for  his 
studies  were  but  his  sports.  But  other  quali- 
ties of  genius  must  distinguish  the  great 
author,  and  even  him  who  would  occupy 
that  leading  rank  in  the  literary  republic 
our  author  aspired  to  fill.  He  lived  too 
much  in  that  class  of  society  which  is  little 
favourable  to  genius ;  he  exerted  neither 
profound  thinking,  nor  profound  feeling ; 
and  too  volatile  to  attain  to  the  pathetic, 
that  higher  quality  of  genius,  he  was  so 
imbued  with  the  petty  elegancies  of  society 
that  every  impression  of  grandeur  in  the 
human  character  was  deadened  in  the 
breast  of  the  polished  cynic.  ...  All 
his  literary  works,  like  the  ornamented 
edifice  he  inhabited,  were  constructed  on 
the  same  artificial  principle ;  an  old  paper 
lodging-house,  converted  by  the  magician 
of  taste  into  a  Gothic  castle,  full  of  scenic 
effects.— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13,  The 
Pains  of  Fastidious  Egotism,  Calamities  of 
Authors. 

His  judgment  of  literature,  of  contem- 
porary literature  especially,  was  altogether 
perverted  by  his  aristocratical  feelings. 
No  writer  surely  was  ever  guilty  of  so 
much  false  and  absurd  criticism.  He 
almost  invariably  speaks  with  contempt  of 
those  books  which  are  now  universally 
allowed  to  be  the  best  that  appeared  in  his 
time ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  he  speaks 
of  writers  of  rank  and  fashion  as  if  they 
were  entitled  to  the  same  precedence  in 
literature  which  would  have  been  allowed 
to  them  in  a  drawing-room.  ...  It 
is  easy  to  describe  him  by  negatives.  He 
had  not  a  creative  imagination.  He  had 
not  a  pure  taste.  He  was  not  a  great 
reasoner.  There  is  indeed  scarcely  any 
writer,  in  whose  works  it  would  be  possible 
to  find  so  many  contradictory  judgments, 
so  many  sentences  of  extravagant  non- 
sense. Nor  was  it  only  in  his  familiar 
correspondence  that  he  wrote  in  this 
flighty  and  inconsistent  manner;  but  in 
long  and  elaborate  books,  in  books  repeat- 
edly transcribed  and  intended  for  the 


public  eye.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babing- 
TON,  1833,  IValpole's  Lettters  to  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  58 ;  Critical 
and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

I  must  guard  you  against  the  historical 
publications  of  the  celebrated  Horace 
Walpole.  Look  for  entertainment  in  them 
if  you  please,  and  you  will  not  be  disap- 
pointed ;  but  give  him  not  your  confidence : 
indeed  you  will  soon  see,  from  his  lively 
and  epigrammatic  style  of  invective,  that 
he  cannot  deserve  it.— Smyth,  William, 
1840,  Lectures  on  Modern  History,  Lec- 
ture xxxiii. 

The  affectation  of  his  style  has  its  roots 
in  the  affectation  of  his  nature,  and  it  is 
an  admirable  style  for  him. — Whipple, 
Edwin  P.,  1849,  Use  and  Misuse  of  Words, 
Literature  and  Life,  p.  247. 

Horace  Walpole  illustrates  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  world  by  anecdote  and  witti- 
cism, by  the  authority  of  his  own  empirical 
opinion,  by  a  fancy  so  wanton  and  discur- 
sive that  it  cannot  fail  to  be  sometimes 
just;  but  he  never  fatigues  himself  by 
seeking,  like  Rochefoucauld,  to  dissect 
and  analyse.  He  prides  himself  on  being 
frivolous,  and,  if  he  is  wise,  he  takes  care 
to  tell  you  that  he  is  only  so  for  his  own 
amusement.  We  cannot  dispute  his 
knowledge  of  the  world  in  breadth  of  sur- 
face, as  we  may  do  that  of  the  French 
Court-philosophers;  but  he  very  rarely 
dives  to  the  depth  which  they  explore, 
though  it  be  but  the  depth  of  a  garden 
fountain.  —  Lytton,  Edward  Bulwer 
Lord,  1863-68,  Caxtoniana,  Miscellaneous 
Prose  Works,  vol.  iii,  p.  427. 

Horace  Walpole's  pungent  prose. — 
Burton,  John  Hill,  1880,  A  History,  of 
the  Reign  of  Queen  Anne,  vol.  ii,  p.  131 

Without  a  spark  of  genius,  he  has  a 
taste,  bright  and  intelligent,  for  the  arts ; 
he  understands  their  principles,  and 
dabbles  in  them  all.  He  revives  Gothic 
architecture  in  Strawberry  Hill — a  toy 
house ;  he  makes  an  experiment  in  romance 
in  ''The  Castle  of  Otranto'' — a  toy  novel; 
he  writes  sketchy  Lives  of  the  Painters, 
and  composes  an  ingenious  ''Essay  on 
Landscape  Gardening. Courthope,  Wil- 
liam John,  1885,  The  Liberal  Movement 
in  English  Literature,  p.  120. 

"Unhealthy  and  disorganised  mind," 
"a  bundle  of  whims  and  affectations,'' 


ai  M  "I 

•S  '-^  =3 


WALPOLE— MASON 


323 


^'maskwithin  mask  these  are  the  phrases 
that  go  to  make  up  the  popular  estimate 
of  a  writer  who  was  distinguished  by  the 
sincerity  of  his  taste  and  judgment,  and 
by  the  quickness  and  truth  of  his  response 
to  all  impressions.  Horace  Walpole  wrote 
and  thought  exactly  as  he  pleased ;  his 
letters  are  the  expression,  direct  and  clear, 
of  a  mind  that  could  not  condescend  to  dull 
its  reflections  by  any  compromise  about 
the  values  of  things,  or  any  concession  to 


opinion.  He  never  tampered  with  his 
instinctive  appreciation  of  anything. 
Whether  his  judgments  are  sound  in  them- 
selves is  a  question  of  small  importance  in 
comparison  with  his  virtue  of  self-respect 
and  self-restraint.  It  is  because  he  had  a 
mind  of  his  own  and  would  not  pretend  to 
like  what  he  could  not  like,  that  he  has 
been  pointed  out  by  the  literary  dema- 
gogue.— Ker,W.  p.,  1895,  English  Prose, 
ed.  Craiky  vol.  iv,  p.  233. 


William  Mason 

1724-1797 

An  English  divine  who  gained  some  reputation  by  his  poetry,  but  more  by  the 
friendship  of  Gray,  was  the  son  of  the  Vicar  of  St.  Trinity  Hall,  in  the  East  Riding  of 
Yorkshire;  educated  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  and  elected  a  Fellow  of  Pem- 
broke College  in  1747.  In  1754,  he  took  holy  orders ;  became  Rector  of  Aston,  York- 
shire, and  chaplain  to  the  king,  and  at  the  time  of  his  death  had  been  thirty-two  years 
Precentor  and  Canon  Residentiary  of  York.  His  principal  works  are  ''Elfrida,  a 
Dramatic  Poem,  written  on  the  Model  of  the  Antient  Greek  Tragedy,"  1752;  ''Odes 
on  Memory,  Independence,  Melancholy,  and  the  Fate  of  Tyranny,"  1756 ;  ''Caractacus, 
a  Dramatic  Poem,  written  on  the  Model  of  the  Antient  Greek  Tragedy,"  1759 ;  ''The 
English  Garden,  a  Poem  in  Pour  Books, "  1772-82 ;  "Collection  of  Anthems  for  Church 
Music,"  1782;  "Secular  Ode  in  Commemoration  of  the  Glorious  Revolution,  1688," 
1788;  "Essays,  Historical  and  Critical,  on  English  Church  Music,"  1795,  "Memoirs 
of  Thomas  Gray,"  1775. — Allibone,  S.  Austin,  1870,  Critical  Dictionary  of  English 
Liter atur By  vol.  ii,  p.  1238. 


PERSONAL 

Mr.  Mason  is  my  acquaintance :  I  liked 
the  ode  very  much,  but  have  found  no  one 
else  that  did.  He  has  much  fancy,  little 
judgment,  and  a  good  deal  of  modesty.  I 
take  him  for  a  good  and  well-meaning 
creature ;  but  then  he  is  really  in  simplic- 
ity a  child,  and  loves  everybody  he  meets 
with :  he  reads  little  or  nothing,  writes 
abundance,  and  that  with  a  design  to 
make  his  fortune  by  it.— Gray,  Thomas, 
1748,  Letter  to  Thomas  Wharton,  June  5 ; 
Works,  ed.  Gosse,  vol.  ii,  p.  184. 

Whence  is  that  groan?  no  more  Britannia 

sleeps, 

But  o'er  her  lost  Musaeus  bends  and  weeps. 
Lo,  every  Grecian,  every  British,  Muse 
Scatters  the  rarest  flowers,  and  gracious  dews, 
Where  Mason  lies. 

— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  421. 

During  the  whole  progress  of  the 
American  war,  Mason  continued  un- 
changed in  his  Whig  principles ;  and  took 
an  active  share  in  the  association  for  par- 
liamentary reform,  which  began  to  be 
formed  in  the  year  1779.  .  .  .  Among  his 
accomplishments,  his  critical  knowledge 


of  painting  must  have  been  considerable, 
for  his  translation  of  DuFresnoy's  poem 
on  that  art,  which  appeared  in  1783,  was 
finished  at  the  particular  suggestion  of 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  who  furnished  it  with 
illustrative  notes.  .  .  .  Mason's  learning 
in  the  arts  was  of  no  ordinary  kind.  He 
composed  several  devotional  pieces  of 
music  for  the  choir  of  York  cathedral; 
and  Dr.  Burney  speaks  of  an  "Historical 
and  Critical  Essay  on  English  Church 
Music,"  which  he  published  in  1795,  in 
very  respectful  terms.  It  is  singular, 
however,  that  the  fault  ascribed  by  the 
same  authority  to  his  musical  theory, 
should  be  that  of  Calvinistical  plainness. 
In  verse  he  was  my  Lord  Peter ;  in  his 
taste  for  sacred  music.  Dr.  Burney  com- 
pares him  to  Jack,  in  the ' '  Tale  of  a  Tub. ' ' 
—Campbell,  Thomas,  1819,  Specimens 
of  the  British  Poets. 

Mason's  private  character  is  said  to 
have  been  distinguished  by  the  most  fervid 
affection  for  his  friends,  and  by  the  most 
universal  philanthropy,  though  there  was 
something  in  his  manners  which  appeared 
more  than  the  mere  dignity  of  conscious 
talent.    Warton,  whose    character  was 


324 


WILLIAM  MASON 


marked  by  an  unaffected  simplicity  and 
easy  carelessness,  used  to  say  "Mason  is 
not  in  my  way,  he  is  a  buckram  man ;"  and 
this  has  been  repeated  by  those  who  were 
not  partial  to  him  for  political  or  other 
reasons.  He  had  the  misfortune  to  sur- 
vive most  of  his  early  friends,  and  he  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  desirous  of  form- 
ing new  connexions ;  this  did  not  proceed 
from  misanthropic  cynicism,  but  from 
natural  reserve ;  yet  it  caused  the  super- 
ficial observer  to  deem  him  proud  and  un- 
social. That  he  possessed  the  Christian 
virtues  in  an  eminent  degree,  and  fulfilled 
the  duties  of  his  sacred  character*  in  an 
exemplary  manner  cannot  be  doubted. — 
Singer,  S.  W.,  1822,  The  British  Poets, 
Chiswick  ed. 

ELFRIDA 

1752 

One  of  the  best  poets  of  the  present 
age,  the  ingenious  Mr.  Mason  of  Cam- 
bridge, has  not  long  ago  published  a 
Tragedy  upon  the  model  of  the  ancients, 
called  "Elfrida;"  the  merit  of  this  piece, 
as  a  poem  has  been  confessed  by  the  gen- 
eral reading  it  has  obtained ;  it  is  full  of 
beauties ;  the  language  is  perfectly  poet- 
ical, the  sentiments  chaste,  and  the  moral 
excellent ;  there  is  nothing  in  our  tongue 
can  much  exceed  it  in  the  flowry  enchant- 
ments of  poetry,  or  the  delicate  flow  of 
numbers,  but  while  we  admire  the  poet, 
we  pay  no  regard  to  the  character;  no 
passion  is  excited,  the  heart  is  never 
moved,  nor  is  the  reader's  curiosity  ever 
raised  to  know  the  event. — Cibber,  The- 
OPHILUS,  1753,  Lives  of  the  Poets,  vol.  I, 
p.  316. 

My  friend  Mason  is  much  chagrined  at 
his  daughter  Elfrida's  having  eloped  with- 
out his  consent.  I  knew  when  I  heard  it 
was  brought  on  the  stage  that  he  was  not 
consulted,  and  they  say  it  is  sadly  per- 
formed. It  vexes  one  to  think  that  a 
poem  of  such  delicacy  and  dignity  should 
be  prostituted,  and  the  charms  of  virgins 
represented  by  the  abandoned  nymphs  of 
Drury  Lane.  Such  a  poem  would  have 
been  represented  in  days  of  yore  by  the 
youthful  part  of  the  Royal  family,  or  those 
of  the  first  rank.  —  Granville,  Mary 
(Mrs.  Delany,),  1772,  Letter  to  Mrs. 
Port,  Dec.  30;  Autobiography  and  Corre- 
spondence, ed.  Llanover,  Second  series,  vol. 
I,  p.  488. 

Mr. Mason,  in  his  ''Elfrida,"  has  wantonly 


misrepresented  historical  fact, — for  which 
no  man  could  be  forgiven,  and  for  which 
no  beauties  in  his  poetry  can  compensate. 
— Headley,  Henry,  1787,  Select  Beauties 
of  Ancient  English  Poetry. 

The  conduct  of  this  regular  drama  is 
the  most  irregular  thing  in  the  world. — 
Bo  ADEN,  James,  1825,  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  of  John  Philip  Kemble,  vol.  i,  p.  265. 

"Elfrida"  is  very,  very  far  from  a  con- 
temptible piece  of  workmanship:  it  is 
manifestly  the  production  of  a  scholar  and 
a  gentleman,  of  an  ardent  lover  of  poetry, 
and  platonic  inamorato  of  abstract  virtue : 
but  impossible  as  it  is  to  approve  our  con- 
jecture by  experiment,  we  do  shrewdly 
suspect  that  it  is  nothing  like  what 
Sophocles  or  Euripides  would  have  written 
had  they  risen  from  the  dead  in  the  pleni- 
tude, or,  if  you  will,  with  only  a  tithe  of 
their  powers,  and  an  inspired  mastery  of 
the  English  language,  to  exhibit  to  the 
eighteenth  century  the  marvel  of  a  modern 
ancient  drama.  .  .  .  As  an  accommoda- 
tion of  the  ancient  drama  to  modern  habits 
and  sympathies,  "Elfrida"  must  be  pro- 
nounced a  decided  failure.  .  .  .  With 
the  great  poets  in  any  department  of 
poetry.  Mason  cannot  be  numbered,  yet 
for  many  years  of  his  life  he  was  Eng- 
land's greatest  living  Poet. — Coleridge, 
Hartley,  1833,  Biographia  Borealis,  pp. 
406,  427,  462. 

There  are  two  sorts  of  simplicity  in  the 
natural  history  of  poets — the  right  sort, 
the  manly  simplicity  that  makes  him  write 
like  Burns  and  Crabbe,  from  the  forcible 
dictates  of  nature ;  and  the  wrong  sort, 
perhaps,  better  entitled  to  the  name  of 
credulity,  that  gulls  them  to  believe  in 
the  false  resources  of  their  art.  The 
worthy  and  single-hearted  Mason  was  of 
the  latter  description :  he  was  one  of 
those,  to  use  Burns's  words, 

"Who  think  to  climb  Parnassus'  hill 
By  dinto'  Greek." 
He  was  not  only  persuaded  himself  that 
he  could  incorporate  the  Attic  chorus 
with  the  modern  drama — an  attempt  like 
that  of  ingrafting  a  dead  branch  on  a 
living  tree,  but  he  made  his  experiment 
with  a  play  that  is  without  action  and 
without  interest.  We  might  forgive  him 
for  perverting  history,  and  showing  off 
*'Elfrida,"  who  was  a  barbarous  traitress, 
as  a  tender  wife,  but  it  defies  all  patience 
to  find  her  employed  in  nothing  but  making 


WILLIAM  MASON 


325 


speeches, and  calling  on  her  waiting-maids 
to  strike  up  odes  to  the  rising  sun. 
In  order  to  save  her  husband,  and  divert 
the  king's  affection,  she  makes  a  promise 
to  stain  and  deform  her  beauty,  but  she 
never  performs  it ;  and,  when  her  lord  is 
killed,  she  hurries  off  her  poor  maids  into 
a  nunnery,  without  consulting  their  in- 
clinations. All  this  time  he  dreamed 
himself,  and  wrote  to  his  friends,  t-hat  he 
was  imitating  Sophocles !  —  Campbell, 
Thomas,  1834,  Life  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  p.lAS. 

GENERAL 

I  intended  writing  to  you  on  Gray's 
Life, "  if  you  had  not  prevented  me.  I  am 
charmed  with  it,  and  prefer  it  to  all  the 
biography  I  ever  saw.  The  style  is  ex- 
cellent, simple,  unaffected;  the  method 
admirable,  artful,  and  judicious.  He  has 
framed  the  fragments  (as  a  person  said), 
so  well,  that  they  are  fine  drawings,  if  not 
finished  pictures.  For  my  part,  I  am  so 
interested  in  it,  that  I  shall  certainly  read 
it  over  and  over. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1775,  To  Rev.  William  Cole,  April  11; 
Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vi,  p.  199. 

With  many  other  virtues  he  possessed  a 
fine  genius  for  poetry,  and  was  indeed  the 
best  poet  of  his  time,  as  appears  from  his 
Works  of  that  sort  published  by  himself 
at  different  times  in  three  volumes. — 
HuRD,  Richard,  1808?  Commonplace  Book, 
ed.  Kilvert,  p.  247. 

Mr.  Chalmers's  character  of  this  poet  is 
expressed  as  usual  with  laboured  and  in- 
accurate pomposity;  its  import  however 
is  just,  he  censures  the  finical  profuse- 
ness  of  his  ornaments,  the  epithets  which 
encumber  what  they  do  not  illustrate,  and 
the  stiff  and  strained  alliteration  which  he 
so  perpetually  affected:  and  he  does 
justice  to  the  bold  and  original  conceptions 
of  a  writer  who  aimed  at  nobler  and  better 
things  than  any  of  his  contemporaries. — 
SouTHEY,  Robert,  1814,  Chalmers's  Eng- 
lish Poets,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  11,  p.b02. 

I  cannot  bring  myself  to  think  much  of 
Mason's  poetry.  I  may  be  wrong ;  but  all 
those  passages  in  the  Caractacus  which 
we  learn  to  admire  at  school,  now  seem  to 
me  one  continued  falsetto. — Coleridge, 
Samuel  Taylor,  1833,  Table  Talk,  ed. 
Ashe,  Jan.  3,  p,  184. 

Prim,  in  spnice  parti-colours,  Mason  shone, 
His  Muse  lookt  well  in  gall-dyed  crape  alone. 

— Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1846,  Sat- 
irists, Miscellaneous  Poems,  cxvi. 


Mason's  poetry  cannot  be  said  to  be 
popular,  even  with  poetical  readers.  His 
greatest  want  is  simplicity,  yet  at  times 
his  rich  diction  has  a  fine  effect.    In  his 

English  Garden,"  though  verbose  and 
languid  as  a  whole,  there  are  some  ex- 
quisite images.  — •  Chambers,  Robert, 
1876,  Cyelopcedia  of  English  Literature, 
ed.  Carruthers. 

Grateful  as  we  must  be  to  Mason  for 
his  affection  and  good-heartedness,  we 
cannot  refrain  from  wishing  that  his  poems 
had  been  fastened  to  a  mill -stone  and  cast 
into  the  river  Cam.  They  are  not  only 
barren  and  pompous  to  the  very  last  de- 
gree, but  to  the  lovers  of  Gray  they  have 
this  disadvantage,  that  they  constantly 
resolve  that  poet's  true  sublime  into  the 
ridiculous,  and  leave  on  the  ear  an  un- 
comfortable echo,  as  of  a  too  successful 
burlesque  or  parody.  Of  this  Gray  him- 
self was  not  unconscious,  though  he  put 
the  thought  behind  him,  as  one  inconsist- 
ent with  friendship.— GossE,  Edmund, 
1882,  Gray  {English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  87. 

The  most  pretentious  poetical  prig  that 
the  eighteenth  century  produced.  This 
was  Mason,  who  still  lingers  in  literary 
history,  after  a  vicarious  fashion,  as  the 
friend  of  Gray.  He  was  himself,  however, 
not  actually  devoid  of  poetical  ability. 
At  least  at  one  period  of  his  life  spiteful- 
ness  gave  a  vigor  to  his  pen  which  inspira- 
tion was  never  able  to  impart,  and  he 
produced,  as  a  result,  some  abusive  and 
therefore  still  readable  satires.  .  .  . 
No  student  of  Chaucer  needs  to  be  told 
that  language  [of  "Musseus"]  is  hardly 
contemptuous  enough  to  set  forth  satis- 
factorily the  contemptible  character  of 
this  imitation.  It  is  an  outrage  both  upon 
the  memory  of  the  poet  and  of  the  speech 
in  which  he  wrote.  Yet  there  is  no  ques- 
tion that  it  was  generally  thought  at  the 
time  to  be  a  successful  reproduction  of  the 
diction  of  Chaucer.  Mason  was  hailed  by 
some  as  the  coming  poet  upon  the  strength 
of  this  one  production.  Even  as  late  as 
1806  Bowles  in  his  edition  of  Pope  stjled 
it  ''the  exquisite  Musbbus."  That  this 
cuckoo  song  could  so  long  have  been  mis- 
taken for  the  note  of  a  nightingale  is  one 
of  those  perversities  of  criticism  which 
leave  the  reader  in  doubt  whether  there 
is  in  reality  anything  that  can  be  deemed 
even  remotely  a  standard  of  taste.  The 
affirmative  view  can  only  be  maintained  in 


326 


MASON— GODWIN 


this  case  upon  the  ground  that  knowledge 
is  essential  to  any  proper  literary  judg- 
ment, and  that  then  knowledge  of  our 
early  speech  did  not  exist. — Lounsbury, 
Thomas  R.,  1891,  Studies  in  Chaucer, 
vol.  Ill,  pp,  126,  128. 

It  is  rather  difficult  to  classify  the  poet 
William  Mason,  except  to  say  that  he  was 
first,  last,  and  all  the  time  an  imitator. 
.  .  .  His  connection  with  Gray,  and 
the  fact  that  he  edited  Gray's  literary 
remains  have  kept  Mason  alive ;  his  poetry 
is  not  altogether  without  merit,  but  it 
''smells  of  mortality. Lowell  said  that 
Gray  and  Mason  together  could  not  make 
the  latter  a  poet. — Phelps,  William 
Lyon,  1893,  The  Beginnings  of  the  Eng- 
lish Romantic  Movement,  p.  97. 


Mason  was  a  man  of  considerable  abili- 
ties and  cultivated  taste,  who  naturally 
mistook  himself  for  a  poet.  He  accepted 
the  critical  canons  of  the  day,  taking  Gray 
and  Hurd  for  his  authorities,  and  his  seri- 
ous attempts  at  poetry  are  rather  vapid 
performances,  to  which  his  attempt  to 
assimilate  Gray's  style  gives  an  air  of 
affectation.  The  "Heroic  Epistle"  gives 
him  a  place  among  the  other  followers  of 
Pope's  school  in  satire. — Stephen,  L., 
1893,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 

Was  a  very  small  poet  and  a  somewhat 
absurd  person.  He  aped,  first  Milton  and 
afterward  Gray,  so  closely  that  his  work 
often  seems  like  parody. — Beers,  Henry 
A.,  1898,  A  History  of  English  Romanti- 
cism in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  151. 


Mary  WoUstonecraft  Godwin 

1759-1797 

Mary  WoUstonecraft  was  born  27  April  1759.  Companion  to  a  lady,  1778-80.  Kept 
school  at  Newington  Green  with  her  sister,  1783-85.  Acquaintance  with  Dr.  John- 
son. Governess  in  Lord  Kingsborough's  family,  1787-88.  To  London;  worked  as 
reader  and  translator  for  Dr.  Johnson,  1788-92.  Met  William  Godwin,  Nov.  1791. 
To  Paris,  1792.  Lived  with  Gilbert  Imlay,  1793-96.  Attempted  suicide,  1796. 
Intimacy  with  William  Godwin  begun,  1796 ;  married  to  him,  29  March  1797.  Died, 
in  London,  10  Sept.  1797.  Works:  ''Thoughts  on  the  Education  of  Daughters,'' 
1787;  ''Original  Stories"  (anon.),  1788;  "Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Men,'' 
1790;  "Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Woman,"  vol.  i.,  1792  (no  more  pub.) ;  "His- 
torical and  Moral  View  of  .  .  .  the  French  Revolution, "  vol.  i.,  1794  (no  more 
pub.);  "Letters  written  in  Norway, "  1796.  Posthumous:  "Posthumous  Works, "  ed. 
by  Wm.  Godwin  (4  vols.),  1798;  "Letters  to  Imlay,"  ed.  by  C.  Kegan  Paul,  1879. 
She  tensk^e^;  Salzmann's  "Elements  of  Morality,"  1790.— Sharp,  R.  Farquhar- 
SON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  114. 


PERSONAL 
I  never  wanted  but  your  heart — that 
gone,  you  have  nothing  more  to  give. 
Had  I  only  poverty  to  fear,  I  should  not 
shrink  from  life.  Forgive  me  then,  if  I 
say,  that  I  shall  consider  any  direct  or  in- 
direct attempt  to  supply  my  necessities, 
as  an  insult  which  I  have  not  merited,  and 
as  rather  done  out  of  tenderness  for  your 
own  reputation,  than  for  me.  My  child 
may  have  to  blush  for  her  mother's  want 
of  prudence,  and  may  lament  that  the 
rectitude  of  my  heart  made  me  above 
vulgar  precautions ;  but  she  shall  not  de- 
spise me  for  meanness.  You  are  now 
perfectly  free.  God  bless  you ! — Woll- 
STONECRAFT,  Mary,  1793,  Letters  to  Imlay, 
Nov. 

Adieu,  thou  excellent  woman !  thou  re- 
verse of  that  hyaena  in  petticoats,  Mrs. 


Wolstoncroft,  who  to  this  day  discharges 
her  ink  and  gall  on  Maria  Antoinette, 
whose  unparalleled  sufferings  have  not  yet 
stanched  that  Alecto's  blazing  ferocity. 
— Walpole,  Horace,  1795,  To  Hannah 
More;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix, 
p.  452. 

Of  all  the  lions  or  literati  I  have  seen 
here,  Mary  Imlay's  countenance  is  the 
best,  infinitely  the  best :  the  only  fault  in 
it  is  an  expression  somewhat  similar  to 
what  the  prints  of  Home  Tooke  display — 
an  expression  indicating  superiority ;  not 
haughtiness,  not  sarcasm,  in  Mary  Imlay, 
but  still  it  is  unpleasant.  Her  eyes  are 
light  brown,  and  although  the  lid  of  one 
of  them  is  affected  by  a  little  paralysis, 
they  are  the  most  meaning  I  ever  saw. — 
Southey,  Robert,  1797,  Letter  to  J.  Cottle, 
March  13. 


MARY  WOLLSTONECRAFT  GODWIN 


327 


Mrs.  Godwin  died  on  Sunday,  Sept.  10, 
about  eight  in  the  morning.  I  was  with 
her  at  the  time  of  her  delivery,  and  with 
very  little  intermission  until  the  moment 
of  her  death.  Every  skilful  effort  that 
medical  knowledge  of  the  highest  class 
could  make,  was  exerted  to  save  her.  It 
is  not  possible  to  describe  the  unremitting 
and  devoted  attentions  of  her  husband. 
Nor  is  it  easy  to  give  you  an  adequate 
idea  of  the  affectionate  zeal  of  many  of 
her  friends,  who  were  on  the  watch  night 
and  day  to  seize  on  an  opportunity  of  con- 
tributing towards  her  recovery,  and  to 
lessen  her  sufferings.  ...  I  know 
of  no  consolations  for  myself,  but  in  re- 
membering how  happy  she  had  lately  been, 
and  how  much  she  was  admired,  and  almost 
idolized,  by  some  of  the  most  eminent  and 
best  of  human  beings. — Fenwick,  Eliza, 
1797,  Letter  to  Everina  Wollstonecraft^ 
Sept.  12. 

The  loss  of  the  world  in  this  admirable 
woman,  I  leave  to  other  men  to  collect ;  my 
own  I  well  know,  nor  can  it  be  improper  to 
describe  it.  I  do  not  here  allude  to  the 
pleasures  I  enjoyed  in  her  conversation : 
these  increased  every  day,  in  proportion 
as  we  knew  each  other  better,  and  as  our 
mutual  confidence  increased.  They  can 
be  measured  only  by  the  treasures  of  her 
mind,  and  the  virtues  of  her  heart.  But 
this  is  a  subject  for  meditation,  not  for 
words.  What  I  purposed  alluding  to,  was 
the  improvement  that  I  have  forever  lost. 
—Godwin,  William,  1798,  Memoirs  of 
the  Author  of  a  Vindication  of  the  Rights 
of  Woman,  p.  199. 

They  say  that  thou  wert  lovely  from  thy 
birth, 

Of  glorious  parents,  thou  aspiring  child! 
I  wonder  not — for  One  then  left  this  earth 
Whose  life  was  like  a  setting  planet  mild, 
Which  clothed  thee  in  the  radiance  un- 
defiled 

Of  its  departing  glory ;  still  her  fame 
Shines  on  thee,  through  the  tempests  dark 
and  wild, 
Which  sliake  these  latter  days. 
—  Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1817,  To 
Mary,  Revolt  of  Islam. 

An  Ariel  imprisoned  in  a  brickbat !  It 
is  a  real  tragedy  and  of  the  deepest.  Sub- 
limely virtuous  endowment ;  in  practice, 
misfortune,  suffering,  death  ...  by 
destiny,  and  also  by  desert.  An  English 
Mignon;  Godwin  an  honest  boor  that 
loves  her,  but  cannot  guide  or  save  her. 


— Carlyle,  Thomas,  1831,  Journal,  Life 
by  Froude,  vol.  ii,  p.  167. 

Fuseli  found  in  her  a  philosophical 
sloven :  her  usual  dress  being  a  habit  of 
coarse  cloth,  black  worsted  stockings,  and 
a  beaver  hat,  with  her  hair  hanging  lank 
about  her  shoulders.  When  the  Prince 
Talleyrand  was  in  this  country,  in  a  low 
condition  with  regard  to  his  pecuniary 
affairs,  and  visited  her,  they  drank  their 
tea,  and  the  little  wine  they  took,  indis- 
criminately from  tea-cups. —  Knowles, 
John,  1831,  The  Life  and  Writings  of 
Henry  Fuseli. 

No  woman  (with  the  exception  of  the 
greatest  woman,  Madame  de  Stael)  has 
made  any  impression  on  the  public  mind 
during  the  last  fifty  years,  to  be  compared 
with  Mrs.  Godwin.  This  was  perhaps 
more  especially  true  in  the  provinces, 
where  her  new  and  startling  doctrines  were 
seized  with  avidity,  and  acted  upon  in 
some  particulars  to  considerable  extent, 
particularly  by  married  women.  .  .  . 
She  was,  I  have  been  told  by  an  intimate 
friend,  very  pretty  and  feminine  in  man- 
ners and  person ;  much  attached  to  those 
very  observances  she  decries  in  her  works ; 
so  that  if  any  gentleman  did  not  fly  to  open 
the  door  as  she  approached  it,  or  take 
up  the  handkerchief  she  dropped,  she 
showered  on  him  the  full  weight  of  re- 
proach and  displeasure  ;  an  inconsistency 
she  would  have  doubtless  despised  in  a  dis- 
ciple. I  have  heard  the  late  Miss  Jews- 
bury  express  an  intention  of  so  remodel- 
ling the  Rights  of  Women,  that  it  would 
not  fail  to  become  attractive,  and  she 
thought  useful. — Elwood,  Mrs.  A.  K., 
1842,  Memoirs  of  the  Literary  Ladies  of 
England. 

Mary  Wollstonecraft  was  one  of  those 
beings  who  appear  once  perhaps  in  a  gener- 
ation, to  gild  humanity  with  a  ray  which  no 
difference  of  opinion  nor  chance  of  circum- 
stances can  cloud.  Her  genius  was  un- 
deniable. She  had  been  bred  in  the  hard 
school  of  adversity,  and  having  experi- 
enced the  sorrows  entailed  on  the  poor 
and  the  oppressed,  an  earnest  desire  was 
kindled  within  her  to  diminish  these  sor- 
rows. Her  sound  understanding,  her 
intrepidity,  her  sensibility  and  eager 
sympathy,  stamped  all  her  writings  with 
force  and  truth,  and  endowed  them  with  a 
tender  charm  that  enchants  while  it  en- 
lightens.   She  was  one  whom  all  loved 


328 


MARY  WOLLSTONECRAFT  GODWIN 


who  had  ever  seen  her.  Many  years  are 
passed  since  that  beating  heart  has  been 
laid  in  the  cold  still  grave,  but  no  one  who 
has  ever  seen  her  speaks  of  her  without 
enthusiastic  veneration.  Did  she  witness 
an  act  of  injustice,  she  boldly  came  for- 
ward to  point  it  out,  and  induce  its  repara- 
tion. Was  there  discord  among  friends 
or  relatives,  she  stood  by  the  weaker 
party,  and  by  her  earnest  appeals  and 
kindliness  awoke  latent  affection,  and 
healed  all  wounds.  ''Open  as  day  to 
melting  charity, with  a  heart  brimful  of 
generous  affection,  yearning  for  sympathy, 
she  had  fallen  on  evil  days,  and  her  life 
had  been  one  course  of  hardship,  poverty, 
lonely  struggle,  and  bitter  disappoint- 
ment. —  Shelley,  Mary  Wollstone- 
CRAFT,  1851,  Fragmentary  Notes,  Paul's 
Life  of  Godwin,  vol.  i,  p.  231. 

Mary  Wollstonecraft  went  to  live  with 
Imlay  without  going  through  any  prelimi- 
nary ceremony  of  marriage,  because  she 
believed  that  the  enforced  permanence  of 
wedlock  was  inexpedient  or  immoral ;  and 
yet,  curiously  enough,  those  who  are  most 
eager  to  justify  her  in  acting  out  one  half 
of  the  theory  are  most  severe  upon  Imlay 
for  acting  out  the  other  half.  The 
deserted  woman,  naturally  enough,  set  the 
example  of  injustice,  and  it  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  all  her  admirers.  Mrs.  Pennell 
quotes  Southey's saying  that*' Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft was  but  beginning  to  reason 
when  she  died."  She  had  certainly  not 
begun  to  reason  when  she  blamed  Imlay, 
and  considered  herself  a  wronged  woman 
because  he  had  acted  as  her  disciple,  and 
owned  no  obligation  save  to  his  own 
emotional  instincts.  He  may  have  been 
worthy  of  blame ;  and  for  my  part  I,  with 
probably  the  majority  of  my  readers,  must 
regard  hi'm  as  a  heartless  brute ;  but  I  do 
not  think  that  any  one  who  echoes  my 
verdict  with  one  breath,  and  justifies  Mary 
Wollstonecraft' s  theory  and  practice  with 
another,  can  be  credited  with  a  severely 
logical  mind. — Noble,  James  Ashcroft, 
1885,  Mary  Wollstonecraft  Godwin,  The 
Academy,  vol.  28,  p.  55. 

Who  shall  paint  her  as  she  was,  without 
distortion,  without  idealization?  This 
beautiful  woman,  with  her  "Titianesque" 
coloring,  her  careless  dress,  and  habits 
frugal  that  she  might  be  generous — with 
her  quick  temper,  sensitiveness,  pride, 
inconsistency,  deep  personal  tenderness; 


with  her  melancholy,  and  her  misunder- 
stood religious  enthusiasm ;  this  daughter 
of  the  Revolution,  her  strong  head  crowded 
with  theories— some  of  them,  one  would 
think,  to  be  beaten  out  of  it  by  all  the 
waves  and  billows  that  went  over  her. 
But  not  so;  the  circumstances  of  her 
marriage  with  Godwin,  the  tendency  of  the 
work  done  during  the  brief  remainder  of 
her  life,  show  us  that  we  must  add  tenacity 
to  her  characteristics.  This  creature, 
now  coarse,  now  fine,  now  harsh,  and  now 
all  pity, — who  shall  explore  her  strength 
and  weakness,  her  deeps  and  shallows? 
It  is  natural  that  in  an  age  better  calcu- 
lated to  understand  her  motives  than  that 
in  which  she  lived,  a  vindicator  should 
have  arisen  to  call  up  out  of  the  past,  by 
the  name  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  a  spirit 
radiant  and  purified,  like  the  soul  of  lanthe 
in  "Queen  Mab,"  from  every  stain  of 
earthliness.  But  to  make  the  woman  her- 
self live  before  us,  as  she  lived  in  Paris,  in 
London,  in  those  strange  days  of  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century — that  would  be 
a  task  for  a  pen  that  has  dealt  with  char- 
acter under  somewhat  similar  conditions 
—  the  pen  of  Ivan  Turgenef. —  Cone, 
Helen  Gray,  and  Gilder,  Jeannette  L., 
1887,  Pen-Portraits  of  Literary  Women, 
vol  I,  p.  84. 

Her  books  show  some  genuine  eloquence, 
though  occasionally  injured  by  the  stilted 
sentimentalism  of  the  time.  The  letters 
are  pathetic  from  the  melancholy  story 
which  they  reveal.  Her  faults  were  such 
as  might  be  expected  from  a  follower  of 
Rousseau,  and  were  consistent  with  much 
unselfishness  and  nobility  of  sentiment, 
though  one  could  wish  that  her  love-affairs 
had  been  more  delicate. — Stephen,  Les- 
lie, 1890,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XXII,  p.  61. 

She  v^as  rather  hardly  treated  in  her 
own  time;  Horace  Walpole  calling  her,  it 
is  said  (I  have  not  verified  the  quotation), 
a ''hyena  in  petticoats:"  it  would  be  at 
least  as  just  to  call  Lord  Orford  a  baboon 
in  breeches.  And  though  of  late  years 
she  has  been  made  something  of  a  heroine, 
it  is  to  be  feared  that  admiration  has  been 
directed  rather  to  her  crotchets  than  to 
her  character.  This  last  appears  to  have 
been  as  lovable  as  her  hap  was  ill.  .  .  . 
She  had  but  ill  luck  in  her  life,  and  per- 
haps showed  no  very  good  judgment  in 
letters,  but  she  had  neither  bad  brains  nor 


MARY  WOLLSTONECRAFT  GODWIN 


329 


bad  blood ;  and  the  references  to  her,  long 
after  her  death,  by  such  men  as  Southey, 
show  the  charm  which  she  exercised. — 
Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A  History  of 
Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  pp.  37,  38. 

VINDICATION  OF  THE  RIGHTS  OF 
WOMAN 
1793 

I  have  seen  Mary  Woolstonecroft's  book, 
which  is  much  run  after  here.  ...  It 
has  produced  no  other  conviction  in  my 
mind,  but  that  of  the  author's  possessing 
considerable  abilities,  and  greatly  misap- 
plying them.  To  refute  her  arguments 
would  be  to  write  another  and  a  larger 
book;  for  there  is  more  pains  and  skill 
required  to  refute  ill-founded  assertions, 
than  to  make  them.  Nothing  can  be  more 
specious  and  plausible,  for  nothing  can 
delight  Misses  more  than  to  tell  them  they 
are  as  wise  as  their  masters.  Though, 
after  all,  they  will  in  every  emergency  be 
like  Trinculo  in  the  storm,  when  he  crept 
under  Caliban's  gaberdine  for  shelter.  I 
consider  this  work  as  every  way  dangerous. 
First,  because  the  author,  to  considerable 
powers  adds  feeling,  and  I  dare  say  a  degree 
of  rectitude  of  intention.  She  speaks  from 
conviction  on  her  own  part,  and  has  com- 
pletely imposed  on  herself  before  she  at- 
tempts to  mislead  you.  Then  because  she 
speaks  in  such  a  strain  of  seeming  piety,  and 
quotes  Scripture  in  a  manner  so  applicable 
and  emphatic,  that  you  are  thrown  off  your 
guard,  and  surprised  into  partial  acquies- 
cence, before  you  observe  that  the  deduc- 
tion to  be  drawn  from  her  position,  is  in 
direct  contradiction,  not  only  to  Scripture, 
reason,  the  common-sense  and  universal 
custom  of  the  world,  but  even  to  parts  of 
her  own  system,  and  many  of  her  own 
assertions.  —  Grant,  Anne,  1794,  To 
Miss  Ourry,  Jan.  2;  Letters  from  the 
Mountains,  vol.  Ii,  p.  268. 

'^The  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of 
Woman"  is  a  very  unequal  performance, 
and  eminently  deficient  in  method  and  ar- 
rangement. When  tried  by  the  hoary  and 
long-established  laws  of  literary  composi- 
tion, it  can  scarcely  maintain  its  claim  to 
be  placed  in  the  class  of  finished  produc- 
tions. But,  when  we  consider  the  import- 
ance of  its  doctrines,  and  the  eminence  of 
genius  it  displays,  it  seems  not  very  im- 
probable that  it  will  be  read  as  long  as  the 
English  language  endures.  The  publica- 
tion of  this  book  forms  an  epocha  in  the 


subject  to  which  it  belongs;  and  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  will  perhaps  hereafter  be 
found  to  have  performed  more  substantial 
service  for  the  cause  of  her  sex,  than  all 
the  other  writers,  male  or  female,  that 
ever  felt  themselves  animated  by  the  con- 
templation of  their  oppressed  and  injured 
state. — Godwin,  William,  1798,  Mem- 
oirs of  the  Author  of  a  Vindication  of  the 
Rights  of  Woman,  p.  83. 

The  faults  of  the  book  are  grave  over 
and  above  those  of  the  time;  it  is  ill- 
considered,  hasty,  and  rash,  but  its  merits 
are  great  also ;  there  is  much  that  is  valu- 
able for  these  days  also — it  is  fresh,  vigor- 
ous, and  eloquent,  and  most  remarkable  as 
the  herald  of  the  demand  not  even  yet 
wholly  conceded  by  all,  that  woman  should 
be  the  equal  and  friend,  not  the  slave  and 
the  toy  of  man.  .  .  .  Opposed  as  were 
her  views  to  those  of  the  majority  of 
women  in  her  own,  and  even  in  this  day, 
yet  they  were  those  which  now  are,  except 
on  one  point,  held  by  very  many  cultivated 
women,  without  a  shadow  of  blame  attach- 
ing to  them.  Her  opinions  on  the  equality 
of  the  sexes,  on  the  social  and  political 
position  of  women,  might  now  be  held 
without  remark,  and  it  would  not  be  too 
much  to  say  that  she  was  simply  in  advance 
of  her  age  in  giving  expression  on  those 
subjects  to  thoughts  which  are  held  in- 
creasingly by  men  and  women  of  advanced 
political  views,  but  of  many  shades  of  de- 
vout religion.  On  the  question  alone  of 
the  relation  of  the  sexes,  there  is  no  indica- 
tion of  any  approximation  to  her  theories. 
Her  view  had  now  become  that  mutual 
affection  was  marriage,  and  that  the  mar- 
riage tie  should  not  bind  after  the  death 
of  love,  if  love  should  die. — Paul,  C. 
Keg  AN,  1876,  William  Godwin:  His 
Friends  and  Contemporaries,  vol.  I,  pp, 
203,  213. 

To  say  that  her  drunken  father  was  the 
reason  why  Mary  Wollstonecraft  wrote  the 

Rights  of  Women"  would  be  too  strong 
an  accusation;  but  this  circumstance 
evidently  brought  a  painful  struggle  into 
her  life.  And  one  of  her  sisters,  the  pretty 
one,  the  beauty  of  the  family,  ''poor 
Bess,"  made  an  unhappy  marriage,  and 
had  to  be  taken  out  of  her  husband's 
clutches  almost  in  a  state  of  frenzy  by 
Mary  herself.  Thus  degraded  by  the  be- 
sotted folly  of  one  man,  and  driven  into 
energetic  action  by  the  unkindness  of 


330 


MARY  WOLLSTONECRAFT  GODWIN 


another,  she  certainly  was.  And  it  was  not 
till  after  nearly  ten  years^  experience  of 
the  ''slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  for- 
tune" that  she  put  forth  the  book  which  was 
the  first  word  of  a  long  controversy.  .  .  . 
The  woman  who  wrote  this  book  was  not 
an  abstract  personage,  or  one  of  the  class 
which  is  called  strong-minded.  .  .  . 
Mary  Wollstonecraft's  plea  for  women  is 
of  the  mildest  description.  She  vindicates 
their  right  to  be  considered  as  human 
creatures,  bound  by  the  general  laws  of 
truth  and  honour,  and  with  a  generous 
vehemence  assails  the  sentimental  teach- 
ings of  Rousseau  and  of  the  more  virtuous 
moralists— Gregory,  Fordyce,  and  even 
Mrs.  Chapone — who  take  it  for  granted 
that  the  highest  mission  of  a  woman  is'* to 
please, ' '  and  excuse  in  her,  nay,  recommend 
to  her,  those  arts  by  which  she  can  govern 
while  appearing  to  obey.  All  that  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  asks  is  education  for  her 
clients  and  an  exemption  from  that  false 
and  mawkish  teaching  specially  addressed 
to  "the  fair,"  in  which  the  eighteenth 
century  was  so  rich,  and  which  has  not 
quite  died  out,  even  among  ourselves. — 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  The 
Literary  History  of  England^  XVIII-XIX 
Century,  pp.  209,  210. 

A  plainness  of  speech,  amounting  in 
some  places  to  coarseness,  and  a  deeply 
religious  tone,  are  to  many  modern  readers 
the  most  curious  features  of  the  book.  .  .  . 
A  century  ago  men  and  women  were  more 
straightforward  in  their  speech  than  we 
are  to-day.  They  were  not  squeamish.  .  .  . 
Therefore,  when  it  came  to  serious  discus- 
sions for  moral  purposes,  there  was  little 
reason  for  writers  to  be  timid.  .  .  . 
Hers  is  the  plain  speaking  of  the  Jewish 
law-giver,  who  has  for  end  the  good  of  man ; 
and  not  that  of  an  Aretino,  who  rejoices  in 
it  for  its  own  sake.  Even  more  remarka- 
ble than  this  boldness  of  expression  is  the 
strong  vein  of  piety  running  through  her 
arguments.  Religion  was  to  her  as  im- 
portant as  it  was  to  a  Wesley  or  a  Bishop 
Watts.  The  equality  of  man,  in  her  eyes, 
would  have  been  of  small  importance  had 
it  not  been  instituted  by  man's  Creator. 
.  .  .  If  women  were  without  souls, 
they  would,  notwithstanding  their  intel- 
lects, have  no  rights  to  vindicate.  If  the 
Christian  heaven  were  like  the  Mahometan 
paradise,  then  they  might  indeed  be  looked 
upon  as  slaves  and  playthings  of  beings  who 


are  worthy  of  a  future  life,  and  hence  are 
infinitely  their  superiors.  But,  though 
sincerely  pious,  she  despised  the  meaning- 
less forms  of  religion  as  much  as  she  did 
social  conventionalities,  and  was  as  free 
in  denouncing  them. — Pennell,  Eliza- 
beth Robins,  1884,  ]jiary  Wollstonecraft 
(Famous  Women),  pp.  162,  163. 

The  "Vindication  of  the  Rights  of 
Woman, "  on  which  Mary  Wollstonecraft^s 
fame  as  an  author  almost  wholly  rests,  is 
in  some  ways  a  book  nearly  as  faulty  as  it 
can  be.  It  is  not  well-written ;  it  is  full 
of  prejudices  quite  as  wrong-headed  as 
those  it  combats;  it  shows  very  little 
knowledge  either  of  human  nature  or  of 
good  society;  and  its  "niceness,"  to  use 
the  word  in  what  was  then  its  proper  sense, 
often  goes  near  to  the  nasty.  But  its  pro- 
test on  the  one  hand  against  the  "proper" 
sentimentality  of  such  English  guides  of 
female  youth  as  Drs.  Fordyce  and  Greg- 
ory, on  the  other  against  the  "improper" 
sentimentality  of  Rousseau,  is  genuine  and 
generous.  Many  of  its  positions  and  con- 
tentions may  be  accepted  unhesitatingly 
to-day  by  those  who  are  by  no  means 
enamoured  of  advanced  womanhood :  and 
Mary,  as  contrasted  with  most  of  her 
rights-of-woman  followers,  is  curiously 
free  from  bumptiousness  and  the  general 
qualities  of  the  virago. — Saintsbury, 
George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  p.  38. 

It  was  not  an  able  book,  and  grave  faults 
and  frailties  that  clouded  that  later  life  of 
the  authoress  did  much  to  discredit  it,  but 
in  its  general  tendency  it  is  far  from  ex- 
travagant or  revolutionary.  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft indulges  in  none  of  those  attacks 
on  marriage  which  have  sometimes  been 
connected  with  the  movement.  She  speaks 
of  it  with  reverence,  as  "the  foundation 
of  almost  every  social  virtue. ' '  She  dwells 
on  the  transcendent  importance  of  chastity 
and  morality,  and  on  the  essentially  domes- 
tic character  of  the  chief  duties  of  women ; 
and  although  she  desires  to  assimilate  in  a 
great  measure  the  tastes  and  studies  of  the 
two  sexes,  it  is  worthy  of  notice  that  she 
expresses  a  strong  antipathy  to  women 
who  are  addicted  to  field  sports.  .  .  . 
These  views  would  not  now  appear  very 
startling,  and  it  is  difficult  to  realise  the 
indignaiton  they  aroused.  The  political 
aspect  of  the  case  was  only  touched  at 
rare  intervals.— Lecky,  William  Edward 


MARY  WOLLSTONECRAFT  GODWIN 


331 


Hartpole,  1896,  Democracy  and  Liberty, 
vol.  II,  pp.  507,  509. 

GENERAL 

The  story  that  follows  is  an  old  one. 
Captain  Imlay,  whose  name  no  generous 
mind  who  reads  the  following  letters  can 
ever  hear  mentioned  without  execration, 
took  advantage  of  the  ardent  and  tender 
heart  which  threw  itself  trustfully  into 
his  keeping.  She  considered  herself  his 
wife  until  death.  He  also  addressed  her, 
both  by  letters  of  affection  and  busi- 
ness, as  his  ''beloved  wife."  But  when 
absence,  and  other  attractions  which  came 
during  absence,  asserted  themselves  over 
the  shallow  and  base  nature  of  the  man, 
his  affection  began  to  wane.  It  is  touch- 
ing to  trace  the  heart  of  the  woman  in 
these  letters,  and  to  see  how  it  asserts 
itself  over  all  her  theories.  She  pours 
out  to  him  her  love,  her  reproaches,  her 
fears,  in  words  that  seem  written  in 
"heart's  blood  turned  to  tears."  It  is  touch- 
ing also  to  read  her  first  vague  conscious- 
ness of  the  distinction  between  such  a  love 
as  she  felt  and  that  of  which  he  was  only 
capable.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  out- 
side Hood's  ''Bridge  of  Sighs"  which  can 
parallel  in  sadness  the  description  of  the 
poor  wretch  as  she  stood  on  Putney  Bridge, 
in  a  soaking  rain,  waiting  till  her  clothes 
should  be  so  saturated  that  they  would 
more  quickly  "drag  her  down  to  muddy 
death."  She  was  rescued,  however,  by 
a  Thames  boatman  before  life  was  gone, 
and  was  restored  to  her  misery.  .  .  . 
Like  the  letters  of  Vanessa  to  Swift,  or  of 
Keats  to  Fanny  Brawne,  they  are  too 
sacred  for  the  vulgar  eye,  and  ought  to  be 
read  only  by  those  who  have  hearts  to  feel 
for  such  suffering  and  such  heart-break  as 
is  here  made  palpable  upon  the  lifeless 
pages. — Richardson,  Abby  Sage,  1882, 
ed.y  Old  Love-Letters,  pp.  110,  111,  112. 

Few  women  have  worked  so  faithfully 
for  the  cause  of  humanity  as  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft,and  few  have  been  the  objects  of 
such  bitter  censure.  She  devoted  herself 
to  the  relief  of  her  suffering  fellow-beings 
with  the  ardor  of  a  Saint  Vincent  de  Paul, 
and  in  return  she  was  considered  by  them 
a  moral  scourge  of  God.  Because  she  had 
the  courage  to  express  opinions  new  to  her 
generation,  and  the  independence  to  live 
according  to  her  own  standard  of  right 
and  wrong,  she  was  denounced  as  another 
Messalina.    The  5^oung  were  bidden  not  to 


read  her  books,  and  the  more  mature 
warned  not  to  follow  her  example,  the 
miseries  she  endured  being  declared  the 
just  retribution  of  her  actions.  Indeed, 
the  infamy  attached  to  her  name  is  almost 
incredible  in  the  present  age,  when  new 
theories  are  more  patiently  criticised,  and 
when  purity  of  motive  has  been  accepted 
as  the  vindication  of  at  least  one  well- 
known  breach  of  social  laws.  .  .  .  The 
mere  admiration  of  Southey  and  Shelley 
had  little  weight  against  popular  prej- 
udice. Year  by  year  Mary's  books,  like 
so  many  other  literary  productions,  were 
less  frequently  read,  and  the  prediction 
that  in  another  generation  her  name  would 
be  unknown  bade  fair  to  be  fulfilled.  But 
the  latest  of  her  admirers,  Mr.  Kegan 
Paul,  has,  by  his  zealous  efforts  in  her 
behalf,  succeeded  in  vindicating  her  char- 
acter and  reviving  interest  in  her  writings. 
By  his  careful  history  of  her  life,  and 
noble  words  in  her  defence,  he  has  re- 
established her  reputation.  .  .  .  She 
lived  a  century  too  soon. —  Pennell, 
Elizabeth  Robins,  1884,  Life  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  (Famous  Women),  pp.  1, 
10,  269. 

Some  of  the  coarseness  of  this  censor  of 
her  sex  may,  no  doubt,  be  regarded  as  a 
mere  affair  of  superficial  style,  and  w'as 
referable  to  the  tone  of  the  coteries  in 
which  she  had  been  living  for  several 
years: — the  coteries  of  Philosophical 
Radicalism,  where  speech  was  even  more 
free  than  thought.  But  some  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft's  coarseness  was  due  to 
natural  want  of  refinement  and  a  vein  of 
vulgarity  that,  instead  of  playing  only  on 
the  surface  of  her  life,  had  its  source  in 
the  depths  of  her  soul.  Her  view  of  men 
and  their  feelings  was  as  sordid  as  her 
view  of  women  and  their  failings.  Her 
conception  of  love  as  a  force  in  human 
affairs  would  have  discredited  a  chamber- 
maid.— Jeaffreson,  John  Cordy,  1885, 
The  Real  Shelley,  vol.  ii,  p.  25. 

The  works  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft  dis- 
play unusual  versatility  of  mental  powers. 
She  was  able  to  turn  her  mind  to  new 
tasks  in  a  way  that  made  her  eminent  in 
several  directions.  She  may  be  classed 
among  pedagogical  writers,  but  she  also 
wTote  on  historical  subjects  and  took 
part  in  discussions  in  political  principles. 
She  wrote  fiction,  and  her  letters  descrip- 
tive of  experiences  in  travel,  and  letters 


332 


GODWIN— WILKES 


personal,  take  a  high  rank  even  to  this  derived  from  originality  of  conception, 

day,  among  productions  of  that  kind,  which  helped  to  carry  forward  an  historic 

And    more  than  all  this,  her  genius  movement.  —  Rauschenbusch  -  Clough, 

furnished,  in  her  ''Vindication  of  the  Emma,  1898,  A  Study  of  Mary  Wollstone- 

Rights  of  Woman,"  the  motive  power,  craft  and  the  Bights  of  Woman,  p.  24:, 


John  Wilkes 

1727-1797 

Born,  in  Clerkenwell,  17  Oct.  1727.  Early  education  at  schools  at  Hertford  and 
Thame.  Afterwards  at  Leyden  University.  Returned  to  England,  1749.  Married 
Miss  Mead,  Oct.  1749;  separated  from  her  soon  afterwards.  M.  P.  for  Aylesbury, 
1757-64.  Edited  (and  wrote)  "The  North  Briton,"  1762-63.  Expelled  from  House 
of  Commons  (for  attack  on  the  king  in  No.  45  of  "The  North  Briton"),  19  Jan.  1764. 
M.  P.  for  Middlesex,  1^68.  Expelled  from  House  for  his  part  in  the  publication  of  a 
letter  of  Lord  Weymouth's,  27  Jan.  1769.  Re-elected  M.  P.  for  Middlesex,  16  Feb. 
1769 ;  re-expelled,  17  Feb.  Re-elected,  16  March ;  re-expelled,  17  March.  Re-elected, 
13  April;  unseated,  15  April.  Alderman  of  Farringdon  Without,  2  Jan.  1769. 
Sheriff,  1771.  M.  P.  for  Middlesex,  1774.  Lord  Mayor,  1774;  Chamberlain  of  Lon- 
don, 1779-97.  Died  in  London,  25  Dec.  1797.  Buried  in  South  Audley  Street  Church. 
Works:  (Exclusive  of  separate  speeches) :  "Observations  on  the  Papers  relative  to 
the  Rupture  with  Spain"  (anon.),  1762;  "The  North  Briton"  (2  vols.),  1763;  "An 
Essay  on  Woman"  (anon. ;  priv.  ptd.),  1763;  "Recherches  sur  Porigine  du  Despotisme 
Oriental,"  1763;  "The  Present  Crisis"  (anon.),  1764:  "Letter  to  the  Worthy  Electors 
of  .  .  .  Aylesbury, "  1764 ;  "Letter  to  a  Noble  Member  of  the  Club  in  Albemarle 
Street,"  1764;  "Letter  to  .  .  .  the  Duke  of  Grafton"  (anon.),  1767  (8th  edn.  same 
year) ;  "The  History  of  England"  (only  the  "Introduction"  pubd.),  1768;  "Addresses 
to  the  Gentlemen  ...  of  Middlesex,"  1769;  "A  Letter  to  Samuel  Johnson, 
LL.D."  (anon.),  1770;  "Controversial  Letters, "  1771 ;  "Speeches,"  1786.  Post- 
humous: "Letters  ...  to  his  Daughter"  (4  vols.),  1804;  "Correspondence," 
ed.  by  J.  Almon,  1805.  He  edited  "Catullus"  (priv.  ptd.),  1788;  "'©eoc^pao-rov 
Xa/oaxrrype? 'H^tKot"  (priv.  ptd.),  1790;  ''Supplement  to  the  Miscellaneous  Works  of  Mr. 
Gibbon,"  1796.  Life:  by  P.  Fitzgerald,  1888.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A 
Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  301. 


PERSONAL 
On  the  first  Sunday  evening  I  was  in 
Leyden,  I  walked  round  the  Cingle — a  fine 
walk  on  the  outside  of  the  Rhine,  which 
formed  the  wet  ditch  of  the  town — with 
John  Gregory,  who  introduced  me  to 
the  British  students  as  we  met  them,  not 
without  giving  me  a  short  character  of 
them,  which  I  found  ifl  general  a  very 
just  outline.  When  we  came  to  John 
Wilkes,  whose  ugly  countenance  in  early 
youth  was  very  striking,  I  asked  earnestly 
who  he  was.  His  answer  was,  that  he  was 
the  son  of  a  London  distiller  or  brewer, 
who  wanted  to  be  a  fine  gentleman  and 
man  of  taste,  which  he  could  never  be, 
for  God  and  nature  had  been  against  him. 
I  came  to  know  Wilkes  very  well  after- 
wards, and  found  him  to  be  a  sprightly, 
entertaining  fellow, — too  much  so  for  his 
years,  as  he  was  but  eighteen ;  for  even 
then  he  showed  something  of  daring 
profligacy,  for  which  he  was  afterwards 


notorious.  Though  he  was  fond  of  learn- 
ing, and  passionately  desirous  of  being 
thought  something  extraordinary,  he  was 
unlucky  in  having  an  old,  ignorant  pedant 
of  a  dissenting  parson  for  his  tutor. — 
Carlyle,  Alexander,  1745-1860,  Auto- 
biography, p.  137. 

He  had  such  a  flow  of  spirits  that  it  was 
impossible  ever  to  be  a  moment  dull  in  his 
company.  His  wit  gave  charm  to  every 
subject  he  spoke  upon,  and  his  humour 
displayed  the  foibles  of  mankind  in  such 
colours  as  to  put  folly  even  out  of  counte- 
nance. But  the  same  vanity  which  had 
first  made  him  ambitious  of  entering  into 
this  society,  only  because  it  was  composed 
of  persons  superior  to  his  own  in  life,  and 
still  kept  him  in  it,  though  upon  acquaint- 
ance he  despised  them,  sullied  all  these 
advantages.  His  spirits  were  often 
stretched  to  extravagance  to  overcome 
competition.  His  humour  was  debased  into 
buffoonery,  and  his  wit  was  so  prostituted 


JOHN  WILKES 


333 


to  the  lust  of  applause  that  he  would 
sacrifice  his  best  friend  for  a  scurvy  jest, 
and  wound  the  heart  of  him  whom  he 
would  at  the  very  moment  hazard  his  life 
and  fortune  to  serve,  only  to  raise  a  laugh. 
—Johnstone,  Charles,  1760,  The  Ad- 
ventures of  a  Guinea. 

Colonel  Wilkes,  of  the  Buckinghamshire 
Militia,  dined  with  us.  ...  1  scarcely 
ever  met  with  a  better  companion;  he 
has  inexhaustible  spirits,  infinite  wit  and 
humour,  and  a  great  deal  of  knowledge. 
.  .  .  He  told  us  himself,  that  in  this 
time  of  public  dissension,  he  was  resolved 
to  make  his  fortune.— Gibbon,  Edward, 
1762,  Memoir Sy  Journal,  Sep.  23. 

With  good  and  honest  men 
His  actions  speak  much  stronger  than  my 
pen, 

And  future  ages  shall  his  name  adore, 
When  he  can  act  and  I  can  write  no  more. 
England  may  prove  ungrateful  and  unjust, 
But  fostering  France  shall  ne'er  betray  her 
trust : 

'Tis  a  brave  debt  which  gods  on  men  impose, 
To  pay  with  praise  the  merit  e'en  of  foes. 
When  the  great  warrior  of  Amilcar's  race 
Made  Rome's  wide  empire  tremble  to  her 
base, 

To  prove  her  virtue,  though  it  gall'd  her 
pride, 

Rome  gave  that  fame  which  Carthage  had 
denied. 

— Churchill,  Charles,  1764,  The  Candi- 
date, Poems,  ed.  Hannay,  vol.  ii,  p.  200. 

Wilkes  is  here,  and  has  been  twice  to 
see  me  in  my  illness.  He  was  very  civil, 
but  1  cannot  say  entertained  me  much.  I 
saw  no  wit ;  his  conversation  shows  how 
little  he  has  lived  in  good  company,  and  the 
chief  turn  of  it  is  the  grossest  bawdy. — 
Walpole,  Horace,  1765,  To  George 
Montagu,  Oct.  16;  Letters,  ed,  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  IV,  p.  421. 

Bristol,  April  lAth. — We  hear  that  on 
Wednesday  next,  being  the  day  of  Mr. 
Wilkes'  enlargement,  forty-five  persons 
are  to  dine  at  the  ''Crown,"  in  the  passage 
leading  from  Btoad  Street  to  Tower  Lane. 
The  entertainment  is  to  consist  of  two 
rounds  of  beef,  of  45  lbs.  each ;  two  legs 
of  veal,  weighing  45  lbs. ;  two  ditto  of 
pork,  45  lbs. ;  a  pig,  roasted,  45  lbs. ; 
two  puddings  of  45  lbs. ;  45  loaves ;  and, 
to  drink,  45  tankards  of  ale.  After 
dinner,  they  are  to  smoke  45  pipes  of 
tobacco,  and  to  drink  45  bowls  of  punch. 
Among  others,  the  following  toasts  are  to 


be  given: — 1.  Long  live  the  King;  2. 
Long  live  the  supporters  of  British 
Liberty ;  3.  The  Magistrates  of  Bristol. 
And  the  dinner  to  be  on  the  table  exactly 
45  minutes  after  two  o'clock. — London 
Public  Adventurer,  1770. 

Did  we  not  hear  so  much  said  of  Jack 
Wilkes,  we  should  think  more  highly  of 
his  conversation.  Jack  has  great  variety 
of  talk.  Jack  is  a  scholar,  and  Jack  has 
the  manners  of  a  gentleman.  But,  after 
hearing  his  name  sounded  from  pole  to 
pole  as  the  phoenix  of  convivial  felicity, 
we  are  disappointed  in  his  company. — 
Johnson,  Samuel,  1777,  Life  by  Boswell, 
ed.  Hill,  vol.  iii,  p.  208. 

Wilkes  desired  that  his  tomb  should  be 
inscribed,  "J.  W.,  a  friend  to  Liberty." 
1  am  glad  he  was  not  ashamed  to  show  a 
little  gratitude  to  her  in  her  old  age ;  for 
she  was  a  great  friend  to  him. — Tooke, 
John  Horne,  1812?  Recollections  by  Sam- 
uel Rogers. 

He  was  really  a  sad  dog,  but  most  de- 
lightfully amusing,  facetious,  witty,  well- 
informed,  and  with  much  various,  though 
not  profound  learning.  He  was  sometimes 
so  intolerably  sarcastic,  and  more  particu- 
larly at  the  expence  of  his  friends  in  the 
city,  that  the  wonder  is,  how  he  could  so 
long  continue  in  their  good  graces. — 
Beloe,  William,  1817,  The  Sexagena- 
rian, vol.  II,  p.  5. 

Wilkes  had,  till  very  lately,  been  known 
chiefly  as  one  of  the  most  profane,  licen- 
tious, and  agreeable  rakes  about  town. 
He  was  a  man  of  taste,  reading,  and  en- 
gaging manners.  His  sprightly  conversa- 
tion was  the  delight  of  green-rooms  and 
taverns,  and  pleased  even  grave  hearers 
when  he  was  sufliiciently  under  restraint  to 
abstain  from  detailing  the  particulars  of 
his  amours  and  from  breaking  jests  on  the 
New  Testament.  His  expensive  debauch- 
eries forced  him  to  have  recourse  to  the 
Jews.  He  was  soon  a  ruined  man,  and 
determined  to  try  his  chance  as  a  political 
adventurer.  In  Parlianemt  he  did  not 
succeed.  His  speaking,  though  pert,  was 
feeble,  and  by  no  means  interested  his 
hearers  so  much  as  to  make  them  forget 
his  face,  which  was  so  hideous  that  the 
caricaturists  were  forced,  in  their  own 
despite,  to  flatter  him.  i\.s  a  \mter  he 
made  a  better  figure.  —  Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1844,  The  Earl  of 
Chatham,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  80,  ^.560. 


334 


JOHN  WILKES 


He  was  clever,  courageous,  unscrupu- 
lous. He  was  a  good  scholar,  expert  in 
resource,  humorous,  witty,  and  a  ready 
master  of  the  arts  of  conversation.  He 
could  ''abate  and  dissolve  a  pompous  gen- 
tleman" with  singular  felicity.  Churchill 
did  not  know  the  crisis  of  his  fortune  that 
had  given  him  to  patriotism.  He  was 
ignorant,  that,  early  in  the  preceding 
year,  after  loss  of  his  last  seven  thousand 
pounds  on  his  seat  of  Aylesbury,  he  had 
made  an  unsuccessful  attempt  upon  the 
Board  of  Trade.  He  was  not  in  his  con- 
fidence when,  a  little  later,  he  offered  to 
compromise  with  the  Government  for  the 
embassy  to  Constantinople.  He  was  dead 
when,  many  years  later,  he  settled  into  a 
quiet  supporter  of  the  most  atrocious  of 
''things  as  they  were."  What  now  pre- 
sented itself  in  the  form  of  Wilkes  to 
Churchill,  had  a  clear  unembarrassed 
front; — passions  unsubdued  as  his  own; 
principles  rather  unfettered  than  de- 
praved; apparent  manliness  of  spirit ;  real 
courage;  scorn  of  conventions;  an  open 
heart  and  a  liberal  hand ;  and  the  capacity 
of  ardent  friendship.  They  entered  at 
once  into  an  extraordinary  alliance,  offen- 
sive and  defensive.  It  is  idle  to  deny 
that  this  has  damaged  Churchill  with  pos- 
terity, and  that  Wilkes  has  carried  his 
advocate  along  with  him  into  the  Limbo  of 
doubtful  reputations.  But  we  will  deny 
the  justice  of  it.— Forster,  John,  1845- 
55,  Charles  Churchill,  p.  51. 

All,  then,  that  we  dare  now  say  of  him 
is,  that  with  all  his  faults  he  was  a  true- 
born  Englishman,  with  the  marking  char- 
acteristics, good  and  bad;  who,  having 
once  taken  up  a  position,  even  though 
driven  to  do  so  by  his  adversary,  would 
maintain  and  defend  it  with  bull-dog  per- 
tinacity, and  at  all  costs,  personal,  political 
and  social.  His  courage  amounted  almost 
to  reckless  daring ;  and  he  would  resent 
an  insult,  whether  it  came  from  a  Chatham, 
a  Grafton,  an  Onslow,  a  Martin,  or  even 
a  Grenville,  though  it  should  cost  him  the 
friendship  of  a  Temple.  He  was  a  good, 
kind,  and  dutiful  son, — a  gentle,  tender, 
and  affectionate  father.  There  is  some- 
thing morally  beautiful  in  the  fact  that 
when  challenged  by  Lord  Talbot,  his  last 
act  before  the  mad  moonlight  devilry  be- 
gan was,  to  write  to  Lord  Temple  thanking 
him  for  the  friendship  which  he  had  ever 
shown  to  him,  and  entreating  as  a  last  and 


crowning  favour,  that  if  he  fell  his  Lord- 
ship and  Lady  Temple  would  superintend 
the  education  of  his  daughter.  Though 
drinking  and  gaming  were  amongst  the 
vices  of  his  age,  he  was  no  gambler, — and 
his  abstinence  was  remarkable  and  a  sub- 
ject of  remark.  He  rose  early  and  read 
diligently.  Indeed,  his  reading  was  ex- 
tensive and  varied  beyond  that  of  most 
men  of  his  age  not  being  professed  schol- 
ars ;  not  merely  in  the  Classics,  which  he 
especially  loved,  but  in  most  of  the  modern 
languages  that  had  a  literature — French, 
Spanish,  and  Italian.  As  the  amusement 
of  his  leisure  hours,  and  of  that  quiet  do- 
mestic life  which  in  truth  he  loved,  he 
published  editions  of  Catullus  and  Theo- 
phrastus,  said  to  be  almost  unrivalled  for 
accuracy — and  translated  Anacreon  so 
well,  that  Dr.  Joseph  Warton,  no  bad 
judge,  pressed  him  to  publish  it. — Dilke, 
Sir  Charles  Wentworth,  1852,  Wilkes, 
The  Papers  of  a  Critic,  vol.  ii,  p.  262. 

One  morning  when  I  was  a  lad,  Wilkes 
came  into  our  banking-house  to  solicit  my 
father's  vote.  My  father  happened  to  be 
out,  and,  I  as  his  representative,  spoke  to 
Wilkes.  At  parting,  Wilkes  shook  hands 
with  me ;  and  I  felt  proud  of  it  for  a  week 
after.  He  was  quite  as  ugly,  and  squinted 
as  much,  as  his  portraits  make  him ;  but 
he  was  very  gentlemanly  in  appearance 
and  manners.  I  think  I  see  him  at  this 
moment,  walking  through  the  crowded 
streets  of  the  city,  as  Chamberlain,  on  his 
way  to  Guildhall,  in  a  scarlet  coat,  military 
boots,  and  a  bag-wig,  —  the  hackney- 
coachman  in  vain  calling  out  to  him,  "A 
coach,  your  honour?" — Rogers,  Samuel, 
1855,  Table-Talk,  p.  42. 

Wilkes  was  without  morals  of  any  kind ; 
and  only  fought  for  "liberty,"  when  there 
was  nothing  to  be  made  by  jobbing. — 
Hannay,  James,  1866,  ed.,  The  Poetical 
Works  of  Charles  Churchill,  Memoir, 
p.  xviii. 

To  attempt  any  analysis  of  such  a  char- 
acter would  be  superfluous ;  it  is  so  patent 
in  his  actions  that  those  who  run  may  read. 
Trickster,  tuft-hunter,  bully,  humbug, 
roue,  false  alike  to  man  and  woman,  friend 
and  foe,  a  sceptic  in  morals,  politics,  and 
religion,  without  honour  or  honesty,  what 
can  be  said  in  his  favour?  Well,  he  had 
courage  enough  to  defend  his  misdeeds, 
was  a  jovial  boon  companion;  and  ugly, 
squinting,  lying,  dishonest,  dissolute  as  he 


JOHN  WILKES 


335 


was,  he  possessed  some  mysterious  kind  of 
fascination  which  few  men  or  women  could 
resist,  and  which  we  feel  even  in  perusing 
the  records  of  his  life.  Such  was  Jack 
Wilkes,  who,  although  a  Model  Dema- 
gogue, at  least  had  little  of  the  bilious 
sourness  of  the  tribe. — Baker,  H.  Bar- 
ton, 1877,  A  Model  Demagogue,  Gentle- 
man^ s  Magazine,  vol.  241,  p.  492. 

John  Wilkes,  who  now  became  one  of 
the  most  prominent  figures  in  English  poli- 
tics, was  at  this  time  in  his  thirty-sixth 
year.  .  .  .  His  countenance  was  re- 
pulsively ugly.  His  life  was  scandalously 
and  notoriously  profligate,  and  he  was 
sometimes  guilty  of  profanity  which  ex- 
ceeded even  that  of  the  vicious  circle  in 
which  he  lived,  but  he  possessed  some 
qualities  which  were  well  fitted  to  secure 
success  in  life.  He  had  a  brilliant  and 
ever  ready  wit,  unflagging  spirits,  unfail- 
ing good  humour,  great  personal  courage, 
much  shrewdness  of  judgment,  much  charm 
of  manner.  The  social  gifts  must  have 
been  indeed  of  no  common  order  which 
half-conquered  the  austere  Toryism  of 
Johnson,  extorted  a  warm  tribute  of  ad- 
miration from  Gibbon,  secured  the  friend- 
ship of  Reynolds,  and  made  the  son  of  a 
London  distiller  a  conspicuous  member  of 
the  Medmenham  Brotherhood,  and  the 
favourite  companion  of  the  more  dissipated 
members  of  the  aristocracy.  —  Lecky, 
William  Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A 
History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  Ill,  ch.  X,  p.  78. 

What  man  was  ever  more  successful  in 
laying  seige  to  female  hearts  than  the 
demagogue  John  Wilkes  ?  He  was  so  ex- 
ceedingly ugly  that  a  lottery-oflice  keeper 
once  offered  him  ten  guineas  not  to  pass 
his  window  while  the  tickets  were  drawing 
for  fear  of  his  bringing  ill-luck  on  the 
house.  Rogers  the  poet,  who  had  seen 
him,  speaks  of  his  ''diabolical  squint." 
Yet,  though  the  ugliest  man  in  England, 
he  was  at  the  same  time  its  most  accom- 
plished intriguer.  He  was  the  Don  Juan 
of  his  day,  sneering  at  the  very  women  he 
subdued.  He  once  boasted  to  Lord  Town- 
shend,  whom  he  admitted  to  be  the  hand- 
somest man  in  the  kingdom,  that,  give  him 
but  a  half  hour's  start,  he  would  enter  the 
lists  against  his  lordship  with  any  woman 
he  might  choose  to  name. — Mathews, 
William,  1887,  Men,  Places  and  Things, 
p.  244. 


His  part  in  public  life  he  played  with 
courage  and  consistency ;  but  there  was  a 
deeper  sense  than  appeared  on  the  surface 
in  his  arch  denial  that  he  was  ever  a 
Wilkite.  By  nature  unquestionably  he 
was  no  demagogue,  but  a  man  of  fashion 
and  a  dilettante ;  nor  did  he  possess  the 
ready  eloquence  which  is  characteristic  of 
the  born  leader  of  the  masses.  His 
speeches  were  always  carefully  prepared, 
and  smelt  too  much  of  the  oil  for  popular 
effect.  He  retained  dilettantism,  and 
especially  his  interest  in  French  and  Italian 
literature  and  painting,  to  the  last. — 
RiGG,  J.  M.,  1900,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  LXi,  p.  249. 

GENERAL 

That  the  paper  entitled  the  North  Briton, 
No.  XLV.  was  a  false,  scandalous,  and 
seditious  libel,  containing  expressions  of 
the  most  unexampled  insolence  and  con- 
tumely towards  his  Majesty,  the  grossest 
aspersions  on  both  houses  of  parliament, 
and  the  most  audacious  defiance  of  the 
authority  of  the  whole  legislature;  and 
most  manifestly  tending  to  alienate  the 
affections  of  the  people  from  his  Majesty, 
to  withdraw  them  from  their  obedience  to 
tlie  laws  of  the  realm,  and  to  excite  them 
to  traitorous  insurrections. — Resolution 
OF  THE  House  op  Commons,  1763. 

The  only  part  of  the  work  [' '  Correspond- 
ence"] we  have  pursued  with  any  degree 
of  amusement,  is  that  which  contains  his 
private  letters  to  Mr.  Cotes  and  his  daugh- 
ter. The  former  give  a  very  lively  and 
undisguised  picture  of  his  feelings  during 
the  period  of  his  persecution  and  popular- 
ity ;  and  afford  some  curious  glimpses  of 
constitutional  gaiety  and  Epicurean  care- 
lessness, in  a  mind  agitated  by  a  fierce 
ambition,  a  distempered  vanity,  and  a 
rancorous  thirst  for  revenge.  The  latter 
are  indulgent,  cheerful,  unconstrained,  and 
every  way  amiable.  Though  written  in 
a  tone  of  a  man  of  the  world,  the  morality 
which  they  inculcate  is  entirely  unexcep- 
tional, and  show  the  author  to  have  been 
susceptible,  in  private  life,  of  better  feel- 
ings and  affections  than  could  be  guessed 
at  from  his  public  appearances. — Jef- 
frey, Francis  Lord,  1805,  Correspond- 
ence and  Memoirs  of  John  Wilkes,  Edin- 
burgh Review,  vol.  5,  p.  488. 

Wilkes's  brilliancy  faded  away  when  he 
proceeded  to  commit  his  thoughts  to  paper, 


336 


JOHN  WILKES 


as  if  it  had  dissolved  itself  in  the  ink.  .  . . 
Some  of  Wilkes's  colloquial  impromptus 
that  have  been  preserved  are  perfect,  con- 
sidered in  themselves,  and  without  regard 
to  the  readiness  with  which  they  may  have 
been  struck  out, — are  so  true  and  deep, 
and  evince  so  keen  a  feeling  at  once  of  the 
ridiculous  and  of  the  real,  — that  one 
wonders  at  finding  so  little  of  the  same 
kind  of  power  in  his  more  deliberate 
efforts.  In  all  his  published  writings  that 
we  have  looked  into — and,  what  with 
essays  and  pamphlets  of  one  kind  and 
another,  they  fill  a  good  many  volumes — 
we  scarcely  recollect  anything  that  either 
in  matter  or  manner  rises  above  the  veriest 
commonplace,  unless  perhaps  it  be  a  char- 
acter of  Lord  Chatham,  occurring  in  a 
letter  addressed  to  the  Duke  of  Grafton, 
some  of  the  biting  things  in  which  are  im- 
pregnated with  rather  a  subtle  venom.  A 
few  of  his  verses  also  have  some  fancy  and 
elegance,  in  the  style  of  Carew  and  Waller. 
But  even  his  private  letters,  of  which  two 
collections  have  been  published,  scarcely 
ever  emit  a  sparkle.  And  his  House  of 
Commons  speeches,  which  he  wrote  before 
hand  and  got  by  heart,  are  equally  unen- 
livened. It  is  evident,  indeed,  that  he  had 
not  intellectual  lung  enough  for  any  pro- 
tracted exertion  or  display.  The  soil  of 
his  mind  was  a  hungry,  unproductive 
gravel,  with  some  gems  embedded  in  it. — 
Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Compendious 
History  of  English  Literature  and  of  the 
English  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  319. 

His  literary  qualifications  have  been  ex- 
tolled beyond  their  desert.  He  has  been 
called  a  good  classical  scholar;  but  his 
reading  in  Latin  was  not  extensive,  and  his 
knowledge  of  Greek  was  evidently  slight. 
His  editorship  of  Catullus  and  Theophras- 
tus  was  merely  nominal ;  such  commenda- 
tion as  the  volumes  merit  belongs  to  the 
printer.  He  seems  to  have  been  incapable 
to  any  sustained  literary  effort.  After  his 
professed  determination  to  give  a  life  and 
edition  of  Churchill  and  a  life  of  Sterne,  it 
might  have  been  thought  that  very  shame 
would  have  urged  him  to  produce  some- 
thing of  those  works ;  but  what  he  did  for 
Churchill  was  nought,  and  Sterne  he 
utterly  neglected.  Of  his  promised  His- 
tory of  England  nothing  was  written  but 
a  short  introduction  in  praise  of  liberty 
and  the  Revolution.  His  few  attempts  at 
verse  are  poor  and  dry. — Watson,  John 


Selby,  1870,  Biographies  of  John  Wilkes 
and  William  Cobbett,  p.  113. 

The  story  of  the  ''Essay  on  Woman" 
is  singular.  He  had  a  private  press  at 
which  he  ordered  that  twelve  copies  only 
of  this  brief  poem  should  be  struck  off,  for 
he  seems  to  have  had  no  idea  of  publishing 
it.  One  of  the  printers  took  one  sheet  of 
it  with  him  to  wrap  some  butter  in.  Hav- 
ing unrolled  the  butter  at  a  friend's  house 
where  he  was  to  sup,  the  friend  read  some 
of  the  verses,  and  finding  them  spicy,  asked 
for  the  paper,  which  he  showed  to  some 
one  else.  The  paper,  passing  from  hand 
to  hand,  found  its  way  to  higher  quarters. 
The  eminent  enemies  of  Wilkes,  anxious 
to  get  hold  of  some  charge  against  him 
which  would  go  down  with  the  public 
better  than  their  political  indictments, 
actually  bribed  the  head  printer  with  a 
place  worth  a  hundred  pounds  per  annum 
to  give  them  a  copy  of  the  whole  poem. 
The  ridicule  it  heaped  on  the  Athanasian 
Creed  Wilkes  justified  by  quoting  Arch- 
bishop Tillotson's  wish  that  the  Church 
were  fairly  rid  of  that  creed ;  and,  with 
regard  to  the  alleged  indecencies  of  other 
portions,  after  making  sundry  cracks  in 
the  glass  houses  in  which  many  of  his  ac- 
cusers dwelt,  he  confessed  that  it  con- 
tained ''a  few  portraits  drawn  from  warm 
life,  with  the  too  high  coloring  of  a  youth- 
ful fancy ;  and  two  or  three  descriptions, 
perhaps  too  luscious,  which,  though  nature 
and  woman  might  pardon,  a  Kidgell  and  a 
Mansfield  could  not  fail  to  condemn." 
Wilkes  does  not  appear  to  have  lost  any 
friends  by  the  publication  of  the  poem 
either  among  men  or  women.  . 
Wilkes  seems  to  have  employed  one-half 
of  his  active  life  writing  the  memoirs  of 
the  other  half.— Conway,  M.  D.,  1870, 
South-coast  Sauntering s  in  England,  Har- 
per's Magazine,  vol.  40,  yp,  373,  374. 

Less  polished  as  a  writer  than  Addison, 
less  incisive  in  attack  than  Junius,  as  good 
a  classic  and  as  much  a  man  of  the  world 
as  the  former,  as  reckless  and  brazen-faced 
as  the  latter,  he  had  the  art  of  stating  a 
case  with  singular  lucidity,  and  of  illustrat- 
ing it  in  a  homely  and  telling  manner.  His 
touch  was  light,  and  his  sarcasm  stinging. 
He  anticipated  Cobbett  in  the  skill  and 
daring  with  which  he  put  and  reiterated  in 
plain  terms  the  most  unpalatable  truths. 
He  was  the  first  political  writer  who 
not  only  applied  to  things  their  proper 


WILKES— HUTTON 


337 


epithets,  but  also  called  persons  by  their 
proper  names.  The  initials  and  innuendoes 
to  which  timorous  journalists  had  resorted, 
he  discarded  and  disowned,  excepting  when 
an  illusion  was  more  effective  than  a 
simple  statement. — Rae,  William  Fra- 
SER,  1873,  WiLkeSy  Sheridan,  Fox,  p.  28. 

With  the  exception  of  the  *' Essay  on 
Woman, which  was  never  meant  to  be 
published,  Wilkes  had  written  nothing 
that  was  not  sound  in  reason,  and  respect- 
ful in  tone.  Number  forty-five  of  the 
North  Briton,  if  it  had  appeared  in  the 
Morning  Chronicle  as  a  leading  article 
at  the  time  when  George  the  Third  dis- 
missed Pitt  and  sent  for  Addington,  or  at 
the  time  when  William  the  Fourth  dis- 
missed the  Whigs  and  sent  for  Peel,  would 
have  been  regarded  as  a  very  passable 
effusion,  rather  old-fashioned  in  the  tender- 
ness with  which  it  treated  the  susceptibili- 
ties of  the  monarch.  Grave  statesmen 
acknowledged  that  Wilkes  in  his  famous 
paper  had  rendered  a  solid  and  permanent 
service  to  the  cause  of  constitutional 
government  by  the  clear  and  attractive 
form  in  which  he  had  laid  down  the  doc- 
trine that  ministers  are  responsible  for  the 
contents  of  the  royal  speech. — Trevel- 
YAN,  George  Otto,  1880,  The  Early  His- 
tory of  Charles  James  Fox,  p.  143. 

Altogether  Mr.  Wilkes  was  one  of  the 
most  important  personages  of  the  last  cen- 
tury. He  wrote  many  letters  of  a  very  free 
and  easy  sort  to  his  daughter  "Polly,"  born 
in  the  year  1750,  to  whom  he  was  without 
doubt  very  greatly  attached.  He  informed 


her  of  his  movements  and  narrated  for  her 
entertainment  much  that  was  lively  and 
laughable.  But  his  letters  are  certainly 
not  of  the  kind  Mrs.  Hester  Chapone  would 
have  approved,  or  the  Reverend  Dr. 
Fordyce  have  addressed  to  young  women, 
or,  for  that  matter,  to  young  men  either. 
— Cook,  Button,  1882,  John  Wilkes  at 
Brighton,  Belgravia,  vol.  47,  p.  295. 

It  has  been  often  repeated  that  The  North 
Briton  was  scarcely  of  sufficient  import- 
ance to  have  excited  the  commotion  it  did, 
and  that  it  would  have  been  more  prudent 
to  have  treated  it  with  contempt.  But  the 
truth  is,  as  we  read  it  now,  it  is  found  to 
be  a  very  stirring,  vigorous  and  dangerous 
opponent,  written  with  much  pungency, 
wit,  and  even  vivacity.  This  may  be  im- 
agined, when  it  is  stated  that  Wilkes  had 
found  so  valuable  a  coadjutor  as  Charles 
Churchill,  who  contributed  not  only  his 
prose  but  also  his  verse.  Wilkes  was 
often  absent,  and  eventually  the  whole 
burden  of  the  paper  fell  upon  Churchill. 
He  must  at  least  have  written  half  of  the 
numbers,  and,  as  Mr.  Forster  says,  'Svhere- 
ever  it  shows  the  coarse,  broad  mark  of 
sincerity,  there  seems  to  us  the  trace  of 
his  hand.''  The  correspondence  between 
them  during  the  progress  of  the  paper 
shows  Wilkes  to  be  full  of  an  unbounded 
admiration  for  his  friend's  powers,  and  his 
gratitude  for  his  assistance  corresponds 
with  his  generous  appreciation,  which 
certainly  was  beyond  the  merits  of  the 
work. — Fitzgerald,  Percy,  1888,  The 
Life  and  Times  of  John  Wilkes,  vol.  i,  p.  74. 


James  Hutton 

1726-1797 

One  of  the  founders  of  geology,  was  born  at  Edinburgh.  He  studied  medicine  there, 
in  Paris,  and  at  Leyden,  but  in  1754  settled  in  Berwickshire  and  devoted  himself  to 
agriculture  and  chemisty,  from  which  he  was  led  to  minerology  and  geology ;  in  1768 
he  removed  to  Edinburgh.  The  Huttonian  theory,  emphasising  the  igneous  origin  of 
many  rocks  and  deprecating  the  hypothetical  assumption  of  other  causes  than  those 
we  see  still  at  work,  was  expounded  in  two  papers  read  before  the  Royal  Society  of 
Edinburgh,  ''A  Theory  of  the  Earth"  (1785)  and  ''A  Theory  of  Rain"  (1784).  The 
former  was  afterwards  expanded  into  two  volumes  (1795).  He  also  wrote  ''Disserta- 
tions in  Natural  Philosophy"  (1792),  ''Considerations  on  the  Nature  of  Coal  and 
Culm"  (1777),  and  other  works.— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's 
Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  515. 


PERSON  A.L 
To  his  friends  his  conversation  was  in- 
estimable ;  as  great  talents,  the  most  per- 
fect candour,  and  the  utmost  simplicity  of 
character  and  manners,  all  united  to  stamp 

22  c 


a  value  upon  it.  He  had,  indeed,  that 
genuine  simplicity,  originating  in  the 
absence  of  all  selfishness  and  vanity,  by 
which  a  man  loses  sight  of  himself  alto- 
gether, and  neither  conceals  what  is, 


338 


JAMES  HUTTON 


nor  affects  what  is  not.  This  simplicity 
prevaded  his  whole  conduct;  while  his 
manner,  which  was  peculiar,  but  highly 
pleasing,  displayed  a  degree  of  vivacity 
hardly  ever  to  be  found  among  men  of 
profound  and  abstract  speculation.  His 
great  liveliness,  added  to  this  aptness  to 
lose  sight  of  himself,  would  sometimes  lead 
him  into  little  eccentricities,  that  formed 
an  amusing  contrast  with  the  graver  habits 
of  a  philosophic  life.  .  .  .  His  con- 
versation was  extremely  animated  and  for- 
cible, and,  whether  serious  or  gay,  full  of 
ingenious  and  original  observation.  .  .  . 
His  figure  was  slender,  but  indicated  ac- 
tivity ;  while  a  thin  countenance,  a  high 
forehead,  and  a  nose  somewhat  aquiline, 
bespoke  extraordinary  acuteness  and  vig- 
our of  mind.  His  eye  was  penetrating 
and  keen,  but  full  of  gentleness  and  benig- 
nity ;  and  even  his  dress,  plain,  and  all  of 
one  colour,  was  in  perfect  harmony  with 
the  rest  of  the  picture,  and  seemed  to 
give  a  fuller  relief  to  its  characteristic 
features. — Playfair,  John,  1805,  Bio- 
graphical  Account  of  James  Hutton,  M.  D,, 
Works,  vol.  IV,  pp.  110,  111. 

Hutton  was  slender,  but  active,  thin- 
faced,  with  a  high  forehead,  acquiline 
nose,  keen  and  penetrating  eyes,  and  a 
general  expression  of  benevolence.  His 
dress  was  very  plain.  His  portrait  was 
painted  by  Raeburn  for  John  Davidson  of 
Stewartfield.  Upright,  candid,  humane, 
and  a  true  friend,  he  was  very  cheerful  in 
company,  whether  social  or  scientific,  and 
was,  like  Adam  Smith  and  Joseph  Black,  a 
leading  member  of  the  Oyster  Club." 
Playfair  draws  an  interesting  contrast 
(Biography  of  Hufton,  pp.  58,  59),  between 
Hutton  and  his  friend  Black,  to  whom,  as 
well  as  to  John  Clerk  of  Eldin,  he  owed 
many  valuable  suggestions. — Bettany, 
G.  T.,  1891,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XXVIII,  p.  355. 

GENERAL 

It  might  have  been  expected,  when  a 
work  of  so  much  originality  as  this '  'Theory 
of  the  Earth"  was  given  to  the  world,  a 
theory  which  professed  to  be  the  result  of 
such  an  ample  and  accurate  induction,  and 
which  opened  up  so  many  views,  interest- 
ing not  to  mineralogy  alone,  but  to  philos- 
ophy in  general,  that  it  would  have  pro- 
duced a  sudden  and  visible  effect,  and  that 
men  of  science  would  have  been  every- 
where eager  to  decide  concerning  its  real 


value.  Yet  the  truth  is,  that  it  drew 
their  attention  very  slowly,  so  that  several 
years  elapsed  before  any  one  showed  him- 
self publicly  concerned  about  it,  either  as 
an  enemy  or  a  friend.  .  .  .  Truth,  how- 
ever, forces  me  to  add,  that  other  reasons 
certainly  contributed  not  a  little  to  pre- 
vent Dr.  Hutton's  theory  from  making  a  due 
impression  on  the  world.  It  was  proposed 
too  briefly,  and  with  too  little  detail  of 
facts,  for  a  system  which  involved  so  much 
that  was  new,  and  opposite  to  the  opinions 
generally  received.  The  descriptions 
which  it  contains  of  the  phenomena  of 
geology,  suppose  in  the  reader  too  great  a 
knowledge  of  the  things  described.  The 
reasoning  is  sometimes  embarrassed  by  the 
care  taken  to  render  it  strictly  logical;  • 
and  the  transitions,  from  the  author's 
peculiar  notions  of  arrangement,  are  often 
unexpected  and  abrupt.  These  defects 
run  more  or  less  through  all  Dr.  Hutton's 
writings,  and  produce  a  degree  of  obscu- 
rity astonishing  to  those  who  knew  him,  and 
who  heard  him  every  day  converse  with  no 
less  clearness  and  precision,  than  anima- 
tion and  force.  From  whatever  causes  the 
want  of  perspicuity  in  his  writings  pro- 
ceed, perplexity  of  thought  was  not  among 
the  number ;  and  the  confusion  of  his  ideas 
can  neither  be  urged  as  an  apology  for 
himself,  nor  as  a  consolation  to  his  read- 
ers.— Playfair,  John,  1805,  Biographical 
Account  of  James  Hutton,  M.  D.,  Works, 
vol.  IV,  pp.  63,  64. 

Meanwhile  Hutton,  a  contemporary  of 
Werner,  began  to  teach,  in  Scotland,  that 
granite  as  well  as  trap  was  of  igneous 
origin,  and  had  at  various  periods  intruded 
itself  in  a  fluid  state  into  different  parts 
of  the  earth's  crust.  He  recognized  and 
faithfully  described  many  of  the  phenom- 
ena of  granitic  veins,  and  the  alterations 
produced  by  them  on  the  invaded  strata 
which  will  be  treated  of  in  the  thirty-third 
chapter.  He,  moreover,  advanced  the 
opinion,  that  the  crystalline  strata  called 
primitive  had  not  been  precipitated  from  a 
primaeval  ocean,  but  were  sedimentary 
strata  altered  by  heat.  In  his  writings, 
therefore,  and  in  those  of  his  illustrator, 
Playfair,  we  find  the  germ  of  that  meta- 
morphic  theory. — Lyell,  Sir  Charles, 
1838-55,  A  Manual  of  Elementary  Geo- 
logy, p.  92. 

By  an  idea  entirely  new,  the  illustrious 
Scottish  philosopher  showed  the  successive 


JAMES  BUTTON 


339 


co-operation  of  water  and  the  internal 
heat  of  the  globe  in  the  formation  of 
the  same  rocks.  It  is  the  mark  of  genius 
to  unite  in  one  common  origin  phe- 
nomena very  different  in  their  nature. 

.  Hutton  explains  the  history 
of  the  globe  with  as  much  simplicity  as 
grandeur.  Like  most  men  of  genius,  in- 
deed, who  have  opened  up  new  paths,  he 
exaggerated  the  extent  to  which  his  con- 
ceptions could  be  applied.  But  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  view  with  admiration  the 
profound  penetration  and  the  strictness  of 
induction  of  so  clear-sighted  a  man,  at  a 
time  when  exact  observations  had  been  so 
few,  he  being  the  first  to  recognise  the 
simultaneous  effect  of  water  and  heat  in 
the  formation  of  rocks,  in  imagining  a 
system  which  embraces  the  whole  physical 
system  of  the  globe.  He  established 
principles  which,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
fundamental,  are  now  universally  ad- 
mitted.— Daubree,  Gabriel  Auguste, 
1860,  Essays. 

It  is  not  so  generally  known  that  he 
found  much  satisfaction  in  the  pursuit  of 
metaphysics,  and  is  author  of  an  elaborate 
work  in  three  large  quarto  volumes,  ' '  An 
Investigation  of  the  Principles  of  Knowl- 
edge, and  of  the  Progress  of  Reason  from 
Sense  to  Science  and  Philosophy."  The 
work  is  full  of  awkwardly  constructed 
sentences  and  of  repetitions,  and  it  is  a 
weariness  in  the  extreme  to  read  it.  Yet 
we  are  made  to  feel  at  times  that  these 
thoughts  must  be  profound,  if  only  we 
could  understand  them.  He  certainly 
speculates  on  recondite  subjects,  but  does 
not  throw  much  light  on  them. — McCosH, 
James,  1874,  The  Scottish  Philosophy y 
p.  262. 

But  it  was  not  merely,  or  even  chiefly, 
for  their  exposition  of  the  structure  and 
history  of  the  rocks  under  our  feet  that 
the  geologists  of  the  Scottish  School  de- 
serve to  be  held  in  lasting  remembrance. 
They  could  not,  indeed,  have  advanced  as 
far  as  they  did  in  expounding  former  and 
ancient  conditions  of  the  planet,  had  they 
not,  with  singular  clearness,  perceived  the 
order  and  system  of  change  which  is  in 
progress  over  the  surface  of  the  globe  at 
the  present  day.  It  was  their  teaching 
which  first  led  men  to  see  the  harmony  and 
co-operation  of  the  forces  of  nature  which 
work  within  the  earth,  with  those  which 
are  seen  and  felt  upon  its  surface.  Hutton 


first  caught  the  meaning  of  that  constant 
circulation  of  water  which,  by  means  of 
evaporation,  winds,  clouds,  rain,  snow, 
brooks,  and  rivers,  is  kept  up  between  land 
and  sea.  He  saw  that  the  surface  of  the  dry 
land  is  everywhere  being  wasted  and  worn 
away.  The  scarped  cliff,  the  rugged  glen, 
the  lowland  valley,  are  each  undergoing 
this  process  of  destruction  ;  wherever  land 
rises  above  ocean,  there,  from  mountain- 
top  to  sea-shore,  degradation  is  continually 
going  on.  Here  and  there,  indeed,  the 
debris  of  the  hills  may  be  spread  out  upon 
the  plains;  here  and  there,  too,  dark 
angular  peaks  and  crags  rise  as  they  rose 
centuries  ago,  and  seem  to  defy  the  ele- 
ments. But  these  are  only  apparent  and 
not  real  exceptions  to  the  universal  law, 
that  so  long  as  the  surface  of  land  is  ex- 
posed to  the  atmosphere  it  must  suffer 
degradation  and  removal.  .  .  .  The  men 
were  before  their  time:  and  thus,  while 
the  world  gradually  acknowledged  the 
teaching  of  the  Scottish  school  as  to  the 
past  history  of  the  rocks,  it  lent  an  in- 
credulous ear  to  that  teaching  when  deal- 
ing with  the  present  surface  of  the  earth. 
Even  some  of  the  Huttonians  themselves 
refused  to  follow  their  master  when  he 
sought  to  explain  the  existing  inequalities 
of  the  land  by  the  working  of  the  same 
quiet  unobtrusive  forces  which  are  still 
plying  their  daily  tasks  around  us.  But 
no  incredulity  or  neglect  can  destroy  the 
innate  vitality  of  truth.  And  so  now  after 
the  lapse  of  fully  two  generations,  the 
views  of  Hutton  have  in  recent  years  been 
revived,  and  have  become  the  war-cry  of  a 
yearly  increasing  crowd  of  earnest  hard- 
working geologists. — Geikie,  Archibald, 
1871,  The  Scottish  School  of  Geology,  A 
Lecture,  Nov.  6. 

With  his  true  scientific  spirit  Hutton 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  convulsions 
or  with  the  origin  of  the  globe  ;  he  did  not 
want  to  guess  or  speculate,  but  to  argue 
logically  on  facts  which  anybody  could 
observe.  He  took  geology  out  of  the  age 
of  the  marvellous  and  laid  the  foundations 
of  the  present  aspect  of  the  science.  He 
was  in  no  hurry  to  publish  his  views, 
possibly  because  his  temperament  was 
cautious,  and  possibly  he  was  aware  what 
a  furious  fuss  there  would  be  made  about 
it ;  how  he  would  be  abused,  scolded,  and 
anathematized.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
the  light.s  of  the  age  and  public  opinion 


340 


HUTTON—FARMER 


were  perfectly  incompetent  to  judge  the 
merits  of  such  a  theory ;  they  were  sunken 
in  prejudices,  and  resisted  any  change  of 
opinion.  He  was  aware  that  a  great  out- 
cry would  be  made  by  men  whose  religious 
opinions  were  his  own,  and  whom  he  re- 
spected greatly.  In  fact,  the  world,  just 
before  the  appearance  of  Button's' 'Theory 
of  the  Earth,"  was  less  prepared  for  it  than 
ordinary  opinion  was  for  the  doctrines  of 
Charles  Darwin  one  hundred  years  after- 
wards. The  appearance  of  the  work  of 
this  last  great  naturalist  made,  and  is  still 
making,  a  great  stir,  but  that  of  Button's 
work  was  received,  as  he  anticipated,  with 
incredible  opposition,  by  the  teachers  of 
the  day ;  and  its  slow  acceptation  by  the 
scientific  world  was  remarkable.  No 
abuse  could  efface  its  effects ;  it  was  true, 
and  the  true  alone  lasts ;  it  was  reasonable, 
and  it  was  to  the  glory  of  God. — Duncan, 
P.  Martin,  1882,  Heroes  of  Science,  p.  230. 

Hutton  ranks  as  the  first  great  British 
geologist,  and  the  independent  originator 
of  the  modern  explanation  of  the  phenom- 
ena of  the  earth's  crust  by  means  of 
changes  still  in  progress.    '  *  No  powers, ' ' 


he  says,  ''are  to  be  employed  that  are  not 
natural  to  the  globe,  no  action  to  be  ad- 
mitted of  except  those  of  which  we  know 
the  principle."  He  first  drew  a  marked 
line  between  geology  and  cosmogony. 
He  early  observed  that  a  vast  proportion 
of  the  present  rocks  are  composed  of 
materials  afforded  by  the  destruction  of 
pre-existing  materials.  He  realised  that 
all  the  present  rocks  are  decaying,  and 
their  materials  being  transported  into  the 
ocean ;  that  new  continents  and  tracts  of 
land  have  been  formed  by  elevation,  often 
altered  and  consolidated,  by  volcanic  heat, 
and  afterwards  fractured  and  contorted ; 
and  that  many  masses  of  crystalline  rocks 
are  due  to  the  injection  of  rocks  among 
fractured  strata  in  a  molten  state.  His 
views  on  the  excavation  of  valleys  by 
denudation,  after  being  largely  ignored  by 
Lyell,  have  been  accepted  and  inforced  by 
Ramsay,  A.  Geikie,  and  others.  He  may 
be  considered  as  having  originated  the 
uniformitarian  theory  of  geology  (science 
modified  by  that  of  evolution). — Bettany, 
G.  T.,  1891,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XXVIII,  p.  355. 


Richard  Farmer 

1735-1797 

Shakespearean  scholar ;  born  at  Leicester,  England,  in  1735.  He  was  educated  in 
the  free  grammar  school  of  his  native  town  and  at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge ; 
became  a  classical  tutor  in  the  latter  institution  in  1760,  and  a  master  in  1775,  and 
was  appointed  librarian  at  the  university  in  1778.  He  held  various  benefices  at 
Lichfield,  Canterbury,  and  St.  Paul's,  but  he  twice  declined  the  offer  of  a  bishopric, 
unwilling  to  give  up  the  free-and-easy  life  he  was  used  to.  The  only  monument  of  his 
learning  and  industry  he  has  left  is  his  "Essay  on  the  Learning  of  Shakespeare," 
published  in  1766,  and  afterward  often  reprinted.  Died  at  Cambridge,  Sept.  8,  1797. 
— Adams,  Charles  Kendall,  ed.,  1897,  Johnson's  Universal  Cyclopaedia,  vol.  iii,  p.  289. 


PERSONAL 

When  a  young  man  he  wrote  some  ''Di- 
rections for  Studying  the  English  His- 
tory," which  have  been  printed  in  the 
"European  Magazine"  for  1791  and  in 
Seward's  "Biographiana ;"  but  his  only 
work  of  any  importance  is  the  "Essay  on 
the  Learning  of  Shakespeare."  Invincible 
indolence  prevented  him  from  achieving 
other  literary  triumphs.  He  was  content 
to  be  the  hero  of  a  coterie,  and  to  reign 
supreme  in  a  college  combination-room 
amid  the  delights  of  the  pipe  and  the  bottle. 
To  his  ease  or  his  disappointment  in  love 
may  be  attributed  a  want  of  attention  to 
his  personal  appearance,  and  to  the  usual 


forms  of  behaviour  belonging  to  his  sta- 
tion. In  the  company  of  strangers  ^he 
eccentricity  of  his  appearance  caused  him 
sometimes  to  be  taken  for  a  person  half 
crazed.  There  were  three  things,  it  is 
said,  which  he  loved  above  all  others, 
namely,  old  port,  old  clothes,  and  old 
books;  and  three  things  which  nobody 
could  persuade  him  to  do,  namely,  to  rise 
in  the  morning,  to  go  to  bed  at  night,  and 
to  settle  an  account.  In  his  own  college 
he  was  adored,  and  in  the  university  he 
exercised  for  many  years  more  influence 
than  any  other  individual.  —  Cooper, 
Thompson,  1889,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xviii,  p.  215. 


RICHARD 

GENERAL 

It  C'the  Essay  on  the  Learning  of  Shakes- 
peare") may  in  truth  be  pointed  out  as  a 
master-piece,  whether  considered  with  a 
view  to  the  sprightliness  and  vivacity  with 
which  it  is  written,  the  clearness  of  the 
arrangement,  the  force  and  variety  of  the 
evidence,  or  the  compression  of  scattered 
materials  into  a  narrow  compass  ;  materials 
which  inferior  writers  would  have  ex- 
panded into  a  large  volume. — Reed,  Isaac, 
1807?  Life  of  Farmer, 

How  shall  I  talk  of  thee,  and  of  thy 
wonderful  collection,  0  Rare  Richard 
Farmer  ? — and  of  thy  scholarship,  acute- 
ness,  pleasantry,  singularities,  varied 
learning,  and  colloquial  powers!  Thy 
name  will  live  long  among  scholars  in 
general ;  and  in  the  bosoms  of  virtuous 
and  learned  bibliomaniacs  thy  memory 
shall  be  ever  shrined!  The  walls  of 
Emanuel  College  now  cease  to  convey  the 
sounds  of  thy  festive  wit ;  thy  volumes  are 
no  longer  seen,  like  Richard  Smith's 

bundles  of  sticht  books,"  strewn  upon 
the  floor ;  and  thou  hast  ceased,  in  the 
cause  of  thy  beloved  Shakspeare,  to  delve 
into  the  fruitful  ore  of  black-letter  litera- 
ture. Peace  to  thy  honest  spirit ;  for  thou 
wert  wise  without  vanity,  learned  without 
pedantry,  and  joyous  without  vulgarity. 
.  .  .  Farmer  had  his  foragers,  his 
jackals,  and  his  avant-couriers,  for  it  was 
well  known  how  dearly  he  loved  every  thing 
that  was  interesting  and  rare  in  the  litera- 
ture of  former  ages.  As  he  walked  the 
streets  of  London — careless  of  his  dress, 
and  whether  his  wig  was  full-bottomed 
or  narrow-bottomed — he  would  talk  and 

mutter  strange  speeches"  to  himself, 
thinking  all  the  time,  I  ween,  of  some 
curious  discovery  he  had  recently  made  in 
tifee  aforesaid  precious  black-letter  tomes. 
But  the  reader  is  impatient  for  the  BiB- 

LIOTHECA  FaRMERIANA.— DiBDIN,  ThOMAS 

Frognall,  1811,   The  Bibliomania;  or 
Book-Madness. 

His  knowledge  is  various,  extensive  and 
recondite.  With  much  seeming  negli- 
gence, and  perhaps  in  later  years  some  real 
relaxation,  he  understands  more  and  re- 
members more  about  common  and  uncom- 
mon subjects  of  literature,  than  many  of 
those  who  would  be  thought  to  read  all  the 
day  and  meditate  half  the  night.  In 
quickness  of  apprehension  and  acuteness 
of  discrimination  I  have  not  often  seen  his 


FARMER  341 

equal.— Parr,  Samuel,  1825?  On^it^mrd 
Farmer. 

Farmer  had  silently  p«™ed  an  entire 
chase  in  this ''black"  forest,  for  he  had  a 
keen  gusto  for  the  native  venison ;  and, 
alluding  to  his  Shakespearian  pursuits, 
exclaimed  in ti*€inspiring  language  of  his 
poet, — 

"Age  csinfl!ot  wither  them,  nor  custom  stale 
Their  inmiite  variety." 

His  vivacity  relieved  the  drowsiness  of 
mere  antiquarianism.  This  novel  pursuit 
once  ojJened,  an  eager  and  motley  pack 
was  halloed  up;  but  Shakespeare,  like 
Actseon,  was  torn  to  pieces  by  a  whole 
kennel  of  his  own  hounds,  as  they  were 
typified  with  equal  humor  and  severity. 
But  to  be  severe,  and  never  to  be  just, 
is  the  penury  of  the  most  sordid  criticism  ; 
and  among  these — 

"Spirits  black,  white,  and  gray," — 
are  some  of  the  most  illustrious  in  Eng- 
lish literature. —  Disraeli,  Isaac,  1841, 
Shakespeare,  Amenities  of  Literature. 

There  was  another  cause  of  the  hospi- 
tality of  Steevens  and  his  school  of 
commentators.  Farmer  was  their  Cori- 
phseus.  Their  souls  were  prostrate  be- 
fore the  extent  of  his  researches  in  that 
species  of  literature  which  possesses  this 
singular  advantage  for  the  cultivator, 
that,  if  he  studies  it  in  original  edition,  of 
which  only  one  or  two  copies  are  known  to 
exist  (the  merit  is  gone  if  there  is  a 
baker's  dozen  known),  he  is  immediately 
pronounced  learned,  judicious,  laborious, 
acute.  And  this  was  Farmer's  praise. 
He  wrote,  **An  Essay  on  the  Learning  of 
Shakspeare, "  which  has  not  one  passage 
of  solid  criticism  from  the  first  page  to 
the  last,  and  from  which,  if  the  name  and 
the  works  of  Shakspere  were  to  perish, 
and  one  copy — an  unique  copy  is  the  af- 
fectionate name  for  these  things — could 
be  miraculously  preserved,  the  only  in- 
ference from  the  book  would  be  that  Wil- 
liam Shakspere  was  a  very  obscure  and 
ignorant  man,  whom  some  misjudging  ad- 
mirers had  been  desirous  to  exalt  into  an 
ephemeral  reputation,  and  that  Richard 
Farmer  was  a  very  distinguished  and 
learned  man,  who  had  stripped  the  mask 
oflP  the  pretender.  The  first  edition  of 
Farmer's  pamphlet  appeared  in  1767. 
.  .  .  This  arrogant  pamphlet. — Knight, 
Charles,  1849,  Studies  of  Shakspere, 
p.  546. 


342 


Charles  Macklin 

1699?-1797 

Born,  in  Ireland,  1699  (?).  Name  originally  McLaughlin,  but  form  '^Macklin**  eventu- 
ally adopted.  At  school  near  Dublin.  Ran  away  from  home.  Perhaps  served  in  a 
public  house  in  London,  and  at  Trinity  Coll.,  Dublin,  as  servant.  Joined  strolling  com- 
pany of  actors  in  Bristol.  Acted  in  London,  1725-48.  Married  (i)  Grace  Purvor  (or, 
Mrs.  Ann  Grace?),  1735  (?).  Play,  ''King Henry  VII,"  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  18  Jan. 
1746;  ''A  Will  and  no  Will,"  23  April  1746;  ''The  Suspicious  Husband  Criticised," 
Drury  Lane,  24  March  1747;  "The  Fortune  Hunters,"  1748.  Acted  in  Dublin,  1748- 
50 ;  in  London,  1750-53.  Play,  "Covent  Garden  Theatre, "  produced  at  Covent  Garden, 
8  April  1752.  Retired  from  stage,  1753.  Kept  a  tavern  in  Covent  Garden,  March 
1754  to  Jan.  1758.  Wife  died,  1758  (  ?).  Reappeared  on  stage,  at  Drury  Lane  12  Dec. 
1759,  in  his ' ' Love  a  la  Mode. ' '  Acted  in  London,  17 59-63.  Married  (ii)  Elizabeth  Jones, 
10  Sept.  1759.  "The  Married  Libertine"  produced,  Covent  Garden,  28  Jan.  1761. 
In  Dublin,  1761-63.  "The  True-Born  Irishman"  produced  at  Smock  Alley 
Theatre,  Dublin,  1763  (at  Covent  Garden,  as  "The  Irish  Fine  Lady,"  28  Nov.  1767) ; 
"The  True-Born  Scotchman,"  Crow  Street  Theatre,  Dublin,  7  Feb.  1766  (at  Covent 
Garden,  as  "The  Man  of  the  World,"  10  May  1781).  Acted  in  London,  1772-89. 
Died  in  London,  11  July  1797.  Buried  in  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden.  Works:  "Mr. 
Macklin's  Reply  to  Mr.  Garrick's  Answer,"  1743;  "The  Genuine  Arguments  of  the 
Council,"  etc.  (anon. ;  attrib.  to  Macklin),  1774;  "Love  a  la  Mode,"  1784;  "The  Man 
pf  the  World"  (under  initials  C.  M.),  1786.  Life  by  E.  A.  Parry,  1891.— Sharp,  R. 
Farquh ARSON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors^  p.  180. 


PERSONAL 
Macklin,  who  largely  deals  in  half-form'd 
sounds, 

Who  wantonly  transgresses  Nature's  bounds, 
Whoseacting's  hard,aff  ected  and  constrain'd. 
Whose  features,  as  each  other  they  disdain 'd, 
At  variance  set,  inflexible,  and  coarse, 
Ne'er  know  the  workings  of  united  force, 
Ne'er  kindly  soften  to  each  other's  aid, 
Nor  show  the  mingled  powers  of  light  and 
shade, 

No  longer  for  a  thankless  stage  concern' d. 
To  worthier  thoughts  his  mighty  genius 
turn'd, 

Harangued,  gave  lectures,  made  each  simple 
elf 

Almost  as  good  a  speaker  as  himself, 
Whilst  the  whole  town,  mad  with  mistaken 
zeal, 

An  awkward  rage  for  elocution  feel ; 
Dull  cits  and  grave  divines  his  praise  pro- 
claim, 

And  join  with  Sheridan's  their  Macklin's 
name. 

—Churchill,  Charles,  1761,  The  Ros- 
dad,  V.  633-648,  Poems,  ed.  Hannay,  vol. 
I,  p.  31. 

Macklin,  whose  writing  was  as  harsh 
and  as  hard  as  his  conduct  was  rude  and 
dogmatic,  who,  though  he  did  not  produce 
many  pieces,  contrived  to  make  one  answer 
the  purpose  of  many,  whose  strange  pecul- 
iarities made  him  a  torment  to  himself  and 
to  everybody  else,  was,  however,  a  useful, 
and  sometimes  a  great  actor,  and  very 


far  from  an  inferior  author. — Dibdin, 
Charles,  1795,  History  of  the  Stage,  bk, 
ix,  chap.  7. 

Macklin,  whose  personation  of  Shylock 
to  its  true  reading  had  elicited  the  im- 
promptu of  Pope,  "This  is  the  Jew  that 
Shakespeare  drew,"  was  my  father's  the- 
atrical oracle.  His  portrait  hung  over 
the  fireplace  of  our  little  dining-room, 
with  the  inscription,  Charles  Macklin, 
aged  98. "  In  some  of  his  visits  to  Dublin 
he  had  instructed  my  father  in  the  part  of 
Egerton  in  his  comedy  of  the'*  Man  of  the 
World;"  and  on  the  occasion  of  his  last 
benefit  there  he  sent  for  his  pupil  from 
Waterford  (where  my  father  was  playing) 
to  act ''Egerton."  .  .  .  His  manner 
was  generally  harsh,  as  indeed  was  his 
countenance.  So  much  so  that  on  some 
one  speaking  to  Quin  of  the  "strong 
lines"  of  Macklin's  face,  he  cut  short  his 
remarks  with,  "The  lines  of  his  face,  sir? 
You  mean  the  cordage."  My  father  has 
described  to  me  his  mode  of  speaking  to 
the  players  at  rehearsal.  There  was  good 
advice,  though  conveyed  in  his  gruff  voice 
and  imperious  tone.  "Look  at  me,  sir, 
look  at  me !  Keep  your  eye  fixed  on  me 
when  I  am  speaking  to  you !  Attention  is 
always  fixed ;  if  you  take  your  eye  from 
me  you  rob  the  audience  of  my  effects, 
and  you  rob  me  of  their  applause!" — a 
precept  I  never  forgot,  and  to  which  I 


CHARLES  MACKLIN 


343 


have  been  much  indebted. — Macready, 
W.  C,  1808-11,  Reminiscences,  pp.  2\,  22. 

He  had  no  respect  for  the  modesty  of 
youth  or  sex,  but  would  say  the  most  dis- 
couraging, as  well  as  grossest  things,  and 
felt  pleasure  in  proportion  to  the  pain  he 
gave.  It  was  common  of  him  to  ask  his 
pupils,  why  they  did  not  rather  think  of 
becoming  bricklayers  than  players.  He 
was  impatient  of  contradiction  to  an  ex- 
treme; and  when  he  found  fault,  if  the 
person  attempted  to  answer,  he  stopped 
him  without  hearing,  by  saying,  *'Ha,  you 
have  always  a  reason  for  being  in  the 
wrong!"  This  impatience  carried  him 
still  farther;  it  often  rendered  him  ex- 
ceedingly abusive.  He  could  pronounce 
the  word,  scoundrel^  fool,  blockhead,  famil- 
iarly, without  the  least  annoyance  to  his 
nervous  system.  He,  indeed,  pretended  to 
the  strictest  impartiality,and  while  his  pas- 
sions were  inconcerned,  often  preserved 
it ;  but  these  were  so  extremely  irritable, 
that  the  least  opposition  was  construed 
into  an  unpardonable  insult,  and  the  want 
of  immediate  apprehension  in  his  pupils 
subjected  them  to  the  most  galling  con- 
tempt, which  excited  despair  instead  of 
emulation.  His  authority  was  too  severe 
a  climate  for  the  tender  plant  of  genius 
ever  to  thrive  in.  His  judgment  was, 
however,  in  general  sound,  and  his  instruc- 
tions those  of  a  master. — Holcroft, 
Thomas,  1809  ?  Memoirs,  bk.  ii,  ch.  i. 

His  conversation  among  young  people 
was  perfectly  moral,  and  always  tended  to 
make  us  better :  he  was,  in  my  opinion  as 
to  intellect,  a  very  shining  character,  and 
in  all  instances  I  knew  him  to  be  a  worthy 
man ;  but  a  great  sitter-up  at  nights  for 
sake  of  conversation:  many  a  morning 
sun  has  peeped  into  our  convival  parties ; 
he  was  then  between  seventy  and  eighty. 
From  the  loss  of  his  teeth  his  nose  and  chin 
were  prominent:  he  took  no  snuff,  and 
hated  swearing,  or  broad  vulgar  jests  in 
conversation,  though  smitten  much  with 
repartee. — O'Keeffe,  John,  1826,  Recol- 
lections, vol.  n,  ch.  VI. 

Everybody,  I  presume,  must  have  had 
some  information  respecting  Macklin's 
person  and  manners ;  that  he  was  a  broad- 
breasted,  ball-headed,  shaggy-browed, 
hooked-nosed  individual,  as  rough  and 
husky  as  a  cocoa-nut,  with  a  barking  or 
grunting  delivery  more  peculiar  than 
pleasing,  which  to  musical  ears  made  him 


something  like  a  bore."  .  .  .  If  good 
manners  are  to  be  gleaned  from  a  collision 
with  society,  Macklin's  were  bad,  because 
throughout  life  he  had  been  chiefly  his 
own  company.  His  manners  grew  out  of 
his  mind,  which  became  powerful  and  pro- 
found, cared  not  for  oil  or  ornament,  so 
long  as  it  could  express  itself  with  vigor 
and  conciseness.  .  .  .  The  terrific  effect 
of  his  features,  when  under  excitation,  have 
been  recorded  in  his  performance  of  Shy- 
lock.  The  most  amusing  proof  I  have 
heard  upon  the  point  was  as  follows: — 
When  he  had  established  his  fame  in  that 
character,  George  the  Second  went  to  see 
him ;  and  the  impression  he  received  was 
so  powerful  that  it  deprived  him  of  rest 
throughout  the  night.  In  the  morning 
the  premier  (Sir  Robert  Walpole)  waited 
on  the  king,  to  express  his  fears  that  the 
Commons  would  oppose  a  certain  measure 
then  in  contemplation.  "I  wish,  your 
Majesty, ' '  said  Sir  Robert, '  *  it  was  possible 
to  find  a  recipe  for  frightening  a  House 
of  Commons?"  ^'What  do  you  think," 
replied  the  King,  **of  sending  them  to  the 
Theatre  to  see  that  Irishman  play  Shy- 
lock!" —  Bernard,  John,  1830,  Retro- 
spections of  the  Stage,  vol.  ii,  ch.  i. 

As  an  actor,  he  was  without  trick ;  his 
enunciation  was  clear,  in  every  syllable. 
Taken  as  a  whole,  he  probably  excelled 
every  actor  who  had  ever  played  Shylock, 
say  his  biographers ;  but  I  remember  Ed- 
mund Kean,  and  make  that  exception.  He 
was  not  a  great  tragedian,  nor  a  good  light 
comedian,  but  in  comedy  and  farce,  where 
rough  energy  is  required,  and  in  parts  re- 
sembling Shylock,  in  their  earnest  ma- 
lignity, he  was  paramount.  He  was  also 
an  excellent  teacher,  very  impatient  with 
mediocrity,  but  very  careful  with  the  intel- 
ligent. Easily  moved  to  anger,  his  pupils 
and,  indeed,  many  others  stood  in  awe  of 
him ;  but  he  was  honorable,  generous,  and 
humane;  convivial,  frank,  and  not  more 
free  in  his  style  than  his  contemporaries ; 
but  naturally  irascible,  and  naturally  for- 
giving. Eccentricity  was  second  nature 
to  him,  and  seems  to  have  been  so  with 
other  men  of  his  blood. — Doran,  John, 
1863,  Annals  of  the  English  Stage,  vol.  n, 
p.  191 

GENERAL 
As  a  comic  writer,  Mr.  Macklin  un- 
questionably stands  high.    ''The  Man  of 
the  World,"  for  boldness  of  satire,  and 


344 


MACKLIN— BLACK 


originality  of  character, may  challenge  any 
production,  which  has  been  represented  on 
the  stage  for  the  last  fifty  years ;  and  his 
**Love-a-la-Mode,"  which  is  pregnant  with 
much  genuine  humour,  and  knowledge  of 
men  and  manners,  demands  also  an  high 
share  of  praise.  In  most  of  his  dramatic 
pieces,  there  is  to  be  found  real  character, 
discrimination  of  humour,  modish  affecta- 
tion, and  fashionable  folly.  He  never 
offends  (from  his  thorough  knowledge  of 
stage  oeconomy),  in  the  conduct  of  his 
plot,  and  the  right  management  of  his 
scenes.  To  these  dramatic  excellencies, 
he  added  a  strict  attention  to  decency  and 
morality.  Mr.  Macklin's  merit,  as  an 
actor  and  a  man,  introduced  him  to 
persons  of  high  rank. — Kirkman,  James 
Thomas,  1799,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of 
Charles  Macklin,  vol.  ii,  p.  433. 

But,  alas !  where  shall  we  look  for  the 
foundation  of  Macklin's  authorship?  We 
have  already  sketched  his  education, 
which,  taken  at  its  supposable  extremity, 
could  amount  to  no  more  than  a  capacity 
for  reading  some  of  the  commonest  English 
school-books,  with  scarcely  any  knowledge 
of  the  habits  of  civilized  life.  .  .  .  His 
next  attempt  at  Authorship  was  not  till  the 
year  1760,  when  he  produced  his  Farce 
of  ''Love  a  la  Mode ;"  a  dramatic  morceau, 
which,  though  it  had  many  enemies  to  com- 
bat with,  from  personal  prejudices,  has 
long  since  surmounted  them,  and  given  to 
the  author  the  merited  rank  of  an  able 
comic  v/riter.  Having  now  produced  a 
piece  which  would  stand  the  test  of  time, 
he  was  ambitious  of  producing  a  Comedy 
which  would  carry  the  same  seeds  of  lon- 
gevity; and  for  this  purpose,  without 


consulting  books,  which  are  very  often  but 
the  multiplied  copies  of  fanciful  originals, 
he  sought  his  principal  characters  from  his 
own  long  experience  of  life,  and  of  the 
Stage;  and  with  these  aids  produced  a 
Comedy,  which,  considered  for  regularity 
of  plot,  strength  of  character,  and  knowl- 
edge of  the  world,  will  remain  a  favourite 
on  the  stock  list,  whilst  there  are  per- 
formers found  capable  of  supporting  so 
arduous  and  discriminating  a  part  as  that 
of  Sir  Pertinax  Mac  Sycophant.— Cooke, 
William,  1804-6,  Memoirs  of  Charles 
Macklin,  Comedian,  pp.  412,  415. 

Macklin,  though  not  a  voluminous  con- 
tributor to  scenic  representations,  has 
condensed  multum  in  parvo,  by  showing  a 
complete  knowledge  of  the  practices  of 
the  stage,  and  an  acute  perception  of 
human  life :  his  characters  are  drawn  with 
the  hand  of  a  master,  who  felt  no  diffidence 
in  the  accomplishment  of  the  task  which 
he  had  proposed  to  himself  to  execute. — 
Ireland,  S.  W.  H.  ,  1815,  Scribbleomania, 
p.  113. 

Energy  and  honesty  were  the  dominant 
traits  of  his  character.  Entirely  self- 
educated,  he  yet  used  his  alert  intelligence 
so  well  as  to  become,  after  Garrick,  the 
most  cultured  actor  of  his  time  ;  though 
when  he  attempted  to  lecture  on  the 
theatre  of  the  Greeks  and  the  origins  of 
the  Shaksperean  drama  he  was  doubtless 
beyond  his  depth.  He  wrote  with  vigor 
and  propriety,  though  in  controversy  he 
carried  to  extremes  the  italicized  emphasis 
then  in  vogue. — Archer,  William,  1886, 
Actors  and  Actresses  of  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States,  eds.  Matthews  and  Hut- 
ton,  vol.  I,  p.  10. 


Joseph  Black 

1728-1799 

Joseph  Black  was  born  at  Bordeaux,  in  1728.  His  father,  John  Black,  was  a  native 
of  Belfast,  a  member  of  a  Scottish  family  settled  in  Ireland.  His  mother  belonged  to 
the  family  of  Gordon,  of  Halhead,  in  Aberdeenshire,  and  was  a  cousin  of  Dr.  Adam  Fer- 
guson. In  1740  he  was  sent  home  and  educated  at  the  Grammar  School  of  Belfast.  In 
1746  he  matriculated  at  the  University  of  Glasgow,  where  he  remained  till  1750,  study- 
ing in  the  faculties  of  art  and  medicine.  He  then  removed  to  Edinburgh,  where  he 
graduated  as  doctor  of  medicine  in  1754.  In  1756  he  was  appointed  Professor  of 
anatomy  and  Lecturer  on  Chemistry  in  the  University  of  Glasgow.  He  soon  exchanged 
with  a  colleague  the  duty  of  teaching  anatomy  for  that  of  physiology,  and  continued 
to  lecture  on  physiology  and  chemistry  till  1766,  when  he  was  called  to  Edinburgh  to 
succeed  his  friend  and  teacher.  Dr.  Cullen,  in  the  Chair  of  Chemistry.  He  died 
November  26,  1799. — Brown,  Crum,  1878,  Lecture  to  the  Edinburgh  University 
Chemical  Society,  Nature,  vol.  18,  p.  346. 


JOSEPH  BLACK 


345 


PERSONAL 

His  personal  appearance  and  manner 
were  those  of  a  gentleman,  and  peculiarly 
pleasing.  His  voice  in  lecturing  was  low, 
but  fine ;  and  his  articulation  so  distinct 
that  he  w^as  perfectly  well  heard  by  an 
audience  consisting  of  several  hundreds. 
His  discourse  was  so  plain  and  perspicuous, 
his  illustrations  by  experiment  so  apposite, 
that  his  sentiments  on  any  subject  never 
could  be  mistaken,  even  by  the  most  illit- 
erate ;  and  his  instructions  were  so  clear 
of  all  hypothesis  or  conjecture,  that  the 
hearer  rested  on  his  conclusions  with  the 
confidence  scarcely  exceeded  in  matters 
of  his  own  experience. — Robison,  John, 
1803,  Black^s  Lectures  on  the  Elements  of 
Chemistry^  Preface,  p.  Ixii. 

The  physical  sciences  have  few  more 
illustrious  names  to  boast  than  that  of 
Joseph  Black.  With  all  the  habits  and  the 
disciplined  faculties  of  a  true  philosopher, 
with  the  temper  as  well  as  the  capacity  of 
a  sage,  he  possessed  that  happy  union  of 
strong  but  disciplined  imagination,  with 
powers  of  close  undivided  attention,  and 
ample  resources  of  reasoning,  which  forms 
original  genius  in  scientific  pursuits ;  and, 
as  all  these  qualities  may  be  combined  in 
an  individual  without  his  happening  to 
signalise  his  investigations  of  nature  by 
any  discovery,  we  must  add  that  his  life 
was  crowned  with  the  good  fortune  of 
opening  to  mankind  new  paths  in  which 
both  himself  and  his  followers  successfully 
trod,  enlarging  to  an  incalculable  extent 
the  bounds  of  human  knowledge.  .  .  .  The 
qualities  which  distinguished  him  as  an 
inquirer  and  as  a  teacher  followed  him  into 
all  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  He  was  a 
person  whose  opinions  on  every  subject 
were  marked  by  calmness  and  sagacity, 
wholly  free  from  both  passion  and  prej- 
udice, while  affectation  was  only  known  to 
him  from  the  comedies  he  might  have  read. 
His  temper  in  all  the  circumstances  of  life 
was  unruffled. — Brougham,  Henry  Lord, 
1845-50,  Lives  of  Philosophers  of  the  Time 
of  George  IIL,  pp.  1,  21. 

Black  was  a  prominent  member  of  the 
intellectual  society  by  which  Edinburgh 
was  then  distinguished.  Amongst  his  in- 
timates were  his  relative  and  colleague 
Adam  Ferguson,  Hume,  Hutton,  A.  Car- 
lyle,  Dugald  Stewart,  and  John  Robison. 
Adam  Smith  with  whom  he  knit  a  close 
friendship  at  Glasgow,  used  to  say  that 


"  no  man  had  less  nonsense  in  his  head  than 
Dr.  Black."  He  was  one  of  James  Watt's 
earliest  patrons,  and  kept  up  a  constant 
correspondence  with  him.  Though  grave 
and  reserved.  Black  was  gentle  and  sincere, 
and  it  is  recorded  of  him  that  he  never 
lost  a  friend.  He  was  at  the  same  time 
gifted  with  a  keen  judgment  of  character, 
and  with  the  power  of  expressing  that 
judgment  in  an  indelible  phrase."  In 
person  he  is  described  as  rather  above 
the  middle  size ;  he  was  of  a  slender  make ; 
his  countenance  was  placid  and  exceed- 
ingly engaging"  (Thomson).  As  he  ad- 
vanced in  years,  Robison  tells  us,  he 
preserved  a  pleasing  air  of  inward  con- 
tentment. Graceful  and  unaffected  in 
manner,  *'he  was  of  most  easy  approach, 
affable,  and  readily  entered  into  conversa- 
tion, whether  serious  or  trivial."  Nor 
did  he  distain  elegant  accomplishments. 
— Clerke,  Miss  A.  M.,  1886,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  v,  p.  111. 

GENERAL 

The  modesty  of  his  nature  making  him 
averse  to  publish  his  speculations,  and  the 
genuine  devotion  to  the  investigation  of 
truth,  for  its  own  sake,  rendering  him 
most  open  in  his  communications  with  all 
who  were  engaged  in  the  same  pursuits, 
his  incontestable  claim  to  be  regarded  as 
the  founder  of  modern  chemistry  has  been 
oftentimes  overlooked;  and,  while  some 
have  endeavoured  more  or  less  obscurely 
to  mingle  themselves  with  his  discoveries, 
others  have  thought  it  becoming  to  post- 
date the  new  system,  that  it  might  seem 
the  produce  of  a  somewhat  later  age.  The 
interests  of  truth  and  justice  therefore 
require  that  we  should  minutely  examine 
the  facts  of  the  case;  and,  happily,  the 
evidence  is  so  clear  that  it  only  requires 
an  attentive  consideration  to  remove  all 
doubt  from  the  subject.  I  feel  it  a  duty 
imperatively  cast  upon  me  to  undertake  a 
task  from  which,  did  I  not  regard  it  as 
less  difficult  than  sacred,  I  might  shrink. 
But  I  had  the  great  happiness  of  being 
taught  by  himself,  having  attended  one  of 
the  last  courses  of  lectures  which  he  deliv- 
ered ;  and  the  knowledge  thus  gained  can- 
not be  turned  to  a  better  use  than  in  record- 
ing the  glory  and  in  vindicating  the  fame 
of  my  illustrious  master.  —  Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1845-55,  Lives  of  Philoso- 
phers of  the  Time  of  George  IIL,  p.  1. 

He  struck  out  a  theory  which,  being 


346 


BLACK— BURNETT 


eminently  original,  was  violently  attacked, 
but  is  now  generally  admitted.  "With  a 
boldness  and  reach  of  thought  not  often 
equalled,  he  arrived  at  the  conclusion,  that 
whenever  a  body  loses  some  of  its  consist- 
ence, as  in  the  case  of  ice  becoming  water, 
or  water  becoming  steam,  such  body  re- 
ceives an  amount  of  heat  which  our  senses, 
though  aided  by  the  most  delicate  ther- 
mometer, can  never  detect.  .  .  .  The 
intellect  of  Black  belonged  to  a  class. 


which,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  was 
almost  universal  in  Scotland,  but  was  hardly 
to  be  found  in  England,  and  which,  for 
want  of  a  better  word,  we  are  compelled 
to  call  deductive,  though  fully  admitting 
that  even  the  most  deductive  minds  have 
in  them  a  large  amount  of  induction,  since, 
indeed,  without  induction,  the  common 
business  of  life  could  not  be  carried  on. — 
Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  1862-66,  History 
of  Civilization  in  England,  voL  ill,  chap,  v. 


James  Burnett 

Lord  Monboddo 
1714-1799 

A  Scottish  lawyer  and  author,  was  born  at  Monboddo,  in  Kincardineshire,  in  1714, 
educated  at  Marischal  College,  Aberdeen,  where  he  displayed  a  great  fondness  for  the 
Greek  philosophers,  and  afterwards  studied  law  for  3  years  at  Gronigen  in  Holland. 
In  1737  he  became  a  member  of  the  Scottish  bar,  and  soon  obtained  considerable 
practice ;  but  the  first  thing  that  brought  him  prominently  into  notice  was  his  con- 
nection with  the  celebrated  Douglas  case,  in  which  Mr.  Burnet  acted  as  counsel  for 
Mr.  Douglas.  In  1767  he  was  raised  to  the  bench  by  the  title  of  lord  Monboddo.  He 
died  May  26,  1799.  Monboddo's  first  work,  on  the  ''Origin  and  Progress  of  Lan- 
guage" (1771-76),  is  a  very  learned,  heretical,  and  eccentric  production;  yet  in  the 
midst  of  its  grotesque  crotches  there  occasionally  flashes  out  a  wonderfully  acute 
observation,  that  makes  one  regret  the  distorted  and  misapplied  talent  of  the  author. 
The  notion  that  men  have  sprung  from  monkeys,  is  perhaps  that  which  is  most  com- 
monly associated  with  the  name  of  Monboddo,  who  gravely  asserted  that  the  orang- 
outangs are  members  of  the  human  species,  and  that  in  the  bay  of  Bengal  there  exists 
a  nation  of  human  creatures  with  tails,  and  that  we  have  only  worn  away  ours  by 
sitting  on  them,  but  that  the  stumps  may  still  be  felt.  Monboddo  wrote  another  work, 
entitled  ''Ancient  Metaphysics,''  which  was  published  only  a  few  weeks  before  his 
death. — Peck,  Harry  Thurston,  ed.,  1898,  The  International  Cyclopcedia,  vol.  x,  p.  16. 


PERSONAL 

The  metaphysical  and  philological  Lord 
Monboddo  breakfasted  with  us  yesterday. 
He  is  such  an  extravagant  admirer  of  the 
ancients  that  he  scarcely  allows  the  Eng- 
lish language  to  be  capable  of  any  excel- 
lence, still  less  the  French.  ...  He  said 
we  moderns  were  entirely  degenerated. 
1  asked  in  what?  "In  everything,"  was 
his  answer.  "Men  are  not  so  tall  as  they 
were, — women  are  not  so  handsome  as  they 
were,  nobody  can  now  write  a  long  period, 
everything  dwindles."  .  .  .  Among  much 
just  thinking  and  some  taste,  especially  in 
his  valuable  third  volume  on  "The  Origin 
and  Progress  of  Language,"  he  entertained 
some  opinions  so  absurd  that  they  would 
be  hardly  credible  if  he  did  not  deliver 
them  himself,  both  in  writing  and  conversa- 
tion, with  a  gravity  which  shows  that  he 
is  in  earnest,  but  which  makes  the  hearer 
feel  that  to  be  grave  exceeds  all  power  of 


face.  He  is  so  wedded  to  system,  that,  as 
Lord  Barrington  said  to  me  the  other  day, 
rather  than  sacrifice  his  favorite  opinion 
that  men  were  born  with  tails,  he  would 
be  contented  to  wear  one  himself. — More, 
Hannah,  1782,  Letter  to  her  Sister,  Mem- 
oirs, ed.  Roberts,  vol.  i,  p.  146. 

I  was  married  to  the  handsomest  woman 
in  Scotland,  and  I  believe  the  best  wife  in 
it,  with  whom  1  lived  most  happily  seven 
years.  I  have  been  fifteen  years  a 
widower,  and  during  all  that  time  I  never 
had  the  least  thought  of  a  second  choice, 
till  I  saw  you  at  this  time  in  London,  so 
amiable  both  in  mind  and  person,  and  your 
sentiments  so  much  agreeing  with  mine 
that  I  thought,  and  still  think,  we  are 
made  for  one  another,  and  may  live  most 
comfortably  together.  During  my  wido  w- 
hood, the  affairs  of  my  family  have  suffered 
much,  chiefly  for  want  of  a  mother  to  my 
children.    ...    I  am  sure  I  would 


JAMES  BURNETT 


347 


make  a  most  loving  husband  to  you,  and 
besides  I  would  propose  to  be  a  father  to 
that  excellent  girl  who  lives  with  you  and 
whose  admirable  genius  it  would  give  me 
the  greatest  pleasure  to  cultivate  and  im- 
prove, as  I  think  I  could  do.  Now  my 
dear  Mrs.  Garrick,  tell  me  if  you  know  any 
three  in  Britain  that  you  think  would  be 
happier  together  than  we  three?  And  if 
you  pleased,  I  would  add  a  fourth,  my 
young  daughter,  who  is  almost  as  hand- 
some as  her  mother,  a  good  figure,  a  very 
good  disposition,  and  not  defective  in 
genius,  particularly  in  painting. — ^BUR- 
NETT,  James  Lord  Monboddo,  1782,  Letter 
to  Mrs.  David  Garrick. 

The  answer  I  gave  you  in  that  moment 
when  you  did  me  the  honor  of  proposing  an 
union  between  us  came  from  my  heart :  it 
was  that  I  never  would  change  my  situa- 
tion ;  and  which  you  must  give  me  leave 
to  repeat  again  as  a  final  answer  to  your 
letter,  I  remain,  my  Lord,  Your  most 
obliged  and  obedient  servant. — Garrick, 
Mrs.  David,  1782,  Letter  to  Lord  Mon- 
hoddOy  June  26. 

Lord  Monboddo's  temper  was  affection- 
ate, friendly  and  social.  He  was  fond  of 
convivial  intercourse ;  and  it  was  his  daily 
custom  to  unbend  himself,  after  his  pro- 
fessional labours,  amidst  a  select  party  of 
literary  friends,  whom  he  invited  to  an 
early  supper.  The  entertainment  itself 
partook  of  the  costume  of  the  ancients :  it 
had  all  the  variety  and  abundance  of  a 
principal  meal ;  and  the  master  of  the 
feast  crowned  his  wine,  like  Anacreon, 
with  a  garland  of  roses.  His  conversa- 
tion, too,  had  a  race  and  ^a?;o2^r  peculiarly 
its  own :  it  was  nervous,  sententious,  and 
tinctured  with  genuine  wit.  His  apo- 
thegms, (or,  as  his  favourite  Greeks  would 
rather  term  them  Tyw^t),  were  singularly 
terse  and  forcible  ;  and  the  grave  manner 
in  which  he  often  conveyed  the  keenest 
irony,  and  the  eloquence  with  which 
he  supported  his  paradoxical  theories, 
afforded  the  highest  amusement  of  those 
truly  attic  banquets,  which  will  be  long 
remembered  by  all  who  had  the  pleasure  of 
partaking  in  them. — Tytler,  Alexander 
Fraser,  1806-14,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  and 
Writings  of  Henry  Home  of  KameSy  vol.  i, 
p.  250,  note. 

Lord  Monboddo  was  a  humorist  both  in 
private  life  and  in  his  literary  career.  He 
was,  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  a  gentleman  of 


the  most  amiable  disposition,  and  of  the 
strictest  honour  and  integrity.  He  was 
deeply  read  in  ancient  literature,  was  a 
devout  believer  in  the  virtues  of  the  heroic 
ages  and  the  deterioration  of  civilized 
mankind,  and  so  great  a  contemner  of 
luxuries  that  he  would  never  use  a  wheel 
carriage.  There  were  several  points  of 
similarity  between  him  and  Johnson — 
great  learning,  clearness  of  head,  precision 
of  speech,  and  a  love  of  inquiry  on  subjects 
which  people  in  general  do  not  investigate. 
Foote  used  to  call  Lord  Monboddo  "an 
Elzevir  edition  of  Johnson." — Ford,  Ed- 
ward, 1883,  Lord  Monboddo  and  Mrs. 
Garricky  National  Review,  vol.  2,  p.  106. 

In  his  judicial  capacity  he  showed  him- 
self to  be  both  a  profound  lawyer  and  an 
upright  judge,  and  his  decisions  were  free 
from  those  paradoxes  which  so  frequently 
appeared  in  his  writings  as  well  as  in  his 
conversation.  He  was  not,  however,  with- 
out peculiarities,  even  in  the  court  of 
sessions,  for  instead  of  sitting  on  the 
bench  with  his  fellow-judges,  he  always 
took  his  seat  underneath  with  the  clerks. 
Nor  was  he  as  a  rule  inclined  to  agree  with 
his  colleagues  in  their  decisions,  but  was 
generally  in  the  minority  and  sometimes 
alone.  Burnett  is,  however,  best  known 
to  the  world  as  a  man  of  letters.  . 
In  private  life  Burnett  was  an  amiable, 
generous,  and  kind-hearted  man.  Though 
in  his  habit  he  was  exceedingly  temperate 
and  lived  much  according  to  rule,  yet  he 
greatly  delighted  in  the  convivial  society 
of  his  friends. — Barker,  G.  F.  Russell, 
1886,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography , 
vol.  VII,  pp.  412,  413. 

Lord  Monboddo  was  known  rather  for 
his  quaint  eccentricities  and  social  humour 
than  for  any  consummate  mastery  of  the 
law.— Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Cen- 
tury of  Scottish  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  148. 

The  venerable  figure  of  Monboddo  was 
every  year  seen  on  horseback  posting  off  to 
London,  to  visit  old  friends  and  delight 
old  circles.  At  last,  however,  such  ex- 
peditions were  too  fatiguing  for  his  shriv- 
elled old  body.  He  was  on  his  way  in  1799 
to  make  his  annual  visit,  but  only  got  as 
far  as  Dunbar,  where  he  was  taken  ill,  and 
forced  to  undergo  the  ignominy  of  being 
conveyed  home  in  the  despised  chaise. 
*'0h,  George,  "he  said  plaintively  to  his 
nephew,  "I  find  that  I  am  eighty-four." 
A  few  days  later,  in  May,  the  venerable 


348 


JAMES  BURNETT 


humorist  was  dead.  Then  the  world 
gossiped,  according  to  its  fashion,  of 
stories  true  and  false  about  the  old  man's 
humours — how  he  used  to  fancy  that  the 
tails  of  babies  were  snipped  off  by  mid- 
wives  at  their  birth,  and  how  he  would 
watch  at  the  bedroom  door  when  a  child 
was  born,  in  order  to  detect  the  relics  of  a 
primeval  ancestry.  Others  more  worthily 
recalled  memorable  nights  in  his  society, 
his  sayings  of  curious  wit,  his  sallies  which 
set  the  table  in  a  roar,  while  perfect 
gravity  reigned  on  his  ugly  old  face ;  his 
pleasant  ways,  his  courtly,  old-fashioned 
manners.  They  missed  the  familiar  form 
which  had  trotted  up  innumerable  stairs  to 
merry  suppers — the  worn-out  old  figure 
they  had  daily  seen  standing  at  the  door  of 
Creech's  shop,  or  pacing  the  Parliament 
Close — the  owner  of  a  most  kindly  heart, 
the  author  of  most  unreadable  books. 
— Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  197. 

GENERAL 
And  with  Monboddo  still  believ'd  in  tails. 
—  Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  331. 

The  writings  of  Lord  Monboddo  display 
a  profound  acquaintance  with  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  ancients,  which  he  has  explored 
with  the  ardour,  and  admired  perhaps  with 
the  prejudices  of  an  enthusiast ;  but  in  so 
far  as  they  relate  to  criticism  and  phi- 
lology, they  are  valuable  monuments  of 
classical  taste,  and  a  sound  discriminating 
judgment  in  the  excellencies  and  defects 
of  rhetorical  composition.— Tytler,  ALEX- 
ANDER Eraser,  1806-14,  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  Henry  Home  of  Kames, 
vol.  I,  p.  246. 

The  writings  of  the  eccentric  James 
Burnet,  Lord  Monboddo,  contain  interest- 
ing passages,  such  as  his  theory  about  the 
origin  of  man,  and  his  humorously  extrava- 
gant defence  of  the  superiority  of  ancient 
over  modern  writers ;  but  the  interest  is 
more  in  the  matter  than  in  any  felicity  or 
original  force  of  expression. — Minto, 
William,  1872-80,  Manual  of  English 
Prose  Literature,  p.  487. 

I  confess  that  I  have  felt  a  deep  interest 
in  reading  the  philosophical  works  of  Lord 
Monboddo, — he  is  so  unlike  any  other 
Scotch  metaphysician,  he  is  so  unlike  his 
age.  As  appearing  among  a  body  of  in- 
ductive inquirers,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 


eighteenth  century,  he  looks  very  much 
like  a  megatherium  coming  in  upon  us  in 
the  historical  period.  His  society  is  not 
with  the  modern  empiricists,  not  even  with 
the  Latins,  but  with  Plato  and  the  Neo- 
Platonists,  with  Aristotle  and  his  com- 
mentators. As  regards  the  higher  Greek 
philosophy,  he  is  the  most  erudite  scholar 
that  Scotland  has  produced,  not  excepting 
even  Sir  William  Hamilton.  He  had  two 
great  philosophic  works.  ...  He 
dwells  with  evident  fondness  on  categories 
or  universal  forms.  All  things  are  to  be 
known  by  their  causes.  The  knowledge  of 
first  causes  belongs  to  metaphysics. 
Everything  that  is  to  be  known  falls 
under  one  or  other  of  the  categories.  He 
shows  that  God  must  have  ideas.  Man 
is  capable  of  forming  ideas.  Time  is  not 
a  cause,  but  is  a  necessary  adjunct  or 
concomitant  of  the  material  world.  — 
McCosH,  James,  1874,  The  Scottish  Phil- 
osophy, pp.  248,  250,  252. 

A  brief  reference  must  suffice  to  one 
other  thinker  of  considerable  ability,  who, 
in  attempting  to  assail  the  dominant  philos- 
ophy, produced  at  least  a  literary  curios- 
ity. Lord  Monboddo,  following  James 
Harris,  the  author  of  ''Hermes,"  attempted 
to  revive  the  Aristotelian  philosophy. 
His  six  quartos  upon  ''Antient  Metaphy- 
sics," and  his  six  octavos  upon  the  pro- 
gress of  language,  contain  much  acute 
thought  amidst  huge  masses  of  digression, 
repetition,  and  apology  for  eccentric 
crochets.  His  main  point  is  really  a 
criticism  of  Locke  and  Hume  for  their  con- 
fusion of  sensation  and  perception.  He 
makes  many  of  the  criticisms  which  from 
this  point  of  view  would  commend  them- 
selves to  the  metaphysical  school  of  which 
he  professes  himself  an  adherent ;  but  he 
produced  no  influence  upon  thought — 
partly  because  his  doctrine  was  an  attempt 
to  resuscitate  the  dead ;  and  even  more, 
perhaps,  because  it  was  overlaid  with  oddi- 
ties, some  of  which  are  remembered  when 
his  more  serious  remarks  are  forgotten. 
.  .  .  Reid  and  Hartley  each  founded  a 
school ;  but  Monboddo  remained  an  isolated 
being,  annointing  himself  according  to  the 
fashion  of  the  ancients,  growling  at  the 
degeneracy  of  mankind,  and  regarded  by 
them  as  a  semi-lunatic,  outside  the  sphere 
of  practical  influence. — Stephen,  Leslie, 
1876,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  i,  pp.  68,  69. 


349 


Patrick  Henry 

1736-1799 

Henry  was  born  at  Studley,  Virginia,  May  29th,  1736.  He  was  of  good  Scotch  and 
English  blood,  and  was  educated  by  his  father ;  he  married  at  eighteen  and  went  early 
into  business.  He  became  a  lawyer  when  twenty-four,  and  was  successful  from  the 
first.  When  pleading  the  cause  of  a  clergyman  in  1763  in  the  celebrated  tobacco-tax 
question,  he  showed  himself  to  be  a  fine  speaker ;  and  from  this  on,  advanced  rapidly 
in  public  life.  Elected  in  1765  to  the  Virginia  House,  in  a  fiery  speech  he  advocated 
resistence  to  the  Stamp  Act  and  became  the  leader  of  his  colony.  He  was  a  delegate 
to  the  first  Continental  Congress,  and  in  1776,  on  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  his 
own  state  made  him  four  times  governor ;  he  declined  re-election  in  1786,  to  be  again 
elected  in  1796  and  again  to  decline.  .  .  .  Retiring  from  public  life  in  1791  at  the 
age  of  fifty-five,  he  practiced  law,  preferring  to  guard  his  broken  health  and  provide  for 
his  large  family ;  although  subsequently  Washington  offered  him  the  post  of  Secretary 
of  State  and  that  of  Chief  Justice,  and  President  Adams  named  him  minister  to  France. 
In  1799,  however,  at  Washington's  appeal  he  allowed  himself  to  be  elected  to  the 
Legislature;  but  died  June  6th,  before  taking  his  seat. — Warner,  Charles  Dudley, 
ed.f  1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Literature,  vol.  xii,  p.  7241. 


PERSONAL 

On  the  6th  inst.  departed  this  life 
Patrick  Henry,  Esquire,  of  Charlotte 
Count.  Mourn,  Virginia,  mourn!  Your 
Henry  is  gone !  Ye  friends  to  liberty  in 
every  clime,  drop  a  tear.  No  more  will 
his  social  feelings  spread  delight  through 
his  happy  house.  No  more  will  his  edify- 
ing example  dictate  to  his  numerous  off- 
spring the  sweetness  of  virtue,  and  the 
majesty  of  patriotism.  No  more  will  his 
sage  advice,  guided  by  zeal  for  the  com- 
mon happiness,  impart  light  and  utility  to 
his  caressing  neighbors.  No  more  will  he 
illuminate  the  public  councils  with  senti- 
ments drawn  from  the  cabinet  of  his  own 
mind,  ever  directed  to  his  country's  good, 
and  clothed  in  eloquence  sublime,  delight- 
ful, and  commanding.  Farewell,  first- 
rate  patriot,  farewell  !  As  long  as  our 
rivers  flow,  or  mountains  stand — so  long 
will  your  excellence  and  worth  be  the  theme 
of  homage  and  endearment,  and  Virginia, 
bearing  in  mind  her  loss,  will  say  to  rising 
generations,  imitate  my  Henry. — Vir- 
ginia Gazette,  1799,  June  14 

I  have  not  time  to  compare  the  charac- 
ters of  Washington  and  Henry,  or  I  would 
clearly  show  that  fewer  blunders  fell  to  the 
share  of  the  latter  than  the  former,  and 
yet  I  have  no  objection  to  paying  a  tribute 
to  the  past  services  and  virtues  of  either. 
—Tyler,  John,  1799,  Letter  to  James 
Monroe,  Dec.  27. 

His  disposition  was  indeed  all  sweet- 
ness— his  affections  were  warm,  kind,  and 
social — his  patience  invincible — his  tem- 
per ever  unclouded,  cheerful  and  serene — 


his  manners  plain,  open,  familiar,  and 
simple — his  conversation  easy,  ingenious 
and  unaffected,  full  of  entertainment,  full 
of  instruction,  and  irradiated  with  all  those 
light  and  softer  graces,  which  his  genius 
threw,  without  effort,  over  the  most  com- 
mon subjects.  It  is  said  that  there  stood 
in  the  court,  before  his  door,  a  large  wal- 
nut-tree, under  whose  shade  it  was  his  de- 
light to  pass  his  summer  evenings,  sur- 
rounded by  his  affectionate  and  happy 
family,  and  by  a  circle  of  neighbours  who 
loved  him  almost  to  idolatry.  Here  he 
would  disport  himself  with  all  the  careless 
gaiety  of  infancy.  Here,  too,  he  would 
sometimes  warm  the  bosoms  of  the  old,  and 
strike  fire  from  the  eyes  of  his  younger 
hearers,  by  recounting  the  tales  of  other 
times ;  by  sketching,  with  the  boldness  of 
a  master's  hand,  those  great  historic  in- 
cidents in  which  he  had  borne  a  part ;  and 
by  drawing  to  the  life,  and  placing  before 
his  audience,  in  colours  as  fresh  and  strong 
as  those  of  nature,  the  many  illustrious 
men  in  every  quarter  of  the  continent, 
with  whom  he  had  acted  a  part  on  the 
public  stage.  .  .  .  Mr.  Henry's  con- 
versation was  remarkably  pure  and  chaste. 
He  never  swore.  He  was  never  heard  to 
take  the  name  of  his  Maker  in  vain.  He 
was  a  sincere  Christian,  though  after  a 
form  of  his  own ;  for  he  w^as  never  attached 
to  any  particular  religious  society,  and 
never,  it  is  believed,  communed  with  any 
church.  .  .  .  His  morals  were  strict. 
As  a  husband,  a  father,  a  master,  he  had 
no  superior.  He  was  kind  and  hospitable 
to  the  stranger,  and  most  friendly  and 


350 


PATRICK  HENRY 


accommodating  to  his  neighbours.  In  his 
dealings  with  the  world,  he  was  faithful  to 
his  promise,  and  punctual  in  his  contracts, 
to  the  utmost  of  his  power. — Wirt,  Wil- 
liam, 1817,  Sketches  of  the  Life  and  Char- 
acter of  Patrick  Henry,  pp.  394,  418. 

Imagination  can  present  no  brighter 
picture  of  a  happy  old  age,  than  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  real  life  of  Henry ;  and,  when 
we  compare  this  charming  spectacle  with 
that  of  the  cares  and  privations  which 
have  clouded  the  closing  years  of  some  of 
our  greatest  revolutionary  patriots,  we 
are  forced  to  acknowledge,  that  the  strict 
private  economy  with  which  Henry  has 
sometimes  been  reproached  as  a  fault, 
when  combined,  as  it  was  in  his  case,  with 
a  genial  temperament  and  a  liberal  dis- 
charge of  all  the  duties  of  life,  was  not  so 
much  a  venial  error  as  an  actual,  positive, 
and  most  important  virtue.  He  had  been 
always  strongly  impressed  with  the  im- 
portance of  religion,  and  had  studied  with 
care  the  best  books  on  the  subject  that 
came  within  his  reach.  .  .  .  He  possessed 
an  instinctive  sagacity,  which  supplied,  to 
a  great  extent,  the  deficiencies  of  his 
education ;  a  moral  courage,  which  led 
him  to  spurn  all  considerations  of  mere 
temporary  expediency,  when  he  was  once 
satisfied  where  the  right  lay,  and  a  natur- 
ally noble  and  generous  heart.  To  these 
better  qualities  he  owed  his  extraordinary 
eflSciency  and  success  as  a  public  speaker. 
—  Everett,  Alexander  H.,  1844,  Life 
of  Patrick  Henry;  The  Library  of  American 
Biography,  ed.  Sparks,  vol.  I,  pp.  384,  387. 

Mason  Locke  Weems,  with  his  fun  and 
his  fiddle,  his  imagination  and  his  fluency, 
had  points  in  common  with  that  most  gifted 
of  all  such  Virginians,  Patrick  Henry. 
Without  the  opportunity  which  called  into 
exercise  Patrick  Henry's  sublime  talent, 
that  great-natured  orator  might  have  lived 
to  the  end  of  his  days  a  fiddling  stroller 
and  story-teller,  like  his  contemporary, 
Weems.— Parton,  James,  1879,  The  Tra- 
ditional and  Real  Washington,  Magazine 
of  American  History,  vol.  3,  p.  467. 

Such,  1  think  it  may  fairly  be  said, 
was  Patrick  Henry  when,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-four,  having  failed  in  every 
other  pursuit,  he  turned  for  bread  to  the 
profession  of  the  law.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence that  either  he  or  any  other  mortal 
man  was  aware  of  the  extraordinary  gifts 
that  lay  within  him  for  success  in  that 


career.  Not  a  scholar  surely,  not  even  a 
considerable  miscellaneous  reader,  he  yet 
had  the  basis  of  a  good  education ;  he  had 
the  habit  of  reading  over  and  over  again 
a  few  of  the  best  books ;  he  had  a  good 
memory;  he  had  an  intellect  strong  to 
grasp  the  great  commanding  features  of 
any  subject;  he  had  a  fondness  for  the 
study  of  human  nature,  and  singular  pro- 
ficiency in  that  branch  of  science ;  he  had 
quick  and  warm  sympathies,  particularly 
with  persons  in  trouble, — an  invincible 
propensity  to  take  sides  with  the  under- 
dog in  any  fight.  Through  a  long  experi- 
ence in  off-hand  talk  with  the  men  whom 
he  had  thus  far  chiefly  known  in  his  little 
provincial  world, — with  an  occasional 
clergyman,  pedagogue,  or  legislator,  small 
planters  and  small  traders,  sportsmen, 
loafers,  slaves,  and  the  drivers  of  slaves, 
and,  more  than  all,  those  bucolic  Solons 
of  old  Virginia,  the  good-humored,  illiter- 
ate, thriftless  Caucasian  consumers  of 
tobacco  and  whiskey,  who,  cordially  con- 
senting that  all  the  hard  work  of  the 
world  should  be  done  by  the  children  of 
Ham,  were  thus  left  free  to  commune 
together  in  endless  debate  on  the  tavern 
porch  or  on  the  shady  side  of  the  country 
store, — young  Patrick  had  learned  some- 
what of  the  lawyer's  art  of  putting  things ; 
he  could  make  men  laugh,  could  make  them 
serious,  could  set  fire  to  their  enthusiasms. 
What  more  he  might  do  with  such  gifts 
nobody  seems  to  have  guessed ;  very  likely 
few  gave  it  any  thought  at  all.  In  that 
rugged  but  munificient  profession  at  whose 
outward  gates  he  then  proceeded  to  knock, 
it  was  altogether  improbable  that  he  would 
burden  himself  with  much  more  of  its 
erudition  than  was  really  necessary  for  a 
successful  general  practice  in  Virginia  in 
his  time  or  that  he  would  permanently - 
content  himself  with  less. — Tyler,  Moses 
Coit,  1887,  Patrick  Henry  (American 
Statesmen),  p.  18. 

With  no  pomp  or  ceremony,  but  amid 
the  tears  of  his  devoted  family  and  loving 
neighbors,  Patrick  Henry  was  laid  to  rest 
in  the  quiet  graveyard  at  Red  Hill,  at  the 
foot  of  the  garden.  A  plain  marble  slab 
covers  his  grave,  on  which  are  inscribed 
his  name,  the  dates  of  his  birth  and  death, 
and  the  words,  "His  fame  is  his  best 
epitaph." — Henry,  William  Wirt,  1891, 
Patrick  Henry,  vol.  ii,  p.  626. 

Beloved  and  praised  without  stint  by  the 


PATRICK  HENRY 


351 


men  of  his  time,  and  since  his  death 
strangely  maligned  by  a  rival  statesman 
of  Virginia.— Poole,  W.  P.,  1892,  Pat- 
rick Henry,  The  Dial,  vol.  13,  p.  41. 

xA.mong  his  own  countrymen  every  detail 
of  the  career  of  such  a  familiar  historical 
figure  is  of  undying  interest ;  but  to  the 
notice  of  most  English  readers  Patrick 
Henry  comes,  I  think,  but  as  a  shadowy 
name.  His  life  can  be  divided  into  two 
distinct  periods.  The  first  has  an  ijiter- 
national  interest,  and  consists  of  the 
almost  magical  transformation  of  the  de- 
spised clown,  through  a  series  of  dramatic 
situations,  to  a  leading  figure  and  potent 
factor  in  one  of  the  greatest  struggles  in 
English  history.  In  the  second  his  activity 
ceases  to  have  any  international  signifi- 
cance, and  is  reduced  by  the  march  of 
events  to  a  purely  provincial  and  domestic 
stage.  The  former,  as  a  subject  of  in- 
terest to  Englishmen,  needs  no  apology. 
The  latter  would  only  be  welcome  where 
some  sympathy  with  the  personality  of 
Henry,  and  the  conditions  of  the  Southern 
Colonies  after  the  war,  had  been  awakened. 
— Bradley,  A.  G.,  1892.  Patrick  Henrys 
Macmillan^s  Magazine,  vol.  65,  p.  355. 

SPEECHES 
He  is  by  far  the  most  powerful  speaker 
I  ever  heard.  Every  word  he  says  not 
only  engages  but  commands  the  attention ; 
and  your  passions  are  no  longer  your  own 
when  he  addresses  them.  But  his  elo- 
quence is  the  smallest  part  of  his  merit. 
He  is,  in  my  opinion,  the  first  man  upon 
this  continent,  as  well  in  abilities  as 
public  virtues,  and  had  he  lived  in  Rome 
about  the  time  of  the  first  Punic  War.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Henry's  talents  must  have  put  him  at 
the  head  of  that  glorious  commonwealth. 
— Mason,  George,  1774,  Letter  to  Martin 
Cockburn,  Life  and  Writings. 

The  times  in  which  he  lived  were  suited 
to  his  genius,  in  other  times  we  doubt  if 
his  peculiar  powers  would  have  raised  him 
to  a  higher  distinction,  than  that  of  an 
eloquent  speaker  at  the  bar.  .  .  .  The 
secret  of  his  eloquence  unquestionably 
rested  in  his  power  of  touching  the  spring 
of  passion  and  feeling.  He  had  little  to 
do  with  the  understanding  or  judgment  of 
his  hearers.— Sparks,  Jared,  1818,  Mr. 
Wirfs  Life  of  Patrick  Henry,  North  Amer- 
ican Review,  vol.  6,  p.  322. 

They  fall,  of  course,  far  below  his  fame ; 


and  it  is,  after  all,  on  the  faith  of  mere 
tradition,  attested,  however,  by  facts  too 
numerous  and  of  too  public  a  character  to 
leave  it  in  any  way  doubtful,  that  the  pres- 
ent and  future  generations  will  acknowl- 
edge the  justice  of  his  claim  to  the  proud 
title,  that  has  been  given  him,  of  the  great- 
est orator  of  the  New  World.— Everett, 
Alexander  H.,  1844,  Life  of  Patrick 
Henry ;  The  Library  of  American  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  I,  p.  389. 

Mr.  Henry  seldom  used  his  pen,  and  has 
therefore  left  but  little  written  eloquence 
authenticated  by  himself.  To  form  our 
estimate  of  his  powers,  we  have  mainly 
to  rely  on  the  reports  of  those  who  had 
witnessed  the  wonders  he  wrought — those 
who  had  felt  the  magic  of  his  action, 
trembled  at  the  majesty  of  his  voice,  and 
caught  the  flashings  of  his  eye, — who  had 
been  fascinated  by  his  smile,  or  repulsed 
by  his  terrific  frov/n,  and  who  always  found 
themselves  incompetent  to  express  fully 
the  power  with  which  he  impressed  con- 
viction.— Magoon,  E.  L.,  1848,  Orators 
of  the  American  Revolution,  p.  263. 

In  executing  a  mission  from  the  Synod 
of  Virginia,  in  the  year  1794, 1  had  to  pass 
through  the  county  of  Prince  Edward, 
where  Mr.  Henry  resided.  Understanding 
that  he  was  to  appear  before  the  Circuit 
Court,  which  met  in  that  county,  in  de- 
fence of  three  men  charged  with  murder, 
I  determined  to  seize  the  opportunity  of 
observing  for  myself  the  eloquence  of  this 
extraordinary  orator.  ...  In  person, 
Mr.  Henry  was  lean  rather  than  fleshy.  He 
was  rather  above  than  below  the  common 
height,  but  had  a  stoop  in  the  shoulders 
which  prevented  him  from  appearing  as 
tall  as  he  really  was.  In  his  moments  of 
animation,  he  had  the  habit  of  straighten- 
ing his  frame,  and  adding  to  his  apparent 
stature.  He  wore  a  brown  wig,  which 
exhibited  no  indication  of  any  great  care 
in  the  dressing.  Over  his  shoulders  he 
wore  a  brown  camlet  cloak.  Under  this 
his  clothing  was  black,  something  the  worse 
for  wear.  The  expression  of  his  counte- 
nance was  that  of  solemnity  and  deep 
earnestness.  His  mind  appeared  to  be 
always  absorbed  in  what,  for  the  time, 
occupied  his  attention.  His  forehead  was 
high  and  spacious,  and  the  skin  of  his  face 
more  than  usually  wrinkled  for  a  man  of 
fifty.  His  eyes  were  small  and  deeply  set 
in  his  head,  but  were  of  a  bright  blue  color, 


352 


PATRICK  HENRY 


and  twinkled  much  in  their  sockets.  In 
short,  Mr.  Henry's  appearance  had  nothing 
very  remarkable,  as  he  sat  at  rest.  You 
might  readily  have  taken  him  for  a  com- 
mon planter  who  cared  very  little  about 
his  personal  appearance.  In  his  manners, 
he  was  uniformly  respectful  and  courte- 
ous. ...  In  the  countenance,  action,  and 
intonation  of  the  speaker,  there  was  ex- 
pressed such  an  intensity  of  feeling,  that 
all  my  doubts  were  dispelled ;  never  again 
did  I  question  whether  Henry  felt,  or  only 
acted  a  feeling.  Indeed,  I  experienced  an 
instantaneous  sympathy  with  him  in  the 
emotions  which  he  expressed ;  and  I  have 
no  doubt  the  same  sympathy  was  felt  by 
every  hearer. —Alexander,  Archibald, 
1850,  Reminiscences  of  Patrick  Henry , 
Princeton  Magazine ;  Life  by  J.  W.  Alex- 
ander. 

Henry  rose  with  an  unearthly  fire  burn- 
ing in  his  eye.  He  commenced  somewhat 
calmly  [Speech  of  March  23,  1775], 
but  the  smothered  excitement  began 
more  and  more  to  play  upon  his  features 
and  thrill  in  the  tones  of  his  voice.  The 
tendons  of  his  neck  stood  out  white  and 
rigid  "like  whipcords."  His  voice  rose 
louder  and  louder,  until  the  walls  of  the 
building,  and  all  within  them,  seemed  to 
shake  and  rock  in  its  tremendous  vibra- 
tions. Finally,  his  pale  face  and  glaring 
eye  became  ' '  terrible  to  look  upon. ' '  Men 
leaned  forward  in  their  seats,"  with  their 
heads  ''strained  forward,"  their  faces  pale, 
and  their  eyes  glaring  like  the  speaker's. 
His  last  exclamation,  ''Give  me  liberty  or 
give  me  death!"  was  like  the  shout  of  a 
leader  which  turns  back  the  rout  of  battle. 
The  old  clergymen  said,  when  Mr.  Henry 
sat  down,  he  [the  auditor]  felt  "sick  with 
excitement."  Every  eye  yet  gazed  en- 
tranced on  Henry.  It  seemed  as  if  a  word 
from  him  would  have  led  to  any  wild 
explosion  of  violence.  ' '  Men  looked  beside 
themselves." — Randall,  Henry  Steph- 
ens, 1858,  Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  vol,  i, 
p.  101. 

No  one  spoke  so  well  or  reasoned  so 
badly  as  Henry.  He  was  to  the  end  of  his 
days  an  orator  and  an  actor,  and  nothing 
more.  Had  he,  indeed,  gone  upon  the 
stage,  he  would  have  rivalled  Garrick. 
The  attitudes  which  he  struck,  the  way  in 
which  he  walked,  his  gestures,  his  sonorous 
voice,  and  the  wonderful  play  of  his  fea- 
tures must,  if  we  may  trust  the  descriptions 


of  those  who  heard  him,  have  been  most 
remarkable.  He  would  have  been  fine  as 
Othello,  and  have  done  well  as  Sir  Andrew 
Aguecheek.  But  a  statesman  he  certainly 
was  not.  Whatever  could  be  done  by  elo- 
quence he  could  do,  He  could  deliver  a 
fourth-of-July  oration,  move  a  jury,  con- 
duct a  canvass,  or  entertain  the  Legisla- 
ture with  tirades  on  liberty  and,  the  rights 
of  man  in  a  way  that  would  have  ex- 
cited the  envy  of  Pitt  and  Burke.  When, 
however,  the  end  sought  was  to  be  gained 
not  by  good  speaking,  but  by  good  reason- 
ing, he  was  unable  to  cope  with  men  whose 
limited  vocabulary,  whose  mouthing  and 
stammering  and  monotonous  tones  it  was 
painful  to  hear. — McMaster,  John  Bach, 
1883,  A  History  of  the  People  of  the  United 
States,  vol.  I,  p.  490. 

Mr.  Henry  was  a  man  of  marked  and 
peculiar  power  as  an  orator.  He  could 
sway  the  minds  of  the  cultured  and  the 
ignorant  with  equal  ease.  He  could  rouse 
to  action,  or  quiet  the  raging  passions. 
He  was  a  born  actor,  and  understood  how 
to  use  his  powers  with  the  best  effect. 
While  he  was  not  a  wise  and  accomplished 
statesman,  he  exercised  a  strong  influence 
on  the  destinies  of  his  country. — Whit- 
man, C.  M.,  1883,  American  Orators  and 
Oratory,  p.  32. 

For  Virginia  he  was  Otis  and  Adams  in 
one, — both  orator  and  political  manager. 
Not  many  of  his  burning  speeches  have 
come  down  to  us,  but  we  well  know,  what 
he  was:  one  of  the  first  orators  of 
the  eighteenth  century. —  Richardson, 
Charles  F.,  1887,  American  Literature, 
1607-1885,  vol.  I,  p.  189. 

His  speeches  had  an  extraordinary  vivid- 
ness, and  no  speaker  of  his  day  is  so  widely 
quoted  in  our  time  as  Henry.  He  ex- 
pressed honesty  as  well  as  passion,  and 
strong  practical  ability  lay  behind  his 
words.  He  prepared  the  minds  of  the 
people  for  the  inevitableness  of  war,  and 
was  active  in  devising  measures  to  meet  it 
when  it  came  — Hawthorne,  Julian,  and 
Lemmon,  Leonard,  1891,  American  Lit- 
erature, p.  35. 

Mr.  Henry  was  happily  endowed  with 
that  rich  imagination  which  gives  vitality 
to  the  body  of  thought,  and  which  is  essen- 
tial to  the  success  of  the  great  orator. 
He  was  deeply  inbued  with  that  vehemence 
of  conviction,  that  oratorical  action,  which 


HENR  r—  WASHING  TON 


353 


modulates  the  tones,  tinges  the  visage 
with  irresistible  power,  and  suggests  to 
the  hearer  more  than  articulate  language 
can  express. — Hardwicke,  Henry,  1896, 
History  of  Oratory  and  Orators^  p.  332. 

His  oratory  appeals  strongly  to  the 
emotions.  In  his  legal  practice  he  de- 
pended more  on  the  spell  which  his  elo- 
quence threw  over  the  jury,  than  on  a 
mastery  of  the  legal  intricacies  of  the 
case.  He  was  fervid  rather  than  weighty ; 
superficial  and  hasty  rather  than  deep. 
His  oratory  abounds  in  figurative  lan- 
guage ;  it  is  sometimes  overwrought,  even 
turgid,  full  of  exaggerations  and  extrava- 
gant rhapsodies,  yet  when  joined  with  the 


fire,  the  energy,  the  flashing  eye,  the  im- 
passioned voice  of  the  man  who  origin- 
ated it,  was  irresistible. — Pattee,  Fred 
Lewis,  1896,  A  History  of  American  Lit- 
erature, p.  73. 

The  greatest  Revolutionary  orator  of 
the  emotional  type  was  Patrick  Henry  of 
Virginia,  inferior  to  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries in  learning,  judgment,  and  prac- 
tical efficiency,  but  endowed  with  the  gift 
of  passionate  eloquence.  His  famous 
speech  before  the  Virginia  Convention,  in 
1775,  rivals  the  oratory  of  Chatham  for 
terse  strength  and  fiery  logic. — Broxson, 
Walter  C,  1900,  A  Short  History  of 
American  Literature,  p.  46. 


George  Washington 

1732-1799 

Born  in  Westmoreland  County,  Va.,  Feb.  22  (0.  S.  Feb.  11),  1732:  died  at  Mount 
Vernon,  Dec.  14,  1799.  A  famous  American  soldier  and  statesman,  the  first  President 
of  the  United  States.  He  was  the  son  of  Augustine  Washington,  a  Virginia  planter. 
He  was  at  school  until  he  was  about  16  years  of  age ;  was  engaged  in  surveying  1748-51 ; 
was  appointed  adjutant  of  Virginia  troops  in  1751 ;  inherited  Mount  Vernon  on  the  death 
of  his  brother  in  1752;  was  made  by-Dinwiddie  commander  of  a  military  district  of 
Virginia  in  1753 ;  was  sent  on  a  mission  to  the  French  authorities  beyond  the  Allegheny 
River  1753-54 ;  was  appointed  lieutenant-colonel  in  1754 ;  had  a  successful  skirmish 
with  the  French,  and  defended  Fort  Necessity,  but  was  obliged  to  surrender  on  July  3 ; 
was  a  volunteer  aide-de-camp  to  Braddock  in  the  battle  of  the  Monongahela  in  1755, 
and  brought  off  the  Virginians;  commanded  on  the  frontier  1755-57;  and  led  the  ad- 
vance-guard in  Forbes' s  expedition  for  the  reduction  of  Fort  Duquesne  in  1758.  On 
Jan.  9,  1759,  he  married  Martha  Custis  (widow  of  Daniel  Parke  Custis),  and  settled  as 
a  planter  at  Mount  Vernon.  He  was  a  delegate  to  the  Virginia  House  of  Burgesses, 
and  to  the  Continental  Congresses  of  1774  and  1775 ;  was  appointed  commander-in- 
chief  of  the  Continental  forces  June  15,  1775;  arrived  at  Cambridge  July  2,  and  took 
command  and  compelled  the  evacuation  of  Boston  on  March  17,  1776.  His  army  was 
defeated  at  the  battle  of  Long  Island  Aug.  27,  1776,  and  at  White  Plains  Oct.  28,  1776 ; 
he  retreated  through  New  Jersey ;  surprised  the  Hessians  at  Trenton  Dec.  26 ;  won  the 
victory  of  Princeton  Jan.,  1777 ;  was  defeated  at  Brandy  wine  and  Germantown  in  1777 ; 
was  at  Valley  Forge  during  the  winter  of  1777--78 ;  fought  the  drawn  battle  of  Mon- 
mouth in  1778 ;  compelled  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown  in  1781 ;  resigned 
his  commission  as  commander-in-chief  at  Annapolis  in  1783;  and  retired  to  Mount 
Vernon.  In  1787  he  was  president  of  the  Constitutional  Convention ;  was  unanimously 
elected  President  of  the  United  States  in  Feb.  1789,  and  inaugurated  at  New  York 
April  30,  1789 ;  and  was  unanimously  re-elected  in  1793,  serving  until  1797.  Among 
the  chief  events  in  his  administrations  were  the  establishment  of  the  machinery  of 
government,  the  crystallization  of  parties,  the  regulation  of  commerce  and  finance,  the 
admission  of  Vermont,  Kentucky,  and  Tennessee,  the  Indian  wars,  the  whiskey  insur- 
rection," and  the  Jay  treaty.  He  issued  his  farewell  address  to  the  people  in  Sept., 
1796.  He  was  appointed  lieutenant-general  and  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  in 
anticipation  of  a  war  with  France  in  1798. — Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The 
Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  1051. 


PERSONAL 

George  Washington,  son  to  Augustine 
and  Mary  his  wife,  was  born  y*"  11th  day 
of  February  173i  about  ten  in  the  morning, 

23C 


and  was  baptized  the  3d  of  April  following ; 
Mr.  Beverly  Whiting  and  Captain  Christo- 
pher Brooks,  godfathers,  and  Mrs.  Mildred 
Gregory  godmother.— Family  Bible,  1732. 


354 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


Is  Mr.  Washington  among  your  acquaint- 
ances ?  If  not,  I  recommend  you  to  em- 
brace the  first  opportunity  to  form  his 
friendship.  He  is  about  twenty-three 
years  of  age ;  with  a  countenance  both  mild 
and  pleasant,  promising  both  wit  and  judg- 
ment. He  is  of  comely  and  dignified  de- 
meanor, at  the  same  time  displays  much 
self-reliance  and  decision.  He  strikes  me 
as  being  a  young  man  of  extraordinary  and 
exalted  character,  and  is  destined  to 
make  no  inconsiderable  figure  in  our  coun- 
try.—Braddock,  Gen.  Edward,  1755, 
Letters. 

Washington,  the  dictator,  has  shown 
himself  both  a  Fabius  and  a  Camillus.  His 
march  through  our  lines  is  allowed  to  have 
been  a  prodigy  of  generalship.  In  one 
word,  I  look  upon  a  great  part  of  America 
as  lost  to  this  country !  —  Walpole, 
Horace,  1777,  To  Sir  Horace  Mann,  April 
3 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vi,  p.  423. 
Strike  up,  hell's  music !  roar,  infernal  drums ! 
Discharge  the  cannon !  Lo,  the  warrior  comes ! 
He  comes,  not  tame  as  on  Ohio's  banks, 
But  rampant  at  the  head  of  ragged  ranks. 
Hunger  and  itch  are  with  him — Gates  and 
Wayne ! 

And  all  the  lice  of  Egypt  in  his  train. 
Sure  these  are  Falstaff 's  soldiers,  poor  and 
bare, 

Or  else  the  rotten  reg'ments  of  Rag -Fair. 


Hear  thy  indictment,  Washington,  at  large; 
Attend  and  listen  to  the  solemn  charge : 
Thou  hast  supported  an  atrocious  cause 
Against  the  king,  thy  country,  and  the  laws ; 
Committed  perjury,  encouraged  lies. 
Forced  conscience,  broken  the  most  sacred 
ties; 

Myriads  of  wives  and  fathers  at  thy  hand 
Their    slaughtered    husbands,  slaughtered 

sons,  demand; 
That  pastures  hear  no  more  the  lowing  kine, 
That  towns  are  desolate,  all — all  is  thine ; 
The  frequent  sacrilege  that  pained  my  sight, 
The  blasphemies  my  pen  abhors  to  write, 
Innumerable  crimes  on  thee  must  fall— 
For  thou  maintainest,  thou  defendest  all. 
— Odell,  Jonathan,  1779,  The  Loyalist 
Poetry. 

I  have  seen  General  Washington,  that 
most  singular  man — the  soul  and  support 
of  one  of  the  greatest  revolutions  that  has 
ever  happened,  or  can  happen.  I  fixed  my 
eyes  upon  him  with  that  keen  attention 
which  the  sight  of  a  great  man  always  in- 
spires. We  naturally  entertain  a  secret 
hope  of  discovering  in  the  features  of  such 
illustrious  persons  some  traces  of  that 


genius  which  distinguishes  them  from,  and 
elevates  them  above,  their  fellow  mortals. 
Perhaps  the  exterior  of  no  man  was  better 
calculated  to  gratify  these  expectations 
than  that  of  General  Washington.  He  is 
of  a  tall  and  noble  stature,  well  propor- 
tioned, a  fine,  cheerful,  open  countenance, 
a  simple  and  modest  carriage;  and  his 
whole  mien  has  something  in  it  that  inter- 
ests the  French,  the  Americans,  and  even 
enemies  themselves  in  his  favor.  .  .  . 
His  reputation  has,  at  length,  arisen  to  a 
most  brilliant  height;  and  he  may  now 
grasp  at  the  most  unbounded  power,  with- 
out provoking  envy  or  exciting  suspicion. 
He  has  ever  shown  himself  superior  to 
fortune,  and  in  the  most  trying  adversity 
has  discovered  resources  until  then  un- 
known: and,  as  if  his  abilities  only  in- 
creased and  dilated  at  the  prospect  of 
difficulty,  he  is  never  better  supplied  than 
when  he  seems  destitute  of  everything,  nor 
have  his  arms  ever  been  so  fatal  to  his 
enemies,  as  at  the  very  instant  when  they 
thought  they  had  crushed  him  forever.  It 
is  his  to  excite  a  spirit  of  heroism  and 
enthusiasm  in  a  people  who  are  by  nature 
very  little  susceptible  of  it ;  to  gain  over 
the  respect  and  homage  of  those  whose 
interest  it  is  to  refuse  it,  and  to  execute  his 
plans  and  projects  by  means  unknown  even 
to  those  who  are  his  instruments;  he  is 
intrepid  in  dangers,  yet  never  seeks  them 
but  when  the  good  of  his  country  demands 
it,  preferring  rather  to  temporize  and  act 
upon  the  defensive,  because  he  knows  such 
a  mode  of  conduct  best  suits  the  genius 
and  circumstances  of  the  nation,  and  all 
that  he  and  they  have  to  expect,  depends 
upon  time,  fortitude,  and  patience ;  he  is 
frugal  and  sober  in  regard  to  himself,  but 
profuse  in  the  public  cause ;  like  Peter  the 
Great,  he  has  by  defeats  conducted  his 
army  to  victory ;  and  like  Fabius,  but  with 
fewer  resources  and  more  difficulty,  he  has 
conquered  without  fighting  and  saved  his 
country. — Robin,  Claude  C,  1781,  Letter 
from  Camp  of  Phillipsburg,  Aug.  4 ;  Maga- 
zine of  American  History,  vol.  20,  pp. 
137,  138. 

0  Washington !  how  do  I  love  thy  name ! 
How  have  I  often  adored  and  blessed  thy 
God,  for  creating  and  forming  thee  the 
great  ornament  of  human  kind !  .  .  , 
The  world  and  posterity  will,  with  admira- 
tion, contemplate  thy  deliberate,  cool,  and 
stable  judgment,  thy  virtues,  thy  valor  and 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


355 


heroic  achievements,  as  far  surpassing 
those  of  Cyrus,  whom  the  world  loved  and 
adored.  The  sound  of  thy  fame  shall  go 
out  into  all  the  earth,  and  extend  to  dis- 
tant ages.  .  .  .  Such  has  been  thy 
military  wisdom  in  the  struggles  of  this 
arduous  conflict,  such  the  noble  rectitude, 
amiableness,  and  mansuetude  of  thy  char- 
acter, something  is  there  so  singularly 
glorious  and  venerable  thrown  by  Heaven 
about  thee,  that  not  only  does  thy  country 
love  thee,  but  our  very  enemies  stop  the 
madness  of  their  fire  in  full  volley,  stop 
the  illiberality  of  their  slander  at  thy  name, 
as  if  rebuked  from  Heaven  with  a — "Touch 
not  mine  Annointed,  and  do  my  Hero  no 
harm !"  Thy  fame  is  of  sweeter  perfume 
than  Arabian  spices  in  the  gardens  of 
Persia.  A  Baron  de  Steuben  shall  waft 
it  to  a  far  greater  monarch,  and  diffuse 
thy  renown  throughout  Europe.  Listen- 
ing angels  shall  catch  the  odor,  waft  it  to 
heaven,  and  perfume  the  universe! — 
Stiles,  Ezra,  1783,  The  United  States 
Elevated  to  Glory  and  Honor,  p,  334. 

The  name  of  the  Deliverer  of  America 
alone  can  stand  in  the  title-page  of  the 
tragedy  of  the  Deliverer  of  Rome. — To 
you,  most  excellent  and  most  rare  citizen, 
I  therefore  dedicate  this:  without  first 
hinting  at  even  a  part  of  so  many  praises 
due  to  yourself,  which  I  now  deem  all  com- 
prehended in  the  sole  mention  of  your 
name.— Alfieri,  Vittorio,  1785,  The 
First  Brutus,  Dedication. 

My  fine  crab  tree  walking  stick,  with  a 
gold  head  curiously  wrought  in  the  form 
of  the  cap  of  liberty,  I  give  to  my  friend, 
and  the  friend  of  mankind,  General  Wash- 
ington. It  it  were  a  sceptre  he  has 
merited  it ;  and  would  become  it. — Frank- 
lin, Benjamin,  1790,  Will. 

Illustrious  man,  deriving  honour  less 
from  the  splendor  of  his  situation  than 
from  the  dignity  of  his  mind,  before  whom 
all  borrowed  greatness  sinks  into  insignifi- 
cance, and  all  the  potentates  of  Europe 
(excepting  the  members  of  our  own  royal 
family)  become  little  and  contemptible! 
He  has  had  no  occasion  to  have  recourse 
to  any  tricks  of  policy  or  arts  of  alarm ; 
his  authority  has  been  sufficiently  sup- 
ported by  the  same  means  by  which  it  was 
acquired,  and  his  conduct  has  uniformly 
been  characterised  by  wisdom,  modera- 
tion and  firmness. — Fox,  Charles  James, 
1794,  Speech  in  House  of  Commons ,  Jan. 


First  in  war — first  in  peace — and  first 
in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen,  he  was 
second  to  none  in  the  humble  and  endear- 
ing scenes  of  private  life;  pious,  just, 
humane,  temperate  and  sincere ;  uniform, 
dignified  and  commanding,  his  example 
was  as  edifying  to  all  around  him  as  were 
the  effects  of  that  example  lasting.  To 
his  equals  he  was  condescending,  to  his 
inferiors  kind,  and  to  the  dear  object  of 
his  affections  exemplarily  tender.  Correct 
throughout,  vice  shuddered  in  his  presence, 
and  virtue  always  felt  his  fostering  hand. 
The  purity  of  his  private  character  gave 
effulgence  to  his  public  virtues.  His  last 
scene  comported  with  the  whole  tenor  of 
his  life — although  in  extreme  pain,  not  a 
sigh,  nor  a  groan  escaped  him ;  and  with 
undisturbed  serenity  he  closed  his  well- 
spent  life.  Such  was  the  man  America 
has  lost — such  was  the  man  for  whom  our 
nation  mourns. — Lee,  Major  General 
Henry,  1799,  Funeral  Oration  on  Wash- 
ington, Delivered  before  the  Two  Houses  of 
Congress,  Dec.  26. 

The  life  of  our  WASHINGTON  cannot 
suffer  by  a  comparison  with  those  of  other 
countries,  who  have  been  most  celebrated 
and  exalted  by  fame.  The  attributes  and 
declarations  of  royalty  could  have  only 
served  to  eclipse  the  majesty  of  those 
virtues,  which  made  him,  from  being  a 
modest  citizen,  a  more  resplendid  lumi- 
nary. Misfortune,  had  he  lived,  could  here- 
after have  sullied  his  glory  only  with  those 
superficial  minds,  who,  believing  that  char- 
acters and  actions  are  marked  by  success 
alone,  rarely  deserve  to  enjoy  it.  Malice 
could  never  blast  his  honor :  and  envy  made 
him  a  singular  exception  to  her  universal 
rule.  For  himself  he  had  lived  enough, 
to  life  and  glory.  For  his  fellow-citizens, 
if  their  prayers  could  have  been  answered, 
he  would  have  been  immortal.  For  me, 
his  departure  is  at  a  most  unfortunate 
moment.  Trusting,  however,  in  the  wise 
and  righteous  dominion  of  Providence  over 
the  passions  of  men,  and  the  results  of 
their  councils  and  actions,  as  well  as  over 
their  lives,  and  nothing  remains  for  me, 
but  humble  resignation.  His  example  is 
now  complete,  and  it  will  teach  wisdom 
and  virtue  to  magistrates,  citizens,  and 
men,  not  only  in  the  present  age,  but  in 
future  generations,  as  long  as  our  his- 
tory shall  be  read.  If  a  Trajan  found  a 
Pliny,  a  Marcus  Aurelius  can  never  want 


356 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


biographers,  eulogists  or  historians.  — 
Adams,  John,  1799,  To  the  Senate,  Dee.  19. 

Born  to  high  destinies,  he  was  fashioned 
for  them  by  the  hand  of  nature.  His  form 
was  noble — his  port  majestic.  On  his 
front  were  enthroned  the  virtues  which 
exalt,  and  those  which  adorn  the  human 
character.  So  dignified  his  deportment, 
no  man  could  approach  him  but  with  re- 
spect— none  was  great  in  his  presence. 
You  all  have  seen  him,  and  you  all  have 
felt  the  reverence  he  inspired;  it  was 
such,  that  to  command,  seemed  to  him  but 
the  exercise  of  an  ordinary  function,  while 
others  felt  a  duty  to  obey,  which  (anterior 
to  the  injunctions  of  civil  ordinance,  or 
the  compulsion  of  a  military  code)  was 
imposed  by  the  high  behests  of  nature. 
He  had  every  title  to  command — Heaven,  in 
giving  him  the  higher  qualities  of  the  soul, 
had  given  also  the  tumultous  passions  which 
accompany  greatness,  and  frequently  tar- 
nish its  lustre.  With  them  was  his  first 
contest,  and  his  first  victory  was  over  him- 
self. So  great  the  empire  he  had  there 
acquired,  that  calmness  of  manner  and  of 
conduct  distinguished  him  through  life. 
Yet,  those  who  have  seen  him  strongly 
moved,  will  bear  witness  that  his  wrath 
was  terrible ;  they  have  seen  boiling  in  his 
bosom,  passion  almost  too  mighty  for 
man;  yet,  when  just  bursting  into  act, 
that  strong  passion  was  controlled  by  his 
stronger  mind.— Morris,  Gouverneur, 
1799,  An  Oration  upon  the  Death  of  Gen- 
eral Washington,  Delivered  at  the  Request 
of  the  Corporation  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
on  the  ^Ist  of  December. 
Oh,  WASHINGTON!  thou  hero,  patriot, 
sage! 

Friend  of  all  climes,  and  pride  of  every  age ! 
Were  thine  the  laurels,  every  soil  could  raise. 
The  mighty  harvest  were  penurious  praise. 
Well  may  our  realms  thy  Fabian  wisdom 
boast ; 

Thy  prudence  sav'd,  what  bravery  had  lost. 
—Paine,  Thomas,  1800,  Ode  Sung  at  the 
Old  South  Meeting  House,  Boston,  Jan.  9. 

Washington  is  no  more !  The  tomb  has 
claimed  him  who  was  the  model  of  Repub- 
lican perfection.  This  is  not  the  time  to 
trace  all  that  this  truly  great  man  has 
accomplished  for  the  liberties  of  America, 
the  number  and  importance  of  military 
achievements,  the  generous  inspirations 
which  he  imparted  to  the  French  who  were 
attracted  to  his  school  of  arms ;  the  sub- 
lime act  which  will  ever  add  lustre  to  his 


memory,  when,  after  exerting  his  talents 
in  giving  liberty  to  his  country,  he  volun- 
tarily relinquished  supreme  power  to  con- 
ceal his  glory  in  the  obscurity  of  private 
life. — Faulcon,  Felix,  1800,  Proceedings 
in  the  French  Legislative  Assembly,  Feb.  4. 

There  was  indeed  in  this  patriot  some- 
thing that  all  felt,  but  could  not  describe. 
A  strength  of  understanding,  a  keenness  of 
perception,  a  loftiness  of  thought,  that 
convinced  without  argument,  and  subdued 
without  effort.  His  language,  like  his 
carriage,  was  impressive,  elegant  and 
manly.  It  had  secured  a  grace  beyond 
the  reach  of  rhetoric ;  it  had  created  an 
illumination  beyond  the  coloring  of  meta- 
phor. His  integrity  overruled  persuasion ; 
and  his  majesty  overawed  sophistry. 
Corruption  stood  abashed  in  his  presence, 
and  venality  blushed  into  shame.  The  ad- 
ministration caught  the  character  of  their 
leader,  and  seconded  the  energies  of  his 
irresistible  infiuence. —  Story,  Joseph, 
1800,  Eulogy  on  Washington,  Delivered  at 
Marblehead,  Mass.,  Feb.  22. 

There  has  scarcely  appeared  a  really 
great  man  whose  character  has  been  more 
admired  in  his  lifetime,  or  less  correctly 
understood  by  his  admirers.  When  it  is 
comprehended,  it  is  no  easy  task  to  de- 
lineate its  excellence  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  give  to  the  portrait  both  interest  and 
resemblance ;  for  it  requires  thought  and 
study  to  understand  the  true  ground  of  the 
superiority  of  his  character  over  many 
others,  whom  he  resembled  in  the  princi- 
ples of  an  action,  and  even  in  the  manner  of 
acting.  But  perhaps  he  excels  all  the 
great  men  that  ever  lived,  in  the  steadiness 
of  his  adherence  to  his  maxims  of  life,  and 
in  the  uniformity  of  all  his  conduct  to  the 
same  maxims.  .  .  .  His  talents  were 
such  as  assist  a  sound  judgment,  and 
ripen  with  it.  His  prudence  was  consum- 
mate, and  seemed  to  take  the  direction  of 
his  powers  and  passions ;  for  as  a  soldier, 
he  was  more  solicitous  to  avoid  mistakes 
that  might  be  fatal,  than  to  perform  ex- 
ploits that  are  brilliant ;  and  as  a  states- 
man, to  adhere  to  just  principles,  however 
old,  than  to  pursue  novelties ;  and  there- 
fore, in  both  characters,  his  qualities  were 
singularly  adapted  to  the  interest,  and 
were  tried  in  the  greatest  perils,  of  the 
country. — Ames,  Fisher,  1800,  Eulogy  De- 
livered before  the  Massachusetts  Legisla- 
ture, Feb.  8. 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


357 


Born  to  direct  the  destiny  of  empires, 
his  character  was  as  majestic  as  the 
events,  to  which  it  was  attached,  were 
illustrious.  In  the  delineation  of  its  feat- 
ures, the  vivid  pencil  of  genius  cannot 
brighten  a  trait,  nor  the  blighting  breath 
of  a  calumny  obscure.  His  principles 
were  the  result  of  organic  philosophy, — 
his  success,  of  moral  justice.  His  integ- 
rity assumed  the  port  of  command, — his 
intelligence,  the  aspect  of  inspiration. 
Glory,  to  many  impregnable,  he  obtained 
without  ambition;  popularity,  to  all  in- 
constant, he  enjoyed  without  jealousy. 
The  one  was  his  from  admiration,  the  other 
from  gratitude.  The  former  embellished, 
but  could  not  reward  ;  the  latter  followed, 
but  never  could  lead  him.  The  robust 
vigor  of  his  virtue,  like  the  undazzled  eye 
of  the  eagle,  was  inaccessible  to  human 
weakness;  and  the  unaspiring  tempera- 
ment of  his  passions,  like  the  regenerating 
ashes  of  the  phoenix,  gave  new  life  to  the 
greatness  it  could  not  extinguish.  In  the 
imperial  dignity  of  his  person  was  ex- 
hibited the  august  stature  of  his  mind. — 
Paine,  Robert  Treat,  Jr.,  1800,  Eulogy 
on  Washington. 

Exalted  Chief — in  thy  superior  mind 
What  vast  resource,  what  various  talents 
joined! 

Tempered  with  social  virtue's  milder  rays, 
There  patriot  worth  diffused  a  purer  blaze : 
Formed  to  command  respect,  esteem  inspire, 
Midst  statesmen  grave,  or  midst  the  social 
choir, 

With  equal  skill  the  sword  or  pen  to  wield. 
In  council  great,  unequalled  in  the  field. 
Mid  glittering  courts  or  rural  walks  to  please. 
Polite  with  grandeur,  dignified  with  ease ; 
Before  the  splendours  of  that  high  renown 
How  fade  the  glowworm  lustres  of  a  crown. 
How  sink  diminished  in  that  radiance  lost 
The  glare  of  conquest,  and  of  power  the 
boast. 

— Alsop,  Richard,  1800,  Sacred  to  the 
Memory  of  George  Washington. 

There  was  in  him  that  assemblage  of  qual- 
ities which  constitutes  real  greatness ;  and 
these  qualities  were  remarkably  adapted  to 
the  conspicuous  part  which  he  was  called  to 
perform.  He  was  not  tinsel,  but  gold ;  not 
a  pebble,  but  a  diamond ;  not  a  meteor  but 
a  sun.  Were  he  compared  with  the  sages 
from  the  Neroes  of  antiquity,  he  would 
gain  by  the  comparison,  or  rather,  he 
would  be  found  to  be  free  from  the  blem- 
ishes, and  to  unite  the  excellencies  of  them 
all.    Like  Fabius,  he  was  prudent;  like 


Hannibal,  he  was  unappalled  by  difficulties ; 
like  Cyrus,  he  conciliated  affection;  like 
Cimon,  he  was  frugal ;  like  Philopemon,  he 
was  humble ;  and  like  Pompey,  he  was  suc- 
cessful. If  we  compare  him  with  charac- 
ters in  the  Sacred  Records,  he  combined 
the  exploits  of  Moses  and  Joshua,  not  only 
by  conducting  us  safely  across  the 
Red  Sea,  and  through  the  wilderness,  but 
by  bringing  us  into  the  promised  land; 
like  David,  he  conquered  an  insulting 
Goliath,  and  rose  to  the  highest  honors 
from  an  humble  station;  like  Hezekiah, 
he  ruled,  and  like  Josiah  at  his  death, 
there  is  a  mourning  "as  the  mourning  of 
Hadadrimmon,  in  the  valley  of  Megiddon." 
Nor  is  the  mourning  confined  to  us,  but 
extends  to  all  the  wise  and  good  who  ever 
heard  of  his  name.  The  Generals  whom  he 
opposed  will  wrap  their  hilts  in  black,  and 
stern  Cornwallis  drop  a  tear. — Linn,  Wil- 
liam, 1800,  Funeral  Eulogy  on  Washing- 
ton, Feb.  22. 

If  Washington  possessed  ambition,  that 
passion  was,  in  his  bosom,  so  regulated  by 
principles,  or  controlled  by  circumstances, 
that  it  was  neither  vicious,  nor  turbulent. 
Intrigue  was  never  employed  as  the  means 
of  its  gratification,  nor  was  personal 
aggrandizement  its  object.  The  various 
high  and  important  stations  to  which  he 
was  called  by  the  public  voice,  were  un- 
sought by  himself ;  and,  in  consenting  to 
fill  them,  he  seems  rather  to  have  yielded 
to  a  general  conviction  that  the  interests 
of  his  country  would  be  thereby  promoted, 
than  to  an  avidity  for  power.  .  .  . 
Endowed  by  nature  with  a  sound  judg- 
ment, and  an  accurate  discriminating 
mind,  he  feared  not  that  laborious  attention 
which  made  him  perfectly  master  of  those 
subjects,  in  all  their  relations,  on  which 
he  was  to  decide :  and  this  essential  quality 
was  guided  by  an  unvarying  sense  of  moral 
right,  which  would  tolerate  the  employ- 
ment, only,  of  those  means  that  would  bear 
the  most  rigid  examination ;  by  a  fairness 
of  intention  which  neither  sought  nor  re- 
quired disguise :  and  by  a  purity  of  virtue 
which  was  not  only  untainted,  but  unsus- 
pected.— Marshall,  John,  1805-35,  The 
Life  of  George  Washington,  vol.  ii,  pp. 
447,  448. 

He  was  as  fortunate  as  great  and 
good.  Under  his  auspices,  a  civil  war  was 
conducted  with  mildness,  and  a  revolution 
with  order.    Raised  himself  above  the 


358 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


influence  of  popular  passions,  he  happily 
directed  these  passions  to  the  most  useful 
purposes.  Uniting  the  talents  of  the 
soldier  with  the  qualifications  of  the  states- 
man, and  pursuing,  unmoved  by  difficul- 
ties, the  noblest  end  by  the  purest  means, 
he  had  the  supreme  satisfaction  of  behold- 
ing the  complete  success  of  his  great  mili- 
tary and  civil  services,  in  the  independence 
and  happiness  of  his  country. — Bancroft, 
Aaron,  1807,  The  Life  of  George  Wash- 
ington, vol.  II,  p.  218. 

Of  these  private  deeds  of  Washington 
very  little  has  been  said.  In  most  of 
the  elegant  orations  pronounced  to  his 
praise,  you  see  nothing  of  Washington 
below  the  clouds — nothing  of  Washington 
the  dutiful  son — the  afl^ectionate  brother 
— the  cheerful  school-boy — the  diligent 
surveyor — the  neat  draftsman — the  labo- 
rious farmer — the  widow's  husband — the 
orphan's  father — the  poor  man's  friend. 
No !  this  is  not  the  Washington  you  see ; 
'tis  only  Washington,  the  Hero,  and  the 
Demigod — Washington  the  sun-beam  in 
council,  or  the  storm  in  war. — Weems, 
Mason  L.,  1810,  The  Life  of  George  Wash- 
ington, p.  5. 

Washington  had  a  large  thick  nose,  and 
it  was  very  red  that  day,  giving  me  the 
impression  that  he  was  not  so  moderate  in 
the  use  of  liquors  as  he  was  supposed  to 
be.  I  found  afterward  that  this  was  a 
peculiarity.  His  nose  was  apt  to  turn 
scarlet  in  a  cold  wind.  He  was  standing 
near  a  small  camp-fire,  evidently  lost  in 
thought  and  making  no  efl^ort  to  keep 
warm.  He  seemed  six  feet  and  a  half  in 
height,  was  as  erect  as  an  Indian,  and  did 
not  for  a  moment  relax  from  a  military 
attitude.  Washington's  exact  height  was 
six  feet  two  inches  in  his  boots.  He  was 
then  a  little  lame  from  striking  his  knee 
against  a  tree.  His  eye  was  so  gray  that 
it  looked  almost  white,  and  he  had  a 
troubled  look  on  his  colorless  face.  He 
had  a  piece  of  woollen  tied  around  his 
throat  and  was  quite  hoarse.  Perhaps  the 
throat  trouble  from  which  he  finally  died 
had  its  origin  about  then.  Washington's 
boots  were  enormous.  They  were  number 
13.  His  ordinary  walking-shoes  were 
number  11.  His  hands  were  large  in  pro- 
portion, and  he  could  not  buy  a  glove  to  fit 
him  and  had  to  have  his  gloves  made  to 
order.  His  mouth  was  his  strong  feature, 
the  lips  being  always  tightly  compressed. 


That  day  they  were  compressed  so  tightly 
as  to  be  painful  to  look  at.  At  that  time 
he  weighed  two  hundred  pounds,  and  there 
was  no  surplus  flesh  about  him.  He  was 
tremendously  muscled,  and  the  fame  of  his 
great  strength  was  everywhere.  .  .  . 
His  lungs  were  his  weak  point,  and  his  voice 
was  never  strong.  He  was  at  that  time 
in  the  prime  of  life.  His  hair  was  a  chest- 
nut brown,  his  cheeks  were  prominent,  and 
his  head  was  not  large  in  contrast  to  every 
other  part  of  his  body,  which  seemed  large 
and  bony  at  all  points.  His  finger-joints 
and  wrists  were  so  large  as  to  be  genuine 
curiosities.  As  to  his  habits  at  that 
period  I  found  out  much  that  might  be  in- 
teresting. He  was  an  enormous  eater, 
but  was  content  with  bread  and  meat,  if 
he  had  plenty  of  it.  But  hunger  seemed 
to  put  him  in  a  rage.  It  was  his  custom 
to  take  a  drink  of  rum  or  whiskey  on 
awakening  in  the  morning.  Of  course  all 
this  was  changed  when  he  grew  old.  I 
saw  him  at  Alexandria  a  year  before  he 
died.  His  hair  was  very  gray,  and  his 
form  was  slightly  bent.  His  chest  was 
very  thin.  He  had  false  teeth,  which  did 
not  fit  and  pushed  his  under  lip  outward. — 
AcKERSON,  David,  1811,  Letter  to  his  Son. 

Where  may  the  wearied  eye  repose 

Where  gazing  on  the  Great ; 

Where  neither  guilty  glory  glows 

Nor  despicable  state? 

Yes,  one — the  first,  the  last,  the  best, 

The  Cincinnatus  of  the  West, 

Whom  envy  dared  not  hate — 

Bequeathed  the  name  of  Washington, 

To  make  man  blush,  there  was  but  one. 
— Byron,  Lord,  1814,  Ode  to  Napoleon. 

Perhaps  the  strongest  feature  in  his 
character  was  prudence,  never  acting  until 
every  circumstance,  every  consideration, 
was  maturely  weighed;  refraining  if  he 
saw  a  doubt,  but,  when  once  decided,  going 
through  with  his  purpose,  whatever  ob- 
stacles opposed.  His  integrity  was  most 
pure,  his  justice  the  most  inflexible  I  have 
ever  known.  ...  On  the  whole,  his  charac- 
ter was  in  its  mass,  perfect ;  in  nothing  bad, 
in  few  points  indifferent ;  and  it  may  truly 
be  said,  that  never  did  nature  and  fortune 
combine  more  perfectly  to  make  a  man 
great,  and  to  place  him  in  the  same  constel- 
lation with  whatever  worthies  have  merited 
from  man  an  everlasting  remembrance. 
For  his  was  the  singular  destiny  and  merit, 
of  leading  the  armies  of  his  country  suc- 
cessfully through  an  arduous  war,  for  the 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


359 


establishment  of  its  independence ;  of  con- 
ducting its  councils  through  the  birth  of  a 
government,  new  in  its  forms  and  princi- 
ples, until  it  had  settled  down  into  a  quiet 
and  orderly  train;  and  of  scrupulously 
obeying  the  laws  through  the  whole  of  his 
career,  civil  and  military,  of  which  the 
history  of  the  world  furnishes  no  other 
example.—  Jefferson,  Thomas,  1814, 
Letter  to  Dr.  Walter  Jones,  Jan.  2. 

Dilke,  whom  you  know  to  be  a  Godwin- 
perfectibility  man,  pleases  himself  with 
the  idea  that  America  will  be  the  country 
to  take  up  the  human  intellect  where  Eng- 
land leaves  off.  I  differ  there  with  him 
greatly :  a  country  like  the  United  States, 
whose  greatest  men  are  Franklins  and 
Washingtons,  will  never  do  that :  they  are 
great  men  doubtless ;  but  how  are  they  to 
be  compared  to  those,  our  countrymen, 
Milton  and  the  two  Sidneys  ?  The  one  is  a 
philosophical  Quaker,  full  of  mean  and 
thrifty  maxims ;  the  other  sold  the  very 
charger  who  had  taken  him  through  all 
his  battles. — Keats,  John,  1818,  Letter 
to  George  Keats,  Oct.  29 ;  Works,  ed.  For- 
man,  vol.  ni,  p.  242. 

Washington  is  another  of  our  perfect 
characters;  to  me  a  most  limited,  un- 
interesting sort.  The  thing  is  not  only  to 
avoid  error,  but  to  attain  immense  masses 
of  truth.  The  ultra-sensual  surrounds  the 
sensual  and  gives  it  meaning,  as  eternity 
does  time.  Do  I  understand  this  ?  Yes, 
partly,  I  do.— Carlyle,  Thomas,  1833, 
Journal,  Life  by  Froude,  vol.  ii,  p.  300. 

The  disinterested  virtue,  prophetic  wis- 
dom, and  imperturbable  fortitude  of 
Washington.— Alison,  Sir  Archibald, 
1833-42,  History  of  Europe  During  The 
French  Revolution,  vol.  xiv,  p.  2. 

On  my  return  to  Philadelphia  in  May, 
1796, 1  saw  for  the  first  time,  in  company 
with  my  father  and  uncle,  Stuart's  por- 
trait. We  all  agreed  that  although 
beautifully  painted,  and  touched  in  a 
masterly  style,  as  a  likeness  it  was  inferior 
to  its  merit  as  a  painting — the  complexion 
being  too  fair  and  florid,  the  forehead  too 
flat,  eyebrows  too  high,  eyes  too  full,  nose 
too  broad,  about  the  mouth  too  much  in- 
flated, and  the  neck  too  long.  Such  were 
the  criticisms  made  by  artists  and  others 
during  the  life  time  of  Washington.  This 
is  truth,  and  should  be  a  matter  of  his- 
tory. After  the  death  of  Washington,  it 
was  my  opinion  and  deep-felt  regret  that 


there  existed  no  portrait  which  character- 
istically recorded  the  countenance  of  that 
great  man.  With  the  hope,  therefore,  of 
finding  something  that  would  at  least 
gratify  my  own  feelings,  I  made  many  at- 
tempts to  combine  in  a  separate  picture 
what  I  conceived  to  be  the  merits  of  my 
father's  and  my  own  studies,  and  with 
various  success,  always  to  gratify  some 
willing  purchaser,  but  never  to  satisfy  my- 
self, till  the  seventeenth  trial,  which  re- 
sulted, under  extraordinary  excitements, 
in  accomplishing  the  portrait  which  is 
now  in  the  Senate  chamber  at  Washington. 
These  efforts  were  solely  to  gratify  my 
own  feelings  and  admiration  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  great  original;  and  I  had 
every  right  to  do  so,  without  reference  to 
any  other  artist's  claim. — Peale,  Rem- 
brandt, 1834,  To  William  Dunlap,  Dec.  27. 

He  is  eminently  conspicuous  as  one  of 
the  great  benefactors  of  the  human  race, 
for  he  not  only  gave  liberty  to  millions, 
but  his  name  now  stands,  and  will  for  ever 
stand,  a  noble  example  of  high  and  low. 
He  is  a  great  work  of  the  Almighty  Artist, 
which  none  can  study  without  receiving 
purer  ideas  and  more  lofty  conceptions  of 
the  grace  and  beauty  of  the  human  char- 
acter. He  is  one  that  all  may  copy  at 
different  distances,  and  whom  none  can 
contemplate  without  receiving  lasting  and 
salutary  impressions  of  the  sterling  value, 
the  inexpressible  beauty  of  piety,  integ- 
rity, courage,  and  patriotism,  associated 
with  a  clear,  vigorous,  and  well-poised  in- 
tellect. ...  He  is  already  become  the 
saint  of  liberty,  which  has  gathered  new 
honours  by  being  associated  with  his 
name;  and  when  men  aspire  to  free 
nations,  they  must  take  him  for  their 
model.— Paulding,  James  Kirke,  1835, 
Life  of  George  Washington,  p.  283. 

To  the  historian,  indeed,  there  are  few 
characters  that  appear  so  little  to  have 
shared  the  common  frailties  and  imperfec- 
tions of  human  nature ;  there  are  but  few 
particulars  that  can  be  mentioned  even  to 
his  disadvantage.  It  is  understood,  for 
instance,  that  he  was  once  going  to  com- 
mit an  important  mistake  as  a  general  in 
the  field;  but  he  had  at  least  the  very 
great  merit  of  listening  to  Lee  (a  man 
whom  he  could  not  like,  and  who  was  even 
his  rival),  and  of  not  committing  the  mis- 
take.—Smyth,  William,  1839,  Lectures 
on  Modern  History,  Lecture  xxxvi. 


360 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


Washington 
Doth  know  no  other  language  than  the  one 
We  speak  :  and  never  did  an  English  tongue 
Give  voice  unto  a  larger,  wiser  mind. 
You'll  task  your  judgment  vainly  to  point 
out 

Through  all  this  desp'rate  conflict,  in  liis 
plans 

A  flaw,  or  fault  in  execution.  He 
In  spirit  is  unconquerable,  as 
In  genius  perfect. 

—Calvert,  George  Henry,  1840,  Ar- 
nold and  Andre, 

However,  to  say  nothing  of  eloquence, 
Washington  had  not  those  brilliant  and 
extraordinary  qualities,  which  strike  the 
imagination  of  men  at  the  first  glance. 
He  did  not  belong  to  the  class  of  men  of 
vivid  genius,  who  pant  for  an  opportunity 
of  display,  are  impelled  by  great  thoughts 
or  great  passions,  and  diffuse  around  them 
the  wealth  of  their  own  natures,  before 
any  outward  occasion  or  necessity  calls 
for  its  employment.  Free  from  all  inter- 
nal restlessness,  and  the  promptings  and 
pride  of  ambition,  Washington  did  not  seek 
opportunities  to  distinguish  himself,  and 
never  aspired  to  the  admiration  of  the 
world.  This  spirit,  so  resolute,  this  heart 
so  lofty,  was  profoundly  calm  and  modest. 
Capable  of  rising  to  a  level  with  the  highest 
destiny,  he  might  have  lived  in  ignorance 
of  his  real  power,  without  suffering  from 
it,  and  have  found,  in  the  cultivation  of 
his  estates,  a  satisfactory  employment 
for  those  energetic  faculties,  which  were 
to  be  proved  equal  to  the  task  of  com- 
manding armies  and  founding  a  govern- 
ment. ^  But,  when  the  opportunity  pre- 
sented itself,  when  the  exigence  occurred, 
without  effort  on  his  part,  without  any  sur- 
prise on  the  part  of  others,  indeed  rather, 
as  we  have  just  seen,  in  conformity  with 
their  expectations  the  prudent  planter 
stood  forth  a  great  man.  He  had,  in  a 
remarkable  degree,  those  two  qualities 
which,  in  active  life,  make  men  capable  of 
great  things.  He  could  confide  strongly 
in  his  own  views,  and  act  resolutely  in 
conformity  with  them,  without  fearing  to 
assume  the  responsibility. — Guizot,  Fran- 
gois  Pierre  Guillaume,  1840,  An  Essay 
on  the  Character  of  Washington  and  his 
Influence  in  the  Revolution  of  the  United 
States  of  America. 

High  over  all  whom  might  or  mind  made 
great. 

Yielding  the  conqueror's  crown  to  harder 
hearts, 


Exalted  not  by  politician's  arts, 
Yet  with  a  will  to  meet  and  master  fate, 
And  skill  to  rule  a  young,  divided  State  ; 
Greater  by  what  was  not  than  what  was 
done — 

Alone  on  History 's  height  stands  Washington ; 
And  teeming  Time  shall  not  bring  forth  his 
mate; 

For  only  he,  of  men,  on  earth  was  sent, 
In  all  the  might  of  mind's  integrity; 
Ne'er  as  in  him  truth,  strength,  and  wisdom 
blent ; 

And  that  his  glory  might  eternal  be, 

A  boundless  country  is  his  monument, 

A  mighty  nation  his  posterity. 

—White,  Richard  Grant,  1842,  George 

Washington. 

The  nearest  approach  to  universality  of 
genius  in  intellect  is  Shakspeare ;  in  will. 
Napoleon;  in  harmony  of  combination, 
Washington.  It  is  singular  that  Washing- 
ton is  not  generally  classed  among  men  of 
genius.  Lord  Brougham  declares  him  to 
be  the  greatest  man  that  ever  lived,  but 
of  moderate  talents, — as  if  being  the  soul 
of  a  revolution  and  the  creator  of  a  coun- 
try did  not  suppose  energies  equal  to  those 
employed  in  the  creation  of  a  poem, — as 
if  there  were  any  other  certain  test  of 
genius  but  its  influence,  any  other  measure 
of  the  power  of  a  cause  but  the  magnitude 
of  its  effects! — Whipple,  Edwin  P., 
1848-71,  Literature  and  Life,  p.  159. 

The  picture  of  a  man  beside  whom,  con- 
sidered physically,  any  English  nobleman 
whom  I  have  seen  would  look  like  common 
clay.— Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  1855, 
English  Note-Books,  Sep.  14. 

The  character  of  Washington  may  want 
some  of  those  political  elements  which 
dazzle  and  delight  the  multitude,  but  it 
possessed  fewer  inequalities  and  a  rarer 
union  of  virtues  than  perhaps  ever  fell  to 
the  lot  of  one  man.  Prudence,  firmness, 
sagacity,  moderation,  and  overruling 
judgment,  an  immovable  justice,  courage 
that  never  faltered,  patience  that  never 
wearied,  truth  that  disdained  all  artifice, 
magnanimity  without  alloy.  It  seems  that 
if  Providence  had  endowed  him  in  a  pre- 
eminent degree  with  the  qualities  requisite 
to  fit  him  for  the  high  destiny  he  was  called 
upon  to  fulfill.  ...  The  fame  of  Wash- 
ington stands  apart  from  every  name  in 
history:  shining  with  a  truer  light  and 
more  benignant  glory. — Irving,  Wash- 
ington, 1855-59,  Life  of  George  Washing- 
ton. 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


361 


History,  which  shows  us  many  a  more 
dazzling  character,  shows  none  so  grandly 
consistent,  so  splendid  in  disinterested- 
ness, so  free  from  conceit,  yet  so  deter- 
mined in  duty,  so  true  and  tender  in  friend- 
ship, yet  able  to  put  aside  every  personal 
consideration  when  the  good  of  the  country 
and  the  great  cause  of  Freedom  were  in 
question.  What  manner  of  people  ought 
we  to  be  in  return  for  this  great  gift? 
Let  us  bless  God  that  America,  having  pro- 
duced one  such  son,  may  bring  forth  others 
like  him,  when  the  day  of  trial  shall  come, 
as  it  may  come,  even  to  us,  favored  as  we 
are  above  all  the  nations  of  the  earth. 
There  is  more  hope,  not  less,  of  another 
Washington,  from  having  had  the  first. — • 
— KiRKLAND,  Caroline  Matilda,  1856, 
Memoirs  of  Washington,  p.  501. 

In  his  person,  Washington  was  six  feet 
high,  and  rather  slender.  His  limbs  were 
long ;  his  hands  were  uncommonly  large, 
his  chest  broad  and  full,  his  head  was  ex- 
actly round,  and  the  hair  brown  in  man- 
hood, but  gray  at  fifty;  his  forehead 
rather  low  and  retreating,  the  nose  large 
and  massy,  the  mouth  wide  and  firm,  the 
chin  square  and  heavy,  the  cheeks  full  and 
ruddy  in  early  life.  His  eyes  were  blue 
and  handsome,  but  not  quick  or  nervous. 
He  required  spectacles  to  read  with  at 
fifty.  He  was  one  of  the  best  riders  in 
the  United  States,  but,  like  some  other 
good  riders,  awkward  and  shambling  in  his 
walk.  He  was  stately  in  his  bearing,  re- 
served, distant,  and  apparently  haughty. 
Shy  among  women,  he  was  not  a  great 
talker  in  any  company,  but  a  careful  ob- 
server and  listener.  He  read  the  natural 
temper  of  men,  but  not  always  aright.  He 
seldom  smiled.  He  did  not  laugh  with  his 
face,  but  in  his  body,  and  while  calm  above, 
below  the  diaphragm  his  laughter  was 
copious  and  earnest.  Like  many  grave 
persons,  he  was  fond  of  jokes  and  loved 
humorous  stories.  He  had  negro  story- 
tellers to  regale  him  with  fun  and  anec- 
dotes at  Mount  Vernon.  He  was  not 
critical  about  his  food,  but  fond  of  tea. 
He  took  beer  or  cider  at  dinner,  and  oc- 
casionally wine.  He  hated  drunkenness, 
gaming,  and  tobacco.  He  had  a  hearty 
love  of  farming,  and  of  private  life. 
There  was  nothing  of  the  politician  in  him, 
no  particle  of  cunning.  He  was  one  of 
the  most  industrious  of  men.  Not  an 
elegant  or  accurate  writer,  he  yet  took 


great  pains  with  style,  and,  after  the  Rev- 
olution, carefully  corrected  the  letters 
he  had  written  in  the  time  of  the  French 
War,  more  than  thirty  years  before.  He 
was  no  orator,  like  Jefferson,  Franklin, 
Madison,  and  others,  who  had  great  influ- 
ence in  American  affairs.  He  never  made 
a  speech.  .  .  .  Cromwell  is  the  greatest 
Anglo-Saxon  who  was  ever  a  ruler  on  a 
large  scale.  In  intellect,  he  was  im- 
mensely superior  to  Washington ;  in  integ- 
rity, immeasurably  below  him.  For  one 
thousand  years  no  king  in  Christendom  has 
shown  such  greatness,  or  gives  us  so  high 
a  type  of  manly  virtue.  He  never  dis- 
sembled. He  sought  nothing  for  himself. 
In  him  there  was  no  unsound  spot ;  nothing 
little  or  mean  in  his  character.  The  whole 
was  clean  and  presentable.  We  think 
better  of  mankind  because  he  lived,  adorn- 
ing the  earth  with  a  life  so  noble.  .  .  . 
God  be  thanked  for  such  a  man. — Par- 
ker, Theodore,  1858-70,  Historic  Amer- 
icans. 

Upon  the  banks  of  the  Potomac,  which 
for  four  years  have  been  swept  by  the  des- 
olating storms  of  war,  where  tens  of 
thousands  of  the  bravest  sons  of  the  Re- 
public have  gone  down  in  the  shock  of 
fratricidal  strife,  is  one  sacred  spot  in  the 
presence  of  which  war  has  forgotten  its 
passion,  and  assumed,  for  the  moment,  the 
virtues  of  white-robed  Peace.  A  simple 
tomb  there  marks  the  place  where  Liberty 
has  erected  her  chosen  altar  on  this  earth. 
Thanks  be  to  God  that  every  American 
heart  that  pulsates  lovingly  towards  the 
Father  of  his  Country — and  whose  does 
not? — may  claim  that  altar  for  his  own! 
Let  us,  on  this  day,  with  reverent  step  and 
worshipful  feeling,  approach  it  with  votive 
offerings.  Let  us  come  as  Americans, 
who  still  have  one  country  and  one  destiny, 
and  unite  with  our  countrymen  all  over 
the  globe,  in  acts  of  grateful  commemora- 
tion. In  this  land,  united  to  our  own  by 
the  most  cherished  traditions,  and  which 
from  mothers'  lips  we  learned  to  love,  let 
us  unite  in  devout  thanksgiving,  that  the 
Temple  of  Liberty  erected  by  Washington 
and  his  compeers,  stands  to-day,  after  its 
fiery  trial,  more  firm  in  its  foundations, 
more  fair  in  its  beauty,  its  portals  th'rown 
more  widely  open  for  the  solace  and  refuge 
of  humanity. — Putnam,  James  0.,  1866, 
Birthday  of  Washington  Celebrated  in 
Paris,  Feb.  22,  p.  3. 


362 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


Soldier  and  statesman,  rarest  unison; 
High-poised  example  of  great  duties  done 
Simply  as  breathing,  a  world's  honors  worn 
As  life's  indifferent  gifts  to  all  men  born ; 
Dumb  for  himself,  unless  it  were  to  God, 
But  for  his  barefoot  soldiers  eloquent. 
Tramping  the  snow  to  coral  where  they  trod, 
Held  by  his  awe  in  hollow-eyed  content ; 
Modest,  yet  firm  as  Nature's  self;  unblamed 
Save  by  the  men  his  nobler  temper  shamed ; 
Never  seduced  through  show  of  present  good 
By  other  than  unsetting  lights  to  steer 
New-trimmed  in  Heaven,  nor  than  his  stead- 
fast mood 

More  steadfast,  far  from  rashness  as  from 
fear; 

Rigid,  but  with  himself  first,  grasping  still 
In  swerveless  poise  the  wave -beat  helm  of 
will; 

Not  honored  then  or  now  because  he  wooed 
The  popular  voice,  but  that  he  still  with- 
stood ; 

Broad-minded,  higher-souled,  there  is  but  one 
Who  was  all  this  and  ours,  and  all  men's, 
— Washington. 

—Lowell,  James  Russell,  1875,  Under 
the  Old  Elm. 

To  the  appointment  of  Washington,  far 
more  than  to  any  other  single  circum- 
stance, is  due  the  ultimate  success  of  the 
American  Revolution,  though  in  purely  in- 
tellectual powers,  Washington  was  cer- 
tainly inferior  to  Franklin,  and  perhaps  to 
two  or  three  of  his  colleagues.  .  .  .  His 
mind  was  not  quick  or  remarkably  original. 
His  conversation  had  no  brilliancy  or  wit. 
He  was  entirely  without  the  gift  of  elo- 
quence, and  he  had  very  few  accomplish- 
ments. He  knew  no  language  but  his  own, 
and  except  for  a  rather  strong  turn  for 
mathematics,  he  had  no  taste  which  can  be 
called  purely  intellectual.  There  was 
nothing  in  him  of  the  meteor  or  the  cata- 
ract, nothing  that  either  dazzled  or  over- 
powered. A  courteous  and  hospitable 
country  gentleman,  a  skilful  farmer,  a  very 
keen  sportsman,  he  probably  differed  little 
in  taste  and  habits  from  the  better  mem- 
bers of  the  class  to  which  he  belonged ;  and 
it  was  in  a  great  degree  in  the  administra- 
tion of  a  large  estate  and  in  assiduous  at- 
tention to  county  and  provincial  business 
that  he  acquired  his  rare  skill  in  reading 
and  managing  men. — Lecky,  William 
Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A  History  of 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol. 
Ill,  ch.  xii,  pp.  468,  469. 

Of  Washington  we  know  at  least  that 
as  he  gave  himself  without  reserve  to  the 
welfare  of  his  country,  as  neither  ambition 


or  any  personal  object  animated  him,  so 
his  happiness  could  not  have  been  exposed 
to  the  causes  which  afflict  the  aspiring 
and  self-seeking ;  that  as  he  was  not  a  man 
of  genius,  so  he  did  not  suffer  the  pains 
of  genius ;  and  that  all  the  enduring  satis- 
faction which  great  deeds,  wise  counsels, 
and  disinterested  services  can  give  to  the 
heart  of  man  must  have  been  his. — Cur- 
tis, George  Ticknor,  1882,  Washington's 
Acceptance  of  the  First  Presidency,  Har- 
per's Magazine,  vol.  64,  p.  523. 

George  Washington  is  now  a  cold  statue 
enshrouded  in  Fourth  of  July  smoke ;  he  is 
a  teashop  chromo  and  a  character  that 
seldom  is  dragged  from  unused  histories 
except  to  be  belittled  by  comparison  with 
some  smaller  man  of  later  days.  While 
he  lived,  Washington  was  a  warm-blooded, 
clear-headed,  clean-hearted  man,  a  hard 
working  farmer,  a  conscientious  employer, 
a  loyal  husband,  a  hearty  friend,  an  un- 
selfish soldier,  an  honest  neighbor,  a  stout- 
hearted patriot,  a  jolly  good  fellow  and  a 
consistent  Christian.  He  paid  close  atten- 
tion to  whatever  was  going  on  about  him 
or  within  his  means  of  information,  was 
superior  to  prejudice  and  partiality,  and 
apparently  believed  that  any  man  could  do 
anything  upon  which  he  set  his  mind. — 
Habberton,  John,  1884,  George  Washing- 
ton (American  Worthies),  Preface. 

The  world  has  done  ample  justice  to  the 
character  of  Washington.  His  own  coun- 
trymen, after  death  had  put  its  solemn 
seal  upon  his  career  and  services,  did  him 
more  than  justice,  and  all  but  idolised  his 
memory.  He  was  not  great  in  the  highest 
sense  of  the  word.  He  was  not  brilliant. 
He  was  not  even  successful,  except  by  aids 
which  he  could  not  have  anticipated,  and 
which  it  would  have  been  better  for  the 
self-love  of  his  country  if  he  had  never 
accepted.  He  wore  out  evil  fortune 
mainly  by  the  incapability  which  he  shared 
with  the  English,  from  whom  he  sprang, 
of  never  knowing  when  he  was  beaten,  and 
by  the  dogged  pertinacity  and  perseverance 
which  are  characteristics  of  the  race.  He 
was  essentiality  a  good  man;  and  though 
subject  to  occasional  fits  of  violence,  was 
cautious,  prudent,  just,  honourable,  un- 
wearied in  the  pursuit  of  the  right,  and 
inflexible  in  his  adherence  to  it  when  dis- 
covered. He  was  a  man  of  his  age — a 
little  in  advance  of  it,  perhaps,  but  never 
so  much  in  advance  of  it  as  to  incur  the 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


363 


reproach  of  being  rash,  impracticable,  or 
Utopian.  Living,  he  attracted  but  little 
love — as  little  as  Aristides  the  Just ;  but 
dead,  he  commanded  the  admiration  of 
Europe  and  the  affectionate  veneration  of 
America,  as  one,  "who  was  first  in  war, 
first  in  peace,  and  first  in  the  hearts  of  his 
countrymen. Mackay,  Charles,  1885, 
The  Founders  of  the  American  Republic^ 
p.  141. 

The  stately  column  that  stretches 
heavenward  from  the  plain  whereon  we 
stand  bears  witness  to  all  who  behold  it, 
that  the  covenant  which  our  fathers  made, 
their  children  have  fulfilled.  In  the  com- 
pletion of  this  great  work  of  patriotic 
endeavor  there  is  abundant  cause  for 
national  rejoicing,  for  while  this  structure 
shall  endure  it  shall  be  to  all  mankind  a 
steadfast  token  for  the  affectionate  and 
reverent  regard  in  which  this  people  con- 
tinue to  hold  the  memory  of  Washington. 
Well  may  he  ever  keep  the  foremost 
place  in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen. — 
Arthur,  Chester  A.,  1885,  On  Present- 
ing the  Washington  National  Monument  to 
the  People,  Feb.  21. 

Washington  stands  alone  and  unap- 
proachable, like  a  snow  peak  rising  above 
its  fellows  into  the  clear  air  of  morning, 
with  a  dignity,  constancy,  and  purity  which 
have  made  him  the  ideal  type  of  civic  virtue 
to  succeeding  generations.  No  greater 
benefit  could  have  befallen  the  republic 
than  to  have  such  a  type  set  from  the  first, 
before  the  eye  and  mind  of  the  people. — 
Bryce,  James,  1888,  The  American  Com- 
monwealth, vol.  I,  p.  641. 

"The  American  Fabius.''  "The  Atlas 
of  America."  "The  Cincinnatus  of  the 
West.'^  "The  Deliverer  of  America." 
"The  Father  of  his  Country."  "The 
Flower  of  the  Forest."  "The  Lovely 
Georgius." — Frey,  Albert  R.,  1888, 
Sobriquets  and  Nicknames,  p.  477. 

He  was  not  perhaps  exactly  joyous  or 
gay  of  nature,  but  he  had  a  contented  and 
happy  disposition,  and,  like  all  robust, 
well-balanced  men,  he  possessed  strong 
animal  spirits  and  a  keen  sense  of  enjoy- 
ment. He  loved  a  wild,  open-air  life,  and 
was  devoted  to  rough  out-door  sports.  He 
liked  to  wrestle  and  run,  to  shoot,  ride  or 
dance,  and  to  engage  in  all  trials  of  skill 
and  strength,  for  which  his  great  muscular 
development  suited  him  admirably.  With 
such  tastes,  it  followed  almost  as  a  matter 


of  course  that  he  loved  laughter  and  fun. 
Good,  hearty  country  fun,  a  ludicrous  mis- 
hap, a  practical  joke,  all  merriment  of  a 
simple,  honest  kind,  were  highly  congenial 
to  him,  especially  in  his  youth  and  early 
manhood.  ...  He  knew  human  nature 
well,  and  had  a  smile  for  its  little  weak- 
nesses when  they  came  to  his  mind.  It 
was  this  same  human  sympathy  which 
made  him  also  love  amusements  of  all 
sorts ;  but  he  was  as  little  their  slave  as 
their  enemy.  No  man  ever  carried  great 
burdens  with  a  higher  or  more  serious 
spirit,  but  his  cares  never  made  him  for- 
bidding, nor  rendered  him  impatient  of 
the  pleasure  of  others.  ...  He 
had,  indeed,  in  all  w^ays  a  thoroughly  well- 
balanced  mind  and  temper.  In  great 
affairs  he  knew  how  to  spare  himself  the 
details  to  which  others  could  attend  as 
well  as  he,  and  yet  he  was  in  no  wise  a 
despiser  of  small  things.  ...  He  did 
not  have  the  poetical  and  imaginative 
quality  so  strongly  developed  in  Lincoln. 
Yet  he  was  not  devoid  of  imagination, 
although  it  was  here  that  he  was  lacking, 
if  anywhere.  He  saw  facts,  knew  them, 
mastered  and  used  them,  and  never  gave 
much  play  to  fancy ;  but  as  his  business  in 
life  was  with  men  and  facts,  this  deficiency, 
if  it  was  one,  was  of  little  moment.  .  .  . 
I  see  in  Washington  a  great  soldier  who 
fought  a  trying  war  to  a  successful  end 
impossible  without  him ;  a  great  statesman 
who  did  more  than  all  other  men  to  lay 
the  foundations  of  a  republic  which  has 
endured  in  prosperity  for  more  than  a 
century.  I  find  in  him  a  marvellous  judg- 
ment which  was  never  at  fault,  a  penetra- 
ting vision  which  beheld  the  future  of 
America  when  it  was  dim  to  other  eyes,  a 
great  intellectual  force,  a  will  of  iron,  an 
unyielding  grasp  of  facts,  and  an  un- 
equaled  strength  of  patriotic  purpose.  I 
see  in  him  too  a  pure  high-minded  gentle- 
man of  dauntless  courage  and  stainless 
honor,  simple  and  stately  of  manner,  kind 
and  generous  of  heart. — Lodge,  Henry' 
Cabot,  1889,  George  Washington  {Amer- 
ican Statesmen),  vol.  ii,  pp.  367,  374,  375, 
384,  388. 

We  always  gladly  concede  that  Wash- 
ington was  good,  but  we  are  not  always  so 
sure  that  he  was  great.  But  a  man's 
greatness  is  measured  by  his  service  to 
mankind.  If,  without  ambition  and  with- 
out crime,  righteously  to  lead  a  people  to 


364 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


independence  through  a  righteous  war; 
then,  without  precedent  and  amid  vast  and 
incalculable  hostile  forces,  to  organize 
their  government,  and  establish  in  every 
department  the  fundamental  principles  of 
the  policy  which  has  resulted  in  marvellous 
national  power  and  prosperity,  and  untold 
service  to  liberty  throughout  the  world ; 
and  to  do  all  this  without  suspicion  or  re- 
proach, with  perfect  dignity  and  sublime 
repose,— if  this  be  greatness,  do  you  find 
it  more  in  Alexander  or  Pericles,  Caesar 
or  Alfred,  in  Charlemagne  or  Napoleon 
Bonaparte,  or  in  George  Washington  ?  As 
this  majestic  arch  will  stand  here,  through 
the  long  succession  of  years,  in  the  all- 
revealing  light  of  day,  visible  at  every 
point  and  at  every  point  exquisitely 
rounded  and  complete,  so  in  the  searching 
light  of  history  stands  Washington,  strong, 
simple,  symmetrical,  supreme,  beloved  by 
a  filial  nation,  revered  by  a  grateful 
world.— Curtis,  George  William,  1890, 
The  Washington  Memorial  Arch,  May  30 ; 
Orations  and  Addresses,  vol.  iii,  p.  196. 

Let  us  thank  God  that  he  has  lived,  and 
that  he  has  given  to  us  the  highest  and 
best  example  of  American  citizenship. 
And  let  us  especially  be  grateful  that  we 
have  this  sacred  memory,  which  spanning 
time,  vicissitude,  and  unhappy  alienation, 
calls  us  together  in  sincere  fellowship  and 
brotherly  love  on  "The  birthday  of  George 
Washington." — Cleveland,  Grover, 
1890,  The  Character  of  George  Washington, 
Writings  and  Speeches,  ed.  Parker,  p.  351. 

Washington  was  to  the  confederacy  all 
in  all.  Without  him  it  would  have  been 
ten  times  lost,  and  the  names  of  the  poli- 
ticians who  had  drawn  the  country  into 
the  conflict  would  have  gone  down  to  pos- 
terity linked  with  defeat  and  shame.  His- 
tory has  hardly  a  stronger  case  of  an 
indispensable  man.  His  form,  like  all 
other  forms  of  the  revolution,  has  no  doubt 
been  seen  through  a  golden  haze  of  pane- 
gyric. We  can  hardly  number  among  the 
greatest  captains  a  general  who  acted  on 
so  small  a  scale  and  who,  though  he  was 
the  soul  of  the  war,  never  won  a  battle. 
.  .  .  Carlyle,  who  threatened  to  take 
George  down  a  peg  or  two,"  might  have 
made  good  his  threat.  But  he  could  not 
have  stripped  Washington  of  any  part  of 
his  credit  for  patriotism,  wisdom  and  cour- 
age ;  for  the  union  of  enterprise  with  pru- 
dence; for  integrity  and  truthfulness ;  for 


simple  dignity  of  character ;  for  tact  and 
forbearance  in  dealing  with  men;  above 
all  for  serene  fortitude  in  the  darkest  hour 
of  his  cause  and  under  trials  from  the  per- 
versity, insubordination,  jealousy  and  per- 
fidy of  those  around  him  severer  than  any 
defeat.  .  .  .  Wellington  might  be 
more  of  an  aristocrat  than  Washington, 
less  of  a  democrat  he  could  hardly  be. 
Washington  insisted  that  his  oflicers  should 
be  gentlemen,  not  men  fit  to  be  shoe- 
blacks. He  drew  a  most  undemocratic 
distinction  between  the  ofllicer  and  the 
private  soldier.— Smith,  Gold  win,  1893, 
The  United  States,  an  Outline  of  Political 
History,  pp.  96,  97. 

He  had  the  English  feeling  of  never 
knowing  when  he  was  beaten ;  and  his  own 
courageous  enthusiasm  finally  infected  the 
men  whom  he  led.  His  personal  influence 
was  greater  than  any  leader  on  his  side. 
Lee  and  Gates  might  have  had  a  certain 
amount  of  romantic  enthusiasm  attached 
to  them  when  successful,  but  when  they 
failed  their  influence  failed  too.  Through 
success  and  failure,  through  want  and 
privation,  as  well  as  through  victory, 
Washington,  the  only  general  of  them  all 
who  never  left  his  men  through  the  weary 
years  of  war,  even  to  go  to  his  beloved 
home,  save  on  two  brief  occasions,  won 
year  by  year  their  increasing  reverence 
and  regard.  It  was  this  that  made  George 
Washington  one  of  the  leaders  of  military 
history.  A  leader  of  men;  not  from 
victories  in  the  field,  but  from  that  higher 
and  nobler  leadership  of  being  their  sym- 
pathetic comrade  through  pain  and  toil  as 
well  as  through  success,  which  is  rarer 
than  generalship.— King,  Lieut. -Colonel 
Cooper,  1894,  George  Washington,  p.  273. 

There  have  been  three  distinct  eras  in 
Washington-olatry.  The  generation  which 
fought  the  Revolution,  framed  and  adopted 
the  Constitution,  and  established  the 
United  States  were  impressed  with  the 
most  profound  veneration,  the  most  de- 
voted affection,  the  most  absolute  idolatry 
for  the  hero,  sage,  statesman.  In  the 
reaction  that  came  in  the  next  generation 
against* 'the  old  soldiers,"  who  for  thirty 
years  had  assumed  all  the  honors  and  en- 
joyed all  the  fruits  of  the  victory  that 
they  had  won,  accelerated  by  the  division 
in  American  sentiment  for  or  against  the 
French  Revolution,  it  came  to  be  felt, 
as  the  younger  generation  always  will  feel. 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


365 


that  the  achievements  of  the  veterans  had 
been  greatly  overrated  and  their  demigod 
enormously  exaggerated.  They  thought, 
as  English  Harry  did  at  Agincourt,  that 
''Old  men  forget:  yet  all  shall  be  forgot, 
but  they'll  remember  with  advantages 
what  feats  they  did  that  day. ' '  The  fierce 
attacks  of  the  Jeffersonian  Democracy  on 
Washington,  his  principles,  his  life,  and 
his  habits,  exercised  a  potent  influence  in 
diminishing  the  general  respect  for  his 
abilities  felt  by  the  preceding  generation; 
and  Washington  came  to  be  regarded  as  a 
worthy,  honest,  well-meaning  gentleman, 
but  with  no  capacity  for  military  and  only 
mediocre  ability  in  civil  affairs.  The 
estimate  continued  from  the  beginning  of 
Jefferson's  administration  to  the  first  of 
Grant's.  Neither  Marshall  nor  Irving  did 
much  during  that  period  to  place  him  in  a 
proper  historical  light.  The  official  and 
judicial  statement  of  the  case  by  Chief- 
Justice  Marshall  never  reached  the  popular 
ear,  and  the  laudatory  style  of  Washington 
Irving  did  not  impress  the  popular  convic- 
tion. But  in  the  last  twenty-five  years 
there  has  been  a  steady  drift  toward  giving 
Washington  his  proper  place  in  history  and 
his  appropriate  appreciation  as  soldier  and 
statesman.  The  general  who  never  won  a 
battle  is  now  understood  to  have  been  the 
Revolution  itself,  and  one  of  the  great 
generals  of  history.  The  statesman  who 
never  made  a  motion,  nor  devised  a  meas- 
ure, nor  constructed  a  proposition  in  the 
convention  of  which  he  was  president,  is 
appreciated  as  the  spirit,  the  energy,  the 
force,  the  wisdom  which  initiated,  organ- 
ized, and  directed  the  formation  of  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  the 
Union  by,  through,  and  under  it ;  and  there- 
fore it  seems  now  possible  to  present  him 
as  the  Virginian  soldier,  gentleman,  and 
planter,  as  a  man,  the  evolution  of  the 
society  of  which  he  formed  a  part,  repre- 
sentative of  his  epoch,  and  his  surround- 
ings, developed  by  circumstances  into  the 
greatest  character  of  all  time — the  first 
and  most  illustrious  of  Americans. — ■ 
Johnson,  Gen.  Bradley  T.,  1894,  Gen- 
eral Washington  (Great  Commanders) y 
Preface^  p.  vii. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Washington 
during  the  whole  of  his  life  had  a  soft  heart 
for  women,  and  especially  for  good  looking 
ones,  and  both  in  his  personal  intercourse 
and  in  his  letters  he  shows  himself  very 


much  more  at  ease  with  them  than  in  his 
relations  with  his  own  sex.  .  .  .  The 
question  whether  Washington  was  a  faith- 
ful husband  might  be  left  to  the  facts 
already  given,  were  it  not  that  stories  of 
his  immorality  are  bandied  about  in  clubs, 
a  well-know  clergyman  has  vouched  for 
their  truth,  and  a  United  States  senator 
has  given  further  currency  to  them  by 
claiming  special  knowledge  on  the  sub- 
jects. Since  such  are  the  facts,  it  seems 
best  to  consider  the  question  and  show 
what  evidence  there  actually  is  for  these 
stories,  that  at  least  the  pretended  "let- 
ters," etc.,  which  are  always  being  cited, 
and  are  never  produced,  may  no  longer 
have  credence  put  in  them,  and  the  true 
basis  for  all  the  stories  may  be  known  and 
valued  at  its  worth.— Ford,  Paul  Lei- 
cester, 1896,  The  True  George  Washing- 
tony  pp.  84,  105. 

Washington  hardly  seems  an  American, 
as  most  of  his  biographers  depict  hirn. 
He  is  too  colorless,  too  cold,  too  prudent. 
He  seems  more  like  a  wise  and  dispassion- 
ate Mr.  Alworthy,  advising  a  nation  as  he 
would  a  parish,  than  like  a  man  building 
states  and  marshaling  a  nation  in  a  wilder- 
ness. But  the  real  Washington  was  as 
thoroughly  an  American  as  Jackson  or 
Lincoln.  What  we  take  for  lack  of  pas- 
sion in  him  was  but  the  reserve  and  self- 
mastery  natural  to  a  man  of  his  class  and 
breeding  in  Virginia.  He  was  no  parlor 
politician,  either.  He  had  seen  the 
frontier,  and  far  beyond  it  where  the 
French  forts  lay.  He  knew  the  rough  life 
of  the  country  as  few  other  men  could. 
His  thoughts  did  not  live  at  Mount  Vernon. 
He  knew  difficulty  as  intimately  and  faced 
it  always  with  as  quiet  a  mastery  as  William 
the  Silent.  —  Wilson,  Woodrow,  1896, 
Mere  Literature  and  Other  Essay Sy  p.  201. 

I  know  of  no  instance  in  which  sectional 
feelings  disturbed  his  impartiality,  nor  do 
I  know  of  a  single  Southern  or  Virginia 
statesman  with  whom  he  can  be  grouped. 
One  reason  of  this  is  obvious — he  was  that 
rara  avis  in  those  days,  a  self-made 
Virginian ;  for  in  his  early  years  he  was 
thrown  largely  on  his  own  resources. 
This  was  not  the  case  with  the  other  great 
Virginians  of  the  Revolution,  save  Patrick 
Henry;  and  Henry's  career  showed  traces 
of  the  shiftlessness  that  nearly  always  ac- 
companied Virginian  poverty.  Washing- 
ton, then,  was  always  something  more  than 


366 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


a  Virginian  or  a  Southerner.  He  has 
always  belonged  to  America  and  the 
nation;  yet  I  do  not  think  he  could  have 
developed  all  the  features  of  his  rounded 
character  anywhere  else  than  in  the  Vir- 
ginia of  the  eighteenth  century. — Trent, 
William  P.,  1897,  Southern  Statesmen  of 
the  Old  Regime,  p.  42. 

Of  the  many  thousand  victims  of  these 
heroic  methods,  the  most  illustrious  was 
George  Washington,  who,  but  for  medical 
treatment,  might  probably  have  lived  a 
dozen  or  fifteen  years  into  the  nineteenth 
century.  When  Washington  in  full  vigour 
found  that  he  had  caught  a  very  bad  cold 
he  sent  for  the  doctors,  and  meanwhile 
had  half  a  pint  of  blood  taken  from  him 
by  one  of  his  overseers.  Of  the  three 
physicians  in  attendance,  one  was  his  dear 
friend,  the  good  Scotchman,  Dr.  James 
Craik,  ''who  from  forty  years'  experi- 
ence,'' said  Washington,  ''is  better  quali- 
fied than  a  dozen  of  them  put  together." 
His  colleague,  Dr.  Elisha  Dick,  said,  "Do 
not  bleed  the  General ;  he  needs  all  his 
strength."  But  tradition  prevailed  over 
common  sense,  and  three  copious  bleed- 
ings followed,  in  the  last  of  which  a  quart 
of  blood  was  taken.  The  third  attendant, 
Dr.  Gustavus  Brown,  afterwards  expressed 
bitter  regret  that  Dr.  Dick's  advice  was 
not  followed.  Besides  this  wholesale 
bleeding,  the  patient  was  dosed  with 
calomel  and  tartar  emetic  and  scarified 
with  blisters  and  poultices ;  or,  as  honest 
Tobias  Lear  said,  in  a  letter  written  the 
next  day  announcing  the  fatal  result, 
"every  medical  assistance  was  offered,  but 
without  the  desired  effect." — Fiske, 
John,  1897,  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neigh- 
bours, vol.  II,  p.  260. 

FAREWELL  ADDRESS 

When  last  in  Philadelphia,  you  men- 
tioned to  me  your  wish,  that  I  should 
redress  a  certain  paper  which  you  had  pre- 
pared. As  it  is  important  that  a  thing  of 
this  kind  should  be  done  with  great  care, 
and  much  at  leisure  touched  and  retouched, 
1  submit  a  wish,  that,  as  soon  as  you  have 
given  it  the  body  you  mean  it  to  have,  it 
may  be  sent  to  me. — Hamilton,  Alex- 
ander, 1796,  Letter  toWashington,May  10. 

Even  if  you  should  think  it  best  to  throw 
the  whole  into  a  different  form,  let  me 
request,  notwithstanding,  that  my  draught 
may  be  returned  to  me  (along  with  yours) 


with  such  amendments  and  corrections  as 
to  render  it  as  perfect  as  the  formation 
is  susceptible  of ;  curtailed  if  too  verbose ; 
and  relieved  of  all  tautology  not  necessary 
to  enforce  the  ideas  iji  the  original  or 
quoted  part.  My  wish  is  that  the  whole 
may  appear  in  a  plain  style,  and  be  handed 
to  the  public  in  an  honest,  unaffected, 
simple  garb.  —  Washington,  George, 
1796,  Letter  to  Alexander  Hamilton, 
May  15. 

With  respect  to  his  farewell  address, 
to  the  authorship  of  which,  it  seems,  there 
are  conflicting  claims,  I  can  state  to  you 
some  facts.  He  had  determined  to  decline 
re-election  at  the  end  of  his  first  term,  and 
so  far  determined,  that  he  had  requested 
Mr.  Madison  to  prepare  for  him  something 
Valedictory,  to  be  addressed  to  his  con- 
stituents on  his  retirement.  This  was 
done,  but  he  was  finally  persuaded  to 
acquiesce  in  a  second  election,  to  which  no 
one  more  strenously  pressed  him  than  my- 
self, from  a  conviction  of  the  importance 
of  strengthening,  by  longer  habit,  the  re- 
spect necessary  for  that  office,  which  the 
weight  of  his  character  only  could  effect. 
When,  at  the  end  of  his  second  term,  his 
valedictory  came  out,  Mr.  Madison  recog- 
nized in  it  several  passages  of  his  draught, 
several  others,  we  were  both  satisfied, 
were  from  the  pen  of  Hamilton,  and  others 
from  that  of  the  President  himself.  These 
he  probably  put  into  the  hands  of  Hamilton 
to  form  into  a  whole,  and  hence  it  may  all 
appear  in  Hamilton's  hand-writing,  as  if  it 
were  all  his  composition. — Jefferson, 
Thomas,  1823,  To  Johnson,  June  12; 
Writings,  ed.  Ford,  vol.  x,  p.  228. 

Washington's  Farewell  Address  is  full 
of  truths  important  at  all  times,  and  par- 
ticularly deserving  consideration  at  the 
present.  With  a  sagacity  which  brought 
the  future  before  him,  and  made  it  like  the 
present,  he  saw  and  pointed  out  the  dan- 
gers that  even  at  this  moment  most  immi- 
nently threaten  us.  I  hardly  know  how  a 
greater  service  of  that  kind  could  now  be 
done  to  the  community,  than  by  a  renewed 
and  wide  diffusion  of  that  admirable  paper, 
and  an  earnest  invitation  to  every  man  in 
the  country  to  reperuse  and  consider  it. 
Its  political  maxims  are  invaluable;  its 
exhortations  to  love  of  country  and  to 
brotherly  affection  among  citizens,  touch- 
ing; and  the  solemnity  with  which  it 
urges  the  observance  of  moral  duties,  and 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


367 


impresses  the  power  of  religious  obliga- 
tion, gives  to  it  the  highest  character  of 
truly  disinterested,  sincere,  parental  ad- 
vice.—Webster,  Daniel,  1832,  The  Char- 
acter of  Washington,  Works,  vol.  i,  p.  227. 

This  composition  is  not  unworthy  of  him, 
for  it  is  comprehensive,  provident,  affec- 
tionate, and  wise. — Smyth,  William, 
1839,  Lectures  on  Modern  History,  Lec- 
ture xxxvi. 

The  document  was  in  every  respect  a 
masterly  production,  and  formed  a  fitting 
close  to  Washington's  official  career. — 
Channing,  Edward,  1895,  The  United 
States  of  America,  1765-1865,  p.  150. 

Although  no  claim  seems  to  have  been 
made  for  it,  Madison  has  clearly  a  share 
with  Hamilton  in  any  honor  arising  from 
its  literary  merit.  It  is  to  Hamilton's 
credit  that  he  used  Madison's  introduc- 
tory, since  it  could  hardly  be  improved 
upon;  and  this  shows  that  he  was  not 
seeking  fame  for  himself  in  rendering 
Washington  the  assistance  requested.  If 
the  inception  of  the  address  and  the  sub- 
stance of  it  were  Washington's,  and  the 
literary  style  was  largely  that  of  Madison, 
what  was  there  in  it,  it  may  be  asked,  that 
was  the  distinctive  work  of  Hamilton? 
While  the  draft  prepared  by  Washington 
was  more  than  a  desultory  enumeration  of 
precepts,  recommendations,  and  warnings, 
while  it  embodied  his  thought  and  feeling 
upon  the  subjects  touched  with  some 
method,  and  in  language  dignified  and 
forceful,  it  was  not  yet,  in  form  and  finish, 
such  a  paper  as  he  intended  his  Farwell 
Address  to  be.  It  was  for  Hamilton  to 
* 'form  anew,"  to  ''redress,"  and ''much 
at  leisure,  touch  and  retouch."  His 
work  was  that  of  the  lapidary  upon  the 
diamond.  It  was  his  to  transform  the 
draft  of  Washington,  and  to  reproduce 
from  it  a  luminous  and  unique  gem  which, 
as  a  public  paper,  should, as  he  said,  "wear 
well,  progress  in  approbation  with  time, 
and  redound  to  future  reputation."  He 
brought  to  bear  upon  that  labor  the  yearn- 
ing of  a  patriotic  heart  and  the  vast  re- 
sources of  a  trained  and  logical  mind.  .  .  . 
Authorship,  in  its  restricted  literary 
sense,  is  not  a  term  properly  applicable 
to  the  Farewell  Address,  unless  joint 
authorship  be  accredited  to  all  who  in  any 
way  participated  in  it.  The  thought  and 
the  expression  of  Washington,  Madison, 
and  Hamilton  were  singularly  intermingled 


in  it,  besides  some  suggestions  by  Judge 
Jay,  to  whom,  at  Washington's  request, 
it  was  on  one  occasion  shown,  liut  the 
origiii  of  the  Address  was  not  in  Madison, 
Hamilton,  or  Jay.  Whatever  their  subse- 
quent contributions  may  have  been,  the 
Address  did  not  generate  in  either  of  them. 
It  was  conceived  in  the  mind,  and  nurtured 
in  the  heart,  of  Washington.  Not  only 
did  he  conceive  the  intention  and  nurture 
the  desire  to  deliver  a  parting  message  to 
his  countrymen,  but  he  selected  and  deter- 
mined the  subjects  he  intended  to  press 
upon  their  consideration.  .  .  .  Great 
honor  is  due  to  Hamilton  and  Madison  for 
eminent  services  in  the  preparation  of  the 
Farewell  Address ;  but  the  evidence  is  con- 
clusive that  Washington  was,  in  the  only 
applicable  sense  of  the  term,  the  author 
of  it. — Washington,  Bushrod  C,  1899, 
Was  Washington  Author  of  his  Farewell 
Address?  Forum,vol.  27,  pp.  153, 154,155. 

GENERAL 

In  his  letters  he  is  plain ;  in  his  public 
addresses  elegant ;  in  all  he  is  correct,  ex- 
pressing in  a  small  compass  his  clear  con- 
ception, without  tiresome  nervosity  or 
any  parade  of  ornament.  In  attending  to 
what  has  fallen  from  his  pen  the  connection 
between  modes  of  thinking  and  writing, 
between  character  and  composition,  is  ap- 
parent. His  writings  are  worded  with  the 
strong  and  pleasing  features  of  sincerity, 
simplicity  and  dignity. — Davis,  John, 
1800,  Address  Before  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society. 

That  he  wrote  in  his  own  hand  all  his 
official  letters  during  the  Revolution,  it 
would  be  as  preposterous  to  suppose,  as 
that  Marlborough,  or  Bonaparte,  or  Wel- 
lington, or  any  other  great  commander, 
was  the  penman  of  all  the  letters  to  which 
he  subscribed  his  name.  Compositions  of 
this  kind  are  not  adduced  as  evidences  of 
the  genius,  the  rhetorical  ingenuity,  the 
brilliant  fancy,  the  felicitous  invention,  or 
the  literary  accomplishments  of  the  per- 
sons, whose  name  they  bear.  The  value 
to  be  attached  to  them,  and  the  high  con- 
sideration, which  they  justly  claim,  are 
derived  from  the  circumstance  of  their 
being  records  of  great  events,  expressing 
the  opinions  and  unfolding  the  designs  of 
men,  in  whose  conduct  and  motives  the 
destinies  of  nations  are  involved.  They 
are  the  highest  and  purest  fountains  of 
history,  and  by  whatever  hand  the  written 


368 


GEORGE  WASHINGTON 


language  is  constructed,  the  spirit  ami 
substance,  the  principles,  facts,  argu- 
ments, and  purposes,  must  necessarily  be 
considered  as  flowing  from  him  by  whose 
name  they  are  sanctioned,  he  is  responsible 
for  the  whole ;  his  character  and  reputa- 
tion, as  well  as  the  vital  interests  of  the 
cause  entrusted  to  him,  are  at  stake. — 
Sparks,  Jared,  1834,  ed.,  The  Writings 
of  George  Washington ;  being  his  Corre- 
spondence, Addresses,  Messages,  and  Other 
Papers,  Official  and  Private,  With  a  Life 
of  the  Author. 

We  deem  it  unnecessary  to  make  any 
extracts  from  the  correspondence,  as 
specimens  of  its  style  or  substantial  char- 
acter. It  is  more  valuable  as  materials 
for  history,  and  as  illustrating  the  char- 
acter of  the  writer,  than  from  the  intrinsic 
interest  of  the  contents,  which  relate  in 
general  to  matters  of  mere  detail.  It  has 
all  the  prominent  qualities  of  the  subse- 
quent revolutionary  correspondence,  and 
exhibits  a  complete  maturity  of  mind,  as 
well  as  style.  The  latter  was  probably 
somewhat  improved  by  revision  at  a  later 
period  of  life. — Everett,  Alexander 
Hill,  1834,  The  Washington  Papers,  North 
American  Review,  vol.  39,  p.  494. 

The  character  of  the  author  transcends 
all  vulgar  praise.  The  interest  of  the 
events,  which  form  the  subjects  of  his  writ- 
ings, is  inferior  to  nothing  in  history.  .  .  . 
We  consider  the  publication  of  a  standard 
edition  of  the  writings  of  Washington,  as 
a  matter  of  importance  in  a  national  point 
of  view.  Of  the  auspicious  influence  of 
the  principles  of  Washington  over  public 
opinion  throughout  the  country,  which 
happily  is  still  highly  operative,  much 
must  be  ascribed  to  the  unexpended  force 
of  his  personal  ascendency  and  the  freshly- 
remembered  power  of  his  personal  inter- 
course. These,  with  the  lapse  of  time, 
must  daily  grow  fainter. — Everett,  Ed- 
ward, 1838,  Sparks' s  Life  and  Writings  of 
Washington,  North  American  Review,  vol. 
47,  p.  319. 

The  name  of  Washington  may  be  intro- 
duced in  a  collection  of  American  litera- 
ture, rather  to  grace  it  than  to  do  honor 
to  him.  In  any  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
Washington  was  not  a  literary  man;  he 
never  exercised  his  mind  in  composition  on 
any  of  those  topics  abstracted  from  com- 
mon life,  or  its  affairs,  which  demanded 
either  art  or  invention.    He  prepared  no 


book  of  elaborate  industry. — Yet  he  was 
always  scrupulously  attentive  to  the 
claims  of  literature;  elegant  and  punc- 
tilious in  the  acknowledgment  of  com- 
pliments from  authors  and  learned  institu- 
tions ;  and  had  formed  a  style  which  is  so 
peculiar  that  it  may  be  recognised  by  its 
own  ear-mark.  .  .  .  The  handwriting 
of  Washington,  large,  liberal,  and  flowing, 
might  be  accepted  as  proof  of  the  honesty 
of  the  figures.  Indeed  this  same  hand- 
writing is  a  capital  index  of  the  style  of 
all  the  letters,  and  may  help  us  to  what  we 
would  say  of  its  characteristics.  It  is 
open,  manly,  and  uniform,  with  nothing 
minced,  affected,  or  contracted.  It  has 
neither  the  precise  nor  the  slovenly  style 
which  scholars  variously  fall  into ;  but  a 
certain  grandeur  of  the  countenance  of 
the  man  seems  to  look  through  it.  Second 
to  its  main  quality  of  truthfulness,  saying 
no  more  than  the  writer  was  ready  to  abide 
by,  is  its  amenity  and  considerate  court- 
esy. Washington  had,  at  different  times, 
many  unpleasant  truths  to  tell;  but  he 
could  always  convey  them  in  the  language 
of  a  gentleman.  He  wrote  like  a  man  of 
large  and  clear  views.  ...  In  fine,  a 
critical  examination  of  the  writings  of 
Washington  will  show  that  the  man  here, 
as  in  other  lights,  will  suffer  nothing  by  a 
minute  inspection. — Duyckinck,  Evert 
A.  AND  George  L.,  1855-65-75,  Cyclo- 
pcedia  of  American  Literature,  ed.  Simons, 
vol.  I,  pp.  189,  191. 

The  writings  of  Washington  produced 
chiefly  in  the  camp  surrounded  by  the  din 
of  arms,  are  remarkable  for  clearness  of 
expression,  force  of  language,  and  a  tone 
of  lofty  patriotism.  They  are  second  to 
none  of  similar  character  in  any  nation, 
and  they  display  powers  which,  had  they 
been  devoted  to  literature,  would  have 
achieved  a  position  of  no  secondary  char- 
acter.—Botta,  Anne  C.  Lynch,"  1860, 
Hand-Book  of  Universal  Literature,  p.  528. 

In  the  letters  and  documents  known  to 
be  his,  his  style  is  simple,  direct,  and  ex- 
plicit, but  bald  and  fragmentary.  Succes- 
sive ideas  were  arranged  by  no  rhetorical 
plan,  in  no  logical  order,  and  with  no  con- 
tinuous flow  of  diction,  but  jotted  down 
abruptly,  and  without  connective  clauses, 
as  they  occurred  spontaneously  to  his 
mind,  or  were  called  up  by  casual  associa- 
tions. His  military  training,  and  his  in- 
cessantly busy  life  through  the  entire 


WASHING  TON—  TUCKER 


369 


period  in  which  the  graces  of  diction  might 
have  been  cultivated,  precluded  the  abun- 
dant leisure  and  the  careful  practice  by 
which  alone  he  could  have  become  a  master 
of  sentences,  as  he  was  of  noble  deeds. — 
Peabody,  a.  p.,  1860,  Washington's  Fare- 
well Address,  North  American  Keview,  vol. 
90,  p.  209. 

He  has  been  edited  into  obscurity,  like 
a  Greek  play.  Where  the  genial  and 
friendly  soldier  wrote  "Old  Put,"  a  re- 
spectable editor,  devoid  of  the  sense  of 
humor,  has  substituted  General  Putman; 
until,  at  length,  a  lover  of  the  man  has  to 
defend  him  against  the  charge  of  perfec- 
tion.—Partox,  James,  1879,  The  Tradi- 
tional and  the  Real  Washington,  Magazine 
of  American  History,  vol.  3,  jo,  465. 

Washington  himself  claims  direct  per- 
sonal recognition  in  the  field  of  letters 
only  by  his  clear  and  incisive,  though 
seldom  highly-polished,  correspondence ; 
for  his  celebrated  "Farewell  Address"  is 
understood  to  have  been  mainly  the  joint 
work  of  himself,  Madison,  and  Jay. — 
NiCHOL,  John,  1880-85,  American  Liter- 
ature, p.  74. 

V/as  a  writer  who  made  some  small  mark 
upon  incipient  American  literature,  and 
who  at  any  rate,  may  be  mentioned  among 
the  political  writers  of  his  time.  Without 
collegiate  education,  and  never  paying 
special  attention  to  the  art  of  style,  he 
wrote  plainly  and  clearly,  in  a  somewhat 
individual  way.  Twelve  large  volumes 
trimly  include  his  once  scattered  and 
desultory  manuscripts,  chiefly  letters  and 


documents.— Richardson,  Charles  F., 
1887,  American  Literature,  1607-1885, 
vol.  I,  p.  203. 

As  a  letter  writer  Washington  had  few 
superiors ;  his  journals,  notably  the  ac- 
count of  his  famous  journey  to  the  Ohio, 
first  published  in  1754,  are  written  in  clear, 
conscise  English ;  and  his  farewell  ad- 
dresses are  full  of  a  wisdom  and  a  stateli- 
ness  worthy  in  every  way  of  the  great  man 
who  produced  them.  —  Pattee,  Fred 
Lewis,  1896,  A  History  of  American  Lit- 
erature, p.  81. 

Of  couse,  no  one  goes  to  the  letters  of 
Washington,  in  the  expectation  of  finding 
there  sprightliness  of  thought,  flexibly, 
or  ease  of  movement;  yet,  in  point  of 
diligence  and  productiveness,  he  was  one 
of  the  great  letter-writers  of  that  age, 
while  all  that  he  ever  wrote  has  the  in- 
communicable worth  of  his  powerful  and 
noble  character — sincerity,  purity,  robust- 
ness, freedom  from  all  morbid  vapors, 
soundness  of  judgment  ripened  under  vast 
responsibility.  Who  can  hope  ever  to  know 
the  mind  and  conscience  of  our  Revolution, 
its  motive,  its  conduct,  its  stern  and 
patient  purpose,  or  its  cost,  without 
studying  Washington's  letters? — Tyler, 
Moses  Coit,  1897,  The  Literary  History 
of  the  American  Revolution,  1763-1783, 
vol.  I,  p.  13. 

Washington'scorrespondence and  "Fare- 
well Address"  would  scarcely,  from  an- 
other, constitute  a  claim  to  literary  re- 
nown.—Bates,  Katharine  Lee,  1897, 
American  Literature,  p.  72. 


Josiah.  Tucker 

1712-1799 

Born  in  Wales;  graduate  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  rector  of  St.  Stephen's, 
Bristol ;  prebend,  1755 ;  dean  of  Gloucester,  1758  till  his  death.  He  was  a  thorough 
student,  and  careful  writer  on  political  economy  and  subjects  pertaining  to  religion,  and 
published  several  pamphlets  in  the  beginning  of  the  contest  between  the  English  govern- 
ment and  its  American  colonies  in  favor  of  the  colonists. — Peck,  Harry  Thurston, 
ed.,  1898,  The  International  Cyclopcedia,  vol.  xiv,  p.  616. 


GENERAL 
A  case  in  which  the  whole  British  nation 
were,  in  one  particular,  manifestly  puzzle- 
headed,  except  one  man  :  who  was  accord- 
ingly derided  by  all.  In  the  dispute 
between  Great  Britain  and  her  American 
Colonies.  .  .  .  Dean  Tucker,  stand- 
ing quite  alone,  wrote  a  pamphlet  to  show 
that  the  separation  would  be  no  loss  at  all, 

24  c 


and  that  we  had  best  give  them  the  in- 
dependence they  coveted,  at  once,  and  in 
a  friendly  way.  Some  thought  he  was 
writing  in  jest,  the  rest  despised  him  as 
too  absurd  to  be  worth  answering  But 
now  (and  for  above  half  a  century)  every 
one  admits  that  he  was  quite  right,  and 
regrets  that  his  view  was  not  adopted.  . . . 
Of  all  the  clever  men,  then,  that  at  that 


370 


TUCKER— COWPER 


time  existed,  and  many  of  whom  spoke 
eloquently  on  each  side,  Tucker  was  the 
only  one  who  was  not  puzzle-headed.  And 
he  obtained  some  small  share  of  late  credit, 
but  present  contempt. — Whately,  Rich- 
ard, 1856,  ed.  Bacon's  Essay with  An- 
notations, Essay  LV. 

Josiah  Tucker,  whose  works  on  Trade 
anticipated  some  of  the  established  doc- 
trines on  political  economy. — Burton, 
John  Hill,  1860,  ed.  Autobiography  of  Rev. 
Dr.  Alexander  Carlyle. 

A  bitter  Tory,  but  one  of  the  best  living 
writers  on  all  questions  of  trade. — Lecky, 
William  Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A 
History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  Ill,  ch.  xii,  p.  421. 

Holds  a  distinguished  place  among  the 
immediate  predecessors  of  Smith.  Most 
of  his  numerous  productions  had  direct  ref- 
erence to  contemporary  questions,  and, 
though  marked  by  much  sagacity  and 
penetration  are  deficient  in  permanent  in- 
terest. .  .  .  The  most  important  of 
his  general  economic  views  are  those  re- 
lating to  international  commerce.  He  is 
an  ardent  supporter  of  free-trade  doc- 
trines, which  he  bases  on  the  principle  that 
there  is  between  nations  no  necessary  an- 
tagonism, but  rather  a  harmony,  of  inter- 
ests, and  that  their  several  natural  advan- 
tages and  different  aptitudes  naturally 
prompt  them  to  exchange.  He  had  not, 
however,  got  quite  clear  of  mercantilism. 


and  favored  bounties  on  exported  manu- 
factures and  the  encouragement  of  popu- 
lation by  a  tax  on  celibacy. — Ingram,  J. 
K.,  1885,  Political  Economy ,  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  Ninth  edition,  vol.  xix,  p.  378. 

Tucker  was  a  very  shrewd  though  a 
rather  crotchety  and  inconsistent  writer. 
He  is  praised  by  McCulloch  and  others  who 
shared  his  view  of  the  inutility  of  colonies ; 
and  he  argued  very  forcibly  that  a ''shop- 
keeping  nation"  would  not  improve  its 
trade  by  beating  its  customers.  The  war 
with  the  colonies  would,  he  said,  hereafter 
appear  to  be  as  absurd  as  the  crusades. 
He  retained,  as  McCulloch  complains,  a 
good  many  of  the  prejudices  which  later 
economists  sought  to  explode.  He  is  not 
clear  about  the  ''balance  of  trade"  ;  he  be- 
lieves in  the  wickedness  of  forestalling 
and  regrating,  and  wishes  to  stimulate 
population  by  legislation.  In  spite,  how- 
ever, of  his  inconsistencies  and  narrowness 
of  views,  he  deserves  credit,  as  Turgot 
preceived,  for  attacking  many  of  the  evils 
of  ^monopolies,  and  was  so  far  in  sympathy 
with  the  French  economists  and  with  Adam 
Smith.  He  deserves  the  credit  of  antici- 
pating some  of  Adam  Smith's  arguments 
against  various  forms  of  monopoly,  but, 
though  he  made  many  good  points,  he  was 
not  equal  to  forming  a  comprehensive 
system.— Stephen,  Leslie,  1899,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  LVii, 
p.  283. 


William  Cowper 

1731-1800, 

Born,  at  Great  Berkhamstead  Rectory,  15  Nov.  1731.  At  a  school  in  Market  Street, 
Herts,  1737-39.  Under  the  care  of  an  oculist,  1739-41.  At  Westminster  School, 
1741-49.  Student  at  Middle  Temple,  29  April  1748.  Articled  to  a  solicitor  for  three 
years,  1750.  Called  to  Bar,  14  June  1754.  Depression  of  mind  began.  Commissioner 
of  Bankrupts,  1759-65.  Contrib.  nos.  Ill,  115,  134,  139  to  "The  Connoisseur," 
1756;  to  Buncombe's  "Translations  from  Horace,"  1756-57;  to  "The  St.  James's 
Chronicle,"  1761.  Symptoms  of  insanity  began  to  appear ;  taken  to  a  private  asylum 
at  St.  Albans,  Dec.  1763.  Left  there  and  settled  in  Huntingdon,  June  1765.  Began 
to  board  in  house  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Unwin  there,  Nov.  1765.  Removed  with  Mrs.  Unwin 
and  family  to  Olney,  Bucks,  autumn  of  1767.  Assisted  John  Newton,  curate  of  Olney, 
in  parochial  duties.  Fresh  attack  of  insanity,  1773-74.  On  recovery,  showed  more 
activity  in  literary  work.  Friendship  with  Lady  Austen,  1781-83.  Contrib.  to 
"Gentleman's  Mag.,"  June  1784  and  Aug.  1785.  Removed  from  Olney  to  Weston, 
Nov.  1786.  Attack  of  insanity,  1787.  Contrib.  to  "Analytical  Review,"  Feb.  1789. 
Crown  pension  of  £300  a  year  granted,  1794.  Visited  various  places  in  Norfolk  with 
Mrs.  Unwin,  summer  of  1795.  Settled  in  Dereham  Lodge,  Oct.  1795.  Died  there, 
25  April  1800.  Buried  in  Dereham  Church.  Works:  "Olney  Hymns"  (anon.,  with 
J.  Newton),  1779;  "Anti-Thelyphthora"  (anon.),  1781;  "Poems,"  1782;  "John 
Gilpin"  (anon.),  1783;  "The  Task,"  1785  (the  fly-leaf  bears  the  words:  "Poems  


WILLIAM  COWPER 


371 


Vol.  II/') ;  Translation  of  ''Iliad  and  Odyssey,"  1791 ;  'Toems"  C'On  the  receipt  of 
my  mother's  picture" — ''The  Dog  and  the  Water  Lily"),  1798.  Posthumous:  "Adel- 
phi,"  1802;  "Life  and  Posthumous  Writings,"  ed.  by  Hayley,  1803  (2nd  edn.,  1804; 
3rd.  entitled  "Life  and  Letters,"  1809);  "Memoir  of  the  early  life  of  William 
Cowper"  (autobiographical),  1816;  "Table  Talk,"  1817;  "Hymns,"  1822;  "Private 
Correspondence"  (2  vols.),  1824;  "Poems,  the  early  productions  of  W.  Cowper,"  ed. 
by  J.  Croft,  1825;  "Minor  Poems,"  1825;"  "The  Negro's  Complaint,"  1826.  He 
translated:  "Homer,"  1791;  "The  Power  of  Grace,"  by  Van  Lier,  1792;  "Poems  by 
Mme.  De  la  Motte  Guion"  (posth.),  1801;  Milton's  Latin  and  Italian  poems  (posth.), 
1808.  Collected  Works:  ed.  by  Newton  (10  vols.),  1817;  ed.  by  Memes  (3  vols.), 
1834;  ed.  by  Grimshawe  (8  vols.),  1835;  ed.  by  Southey  (15  vols.),  1836-37.  Life: 
by  Hayley,  1803 ;  by  Bruce,  in  Aldine  edn.  of  Works,  1865 ;  by  Benham,  in  Globe  edn.  of 
Works,  1870.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  Ql. 


PERSONAL 

The  morning  is  my  writing  time,  and  in 
the  morning  I  have  no  spirits.  So  much 
the  worse  for  my  correspondents.  Sleep, 
that  refreshes  my  body,  seems  to  cripple 
me  in  every  other  respect.  As  the  evening 
approaches,  I  grow  more  alert,  and  when 
I  am  retiring  to  bed,  am  more  fit  for  mental 
occupation  than  at  any  other  time.  So  it 
fares  with  us  whom  they  call  nervous.  By 
a  strange  inversion  of  the  animal  economy, 
we  are  ready  to  sleep  when  we  have  most 
need  to  be  awake,  and  go  to  bed  just  when 
we  might  sit  up  to  some  purpose.  The 
watch  is  irregularly  wound  up,  it  goes  in 
the  night  when  it  is  not  wanted,  and  in 
the  day  stands  still.— Cowper,  William, 
1784,  Letter  to  John  Newton,  Feb.  10. 

IN  MEMORY 

OF  WILLIAM  COWPER,  ESQ. 

BORN  IN  HERTFORDSHIRE,  1731. 
BURIED  IN  THIS  CHURCH,  1800. 
Ye,  who  with  warmth  the  public  triumph 
feel 

Of  talents,  dignified  by  sacred  zeal, 
Here,  to  devotion's  Bard  devoutly  just. 
Pay  your  fond  tribute  due  to  Cowper's  dust! 
England,  exulting  in  his  spotless  fame. 
Ranks  with  her  dearest  sons  his  fav'rite 
name ; 

Sense,  fancy,  wit,  suffice  not  all  to  raise 
So  clear  a  title  to  affection's  praise : 
His  highest  honors  to  the  heart  belong ; 
His  virtues  form'd  the  magic  of  his  song. 
— Hayley,  William,  1800,  Inscription 
on  Monument,  St.  Edmund's  Chapel,  East 
Dereham  Church. 

From  his  figure,  as  it  first  appeared  to  me, 
in  his  sixty-second  year,  I  should  imagine 
that  he  must  have  been  very  comely  in  his 
youth;  and  little  had  time  injured  his 
countenance,  since  his  features  expressed, 
in  that  period  of  life,  all  the  powers  of  his 
mind,  and  all  the  sensibility  of  his  heart. 
He  was  of  a  middle  stature,  rather  strong 


than  delicate  in  the  form  of  his  limbs :  the 
colour  of  his  hair  was  a  light  brown,  that 
of  his  eyes  a  bluish,  and  his  complexion 
ruddy.  In  his  dress  he  was  neat,  but  not 
finical;  in  his  diet  temperate  and  not 
dainty.  He  had  an  air  of  pensive  reserve 
in  his  deportment,  and  his  extreme  shyness 
sometimes  produced  in  his  manners  an  in- 
describable mixture  of  aukwardness  and 
dignity ;  but  no  being  could  be  more  truly 
graceful  when  he  was  in  perfect  health 
and  perfectly  pleased  with  his  society. 
Towards  women,  in  particular,  his  be- 
haviour and  conversation  was  delicate  and 
fascinating  in  the  highest  degree. — Hay- 
ley, William,  1803,  Life  and  Posthumous 
Writings  of  William  Cowper,  vol.  ii,  p.  124. 

It  appears  to  the  present  writer,  from  a 
careful  perusal  of  that  instructive  piece 
of  biography  published  by  Mr.  Hayley, 
that  Cowper,  from  his  infancy,  had  a  ten- 
dency to  errations  of  the  mind ;  and  with- 
out admitting  this  fact  in  some  degree,  it 
must  seem  extremely  improbable  that  the 
mere  dread  of  appearing  as  a  reader  in 
the  house  of  lords  should  have  brought  on 
his  first  settled  fit  of  lunacy.  Much,  in- 
deed, has  been  said  of  his  uncommon  shy- 
ness and  diffidence,  and  more,  perhaps, 
than  the  history  of  his  early  life  will 
justify.  Shyness  and  diffidence  are  com- 
mon to  all  young  persons  who  have  not 
been  early  introduced  into  company,  and 
Cowper,  who  had  not,  perhaps,  that  ad- 
vantage at  home,  might  have  continued  to 
be  shy  when  other  boys  are  forward.  But 
had  his  mind  been,  even  in  this  early  period, 
in  a  healthful  state,  he  must  have  gradu- 
ally assumed  the  free  manners  of  an  in- 
genuous youth,  conscious  of  no  unusual 
imperfection  that  should  keep  him  back. 
At  school,  we  are  told,  he  was  trampled 
upon  by  the  ruder  boys  who  took  advantage 
of  his  weakness,  yet  we  find  that  he  mixed 


372 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


in  their  amusements,  which  must  in  some 
degree  have  advanced  him  on  a  level  with 
them:  and  what  is  yet  more  extraordi- 
nary, we  find  him  associating  with  men  of 
more  gaiety  than  pure  morality  admits, 
and  sporting  with  the  utmost  vivacity  and 
wildness  with  Thurlow  and  others,  when 
it  was  natural  to  expect  that  he  would 
have  been  glad  to  court  solitude  for 
the  purposes  of  study,  as  well  as  for 
the  indulgence  of  his  habitual  shyness,  if, 
indeed,  at  this  period  it  was  so  habitual 
as  we  are  taught  to  believe. — Chalmers, 
Alexander,  1814,  English  Poets,  Life  of 
Cowper. 

I  could  have  wished  a  stronger  tone  of 
severity  to  have  been  expressed,  in  the 
authority  last  referred  to,  against  the 
publication  of  those ' '  Memoirs  of  Cowper, " 
1816,  8vo.,  which  were  written  by  himself, 
and  which  betrayed  his  morbid  and  un- 
happy state  of  feelings  in  an  attempt  to 
commit  suicide.  There  is  perhaps  no 
species  of  mental  depravation,  connected 
with  a  lust  of  lucre,  more  deserving  of 
reproof  and  castigation,  than  that  which 
led  to  the  publication  of  these  Memoirs. 
First,  this  composition  could  never  have 
been  intended  for  the  public  eye;  and 
was  therefore  on  every  account  sacred. 
Secondly,  it  could  only  lead  to  the  debase- 
ment of  that  amiable  creature,  whom  it 
was  the  bounden  duty  of  the  publisher  to 
have  kept  as  free  from  all  imputation  as 
the  pages  of  Hayley  had  justly  represented 
him.  Thirdly,  if  the  feeling  which  lead  to 
this  publication  were  a  religious  one,  I 
must  say  that  it  is  one  of  the  most  per- 
verted and  mischievous  views  of  religion 
with  which  I  am  acquainted.  Cant,  or 
lucre,  in  its  genuine  form,  was,  I  fear, 
the  source  or  the  motive  of  this  highly  in- 
judicious publication.  We  love  and  re- 
spect Cowper  too  sincerely,  to  ''drag  his 
frailties  from  their  drear  abode.  "*^Dib- 
DiN,  Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The  Li- 
brary Companion,  p.  533,  note. 

Had  Cowper' s  mind  been  sane,  no  rational 
views  of  religion  could  unquestionably 
have  produced  the  hallucination;  but 
when  his  mind  was  clouded  with  hypo- 
chondria, as  in  early  life  before  it  had  taken 
any  definite  form,  nothing  was  wanting  to 
convert  his  melancholy  into  monomania, 
and  to  change  the  wandering  reveries  of 
the  former  into  the  settled  gloom  of  the 
latter,  but  the  exclusive  application  of 


enthusiasm  to  a  single  subject.  .  .  . 
Cowper,  from  his  earliest  years,  was  deli- 
cate in  constitution,  and  timid  in  his  dis- 
position. Excessive  application  to  pro- 
fessional studies  in  the  Temple  increased 
the  delicacy  of  his  health,  the  nervous 
system  and  the  cerebral  organs  became 
disturbed  or  disordered  in  their  functions, 
and  his  natural  timidity  merged  into  a 
morbid  sensibility  which  wholly  disquali- 
fied him  for  the  active  duties  of  that  pro- 
fession in  which  he  had  been  so  improperly 
placed.— Madden,  R.  R.,  1833,  The  In- 
firmities of  Genius,  vol.  ii,  pp.  47,  99. 

His  prevailing  insanity,  so  far  as  it  could 
be  called  insanity  at  all,  in  those  long  in- 
tervals of  many  years,  during  which  his 
mind  was  serene  and  active,  his  habit  of 
thought  playful,  and  his  affections  more 
and  more  fervent,  was  simply  the  exclusion 
of  a  personal  religious  hope  to  such  a  de- 
gree as  to  seem  like  habitual  despair. 
This  despair  was  his  insanity,  for  it  could 
be  only  madness  that  could  produce  it, 
after  such  a  revelation  of  the  glory  of  God 
in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ  as  he  had  been 
permitted  in  the  outset  to  enjoy.  If  Paul 
had  gone  deranged  after  being  let  down 
from  his  trance  and  vision  in  the  third 
heavens,  and  the  type  of  his  derangement 
had  been  the  despair  of  ever  again  behold- 
ing his  Saviour's  face  in  glory,  and  the 
obstinate  belief  of  being  excluded  by 
Divine  decree  from  heaven,  though  his 
affections  were  all  the  while  in  heaven, 
even  that  derangement  would  have  been 
scarcely  more  remarkable  than  Cowper' s. 
In  the  case  of  so  delicate  and  profound  an 
organization  as  his,  it  is  very  difficult  to 
trace  the  effect  of  any  entanglement  or 
disturbance  from  one  side  or  the  other 
between  the  nervous  and  mental  sensibili- 
ties of  his  frame.  There  was  a  set  of 
Border  Ruffians  continually  threatening  his 
peace,  endeavoring  to  set  up  slavery  in- 
stead of  freedom,  and  ever  and  anon  mak- 
ing their  incursions,  and  defacing  the 
title-deeds  to  his  inheritance,  which  they 
could  not  carry  away ;  and  Cowper  might 
have  assured  himself  with  the  consolation 
that  those  documents  would  not  be  de- 
stroyed, being  registered  in  heaven,  and 
God  as  faithful  to  them,  as  if  their  rec- 
ord in  his  own  heart  had  been  always 
visible.  — Cheever,  George  B.,  1843, 
Lectures  on  the  Life,  Genius  and  Insanity 
of  Cowper,  Introduction,  p.  vii. 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


373 


O  poets!  from  a  maniac's  tongue  was  poured 

the  deathless  singing ! 
O  Christians!  at  your  cross  of  hope,  a  hope- 
less hand  was  clinging ! 
O  men !  this  man  in  brotherhood  your  weary 

paths  beguiling, 
Groaned  inly  while  he  taught  you  peace,  and 

died  while  ye  were  smiling ! 
And  now,  wliat  time  ye  all  may  read  through 

dimming  tears  his  story, 
How  discord  on  the  music  fell,  and  darkness 

on  the  glory. 
And  how  when  one  by  one,  sweet  sounds 

and  wandering  lights  departed, 
He  wore  no  less  a  loving  face  because  so 

broken-hearted ; 
He  shall  be  strong  to  sanctify  the  poet's  high 

vocation, 

And  bow  the  meekest  Christian  down  in 

meeker  adoration : 
Nor  ever  shall  he  be,  in  praise,  by  wise  or 

good  forsaken ; 
Named  softly  as  the  household  name  of  one 

whom  God  hath  taken. 

— Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1844, 
Cowpefs  Grave, 

Here  Cowper  was  fond  of  coming,  and 
sitting  within  the  hollow  boll  for  hours, 
around  him  stretching  the  old  woods,  with 
their  solitude  and  the  cries  of  woodland 
birds.  The  fame  which  he  has  conferred 
on  this  tree  has  nearly  proved  its  destruc- 
iton.  Whole  arms  and  great  pieces  of  its 
trunk  have  been  cut  away  with  knife  and 
axe  and  saw  to  prepare  different  articles 
from.  The  Marquis  of  Northampton,  to 
whom  the  chase  belongs,  has  had  multi- 
tudes of  nails  driven  in  to  stop  the  prog- 
ress of  this  destruction,  but,  finding  that 
not  sufficient,  has  affixed  a  board  bearing 
this  inscription :  *'Out  of  respect  to  the 
memory  of  the  poet  Cowper,  the  Marquis 
of  Northampton  is  particularly  desirous  of 
preserving  this  oak.  Notice  is  hereby 
given  that  any  person  defacing  or  other- 
wise injuring  it  will  be  prosecuted  accord- 
ing to  law."  In  stepping  round  the 
Yardley  Oak  it  appeared  to  me  to  be,  at 
the  foot,  about  thirteen  yards  in  circum- 
ference.—Ho  WITT,  William,  1847,  The 
Homes  and  Haunts  of  the  Most  Eminent 
British  Poets,  vol.  I,  p.  458. 

Few  things  are  more  touching  than  the 
history  of  Cowper 's  life,  as  it  is  related, 
with  more  than  feminine  grace,  innocence, 
and  tenderness,  in  his  own  inimitable  let- 
ters ;  and  we  can  understand  the  devoted- 
ness  with  which  so  many  of  his  friends 
sacrificed  their  whole  existence  to  cherish 


and  console  a  being  so  gifted,  so  fascinat- 
ing, and  so  unhappy.  The  dim  shadow, 
too,  of  an  early  and  enduring,  but  hope- 
less love,  throws  over  the  picture  a  soft 
and  pensive  tint,  like  moonlight  on  some 
calm  landscape.— Shaw,  Thomas  B.,  1847, 
Outlines  of  English  Literature,  p.  305. 

Words  are  wanting  to  describe  the  sense 
of  relief  with  which  we  close  this  saddest, 
most  mysterious  narrative.  The  man  were 
granite  who  could  refrain  from  sympathy, 
amounting  to  bitter  anguish,  with  this 
poor  unfortunate.  And  then,  there  are 
questions  arising  out  of  his  story,  which 
descend  into  the  very  depths  of  those 
awful  relations  which  connect  us  with  God 
and  Eternity.  Why  did  this  man  suffer 
thus  ?  Why  was  he  ever  born  to  endure 
such  wretchedness  ?  What  the  rationale  of 
his  long  martyrdom  and  darkness  ?  .  .  . 
Truly  William  Cowper  was  still  more  a 
marvellous,  than  he  was  a  mild  and  gentle 
spirit, — stronger,  even,  than  he  was  ami- 
able— a  very  Prometheus  chained  to  his 
rock,  let  us  call  him, — the  rock  being  his 
rugged,  deep-rooted  woe;  the  chain  his 
lengthened  life ;  and  himself  the  Titan,  in 
his  earnestness,  lofty  purpose,  and  poetic 
power. — GiLPiLLAN,  George,  1854,  ed. 
Cowpefs  Poetical  Works,  Life,  vol,  i,  pp. 
XXV,  xxvii. 

His  talent  is  but  the  picture  of  his  char- 
acter, and  his  poems  but  the  echo  of  his 
life.  ...  He  was  one  of  those  to 
whom  women  devote  themselves,  VN^hom 
they  love  maternally,  first  from  compas- 
sion, then  by  attraction,  because  they  find 
in  them  alone  the  contrivances,  minute 
and  tender  attentions,  delicate  observances 
which  men's  rude  nature  cannot  give 
them,  and  which  their  more  sensitive 
nature  nevertheless  craves. — Taine,  H. 
A..  1871,  History  of  English  Literature,  tr. 
Van  Laun,  vol.  ii,  bk.  iv,  ch.  i,  pp.  243-4. 

It  niust  have  been  a  disappointment  to 
Cowper  that  the  songs  or  ballads  he  wrote 
on  the  slave  trade,  for  the  express  purpose 
of  being  sung  in  the  streets,  and  by  that 
means  widely  circulated  among  the  people, 
came  to  nothing.  ''If  you  hear  ballads 
sung  in  the  streets  on  the  hardships  of  the 
negroes  in  the  islands,"  he  writes  to  Mr. 
Rose,  ''they  are  probably  mine."  But 
Mr.  Rose  heard  them  not,  nor  was  the  song 
writer  ever  to  have  that  satisfaction  him- 
self.—Jacox,  Francis,  1872,  Self-Heard 
in  Song,  Aspects  of  Authorship,  p.  48. 


374 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


So  sad  and  strange  a  destiny  has  never 
before  or  since  been  that  of  a  man  of 
genius.  With  wit  and  humour  at  will,  he 
was  nearly  all  his  life  plunged  in  the  dark- 
est melancholy.  Innocent,  pious  and  con- 
fiding, he  lived  in  perpetual  dread  of  ever- 
lasting punishment:  he  could  only  see 
between  him  and  heaven  a  high  wall  which 
he  despaired  of  ever  being  able  to  scale ; 
yet  his  intellectual  vigour  was  not  subdued 
by  affliction.  What  he  wrote  for  amuse- 
ment or  relief  in  the  midst  of  supreme 
distress,''  surpasses  the  elaborate  efforts 
of  others  made  under  the  most  favourable 
circumstances ;  and  in  the  very  winter  of 
his  days,  his  fancy  was  as  fresh  and  bloom- 
ing as  in  the  spring  and  morning  of  exist- 
ence. That  he  was  constitutionally  prone  to 
melancholy  and  insanity,  seems  undoubted ; 
but  the  predisposing  causes  were  as  surely 
aggravated  by  his  strict  and  secluded 
mode  of  life. — Chambers,  Robert,  1876, 
Cyclopoedia  of  English  Literature,  ed.  Car- 
ruthers. 

If  Cowper's  retirement  was  virtuous,  it 
was  so  because  he  was  actively  employed 
in  the  exercise  of  his  highest  faculties : 
had  he  been  a  mere  idler,  secluded  from 
his  kind, his  retirement  would  not  have  been 
virtuous  at  all.  His  flight  from  the  world 
was  rendered  necessary  by  his  malady,  and 
respectable  by  his  literary  work ;  but  it 
was  a  flight  and  not  a  victory.  His  mis- 
conception was  fostered  and  partly  pro- 
duced by  a  religion  which  was  essentially 
ascetic,  and  which,  while  it  gave  birth  to 
characters  of  the  highest  and  most  ener- 
getic beneficence,  represented  salvation 
too  little  as  the  reward  of  effort,  too  much 
as  the  reward  of  passive  belief  and  of  spir- 
itual emotion. — Smith,  Goldwin,  1880, 
Cowper  (English  Men  of  Letters.),  p.  52. 

The  time  of  William  Cowper  seems 
now,  so  far  as  Westminster  is  con- 
cerned, equally  remote  as  that  of  Raleigh. 
It  was  in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Mar- 
garet's, while  he  was  a  scholar  at  West- 
minster, that  he  received  one  of  those 
impressions  which  had  so  strong  an  effect 
on  his  after  life.  Crossing  the  burial- 
ground  one  dark  evening,  towards  his 
home  in  the  school,  he  saw  the  glimmering 
lantern  of  a  grave-digger  at  work.  He 
approached  to  look  on,  with  a  boyish  crav- 
ing for  horrors,  and  was  struck  by  a  skull 
heedlessly  thrown  out  of  the  crowded 
earth.    To  the  mind  of  William  Cowper 


such  an  accident  had  an  extraordinary 
significance.  In  after  life  he  remembered 
it  as  the  occasion  of  religious  emotions  not 
readily  suppressed.  On  the  south  side 
of  the  church,  until  the  recent  restora- 
tions, there  was  a  stone  the  inscription  of 
which  suggests  the  less  gloomy  view  of 
Cowper 's  character.  It  marked  ''The 
Burial-Place  of  Mr.  John  Gilpin the  date 
was  not  to  be  made  out,  but  it  must  have 
been  fresh  when  Cowper  was  at  school,  and 
it  would  be  absurd  to  doubt  that  the  future 
poet  had  seen  it,  and  perhaps  unconsciously 
adopted  from  it  the  name  of  his  hero. — 
LoFTiE,  William  John,  1883-4,  History 
of  London,  vol.  ii,  ch.  xvi. 

William  Cowper  is  one  of  the  strangest 
and  most  pathetic  figures  in  the  literary 
history  of  England.  He  had  much  in  com- 
mon with  another  famous  writer,  and  it 
would  be  easy  to  draw  a  parallel  between 
William  Cowper  and  Charles  Lamb.  In 
nothing  is  the  resemblance  closer  than  in 
the  circumstance  that  both  began  by  writ- 
ing poetry  and  produced  much  sweet  verse, 
while  the  prose  of  each  is  far  more  note- 
worthy than  his  poetry,  and  is  among  the 
best  in  the  language.  If  neither  had 
written  a  line  or  a  sentence,  the  personal 
story  of  each  would  have  ensured  his  name 
being  remembered.  Though  the  career  of 
both  was  chequered  and  painful,  yet  it 
has  a  fascination  for  every  reader,  and,  of 
the  two,  Cowper' s  is  the  sadder  and  the 
more  curious. — Rae,  W.  Eraser,  1891, 
The  Bard  of  Olney,  Temple  Bar,  vol.  91, 
p.  503. 

On  the  19th  of  April  it  was  evident  that 
death  was  near,  and  Mr.  Johnson  ventured 
to  speak  of  his  approaching  dissolution  as 
the  signal  for  his  deliverance  from  the 
miseries  of  both  mind  and  body.  Cowper 
making  fewer  objections  than  might  have 
been  supposed,  Johnson  proceeded  to  say, 
''that  in  the  world  to  which  he  was  hasten- 
ing, a  merciful  Redeemer  had  prepared 
unspeakable  happiness  for  all  His  children, 
and  therefore  for  him. "  To  the  first  part  of 
this  sentence  he  listened  with  composure, 
but  upon  hearing  the  concluding  words  he 
passionately  entreated  that  no  further 
observations  might  be  made  on  the  sub- 
ject. He  lingered  five  days  longer.  On 
Thursday  he  sat  up  as  usual  in  the  evening. 
In  the  course  of  the  night,  when  he  was 
exceedingly  exhausted.  Miss  Perowne 
offered  him  some  refreshment,  which  he 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


375 


rejected,  saying,  **What  can  it  signify?" 
and  these  were  the  last  words  he  was  heard 
to  utter.  At  five  in  the  morning  a  deadly 
change  had  taken  place  in  his  features,  and 
he  remained  in  an  insensible  state  from 
that  time  till  about  five  in  the  afternoon, 
when  he  ceased  to  breathe,  expiring  so 
peacefully  that  none  who  stood  at  his  bed- 
side could  tell  the  precise  moment  of  his 
departure.  From  the  time  of  his  death 
till  the  coffin  was  closed,  Mr.  Johnson 
says,  "the  expression  with  which  his 
countenance  had  settled  was  that  of  calm- 
ness and  composure,  mingled,  as  it  were, 
with  holy  surprise." — Wright,  Thomas, 
1892,  The  Life  of  William  Cowper,  p.  656. 

Intellectually,  Cowper  is  rendered  more 
difficult  in  appearance,  perhaps,  than  in 
reality  by  his  malady.  He  would  probably 
not  have  been  very  different  as  a  perfectly 
sane  man ;  that  is  to  say,  he  would  have  at 
least  shown  generous  sympathies,  pure 
morality,  and,  above  all  things,  the  in- 
stincts and  conduct  of  a  gentleman,  in  the 
very  best  sense  of  the  word,  without  join- 
ing to  them  any  very  vigorous  reasoning 
power  or  wide  faculty  of  appreciation. 
His  nature,  slightly  feminine,  must  always 
have  been  more  than  slightly  prejudiced ; 
but  his  prejudices  sometimes  contribute 
to  his  poetry,  and  rarely  interfere  with  it. 
— Saintsbury,  George,  1898,  Short  His- 
tory of  English  Literature^  p.  590. 

The  country  has  but  little  changed  in 
the  course  of  a  century.  The  ruins  of 
Capability  Brown's  exploits  are  still  trace- 
able at  Weston ;  the  square  tower  of  Clif- 
ton still  looks  down  upon  the  spire  of  Olney ; 
there  is  still  a  clump  of  poplars  at  Laven- 
don  Mill ;  there  is  still  a  wealth  of  flower- 
ing rushes  with  their  cherry  scented 
blossoms,  of  broad-leaved  plants  varying 
the  monotony  of  the  reeds,  of  purple  loose- 
strife, of  blue  forget-me-not.  An  ad- 
venturous holiday-maker,  who  could  for  a 
couple  of  days  forego  the  delights  of  dusty 
roads  and  the  rushing  wheel,  might  find  a 
less  agreeable  pastime  than  a  voyage  in  a 
canoe  from  Newport  Pagnell  down  to 
Turvey.  Thus  he  might  bathe  himself  in 
the  atmosphere  which  was  breathed  by  no 
mean  English  poet,  gliding  beneath  hills 
clothed  with  trees,  or  between  wide 
meadows ;  but  he  would  do  well  not  to  sur- 
render himself  unguardedly  to  the  calm 
pleasures  of  plain-sailing,  lest  he  should 
rue  his  error  lost  in  the  mazes  of  a 


reed-bed. — Tarver,  J.  C,  1900,  Cowpefs 
Ouse,  Macmillan's  Magazine,  vol.  82,  p.  144. 

MARY  UNWIN 
The  twentieth  year  is  well-nigh  past, 
Since  first  our  sky  was  overcast ; 
Ah,  would  that  this  might  be  the  last! 

My  Mary ! 
Thy  spirits  have  a  fainter  flow, 
I  see  thee  daily  weaker  grow ; 
'Twas  my  distress  that  brought  thee  low, 
My  Mary ! 


Thy  silver  locks,  once  auburn  bright. 
Are  still  more  lovely  in  my  sight 
Than  golden  beams  of  orient  light, 
My  Mary ! 

Partakers  of  thy  sad  decline, 
Thy  hands  their  little  force  resign ; 
Yet,  gently  prest,  press  gently  mine. 
My  Mary ! 


And  should  my  future  lot  be  cast 
With  much  resemblance  of  the  past, 
Thy  worn-out  heart  will  break  at  last. 
My  Mary ! 

—Cowper,  William,  1793,  To  Mary. 

I  am  tedious  without  being,  perhaps, 
after  all,  intelligible ;  but  an  example  may 
make  me  so.  Mrs.  Unwin,  the  friend  of 
Cowper,  felt  that  the  Divine  inflictions 
were  mercies,  and  to  be  received  as  such, 
as  sensibly  as  we  feel  that  the  shower, 
which  wets  our  garment,  refreshes  the 
dried- up  soil.  What  we  regard,  in  a 
speculative  way,  as  a  thing  we  ought  to 
believe,  was,  with  her,  like  the  evidence 
of  the  senses,  and  enabled  her  to  bear  the 
severest  evils  with  unshaken  and  even 
cheerful  patience.  In  vain  would  those, 
who  cherish  and  brood  over  sorrow,  ex- 
cuse themselves,  by  depreciating  as  a  kind 
of  apathy  the  lively  faith  which  supported 
this  Christian  heroine,  even  under  the 
death  of  her  most  excellent  and  only  son. 
What  but  sensibility  of  the  purest,  highest 
kind  led  her  to  do  and  suffer,  in  the  cause 
of  friendship,  more  than  ever  the  courage 
of  man  or  the  love  of  woman  achieved  ? 
Dying  for  one's  friend  was  nothing  to 
this.  Estranged  from  all  social  enjoy- 
ments, and  having  one's  sole  attention 
tied  down,  day  after  day,  and  year  after 
year,  to  the  most  painful  object  that  heart 
can  conceive — the  ghastly  form  and  sus- 
pended faculties  of  a  dear  friend !  What 
a  being  must  Cowper  have  been,  that  could 
excite  such  a  pure  and  fervent  attachment ; 
and  how  much  beyond  the  conception  of 


376 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


ordinary  minds  was  the  tenderness,  the 
constancy,  the  fortitude,  and,  above  all, 
the  faith  of  this  blessed  woman!  Lady 
Hesketh,  the  good,  the  generous,  and  the 
amiable,  tried  to  fill  her  place,  but  sank 
under  it.  Miss  Fanshawe,  who  was  with 
Lady  H.  in  the  last  months  of  her  life, 
told  me  that  she  never  recovered  the  miser- 
able winter  she  spent  with  her  beloved 
cousin. —  Grant,  Anne,  1823,  Letters, 
Sept.  2 ;  Memoir  and  Correspondence ,  ed. 
Grant,  vol.  iii,  p.  15. 

LADY  AUSTEN 

He  was  not  a  famous  poet  in  those  days, 
but  a  poor  invalid  recluse,  with  a  shadow 
of  madness  and  misery  about  him,  whose 
story  was  inevitably  known  to  all  his 
neighbours,  and  about  whom  there  could 
be  no  delusion  possible ;  but  though  all 
this  is  against  the  theory  that  a  brilliant, 
lively,  charming,  and  very  likely  fanciful 
woman,  such  as  Lady  Austen  seems  to  have 
been,  meant  to  marry  him,  it  is  quite 
enough  to  explain  the  compassionate  in- 
terest rapidly  ripening  into  warm  friend- 
ship which  moved  her  at  first.  Men  like 
Cowper  are  always  interesting  to  women, 
and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that,  in  the 
dull  neighborhood  of  Olney,  such  company 
and  conversation  as  his  would  be  a  godsend 
to  any  visitor  from  livelier  scenes. 
When  the  new  alliance  went  so  far  as  to 
induce  her  to  settle  in  Olney  in  the  adjoin- 
ing house,  with  that  famous  door  in  the 
wall  first  made  to  facilitate  communica- 
tions between  Newton  and  Cowper,  re- 
opened, a  stronger  motive  is  no  doubt 
necessary.  But  it  is  a  vulgar  conclusion 
that  marriage  must  bethought  of  wherever 
a  man  and  woman  are  concerned,  and  it 
was  the  age  for  romantic  friendships.  At 
all  events,  whatever  was  the  cause.  Lady 
Austen  took  up  her  abode  in  the  deserted 
vicarage. — Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W., 
1882,  Literary  History  of  England  in  the 
End  of  the  Eighteenth  and  Beginning  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  i,  p.  55. 

The  fact  now  began  to  dawn  upon  his 
mind  that  Lady  Austen  was  in  love  with 
him.  The  only  wonder  is  that  he  did  not 
perceive  it  before.  Nobody  can  blame  her 
for  losing  her  heart  to  the  poet.  She  saw 
only  the  bright  and  cheerful  side  of  his 
character,  and  knew  little  or  nothing  of 
the  canker  of  despair  that  gnawed  continu- 
ally at  his  heart.  ...  As  soon  as  Cowper 
discovered  in  what  light  Lady  Austen 


regarded  him,  he  perceived  that  matters 
could  no  longer  go  on  as  they  were.  The 
thought  of  love— anything  more  than  a 
brotherly  and  sisterly  love — had  never  en- 
tered his  mind,  for  since  his  last  dreadful 
derangement  at  the  vicarage  he  had  given 
up  all  thoughts  of  marriage  (it  should  be 
remembered,  too,  that  he  was  in  his  fifty- 
fourth  year),  and  seeing  himself  called  on 
to  renounce  either  one  lady  or  the  other, 
he  felt  it  to  be  his  bounden  duty  to  cling 
to  Mrs.  Unwin,  to  whose  kindness  he  had 
been  indebted  for  so  many  years.  It  has 
been  said  by  some  that  Mrs.  Unwin  was 
jealous  of  Lady  Austen.  Very  likely  she 
was.  When  we  consider  how  tenderly  and 
patiently  she  had  watched  over  Cowper  in 
his  dark  and  dreadful  hours,  how  for  so 
many  years  she  had  shared  his  joys  and 
sorrows,  and  delighted  in  his  companion- 
ship, we  need  not  wonder  if  some  feeling 
akin  to  jealousy  stirred  her  when  she  per- 
ceived the  danger  of  her  place  being  taken 
by  one  who,  though  more  brilliant,  could 
not  possibly  love  him  more.  But  Mrs. 
Unwin  had  no  need  to  fear.  Cowper's 
affections  for  her,  his  knowledge  of  her 
worth,  his  gratitude  for  past  services, 
would  not  allow  him  to  hesitate.  He  had 
hoped  that  it  would  be  possible  to  enjoy 
the  friendship  of  both  ladies ;  but  when 
he  discovered  that  it  was  necessary  to 
decide  between  one  and  the  other,  he 
bowed  to  the  painful  necessity  and  wrote 
Lady  Austen  ''a  very  tender  yet  resolute 
letter,  in  which  he  explained  and  lamented 
the  circumstances  that  forced  him  to  re- 
nounce her  society."  She  in  anger  burnt 
the  letter,  and  henceforth  there  was  no 
more  communication  between  them.  — 
Wright,  Thomas,  1892,  The  Life  of  Wil- 
liam Cowper,  pp.  347,  348. 

The  sprightly  Muse,  with  all  her  stability 
of  temper,  sense  of  religion,  and  serious- 
ness of  mind,  must  soon  have  become  disa- 
greeably conscious  of  the  difference  be- 
tween the  forced  attendance  of  a  wayward 
and  irritable  invalid  with  his  thoughts  else- 
where, and  the  effusive  camaraderie  with 
which  he  sought  her  company  in  the  bright 
days  of  their  first  companionship. 
"O  Love !  it  is  a  pleasant  thing 
A  little  time,  while  it  is  new." 

Mrs.  Unwin  might  not  have  resented  the 
change,  but  Lady  Austen  was  not  Mrs. 
Unwin,  and  she  ''repaired  to  Bristol." 
We  might  have  understood  the  cause  of 


WILLIAM  COWPER  377 


the  separation  better  if  the  lady  had  kept 
Cowper's  letter  of  farewell,  but  she  was 
so  dissatisfied  with  it  that  she  threw  it  in 
the  fire — tempted,  perhaps,  for  once  in  her 
life,  to  believe  that  Methodism  was  cant. 
Lady  Austen  was  too  exacting,  or  Cowper 
was  too  exacting ;  anyhow,  they  could  not 
get  on  together— any  explanation  you 
please  except  that  Mrs.  Unwin  was  jealous. 
To  entertain  this  explanation  for  a  moment 
is  to  commit  the  most  senseless  outrage 
on  the  memory  of  a  gentle,  self-denying 
woman  who  bore  with  all  the  crazy  poet's 
selfish  whims  and  caprices,  and  watched 
over  him  with  more  than  a  mother's  love 
till  her  own  mind  gave  way  under  the 
strain.— MiNTO,  William,  1894,  Tke  Lit- 
erature of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed.  Knight^ 
p.  144. 

OLNEY  HYMNS 

1779 

Precious  is  his  memory  to  every  lover  of 
sacred  song.— Hatfield,  Edwin  F.,  1884, 
The  Poets  of  the  Church,  p.  165. 

Very  many  of  Cowper's  hymns,  like 
passages  in  his  longer  poems,  have  become 
''household  words."  .  .  .  Cowper — 
the  great  Christian  poet  of  England,  and, 
as  Willmott  justly  remarks,  pre-eminently 
the  poet  of  the  affections,  above  any 
writer  in  our  language — has  enriched 
sacred  literature  by  so  many  exquisite 
bursts  of  poetic  inspiration,  that  it  is  no 
easy  task  to  determine  which  are  the  best. 
—Saunders,  Frederick,  1885,  Evenings 
with  the  Sacred  Poets,  pp.  345,  346. 

As  a  hymn-writer,  except  for  one  very 
remarkable  composition,  Cowper  scarcely 
ranks  as  high  as  the  Wesleys.  He  might 
have  taken  a  much  higher  place  than  they 
— a  higher  place  than  almost  any  writer 
of  hymns  of  his  own  time  or  since — if  he 
could  have  applied  his  genius  to  the  work. 
That  was  certainly  not  possible  to  him  at 
the  time  when  the  Olney  hymns  were 
written,  and  at  the  other  periods  when  it 
might  have  been  possible  he  was  occupied 
with  greater  things.  The  defect  of  his 
hymns  was  their  severe  doctrinal  char- 
acter. They  are  statements  of  religious 
belief,  for  the  most  part  narrow  and  des- 
pondent; and  only  occasionally,  w^hen 
they  reflect  what  may  have  been  a  passing 
mood  of  cheerfulness,  do'  they  express  the 
aspirations  or  contentments  of  simple 
piety.— Cotterell,  George,  1897,  Cow- 
per's Letters,  The  Argosy,  vol.  64,  p.  152. 


*'Hark  my  Soul"  is  the  most  beautiful 
of  all  English  hymns.  It  emphasises  what 
is  the  essence  of  the  Christian  faith, — the 
appeal  of  Christ  to  the  individual  man. 
It  describes  in  language  that  is  exquisitely 
simple  and  true  the  work  of  the  Saviour 
for  the  soul  in  redemption.  In  words 
hardly  less  powerful  than  those  of  St. 
Paul,  it  brings  home  to  the  heart  the  truth 
that  He  who  speaks  to  us  through  the 
Gospel  is  the  fulness  of  Him  who  filleth  all 
in  all,  and  then  it  closes  by  bringing  the 
poor  human  heart,  conscious  of  its  own 
feebleness,  into  its  true  attitude  of  abso- 
lute reliance  on  the  Divine  peace,  in  which 
it  lives  and  moves,  and  has  its  being. — 
Sinclair,  William  Macdonald,  1897, 
Hymns  that  have  Helped,  ed.  Stead,  p.  146. 

*'God  Moves  in  a  Mysterious  Way." 
Cowper's  hymn  has  helped  multitudes  to 
bear  up  under  the  blows  of  apparently  ad- 
verse fortune.  Within  a  year  of  the  writ- 
ing of  this  beautiful  and  touching  hymn, 
Cowper's  reason  reeled,  and  he  endeav- 
oured to  commit  suicide  by  drowning  in 
the  Ouse.  It  is  some  poor  consolation  to 
know  that  his  attempt  at  suicide  was  not 
a  suicide  of  despair,  but  rather  the  perver- 
sion of  the  spirit  of  resignation  and  joyful 
submission  which  finds  expression  in  the 
hymn.  Newton  says  that  Cowper  tried  to 
take  his  life,  believing  it  was  a  sacrifice 
which  God  required  at  his  hands.  The 
accepted  legend  is  that  he  had  proposed 
to  commit  suicide  at  a  certain  place,  but 
as  the  driver  of  the  postchaise  could  not 
find  it,  he  returned  home  without  putting 
his  purpose  into  execution,  and  there 
composed  this  hymn. — Stead,  W.  T., 
1897,  Hymns  that  have  Helped,  p.  115. 

JOHN  GILPIN 

1783 

When  I  received  your  account  of  the 
great  celebrity  of  ''John  Gilpin,"  I  felt 
myself  both  flattered  and  grieved.  Being 
man,  and  having  in  my  composition  all  the 
ingredients  of  \vhich  other  men  are  made, 
and  vanity  among  the  rest,  it  pleased  me 
to  reflect  that  I  was  on  a  sudden  become 
so  famous,  and  that  all  the  world  was  busy 
inquiring  after  me ;  but  the  next  moment, 
recollecting  my  former  self,  and  that  thir- 
teen years  ago,  as  harmless  as  John's  his- 
tory is,  I  should  not  then  have  written  it, 
my  spirits  sank,  and  I  was  ashamed  of  my 
success.  Your  letter  was  followed  the 
next  post  by  one  from  Mr.  Unwin.  You 


378 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


tell  me  that  I  am  rivalled  by  Mrs.  Bellamy ; 
and  he,  that  I  have  a  competitor  for  fame, 
nor  less  formidable,  in  the  Learned  Pig. 
Alas!  what  is  an  author's  popularity 
worth,  in  a  world  that  can  suffer  a  prosti- 
tute on  one  side,  and  a  pig  on  the  other, 
to  eclipse  his  brightest  glories?  I  am 
therefore  sufficiently  humbled  by  these 
considerations ;  and  unless  I  should  here- 
after be  ordained  to  engross  the  public  at- 
tention by  means  more  magnificent  than  a 
song,  am  persuaded  that  I  shall  suffer  no 
real  detriment  by  their  applause.  I  have 
produced  many  things,  under  the  influence 
of  despair,  which  hope  would  not  have 
permitted  to  spring.  But  if  the  soil  of 
that  melancholy,  in  which  I  have  walked 
so  long,  has  thrown  up  here  and  there  an 
unprofitable  fungus,  it  is  well,  at  least, 
that  it  is  not  chargeable  with  having 
brought  forth  poison.  Like  you,  I  see, 
or  think  I  can  see,  that  Gilpin  may  have 
his  use.  Causes,  in  appearance  trivial, 
produce  often  the  most  beneficial  conse- 
quences; and  perhaps  my  volumes  may 
now  travel  to  a  distance,  which,  if  they 
had  not  been  ushered  into  the  world  by 
that  notable  horseman,  they  would  never 
have  reached. — Cowper,  William,  1785, 
Letter  to  Rev.  John  Newton^  April  22. 

The  story  of  John  Gilpin  has  perhaps 
given  as  much  pleasure  to  as  many  people 
as  anything  of  the  same  length  that  ever 
was  written. — Hazlitt,  William,  1818, 
Lectures  on  the  English  PoetSy  Lecture  v. 

THE  TASK 

1785 

Is  not  ''The  Task"  a  glorious  poem? 
The  religion  of  ''The  Task,''  bating  a  few 
scraps  of  Calvinistic  divinity,  is  the  reli- 
gion of  God  and  Nature ;  the  religion  that 
exalts  and  ennobles  man. — Burns,  Robert, 
1795,  Letter  to  Mrs.  Dunlop,  Dec.  25. 

The  "Task,"  beginning  with  all  the 
peaceful  attractions  of  sportive  gaiety, 
rises  to  the  most  solemn  and  awful  grand- 
eur, to  the  highest  strain  of  religious 
solemnity.  Its  frequent  variation  of  tone 
is  masterly  in  the  greatest  degree,  and  the 
main  spell  of  that  inexhaustible  enchant- 
ment which  hurries  the  reader  through  a 
flowery  maze  of  many  thousand  verses, 
without  allowing  him  to  feel  a  moment  of 
languor  or  fatigue.  Perhaps  no  author, 
ancient  or  modern,  ever  possessed,  so  com- 
pletely as  Cowper,  the  nice  art  of  passing, 


by  the  most  delicate  transition,  from  sub- 
jects to  subjects  that  might  otherwise 
seem  but  little  or  not  at  all  allied  to  each 
other,  the  rare  talent 

"Happily  to  steer 
From  grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe." 
— Hayley,  William,  1803,  The  Life  and 
Posthumous  Writings  of  William  Cowper^ 
vol.  II,  p.  142. 

In  the  "Task"  are  to  be  found  descrip- 
tive powers  not  inferior  to  those  of 
Thomson,  mingled  with  a  strain  of  the 
happiest  satiric  humour,  and  interspersed 
with  touches  of  the  most  exquisite  pathos 
and  sublimity ;  while  the  whole  inculcates, 
in  versification  of  unparalleled  sweetness 
and  simplicity,  the  noblest  lessons  of 
morality  and  religion. — Drake,  Nathan, 
1810,  Essays,  Illustrative  of  the  Rambler, 
Adventurer,  and  Idler,  vol.  ii,  p.  333. 

It  seems  to  have  been  begun  without 
design  like  a  morning's  ramble,  and  to 
have  been  continued  and  completed  with- 
out labour.  Nevertheless,  in  this  walk 
how  many  beautiful  and  even  sublime 
objects  rise  upon  the  view.  Cowper  ap- 
pears to  bear  in  his  style  a  very  great  re- 
semblance to  the  Roman  Ovid.  There  is 
in  both  the  same  elegance  of  diction  and 
unstudied  easiness  of  expression.  But 
the  Christian  poet  must  be  allowed  to  bear 
the  palm  from  the  Pagan  in  sentiment  if 
he  is  equalled  by  him  (which  I  do  not  think) 
in  other  respects.  The  pious  fervour 
which  goes  through  the  page  of  Cowper 
will  preserve  it  from  obljvion,  while  the 
blasphemous  scoffings  of  a  witty  infidel, 
should  they  pass  down  to  another  genera- 
tion, will  be  viewed  only  with  mingled  in- 
dignation and  contempt. —  Thirlwall, 
CONNOP,  1810,  To  John  Candler,  Oct.  24 ; 
Letters,  eds.  Perowne  and  Stokes,  p.  16. 

Cowper' s  first  volume,  partly  from  the 
grave  character  of  the  longer  pieces  and 
the  purposely  rugged,  rambling,  slip-shod 
versification,  was  long  neglected,  till  "The 
Task,"  the  noblest  effort  of  his  muse, 
composed  under  the  inspiration  of  cheer- 
fulness, hope,  and  love,  unbosoming  the 
whole  soul  of  his  affections,  intelligence, 
and  piety, — at  once  made  our  countrymen 
feel  that  neither  the  genius  of  poesy  had 
fled  from  our  isle,  nor  had  the  heart  for  it 
died  in  the  breast  of  its  inhabitants. 
"The  Task"  was  the  first  long  poem  from 
the  close  of  Churchill's  brilliant  but 
evanescent  career,  that  awoke  wonder, 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


379 


sympathy,  and  delight  by  its  own  ineffable 
excellence  among  the  reading  people  of 
England.— Montgomery,  James,  1833, 
Lectures  on  General  Literature,  Poetry, 
etc.,  p.  303. 

Lady  Austen  has  the  honor  also  of  having 
suggested  at  this  time  to  Cowper  the  sub- 
ject of  that  work  which  made  him  the 
most  popular  poet  of  his  age,  and  raised 
him  to  a  rank  in  English  poetry  from 
which  no  revolution  of  taste  can  detrude 
him.  She  had  often  urged  him  to  try  his 
powers  in  blank  verse :  at  last  he  promised 
to  comply  with  her  request,  if  she  would 
give  him  a  subject.  ''Oh,"  she  replied, 
''you  can  never  be  in  want  of  a  subject; 
you  can  write  upon  any ; — write  upon  this 
Sofa!"  The  answer  was  made  with  a 
woman's  readiness,  and  the  capabilities  of 
such  a  theme  were  apprehended  by  Cow- 
per with  a  poet's  quickness  of  perception. 
— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1836-7,  The  Life  of 
William  Cowper,  vol.  i,  p.  268. 

Where  is  the  poem  that  surpasses  the 
"Task"  in  the  genuine  love  it  breathes,  at 
once  towards  inanimate  and  animate  exist- 
ence— in  truthfulness  of  perception  and 
sincerity  of  presentation — in  the  calm 
gladness  that  springs  from  a  delight  in 
objects  for  their  own  sake,  without  self- 
reference — in  divine  sympathy  with  the 
lowliest  pleasures,  with  the  most  short- 
lived capacity  for  pain?  .  .  .  How 
Cowper's  exquisite  mind  falls  with  the  mild 
warmth  of  morning  sunlight  on  the  com- 
monest objects,  at  once  disclosing  every 
detail  and  investing  every  detail  with 
beauty !  No  object  is  too  small  to  prompt 
his  song — not  the  sooty  film  on  the  bars, 
or  the  spoutless  tea-pot  holding  the  bit  of 
mignonette  that  serves  to  chear  the  dingy 
town-lodging  with  a  "hint  that  Nature 
lives;"  and  yet  his  song  is  never  trivial, 
for  he  is  alive  to  small  objects,  not  because 
his  mind  is  narrow,  but  because  his  glance 
is  clear  and  his  heart  is  large. — Eliot, 
George,  1857,  Worldliness  and  Other- 
Worldliness:  The  Poet  Young;  Essays, 
pp.  72,  73. 

Incomparably  the  best  poem  that  any 
Englishman  then  living  had  produced — a 
poem,  too,  which  could  hardly  fail  to  ex- 
cite in  a  well  constituted  mind  a  feeling 
of  esteem  and  compassion  for  the  poet,  a 
man  of  genius  and  virtue,  whose  means 
were  scanty,  and  whom  the  most  cruel  of 
all  the  calamities  incident  to  humanity  had 


made  incapable  of  supporting  himself  by 
vigorous  and  sustained  exertion. — Macau- 
lay,  Thomas  Babington,  1859,  William 
Pitt,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

The  great  beauties  of  "The  Task,"  and 
its  pure  and  elevated  feeling,  can  hardly 
be  said  to  make  it  a  poem  of  the  highest 
class.  The  very  method  of  its  origin  was 
some  bar  to  success.  .  .  .  Towards 
the  end  of  the  First  Book  he  again  changes 
his  subject,  for  the  purpose  of  moralizing. 
The  country  and  the  life  therein  are  con- 
trasted with  the  town,  and  this  affords  the 
opening  for  satire,  which  is  just  touched 
in  the  end  of  the  First  Book,  but  forms 
the  staple  for  the  Second.  And  splendid 
satire  it  is,  full  of  vigour,  and  energy, 
and  point,  sometimes  mere  good  humoured 
badinage,  sometimes  full  of  burning  indig- 
nation. It  is  satire  of  a  different  kind 
from  that  of  his  former  poems ;  it  is  less 
bilious,  more  free  from  personality.  Yet, 
Antseus-like,  the  author  loses  all  his 
power  when  he  ceases  to  touch  his  proper 
sphere.  His  faculty  of  keen  observation 
enables  him  to  lash  effectively  the  false 
pretentions  and  follies  which  he  sees.  But 
his  reflections  upon  the  world  without  are 
of  the  poorest  kind.  He  foresees  the  end 
of  the  world  close  at  hand.  He  rails  at 
the  natural  philosopher  who  attempts  to 
discover  the  causes  of  physical  calamities, 
such  as  earthquakes  and  diseases ;  at  the 
historian  who  takes  the  trouble  to  investi- 
gate the  motives  of  remarkable  men ;  at 
the  geologist  and  the  astronomer.  For 
the  last  especially  there  is  nothing  but 
contempt. — Benham,  William,  1870,  ed.. 
The  Poetical  Works  of  William  Cowper, 
Introduction,  p.  Ivii. 

Is  the  kitchen-garden  indeed  poetical  ? 
To-day  perhaps;  but  to-morrow,  if  my 
imagination  is  barren,  I  shall  see  there 
nothingbut  carrots  and  other  kitchen  stuff. 
It  is  my  sensation  which  is  poetic,  which  I 
must  respect,  as  the  most  precious  flower 
of  beauty.  Hence  a  new  style.  .  .  . 
This  is  his  great  poem,  "The  Task."  If 
we  enter  into  details,  the  contrast  is 
greater  still.  He  does  not  seem  to  dream 
that  he  is  being  listened  to ;  he  only  speaks 
to  himself.  He  does  not  dwell  on  his 
ideas,  to  set  them  in  relief,  and  make  them 
stand  out  by  repetitions  and  antitheses ;  he 
marks  his  sensation  and  that  is  all.  We 
follow  it  in  him  as  it  is  born,  and  we  see 
it  rising  from  a  former  one,  swellings 


380 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


falling,  remounting,  as  we  see  vapour 
issuing  from  a  spring,  and  insensibly  ris- 
ing, unrolling  and  developing  its  shifting 
forms.  Thought,  which  in  others  was 
curdled  and  rigid,  becomes  here  mobile 
and  fluent;  the  rectilinear  verse  grows 
flexible ;  the  noble  vocabulary  widens  its 
scope  to  let  in  vulgar  words  of  conversa- 
tion and  life.  At  length  poetry  has  again 
become  lifelike;  we  no  longer  listen  to 
words,  but  we  feel  emotions;  it  is  no 
longer  an  author  but  a  man  who  speaks. 
His  life  is  there  perfect,  beneath  its  black 
lines,  without  falsehood  or  concoction; 
his  whole  effort  is  bent  on  removing 
falsehood  and  concoction. — Taine,  H.  A., 
1871,  History  of  English  Literature,  tr.  Van 
Laun,  vol.  ii,  bk.  iv,ch.  i,  pp.  246,  247. 

There  is  a  wonderful  variety  of  objects 
and  of  thought  in  this  poem ;  it  may  be 
called  a  universal  composition,  for  the 
poet  gathers  up  all  the  phenomena  of  life, 
nature,  and  society,  and  the  colours  with 
which  he  paints  the  bright  and  the  dark 
sides  of  all  things  are  as  brilliant  as  they 
are  true.— Scherr,  J.,  1874,  A  History 
of  English  Literaturey  tr.  M.  F.,  p.  164. 

Though  Cowper  sees  the  outer  world  as 
set  off  against  his  own  personal  moods  and 
the  interests  of  man,  yet  he  does  not  allow 
these  to  discolor  his  scenes  or  to  blur  the 
exactness  of  their  outlines.  Fidelity,  ab- 
solute veracity,  characterize  his  descrip- 
tions. He  himself  says  that  he  took 
nothing  at  second-hand,  and  all  his  pictures 
bear  witness  to  this.  Homely,  of  course, 
flat,  tame,  was  the  country  he  dwelt  in  and 
described.  But  to  this  day  that  Hunting- 
donshire landscape,  and  the  flats  by  the 
sluggish  Ouse,  in  themselves  so  unbeauti- 
ful,  acquire  a  charm  to  the  eye  of  the 
traveler  from  the  remembered  poetry  of 
the  **Task'^  and  for  the  sake  of  him 
who  wrote  it.— Shairp,  John  Campbell, 
1877,  On  Poetic  Interpretation  of  Nature, 
p.  215. 

As  Paradise  Lost''  is  to  militant  Puri- 
tanism, so  is  ''The  Task"  to  the  religious 
movement  of  its  author's  time.  To  its 
character  as  the  poem  of  a  sect  it  no  doubt 
owed  and  still  owes  much  of  its  popular- 
ity. Not  only  did  it  give  beautiful  and 
effective  expression  to  the  sentiments  of  a 
large  religious  party,  but  it  was  about  the 
only  poetry  that  a  strict  Methodist  or 
Evangelical  could  read;  while  to  those 
whose  worship  was  unritualistic  and  who 


were  debarred  by  their  principles  from  the 
theatre  and  the  concert,  anything  in  the 
way  of  art  that  was  not  illicit  must  have 
been  eminently  welcome. — Smith,  Gold- 
win,  1880,  Cowper  {English  Men  of  Let- 
ters), p.  62. 

It  is  in  the  second  book,  **The  Time- 
piece," that  the  poet  takes  his  highest 
flight.  Nothing  finer  of  its  kind  has  ever 
been  written  in  the  English  language  than 
the  first  half-dozen  pages. — Hope,  Eva, 
1886,  The  Poetical  Works  of  William 
Cowper  (Canterbury  Poets),  Introduction, 
p.  xxvi. 

Save  for  a  few  occasional — and  not 
always  fortunate — lapses  into  familiarity, 
Cowper's  manner  of  dealing  with  the 
domestic  is  still  the  manner  of  the  earlier 
century,  still  radically  opposed  to  these 
principles  of  ''natural"  poetic  diction,  on 
which  Wordsworth  was  afterwards  to  in- 
sist with  so  much  more  zeal  than  discre- 
tion, and  to  delay  for  many  years  the 
acceptance  of  invaluable  truth  by  ex- 
aggerating them  in  his  preaching  and 
rendering  them  ridiculous  in  his  practice. 
Cowper  is  still  far  from  that  frank  frater- 
nal recognition  of  the  common  objects, 
ideas,  and  interests  of  life  which  is  ad- 
vocated in  the  famous  preface  to  the 
"Lyrical  Ballads."  Poetry  in  his  hands 
will  unbend  to  common  things,  but  it  is 
always  with  a  too  vigilant  dignity:  she 
will  take  notice  of  the  tea-urn  and  the  silk- 
reels,  and  the  modest  indoor  pleasures  and 
employments  of  the  country  house',  but  it 
is  all  done  with  the  conscious  condescen- 
sion of  the  squire's  wife  at  the  village 
school  treat.  And  Cowper,  moreover, 
clings  still  to  that  leisurely  diffuseness  of 
utterance  which  is  so  alien  to  the  spirit  of 
the  great  poetry,  pregnant  with  thought, 
and  eager  to  bring  it  to  the  birth.  One 
reads  him  sometimes  divided  between  de- 
light in  his  perfect  literary  finish  and 
irritation  at  its  prolixity. — Traill,  Henry 
Duff,  1896,  Social  England,  vol.  v,  p.  443. 

Cowper's  "Task"  is  almost  curiously 
barren  of  landscape;  and  the  style  does 
not  essentially  differ  from  Thomson's 
except  in  that  the  poet  himself  is  the 
spectator;  whence,  naturally,  the  land- 
scape is  more  intimate  and  more  devout. 
This  poem,  though  of  much  value  in  its  own 
day,  now  certainly  disappoints.  —  Pal- 
grave,  Francis  Turner,  1896,  Land- 
scape in  Poetry,  p.  175. 


9 


WILLIAM  COW  PER 


381 


HOMER 

1791 

My  dear  friend's  Homer  is  coming 
abroad.  1  have  received  my  copy,  but  the 
publication  is  not  yet.  I  have  cursorily 
surveyed  the  first  volume ;  it  seems  fully 
equal  to  what  I  expected,  for  my  expecta- 
tions were  not  high.  I  do  not  think  it 
will  add  to  the  reputation  of  the  author  of 
the  ''Task,"  as  a  poet ;  but  I  hope  the  per- 
formance will  not  be  unworthy  of  him, 
though  the  subject  is  greatly  beneath 
the  attention  of  the  writer,  who  has  a  mind 
capable  of  original,  great,  and  useful 
things ;  but  he  could  not  at  the  time  fix  his 
thoughts  upon  any  thing  better — and  they 
who  know  his  state  will  rather  pity  than 
blame  him.  I  hope  we  shall  have  no  more 
translations. — Newton,  John,  1791,  Let- 
ter  to  Hannah  More,  July  17 ;  Memoirs  of 
Hannah  More,  ed.  Roberts. 

You  know  my  admiration  for  this  truly 
great  genius,  but  I  am  really  grieved  that 
he  should  lower  his  aims  so  far  as  to  stoop 
to  become  a  mere  editor  and  translator.  It 
is  Ulysses  shooting  from  a  baby's  bow. 
Why  does  he  quit  the  heights  of  Solyma 
for  the  dreams  of  Pindus?  "What's 
Hecuba  to  him,  or  he  to  Hecuba?"  In 
his  own  original  way  he  has  few  competi- 
tors ;  in  his  new  walk  he  has  many  superi- 
ors ;  he  can  do  the  best  things  better  than 
any  man,  but  others  can  do  middling 
things  better  than  he. — More,  Hannah, 
1791,  Letter Sy  ed.  Roberts. 

That  the  translation  is  a  great  deal  more 
close  and  literal,  than  any  that  had  previ- 
ously been  attempted  in  English  verse, 
probably  will  not  be  disputed  by  those  who 
are  the  least  disposed  to  admire  it.  That 
the  style  into  which  it  is  translated  is  a 
true  English  style,  though  not  perhaps  a 
very  elegant  or  poetical  one,  may  also  be 
assumed ;  but  we  are  not  sure  that  a  rigid 
and  candid  criticism  will  go  farther  in  its 
commendation. — Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord, 
1803,  Hay  ley's  Life  of  Cowper,  Edinburgh 
Review,  vol.  2,  p.  85. 

No  satiety  is  perceived  from  reading  any 
quantity  of  the  blank  verse  of  Cowper ; 
and  the  genius  of  Homer,  the  state  of 
manners  of  the  period  in  which  he  wrote, 
and  the  whole  scope  and  design  of  his  im- 
mortal epopees,  are  infinitely  better  felt 
and  comprehended  in  the  blank  than  in  the 
rhymed  copy  of  the  venerable  bard.  ^  The 
issue  will  most  likely  be  this,  that  for 


insulated  passages.  Pope  will  generally  be 
referred  to;  but  that  he  who  wishes  to 
peruse,  and  for  any  length  of  time  together, 
the  entire  poems  of  Homer,  will  have  re- 
course to  the  labours  of  Cowper. — Drake, 
Nathan,  1804,  Essays  Illustrative  of  the 
Tatler,  Spectator  and  Guardian,  vol.  ni, 
p.  94. 

I  hate  Cowper 's  slow,  dry,  blank  verse, 
so  utterly  alien  to  the  spirit  of  the  poem, 
and  the  minstrel  mode  of  delivery.  How 
could  it  have  suited  any  kind  of  recitative 
or  melody,  or  the  accompaniment  of  any 
music  ?  It  is  like  a  pursy,  pompous,  but 
unpolished  man  moving  laboriously  in  a 
stiff  dress  of  office.  Those  boar  and  lion 
hunting  similes  describing  swift  motion  are 
dreadfully  dragging  in  this  sort  of  verse. 
.  .  .  Cowper's  poem  is  like  a  Camera 
Lucida  portrait — far  more  unlike  in  ex- 
pression and  general  result  than  one  less 
closely  copied  as  to  lines  and  features. — 
Coleridge,  Sara,  1834,  To  Her  Husband, 
Memoir  and  Letters,  ed.  Her  Daughter, 
pp.  92,  93. 

Between  Cowper  and  Homer  there  is  in- 
terposed the  mist  of  Cowper's  elaborate 
Miltonic  manner,  entirely  alien  to  the  flow- 
ing rapidity  of  Homer. — Arnold,  Mat- 
thew, 1861,  Lectures  on  Homer,  p.  11. 

The  transition  from  Pope  to  Cowper  is 
the  change  from  poetic  thraldom  to  poetic 
freedom.  In  the  former  you  are  held 
down  to  the  severest  rigor  of  rhythm, 
while  yet  you  admire  the  grace,  the  finish, 
and  the  splendor  of  the  chain  which  binds 
you.  In  the  latter  you  find  yourself  let 
loose  and  range  in  freedom,  unrestrained 
but  by  the  beautiful  order  that  rules  in  the 
very  nature  of  things.  In  reading  Pope, 
one  admires  the  wonderful  subjection  of 
the  idea,  the  thought  in  its  divers  phases 
and  relations,  its  qualities  and  its  meas- 
ures, to  the  exactions  of  the  rhyme  and 
the  rhythm ;  in  Cowper,  one  admires  the 
more  wonderful  incorporation  of  the  idea 
into  the  perfect  harmonies  and  melodies 
of  words.  One  must  read  Pope  with  his 
attention  fixed  on  the  rhythm;  he  must 
read  Cowper  with  his  mind  filled  and 
prompted  by  the  thought.  There  can 
hardly  be  supposed  a  wider  contrast  than 
the  two  present.— Day,  Henry  N.,  1868, 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  English  Litera- 
ture, p.  340. 

Cowper  brought  such  poetic  gifts  to  his 
work  that  his  failure  might  have  deterred 


382 


WILLIAM  COW  PER 


others  from  making  the  same  hopeless 
attempt.  But  a  failure  his  work  is; 
the  translation  is  no  more  a  counterpart 
of  the  original,  than  the  Ouse  creeping 
through  its  meadow  is  the  counterpart  of 
the  ^gean  rolling  before  a  fresh  wind  and 
under  a  bright  sun.  Pope  delights  school- 
boys ;  Cowper  delights  nobody,  though,  on 
the  rare  occasions  when  he  is  taken  from 
the  shelf,  he  commends  himself,  in  a  cer- 
tain measure,  to  the  taste  and  judgment 
of  cultivated  men.  —  Smith,  Goldwin, 
1880,  Cowper  {English  Men  and  Letters), 
p.  93 

He  brought  scholarly  tastes  and  a  quick 
conscience  to  the  work ;  a  boy  would  be 
helped  more  to  the  thieving  of  the  proper 
English  by  Cowper's  Homer,  than  by 
Pope's ;  but  there  was  not ' '  gallop' '  enough 
in  his  nature  for  a  live  rendering ;  and  he 
was  too  far  in-shore  for  the  rhythmic  beat 
of  the  multitudinous  waves  and  too  far  from 
the  ''hollow"  ships.— Mitchell,  Donald 
G.,  1895,  English  Lands  Letters  and  Kings, 
Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges,  p.  251. 

ON  THE  RECEIPT  OF  MY  MOTHER'S 
PICTURE 

1798 

This  is  no  doubt,  as  a  whole,  Cowper's 
finest  poem,  at  once  springing  from  the 
deepest  and  purest  fount  of  passion,  and 
happy  in  shaping  itself  into  richer  and 
sweeter  music  than  he  has  reached  in  any 
other.  It  shows  what  his  real  originality, 
and  the  natural  spirit  of  art  that  was  in 
him,  might  have  done  under  a  better  train- 
ing and  more  favorable  circumstances  of 
personal  situation,  or  perhaps  in  another 
age.— Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Com- 
pendious History  of  English  Literature  and 
of  the  English  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  381. 

Perhaps  the  most  pathetic  poem  in  our 
language,  which  the  recluse  of  Olney  wrote 
on  the  receipt  of  his  mother's  picture. — 
Farrar,  F.  W.,  1883,  With  the  Poets, 
Preface,  p.  xviii. 

A  cousin  sent  him  his  mother's  portrait. 
He  received  it  in  trepidation,  kivssed  it,  hung 
it  where  it  would  be  seen  last  at  night,  first 
in  the  morning,  and  wrote  a  poem  on 
it,  whose  tenderness  and  pathos,  flowing 
in  richer  and  sweeter  music  than  he  had 
elsewhere  reached,  are  unequalled  by  any- 
thing else  he  has  written,  and  surpassed 
by  little  in  the  language.  Springing  from 
the  deepest  and  purest  fount  of  passion, 
and  shaping  itself  into  mobile  and  fluent 


verse,  it  reveals  his  true  originality,  as 
well  as  that  life-like  elegance,  that  natural 
spirit  of  art,  wherein  consists  the  great 
revolution  of  the  modern  style. — Welsh, 
Alfred  H.,  1883,  Development  of  English 
Literature  and  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  245. 

After  reading  [Tennyson]  Cowper's 
"Poplar  Field,"  People  nowadays,  I 
believe,  hold  this  style  and  metre  light ;  I 
wish  there  were  any  one  who  could  put 
words  together  with  such  exquisite  flow 
and  evenness. ' '  Presently  we  reached  the 
same  poet's  stanzas  to  Mary  Unwin.  He 
read  them,  yet  could  barely  read  them,  so 
deeply  was  he  touched  by  their  tender, 
their  most  agonizing  pathos.  And  once 
when  I  asked  him  for  the  ''Lines  on  my 
Mother's  Portrait,"  his  voice  faltered  as 
he  said  he  would,  if  I  wished  it ;  but  he 
knew  he  should  break  down. — Palgrave, 
Francis  Turner,  1892-97,  Personal  Rec- 
ollections of  Tennyson ;  Alfred  Lord  Ten- 
nyson, A  Memoir  by  His  Son,  vol.  ii,  p.  501. 

SONNETS 
Petrarch's  sonnets  have  a  more  ethereal 
grace  and  a  more  perfect  finish ;  Shakes- 
peare's more  passion;  Milton's  stand  su- 
preme in  stateliness,  Wordsworth's  in 
depth  and  delicacy.  But  Cowper's  unites 
with  an  exquisiteness  in  the  turn  of 
thought  which  the  ancients  would  have 
called  Irony,  an  intensity  of  pathetic 
tenderness  peculiar  to  his  loving  and  in- 
genuous nature. — There  is  much  manner- 
ism, much  that  is  unimportant  or  of  now 
exhausted  interest  in  his  poems :  but  where 
he  is  great,  it  is  with  that  elementary  great- 
ness which  rests  on  the  most  universal 
human  feelings.  Cowper  is  our  highest 
master  in  simple  pathos. — Palgrave, 
Francis  Turner,  1861,  The  Golden  Treas- 
ury, note. 

They  never  rise  to  the  highest  excel- 
lence, neither  do  they  fall  much  below  the 
level  of  his  average  compositions.  If  they 
embalm  no  superb  thoughts,  of  which  it 
can  be  said,  as  of  Herrick's  fly  in  amber : 
"The  urn  was  little  but  the  room 
More  rich  than  Cleopatra's  tomb;  " 
and  if  none  of  them  have  lines  which  have 
become  current  for  their  intrinsic  beauty 
or  wealth  of  thought,  or  for  a  breadth  of 
application  which  has  caused  them  to  echo 
alone  the  decades  from  his  day  till  ours, 
they  still  present  refined  and  elevated 
sentiments,  gracefully,  naturally,  and 
poetically,  and  clothe  them  in  pure  and 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


383 


nervous  English. — Deshler,  Charles  D., 
1879,  Afternoons  with  the  Poets,  p.  176. 

LETTERS 
The  letters  of  Cowper  .  .  .  form 
a  perfect  contrast  to  Pope's.  In  the  one, 
I  think  I  see  a  mind  striving  to  be  great, 
and  affecting  to  be  unaffected;  in  the 
other,  we  contemplate,  not  the  studious 
loftiness,  but  the  playfulness  of  a  mind 
naturally  lofty,  throwing  at  random  a  ray 
of  sweetness,  cheerfulness,  and  tenderness 
upon  whatever  subject  occurs,  mixed  oc- 
casionally with  severer  touches  of  wisdom, 
and  a  mournful,  but  seldom  angry  survey 
of  the  follies  of  mankind.  We  see  the 
playful  humour,  mingled  with  melancholy, 
and  the  melancholy,  mingled  with  kind- 
ness, social  feelings,  sincerity  and  tender- 
ness.—Bowles,  William  Lisle,  1806, 
ed.  Pope's  IVorks. 

There  is  something  in  the  letters  of 
Cowper  inexpressibly  delightful.  They 
possess  excellencies  so  opposite — a  naive 
simplicity,  arising  from  perfect  goodness 
of  heart  and  singleness  of  purpose,  con- 
trasted with  a  deep  acquaintance  with  the 
follies  and  vices  of  human  nature,  and  a 
keen  sense  of  humour  and  ridicule.  They 
unite  the  playfulness  of  a  child,  the  affec- 
tionateness  of  a  woman,  and  the  strong 
sense  of  a  man :  they  give  us  glimpses  of 
pleasures  so  innocent  and  pure  as  almost 
to  realise  the  Eden  of  our  great  poet,  con- 
trasted with  horrors  so  deep,  as  even  to 
exceed  his  power  of  imagery  to  express. 
— Heber,  Reginald,  1823,  Private  Cor- 
respondence of  Cowper  J  Quarterly  Review^ 
vol.  30,  p.  185. 

Being  neither  a  blockhead  nor  conceited, 
you  will  take  due  interest  in  all  that  per- 
tains to  this  saintly  sufferer ;  yet  there  are 
blockheads,  namely,  conceited  ones,  that 
will  say,  '^What  do  the  public  care  for  his 
stockings,  or  for  his  oysters,  or  for  the 
cake  that  came  in  its  native  pan,  or  the 
heartless  hens  that  refused  to  lay  eggs 
to  make  another  cake?"  I  would  have 
such  persons  to  know  that  a  Cowper,  mov- 
ing in  the  light  of  his  mental  beauty  and 
modest  sanctity,  irradiates  every  object 
that  is  in  contact  with  him;  it  is  their 
oysters  and  cakes  that  are  insignificant, 
because  they  are  so  themselves.  I  wish  I 
knew  what  kind  of  garters  he  wore ;  how 
proud  and  happy  I  should  have  been  to 
knit  a  pair  for  him :  I  should  have  hung 


up  the  wires  as  Cervantes  did  his  pen,  con- 
sidering them  hallowed  ever  afterwards. 
—Grant,  Anne,  1824,  Letters,  Apr.  7 ; 
Memoir  and  Correspondence,  ed.  Grant, 
vol.  Ill,  y.  28. 

The  best  of  English  letter-writers. — 
SouTHEY,  Robert,  1836-7,  The  Life  of 
William  Cowper, 

The  purest  and  most  perfect  specimens 
of  familiar  letters  in  the  language.  Con- 
sidering the  secluded,  uneventful  course 
of  Cowper's  life,  the  charm  in  his  letters 
is  wonderful ;  and  is  to  be  explained,  I 
believe,  chiefly  by  the  exquisite  light  of 
poetic  truth  which  his  imagination  shed 
upon  daily  life,  whether  his  theme  was 
man,  himself  or  a  fellow-being,  or  books, 
or  the  mute  creation  which  he  loved  to 
handle  with  such  thoughtful  tenderness. 
His  seclusion  did  not  separate  him  from 
sympathy  with  the  stirring  events  of  his 
time ;  and,  alike  in  seasons  of  sunshine  or 
of  gloom,  there  is  in  his  letters  an  ever- 
present  beauty  of  quiet  wisdom,  and  a 
gentle  but  fervid  spirit. — Reed,  Henry, 
1851-55,  Lectures  on  English  Literature, 
From  Chaucer  to  Tennyson,  p.  409. 

The  charm  of  Cowper's  Correspondence 
consists  in  this  succession  of  images,  of 
thought,  and  of  shades  of  meaning  unfolded 
with  varying  vivacity,  but  in  an  equable 
and  peaceful  course.  In  his  letters  we  can 
best  apprehend  the  true  sources  of  his 
poetry,  of  the  true  domestic  poetry  of 
private  life :  bantering  not  devoid  of  affec- 
tion, a  familiarity  which  disdains  nothing 
which  is  interesting  as  being  too  lowly  and 
too  minute,  but  alongside  of  them,  eleva- 
tion or  rather  profundity.  Nor  let  us 
forget  the  irony,  the  malice,  a  delicate  and 
easy  raillery  such  as  appears  in  the  letters 
I  have  quoted. — Sainte-Beuve,  C.  A., 
1854,  English  Portraits,  p.  191. 

Cowper's  letters  are  far  more  than  con- 
tributions towards  his  biography.  The 
graceful  affectionateness,  the  shrewd  esti- 
mate of  men  and  things,  the  genuine  love 
of  fun  and  appreciation  of  it  in  others,  all 
contribute  to  make  his  correspondence  de- 
lightful. In  fact,  to  many  readers  his 
prose  will  be  more  agreeable  than  his 
poetry,  though,  as  in  many  like  cases, 
his  letters  were  only  published  because 
his  poetry  had  made  him  famous. — Ben- 
ham,  William,  1883,  ed.,  Letters  of  Wil- 
liam Cowper,  Introduction,  p.  xii. 


384 


WILLIAM  COW  PER 


In  these  select  letters,  flowing  on  in  the 
old,  sweet,  fresh  English,  one  perceives 
the  rare  literary  faculty,  the  shy  humor,  the 
discrimination,  the  sound  sense,  all  the 
many  graces  of  style  and  many  virtues  of 
intrinsic  worth  that  have  long  been 
familiar  to  scholars,  and,  more  than  that, 
one  gladly  recognizes  again  the  companion- 
able, soft-hearted,  pathetic  man  whose 
pastimes,  whether  in  gardening,  or  poetry, 
or  caring  for  his  pets,  were  a  refuge  from 
the  most  poignant  anguish;  who  played 
only  to  escape  this  terror,  and  at  last 
failed  even  in  that.  .  .  .  Now,  it  is 
a  very  striking  fact  that  while  Cowper 
spent  the  larger  part  of  his  time  in  reli- 
gious reading  and  conversation,  and  besides 
meditated  in  private  on  the  same  themes, 
his  letters  do  not  show  in  any  degree  that 
insight  into  spiritual  things  which  would 
naturally  be  looked  for  from  real  genius 
occupied  with  such  subjects.  Spirituality 
should  have  been  his  trait  if  religion  was 
his  life,  but,  in  fact,  these  letters  are  in 
this  regard  barren. — Woodberry,  George 
E.,  1884,  Cowpefs  Letters,  The  Nation, 
vol.  39,  j9.  57. 

His  correspondence  is  unaffected,  facile, 
and  often  playful.  Religion  of  course 
forms  a  substantial  part  of  this,  as  it  so 
conspicuously  did  of  the  author's  mind: 
but  it  has  been  noticed,  and  has  been  made 
matter  of  some  reproach  from  certain 
quarters,  that  the  religious  tone  of  the 
letters  diminishes  very  observably  after 
1785,  when  Cowper  had  become  an  eminent 
man  in  literature,  and  more  open  conse- 
quently to  the  entanglements  of  "the 
world."— RossETTi,  William  Michael, 
1878,  Lives  of  Famous  Poets,  p.  187. 

His  letters,  like  his  best  poetry,  owe 
their  charm  to  absolute  sincerity.  .  .  . 
His  letters  are  written  without  an  erasure 
— at  leisure  but  without  revision;  the 
spontaneous  gaiety  is  the  more  touching 
from  the  melancholy  background  some- 
times indicated ;  they  are  the  recreation 
of  a  man  escaping  from  torture;  and 
the  admirable  style  and  fertility  of  ingen- 
ious illustration  make  them  perhaps  the 
best  letters  in  the  language. — Stephen, 
Leslie,  1887,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xii,  p.  401. 

Rich  mines  of  pleasure  and  profit  for  us 
all,  full  to  the  brim  of  homely  pleasant 
details  which  only  leisure  can  find  time  to 
note.    A  man  who  was  even  ordinarily 


busy  would  never  have  stopped  to  observe 
the  things  which  Cowper  tells  us  about  so 
charmingly. — Repplier,  Agnes,  1893, 
Essays  in  Idleness,  p.  219. 

His  letters  are  his  principal  work  in 
prose,  if  not  the  best  of  all  his  work. 
They  differ  from  most  of  the  prose  of  the 
time  by  the  same  interval  as  separates  the 
verse  of  ''The  Task"  at  its  best  from  the 
verse  of  ''The  Botanic  Garden."  The 
phrase  of  Landor,  in  the  preface  to  the 
Hellenics,  "not  prismatic  but  diaphanous," 
applies  more  fitly  to  the  style  of  Cowper 
in  verse  and  prose,  especially  prose,  than 
to  any  other  writer.  It  is  not  that  the 
style  is  insipid  or  tame;  it  is  alive  and 
light ;  but  it  escapes  notice,  like  the  prose 
of  Southey,  by  reason  of  its  perfect  ac- 
commodation to  the  matter. — Ker,  W. 
P.,  1895,  English  Prose,  ed.  Craik,  vol. 
IV,  p.  424. 

All  good  critics  have  agreed  that  his 
letters  are  not  surpassed,  perhaps  not 
sur passable.  He  has  more  freedom  than 
Gray ;  he  has  none  of  the  coxcombry  of 
Walpole  and  Byron ;  and  there  is  no  fifth 
name  that  can  be  put  even  into  competi- 
tion with  him.  Ease,  correctness,  facil- 
ity of  expression,  freedom  from  convention 
within  his  range,  harmony,  truth  to  nature, 
truth  to  art: — these  things  meet  in  the 
hapless  recluse  of  Olney  as  they  had  not 
met  for  a  century — perhaps  as  they  had 
never  met — in  English  epistles.  The  one 
thing  that  he  wanted  was  strength:  as 
his  madness  was  melancholy,  not  raving, 
so  was  his  sanity  mild  but  not  triumphant. 
— Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A  History 
of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  p.  6. 

GENERAL 

I  received  the  letter  you  did  me  the 
honour  of  writing  to  me,  and  am  much 
obliged  by  your  kind  present  of  a  book. 
The  relish  for  reading  of  poetry  had  long 
since  left  me,  but  there  is  something  so 
new  in  the  manner,  so  easy,  and  yet  so 
correct  in  the  language,  so  clear  in  the 
expression,  yet  concise,  and  so  just  in  the 
sentiments,  that  I  have  read  the  whole 
with  great  pleasure,  and  some  of  the  pieces 
more  than  once. — Franklin,  Benjamin, 
1782,  Letter  to  Cowper,  May  8. 

I  am  enchanted  with  this  poet;  his 
images  so  natural  and  so  much  his  own ! 
Such  an  original  and  philosophic  thinker ! 
Such  genuine  Christianity!  and  such  a 


WILLIAM  COW  PER 


385 


divine  simDlicity !  but  very  rambling,  and 
the  order  not  very  lucid.  He  seems  to  put 
down  every  thought  as  it  arises,  and  never 
to  retrench  or  alter  anything. — More, 
Hannah,  1786,  Letter  to  Her  Sister,  Feb ; 
Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts,  vol.  I,  p.  235. 
With  England's  Bard,  with  Cowper  who 

shall  vie? 
Original  in  strength  and  dignity, 
With  more  than  painter's  fancy  blest,  with 

lays 

Holy,  as  saints  to  heav'n  expiring  raise. 
— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1794-98,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  418. 

I  have  been  reading  *'The  Task"  with 
fresh  delight.  I  am  glad  you  love  Cowper. 
I  could  forgive  a  man  for  not  enjoying 
Milton ;  but  I  would  not  call  that  man  my 
friend  who  should  be  offended  with  the 
''divine  chit-chat  of  Cowper." — Lamb, 
Charles,  1796,  Dec,  5 ;  Letters,  ed.Ainger, 
vol.  I,  p.  52. 

It  has  been  thought  that  Cowper  was 
the  first  poet  who  re-opened  the  true  way 
to  nature  and  a  natural  style  ;  but  we  hold 
this  to  be  a  mistake,  arising  merely  from 
certain  negations  on  the  part  of  that 
amiable  but  by  no  means  powerful  writer. 
Cowper 's  style  is  for  the  most  part  as  in- 
verted and  artificial  as  that  of  the  others ; 
and  we  look  upon  him  to  have  been  by 
nature  not  so  great  a  poet  as  Pope ;  but 
Pope,  from  certain  infirmities  on  his  part, 
was  thrown  into  the  society  of  the  world, 
and  thus  had  to  get  what  he  could  out  of 
an  artificial  sphere : — Cowper,  from  other 
and  more  distressing  infirmities  (which  by 
the  way  the  wretched  superstition  that 
undertook  to  heal,  only  burnt  in  upon  him) 
was  confined  to  a  still  smaller  though  more 
natural  sphere,  and  in  truth  did  not  much 
with  it,  though  quite  as  much  perhaps  as 
was  to  be  expected  from  an  organization 
too  sore  almost  to  come  in  contact  with 
any  thing. — Hunt,  Leigh,  1817,  The 
Examiner. 

The  love  of  nature  seems  to  have  led 
Thomson  to  a  cheerful  religion;  and  a 
gloomy  religion  to  have  led  Cowper  to  a 
love  of  nature.  The  one  would  carry  his 
fellowmen  along  with  him  into  nature ;  the 
other  flies  to  nature  from  his  fellowmen. 
In  chastity  of  diction,  however,  and  the 
harmony  of  blank  verse,  Cowper  leaves 
Thomson  immeasurably  below  him;  yet 
still  I  feel  the  latter'to  have  been  the  born 
poet.— Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1817, 
Biographia  Literaria,  note, 

25C 


With  all  his  boasted  simplicity  and  love 
of  the  country,  he  seldom  launches  out 
into  general  descriptions  of  nature :  he 
looks  at  her  over  his  clipped  hedges,  and 
from  his  well-swept  garden-walks ;  or  if 
he  makes  a  bolder  experiment  now  and 
then,  it  is  with  an  air  of  precaution,  as  if 
he  were  afraid  of  being  caught  in  a  shower 
of  rain,  or  of  not  being  able,  in  case  of 
any  untoward  accident,  to  make  good  his 
retreat  home.  He  shakes  hands  with 
nature  with  a  pair  of  fashionable  gloves 
on,  and  leads  his'^Vashti"  forth  to  public 
view  with  a  look  of  consciousness  and  at- 
tention to  etiquette,  as  a  fine  gentleman 
hands  a  lady  out  to  dance  a  minuet.  He 
is  delicate  to  fastidiousness,  and  glad  to 
get  ba(7k,  after  a  romantic  adventure  with 
crazy  Kate,  a  party  of  gypsies  or  a  little 
child  on  a  common,  to  the  drawing-room 
and  the  ladies  again,  to  the  sofa  and  the 
tea-kettle — No,  I  beg  his  pardon,  not  to 
the  singing,  well-scoured  tea-kettle,  but 
to  the  polished  and  loud-hissing  urn.  .  .  . 
Still  he  is  a  genuine  poet,  and  deserves 
all  his  reputation.  His  worst  vices  are 
amiable  weaknesses,  elegant  trifling. 
Though  there  is  a  frequent  dryness,  timid- 
ity, and  jejuneness  in  his  manner,  he  has 
left  a  number  of  pictures  of  domestic 
comfort  and  social  refinement,  as  well  as 
of  natural  imagery  and  feeling,  which  can 
hardly  be  forgotten  but  with  the  language 
itself. — Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lec- 
tures on  the  English  Poets,  Lecture  v. 

His  language  has  such  a  masculine 
idiomatic  strength,  and  his  manner, 
whether  he  rises  into  grace  or  falls  into 
negligence,  has  so  much  plain  and  familiar 
freedom,  that  we  read  no  poetry  with  a 
deeper  conviction  of  its  sentiments  having 
come  from  the  author's  heart,  and  of  the 
enthusiasm,  in  whatever  he  describes,  hav- 
ing been  unfeigned  and  unexaggerated. 
.  .  .  Considering  the  tenor  and  circum- 
stances of  his  life,  it  is  not  much  to  be 
wondered  at,  that  some  asperities  and 
peculiarities  should  have  adhered  to  the 
strong  stem  of  his  genius,  like  the  moss 
and  fungus  that  cling  to  some  noble  oak 
of  the  forest,  amid  the  damps  of  its  un- 
sunned retirement.  It  is  more  surprising 
that  he  preserved,  in  such  seclusion,  so 
much  genuine  power  of  comic  observation. 
Though  he  himself  acknowledged  having 
written  "many  things  with  bile"  in  his 
first  volume,  yet  his  satire  has  many 


386 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


legitimate  objects :  and  it  is  not  abstracted 
and  declamatory  satire;  but  it  places 
human  manners  before  us  in  the  liveliest 
attitudes  and  clearest  colours.  There  is 
much  of  the  full  distinctness  of  Theo- 
phrastus,  and  of  the  nervous  and  concise 
spirit  of  La  Bruye,  in  his  piece  entitled 
*' Conversation,"  with  a  cast  of  humour 
superadded,  which  is  peculiarly  English, 
and  not  to  be  found  out  of  England. — 
Campbell,  Thomas,  1819,  Specimens  of 
the  British  Poets. 

At  last,  Cowper  threw  off  the  whole 
trammels  of  French  criticism  and  artificial 
refinement;  and,  setting  at  defiance  all 
the  imaginary  requisites  of  poetical  diction 
and  classical  imagery — dignity  of  style, 
and  politeness  of  phraseology — ventured 
to  write  again  with  the  force  and  the  free- 
dom which  had  characterised  the  old 
school  of  English  literature,  and  been  so 
unhappily  sacrificed,  upwards  of  a  century 
before.  Cowper  had  many  faults,  and 
some  radical  deficiencies ; — but  this  atoned 
for  all.  There  was  something  so  delight- 
fully refreshing,  in  seeing  natural  phrases 
and  natural  images  again  displaying  their 
unforced  graces,  and  waving  their  un- 
pruned  heads  in  the  enchanted  gardens  of 
poetry,  that  no  one  complained  of  the  taste 
displayed  in  the  selection; — and  Cowper 
is,  and  is  likely  to  continue,  the  most 
popular  of  all  who  have  written  for  the 
present  or  the  last  generation. — Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1819-44,  Contributions  to 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  ii,  p.  293. 

Of  Cowper,  how  shall  I  express  myself 
in  adequate  terms  of  admiration?  The 
purity  of  his  principles,  the  tenderness  of 
his  heart,  his  unaffected  and  zealous  piety, 
his  warmth  of  devotion  (however  tinctured 
at  times  with  gloom  and  despondency),  the 
delicacy  and  playfulness  of  his  wit,  and  the 
singular  felicity  of  his  diction,  all  conspire 
by  turns 

To  win  the  wisest,  warm  the  coldest  heart. 
Cowper  is  the  poet  of  a  well-educated 
and  well-principled  Englishman.  * '  Home, 
sweet  home"  is  the  scene — limited  as  it 
may  be  imagined — in  which  he  contrives 
to  concentrate  a  thousand  beauties,  which 
others  have  scattered  far  and  wide  upon 
objects  of  less  interest  and  attraction. 
His  pictures  are,  if  I  may  so  speak,  con- 
ceived with  all  the  tenderness  of  Raffaelle, 
and  executed  with  all  the  finish  and  sharp- 
ness of  Teniers.    No  man,  in  such  few 


words,  tells  his  tale,  or  describes  his 
scene,  so  forcibly  and  so  justly.  His 
views  of  Nature  are  less  grand  and  less 
generalised  than  those  of  Thomson:  and 
here,  to  carry  on  the  previous  mode  of 
comparison,  I  should  say  that  Thomson  was 
the  Caspar  Poussin,  and  Cowper  the 
Hobbima,  of  rural  poetry. — Dibdin, 
Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The  Library 
Com^panion,  p.  735,  note. 

Cowper  divested  verse  of  its  exquisite 
polish ;  he  thought  in  metre,  but  paid 
more  attention  to  his  thoughts  than  his 
verse.  It  would  be  difficult  to  draw  the 
boundary  of  prose  and  blank  verse  between 
his  letters  and  his  poetry. — Peacock, 
Thomas  Love,  1820,  The  Four  Ages  of 
Poetry,  Calidore  and  Miscellanea,  p.  61. 

Cowper  was  a  good  man,  and  lived  at  a 
fortunate  time  for  his  works. — Byron, 
Lord,  1821,  On  Bowleses  Strictures  on 
Pope. 

He  is  allowed,  both  by  Edinburgh  and 
Quarterly  Reviews,  to  be  the  patriarch  and 
founder  of  the  romantic,  or  present  school 
of  poetry.  When  we  say,  present  we  oUght 
to  recollect,  that  there  is  a  Lake,  as  well 
as  a  romantic  school.  .  .  .  One  thing, 
however,  we  must  say,  that  a  school  of 
which  that  moonstruck  prophet,  Cowper, 
was  the  founder,  is  a  school  of  which  we 
should  not  wish  to  become  disciples.  Is 
poetry  run  mad  ?  or  is  that  poetry  good 
for  nothing,  which  is  not  run  mad  ?  So  it 
would  seem,  from  making  Cowper  the 
founder  of  that  school  which  established 
itself  on  the  ruins  of  the  classical.  The 
Quarterly  and  Edinburgh  Reviews  give  him 
the  credit  of  being  the  founder  of  this 
school, — a  school  of  which  they  are  them- 
selves admirers,  and  yet  they  know  he  was 
a  fanatic— M'Dermot,  M.,  1824,  The 
Beauties  of  Modern  Literature,  pp.  xxii, 
xxiii. 

Lord  Byron  unquestionably  estimated 
Cowper  much  too  low  in  calling  him  no 
poet.  But  many  others  have  put  him  much 
too  high,  if  we  are  to  pay  any  consistent 
regard  to  principles.  .  .  .  The  con- 
sideration of  him  raises  the  question  of  all 
those  evanescent  lines  that  separate  the 
approximations  between  poetical  fancy  and 
poetical  imagination.  A  painter  of  par- 
ticular and  local  landscapes,  or  portraits, 
copies  directly  from  external  objects ;  but 
a  describer  in  words,  who  means  it  to  be 
poetry,  scarcely  ever  (if  ever)  does;  he 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


387 


copies  from  the  internal  impression  made 
on  the  fancy. — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel 
Egerton,  1824,  Recollections  of  Foreign 
Travel,  July  20,  vol.  i,  pp.  268,  269. 

Compare  the  landscapes  of  Cowper  with 
those  of  Burns.  There  is,  if  we  mistake 
not,  the  same,  sort  of  difference  between 
them,  as  in  the  conversation  of  two  per- 
sons on  scenery,  the  one  originally  an 
enthusiast  in  his  love  of  the  works  of 
nature,  the  other  driven,  by  disappoint- 
ment or  weariness,  to  solace  himself  with 
them  as  he  might.  It  is  a  contrast  which 
every  one  must  have  observed,  when  such 
topics  come  under  discussion  in  society ; 
and  those  who  think  it  worth  while,  may 
find  abundant  illustration  of  it  in  the 
writings  of  this  unfortunate  but  illustri- 
ous pair.  The  one  all  overflowing  with  the 
love  of  nature,  and  indicating,  at  every 
turn,  that  whatever  his  lot  in  life,  he  could 
not  have  been  happy  without  her.  The 
other  visibly  and  wisely  soothing  himself, 
but  not  without  effort,  by  attending  to 
rural  objects,  in  default  of  some  more  con- 
genial happiness,  of  which  he  had  almost 
come  to  despair.  The  latter,  in  conse- 
quence, laboriously  sketching  every  object 
that  came  in  his  way :  the  other,  in  one  or 
two  rapid  lines,  which  operate,  as  it  were, 
like  a  magician's  spell,  presenting  to  the 
fancy  just  that  picture,  which  was  wanted 
to  put  the  reader's  minds  in  unison  with 
the  writer's.— Keble,  John,  1825,  Sacred 
Poetry,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  32,  p.  217. 

Cowper  has  not  Thomson's  genius,  but 
he  has  much  more  taste.  His  range  is 
neither  so  wide,  nor  so  lofty,  but,  as  far 
as  it  extends,  it  is  peculiarly  his  own. 
He  cannot  paint  the  Plague  at  Carthagena, 
or  the  Snow-storm,  or  the  Earthquake,  as 
Thomson  has  done ;  but  place  him  by  the 
banks  of  the  Ouse,  or  see  him  taking  his 
Winter  walk  at  Noon,"  or  accompany 
him  in  his  rambles  through  his  Flower 
garden,  and  where  is  the  Author  who  can 
compare  with  him  for  a  moment?  The 
pictures  of  domestic  life  which  he  has 
painted  are  inimitable.  It  is  hard  to  say 
whether  his  sketches  of  external  nature, 
or  of  indoor  life,  are  the  best.  Cowper 
does  not  attempt  the  same  variety  of  scene 
as  Thomson ;  but  in  what  he  does  attempt, 
he  always  succeeds. —  Neele,  Henry, 
1827-29,  Lectures  on  English  Poetry, 
p.  184. 

The  forerunner  of  the  great  restoration 


of  our  literature  was  Cowper. — Macau- 
lay,  Thomas  Babington,  1830,  Moore's 
Life  of  Lord  Byron,  Edinburgh  Review; 
Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

Cowper's  bold  freedom,  though  it 
seemed  at  first  like  uncouth  roughness, 
gained  much  in  variety  of  expression, 
without  losing  much  in  point  of  sound.  It 
offended,  because  it  seemed  careless,  and 
as  if  he  respected  little  the  prevailing 
taste  of  his  readers :  but  it  was  far  from 
being  unpolished  as  it  seemed.  He  tells 
us,  that  the  lines  of  his  earlier  poems  were 
touched  and  retouched,  with  fastidious 
delicacy :  his  ear  was  not  easily  pleased ; 
and  yet,  if  we  may  judge  from  one  or  two 
specimens  of  alterations,  his  corrections 
very  often  injured  what  they  were  meant 
to  repair. — Peabody,  W.  B.  0.,  1834, 
Life  of  Cowper,  North  American  Review, 
vol.  38,  p.  27. 

The  poet  of  the  Cross. — Memes,  John, 
1840,  ed.  Cowper's  Works,  Life. 

If  Cowper  had  written  songs,  such  was 
the  honesty  of  his  nature  that  he  would 
probably  have  equalled  Burns,  great  as  are 
the  disadvantages  under  which  our  lan- 
guage would  have  laid  him.  .  .  .  Cowper 
does  not,  like  Burns,  write  the  history  of 
the  poor  in  every  page  of  his  works,  but 
his  heart  was  with  them.  ...  If 
Cowper  had  been  blessed  with  the  physical 
strength  of  Burns,  he  might  have  been, — 
but  I  don't  say  he  would  have  been, — at 
once,  one  of  the  greatest  of  poets  and 
ablest  of  active  men.  As  it  is,  I  am  un- 
able to  name  a  poet  whose  writings,  page 
for  page,  can  boast  an  equal  amount  of 
original  thought  and  sterling  common 
sense.— Elliott,  Ebenezer,  1842,  A  Lec- 
ture on  Cowper  and  Burns,  Tail's  Edin- 
burgh Magazine,  vol.  9,  p.  359. 

When  the  shame  of  England  burns  in  the 
heart  of  Cowper,  you  must  believe  him ; 
for  through  that  heart  rolled  the  best  of 
England's  blood.— Wilson,  John,  1845, 
Supplement  to  Mac-Flecnoe  and  the  Dun- 
dad,  Blackwood's  Magazine. 

Sweet  are  thy  strains,  celestial  Bard; 

And  oft,  in  childhood's  years, 
I've  read  them  o'er  and  o'er  again, 
With  floods  of  silent  tears. 


Is  He  the  source  of  every  good. 

The  spring  of  purity? 
Then  in  thine  hours  of  deepest  woe 

Thy  God  was  still  with  thee. 
How  else,  when  every  hope  was  fled, 


388 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


Oouldst  thou  so  fondly  cling 
To  holy  things  and  holy  men? 

And  how  so  sweetly  sing, 
Of  things  that  God  alone  could  teach? 

And  whence  that  purity, 
That  hatred  of  all  sinful  ways— 
That  gentle  charity? 
—Bronte,  Anne,  1846,  To  Cowper,  Poems 
by  Currer,  Ellis  and  Acton  Bell. 

He  is  emphatically  the  poet  of  ordinary 
and  intimate  life,  of  the  domestic  emo- 
tions, of  household  happiness.    His  muse 
is  a  domestic  deity,  a  familiar  Lar,  and 
his  countrymen  have  enshrined  his  verses 
in  the  very  holiest  penetralia  of  their 
hearths.  Cowperwas  one  of  the  first  poets 
— even  among  the  English — who  ventured 
to  describe  those  familiar  thoughts,  feel- 
ings, and  enjoyments  which  are  imagined 
by  the  word  home — that  word  which 
echoes  so  deeply  in  the  English  heart, 
that  word  for  which  so  many  cultivated 
languages    have    neither  synonym  nor 
equivalent.    .    .    .    His  language  is  in 
the  highest  degree  easy,  familiar,  and  con- 
sequently impressive ;  there  is  no  author 
who  so  completely  talks  to  his  reader — 
none  whose  works  breathe  so  completely 
of  the  individuality  and  personal  character 
of  their  writer.    He  abounds  in  descrip- 
tion of  scenery ;  and  we  hardly  regret  that 
he  should  have  passed  his  life  among  the 
dull  levels  of  the  Ouse,  when  we  think  that 
the  power  of  his  genius  has  given  an  un- 
fading grace  and  interest  to  landscapes  in 
themselves  neither  romantic  nor  sublime. 
It  appears  to  us  that  he  is  greatly  inferior 
to  Thomson  in  comprehensiveness  and 
rapidity  of  picturesque  perception;  but 
then  his  mode  of  expression  is  simpler, 
less  ambitious,  and  in  purer  taste,  and  he 
surpasses  not  only  the  author  of  ''The 
Seasons, but  perhaps  all  poets,  in  the 
power  of  communicating  interest  to  the 
familiar  details  of  domestic  life.  His 
humour  was  very  delicate  and  just,  and 
his  descriptions  of  the  common  absurdities 
of  ordinary  intercourse  are  masterly. 
When  rising,  as  he  often  and  gracefully 
does,  into  the  loftier  atmosphere  of  moral 
or  religious  thought,  he  exhibits  a  surpris- 
ing ease  and  dignity ;  his  mind  was  of  that 
rare  order  which  can  rise  without  an  effort 
and  sink  without  meanness.    He  is  uni- 
formly earnest  and  sincere.  —  Shaw, 
Thomas  B.,  1847,  Outlines  of  English  Lit- 
erature, pp.  305,  307. 

Cowper  is  eminently  the  David  of 


English  poetry,  pouring  forth,  like  the 
great  Hebrew  bard,  his  own  deep  and 
warm  feelings  in  behalf  of  moral  and  re- 
ligious truth.— Celveland,  Charles  D., 
1848,  A  Compendium  of  English  Litera- 
ture, p.  737. 

Tenderest  of  tender  hearts,  of  spirits  pure 
The  purest!  such,  O  Cowper!  such  wert  thou, 
But  such  are  not  the  happiest :  thou  wert  not, 
Till  borne  where  all  those  hearts  and  spirits 
rest. 

Young  was  I,  when  from  Latin  lore  and 
Greek 

I  play'd  the  truant  for  thy  sweeter  Task, 
Nor  since  that  hour  hath  aught  our  Muses 
held 

Before  me  seem'd  so  precious ;  in  one  hour, 
I  saw  the  poet  and  the  sage  unite, 
More  grave  than  man,  more  versatile  than 
boy! 

— Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1853,  The 
Last  Fruit  off  an  Old  Tree,  xxxvii. 

Cowper  is  certainly  the  sweetest  of  our 
didactic  poets.  He  is  elevated  in  his 
''Table  Talk acute  in  detailing  the  ''Prog- 
ress of  Error;''  and  he  chants  the  praises 
of  Truth"  in  more  dulcet  notes  than 
were  ever  sounded  by  the  fairest  swan  in 
Cayster.  His  Expostulation"  is  made 
in  the  tones  of  a  benevolent  sage.  His 
*'Hope"  and  his  Charity"  are  proofs  of 
his  pure  Christian-like  feeling, — a  feeling 
which  also  pervades  his  Conversation" 
and  his  Retirement,"  and  which  barbs 
the  shafts  of  his  satire  without  taking 
away  from  their  strength.— Doran,  John, 

1854,  Habits  and  Men,  p.  20. 

As  a  scold,  we  think  Cowper  failed.  He 
had  a  great  idea  of  the  use  of  railing,  and 
there  are  many  pages  of  laudable  invective 
against  various  vices  which  we  feel  no  call 
whatever  to  defend.  But  a  great  vitu- 
perator  had  need  to  be  a  great  hater ;  and 
of  any  real  rage,  any  such  gall  and  bitter- 
ness as  great  and  irritable  satirists  have 
in  other  ages  let  loose  upon  men, — of  any 
thorough,  brooding,  burning,  abiding  de- 
testation,— he  was  as  incapable  as  a  tame 
hare.  His  vituperation  reads  like  the  mild 
man's  whose  wife  ate  up  his  dinner  : 
Really,  sir,  I  feel  quite  angry  Nor 
has  his  language  any  of  the  sharp  intru- 
sive acumen  which  divides  in  sunder  both 
soul  and  spirit,  and  makes  fierce  and  un- 
forgetable  reviling. — Bagehot,  Walter, 

1855,  William  Cowper,  Works,  ed.  Mor- 
gan, vol.  I,  p.  428. 

Whatever  estimate  may  be  formed  of 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


389 


his  poetry  in  comparison  with  that  of 
earlier  or  later  writers,  everyone  must  feel 
that  his  English  is  that  of  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman — that  he  had  the  purest  enjoy- 
ment of  domestic  life,  and  of  what  one  may 
call  the  domestic  or  still  life  of  nature. 
One  is  sure  also  that  he  had  the  most  ear- 
nest faith,  which  he  cherished  for  others 
when  he  could  find  no  comfort  in  it  for 
himself.  These  would  be  sufficient  ex- 
planations of  the  interest  which  he  has 
awakened  in  so  many  simple  and  honest 
readers  who  turn  to  books  for  sympathy 
and  fellowship,  and  do  not  like  a  writer  at 
all  the  worse  because  he  also  demands  their 
sympathy  with  him.  Cowper  is  one  of  the 
strongest  instances,  and  proofs,  how  much 
more  qualities  of  this  kind  affect  English- 
men than  any  others.  The  gentleness  of 
his  life  might  lead  some  to  suspect  him 
of  effeminacy;  but  the  old  Westminster 
school-boy  and  cricketer  comes  out  in  the 
midst  of  his  Meditation  on  Sofas ;  and  the 
deep  tragedy  which  was  at  the  bottom  of 
his  whole  life,  and  which  grew  more  ter- 
rible as  the  shadows  of  evening  closed 
upon  him,  shows  that  there  may  be  un- 
utterable struggles  in  those  natures  which 
seem  least  formed  for  the  rough  work  of 
the  world. — Maurice,  Frederick  Den- 
ISON,  1856,  The  Friendship  of  Books  and 
Other  Lectures^  p.  28. 

His  language  is  often  vulgar,  and  not 
least  so  when  his  theme  is  most  sublime ; 
and  his  most  successful  passages,  his 
minutely  touched  descriptions  of  familiar 
still-life  and  rural  scenery,  are  indeed 
strongly  suggestive,  but  have  little  of 
the  delicate  susceptibility  of  beauty  which 
breathes  through  Thomson's  musings  on 
nature. — Spalding,  William,  1852-82, 
A  History  of  English  Literature,  p,  357. 

As  the  death  of  Samuel  Johnson  closes 
one  era  of  our  literature,  so  the  appear- 
ance of  Cowper  as  a  poet  opens  another. 
Notwithstanding  his  obligations  both  to 
Churchill  and  Pope,  a  main  characteristic 
of  Cowper's  poetry  is  its  originality. 
Compared  with  almost  any  one  of  his  pred- 
ecessors, he  was  what  we  may  call  a 
natural  poet.  He  broke  through  conven- 
tional forms  and  usages  in  his  mode  of 
writing  more  daringly  than  any  English 
poet  before  him  had  done,  at  least  since 
the  genius  of  Pope  had  bound  in  its  spell 
the  phraseology  and  rhythm  of  our  poetry. 
His  opinions  were  not  more  his  own  than 


his  manner  of  expressing  them. — Craik, 
George  L.,  1861,  A  Compendious  History 
of  English  Literature  and  of  the  English 
Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  372. 

If  we  compare  our  English  literature  to 
a  beautiful  garden,  where  Milton  lifts  his 
head  to  heaven  in  the  spotless  chalice  of 
the  tall  white  lily,  and  Shakspere  scatters 
his  dramas  round  him  in  beds  of  fragrant 
roses,  blushing  with  a  thousand  various 
shades — some  stained  to  the  core  as  if 
with  blood,  others  unfolding  their  fair 
pink  petals  with  a  lovely  smile  to  the  sum- 
mer sun, — what  shall  we  find  in  shrub  or 
flower  so  like  the  timid,  shrinking  spirit  of 
William  Cowper,  as  that  delicate  sensitive 
plant,  whose  leaves,  folding  up  at  the 
slightest  touch,  cannot  bear  even  the 
brighter  rays  of  the  cherishing  sun? — 
Collier,  William  Francis,  1861,  ^  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  p.  379. 

William  Cowper  and  Erasmus  Darwin 
were  contemporaries:  but  how  has  the 
lowlier  russet  outlasted  the  glittering  Bal- 
masque  costume,  a  genuine  human  heart 
beneath  the  one,  a  piece  of  mechanism, 
like  a  skeleton-clock,  within  the  other: 
the  one  pure,  true,  beating,  the  other 
movement  without  life,  energy  without 
appliance. —  Grosart,  Alexander  B., 
1868,  Giles  Fletcher's  Poems,  Memorial- 
Introduction,  p.  56. 

The  gentleness  of  his  temper,  and  the 
wide  charity  of  his  sympathies,  made  it 
natural  for  him  to  find  good  in  everything 
except  the  human  heart.  .  .  .  Your 
muscles  grow  springy,  and  your  lungs 
dilate  with  the  crisp  air  as  you  walk  along 
with  him.  You  laugh  with  him  at  the 
grotesque  shadow  of  your  legs  lengthened 
across  the  snow  by  the  just-risen  sun.  I 
know  nothing  that  gives  a  purer  feeling 
of  out-door  exhilaration  than  the  easy 
verses  of  this  escaped  hypochondriac.  .  .  . 
To  me  Cowper  is  still  the  best  of  our  de- 
scriptive poets  for  every-day  wear.  And 
what  unobtrusive  skill  he  has !  How  he 
heightens,  for  example,  your  sense  of 
winter-evening  seclusion,  by  the  twanging 
horn  of  the  postman  on  the  bridge ! — 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  1871,  A  Good 
Word  for  Winter,  My  Study  Windows. 

While  his  poems  have  in  them  much 
that  might  be  thought  didactic,  this 
matter  is  given  in  so  natural,  reflective, 
and  yet  more,  in  so  emotional,  a  manner  as 
quite  to  escape  the  censure  that  might  be 


390 


WILLIAM  COW  PER 


implied  in  the  word.  The  thought  does 
not,  predetermined,  so  much  seek  for  the 
image  and  rhythm  wherewith  to  enforce 
itself,  as  flow  out  in  an  incidental  living 
way  from  the  scenes  and  objects  present 
to  the  poetic  imagination.  .  .  .  Cowper 
has  a  large  measure  of  that  power  which 
brings  interpretation  to  natural  objects, 
and  looks  upon  them  with  a  rapid  interplay 
of  suggestions,  uniting  the  visible  to  the 
invisible,  and  lending  to  passing  events  a 
scope  otherwise  quite  beyond  them.  .  .  . 
The  quiet,  earnest,  subtile,  pure,  pervasive 
mind  of  Cowper  made  him  a  poet  by  the 
innate  force  and  character  of  its  concep- 
tions. There  is  everything  in  his  history 
to  confirm  the  view,  that  art  finds  its  germ 
in  natural  endowment,  and  nothing  to  sus- 
tain the  theory,  that  it  can  be  compassed 
by  external  conditions. — Bascom,  John, 
1874,  Philosophy  of  English  Liter ature, 
pp.  218,  219. 

Cowper  is  the  first  of  the  poets  who 
loves  Nature  entirely  for  her  own  sake. 
He  paints  only  what  he  sees,  but  he  paints 
it  with  the  affection  of  a  child  for  a  flower 
and  with  the  minute  observation  of  a  man. 
The  change  in  relation  to  the  subject  of 
man  is  equally  great.  The  idea  of  mankind 
as  a  whole  which  we  have  seen  growing  up 
is  fully  formed  in  Cowper' s  mind.  The 
range  of  his  interests  is  as  wide  as  the 
world,  and  all  men  form  one  brotherhood. 
— Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  1876,  English 
Literature  (Primer)^  p.  148. 

Cowper's  diatribes  against  the  growth 
of  luxury  have  become  obsolete ;  his  reli- 
gious meanings  are  interesting  to  those 
alone  who  share  his  creed ;  but  his  intense 
love  of  calm  scenery  fell  in  with  a  widely- 
spread  sentiment  of  his  age,  and  has  scat- 
tered through  his  pages  vignettes  of  en- 
during beauty.  The  pathetic  power  in 
which  he  was  unrivalled,  and  which  gives 
to  two  or  three  of  his  poems  a  charm  quite 
unique  in  its  kind,  seems  to  belong  to  no 
age. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History  of 
English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century ^ 
vol.  II,  p.  454. 

The  eager,  sudden-looking,  large-eyed, 
shaven  face  of  Cowper  is  familiar  to  us  in 
his  portraits — a  face  sharp-cut  and  suf- 
ficiently well-moulded,  without  being  hand- 
some, nor  particularly  sympathetic.  It 
is  a  high-strung,  excitable  face ;  as  of  a 
man  too  susceptible  and  touchy  to  put  him- 
self forward  willingly  among  his  fellows, 


but  who,  feeling  a  vocation"  upon  him, 
would  be  more  than  merely  earnest — self- 
asserting,  aggressive,  and  unyielding. 
This  is  in  fact  very  much  the  character  of 
his  writings.  He  was  an  enthusiastic 
lover  of  Nature,  and  full  of  gentle  kindli- 
ness, and  of  quiet  pleasant  good-humour, 
— and  all  these  lovable  qualities  appear 
in  ample  proportion  and  measure  in  pas- 
sages of  his  writings:  but  at  the  same 
time  his  narrow,  exclusive,  severe,  and 
arbitrary  religious  creed — a  creed  which 
made  him  as  sure  that  other  people  were 
wicked  and  marked  out  for  damnation  as 
that  himself  was  elected  and  saved  (and 
even  as  regards  himself  this  confidence 
gave  way  sometimes  to  utter  desperation) 
— this  creed  speaks  out  in  his  poems  in 
unmistakable  tones  of  harsh  judgment  and 
unqualified  denunciation.  Few  writers 
are  more  steadily  unsparing  of  the  lash 
than  the  shrinking  sensitive  Cowper.  It 
may  be  that  he  does  not  lay  it  on  with  the 
sense  of  personal  power,  and  indignant 
paying-off  of  old  scores,  which  one  finds 
in  a  Juvenal  or  a  Pope ;  but  the  conviction 
that  he  is  the  mouthpiece  of  Providence, 
and  that,  when  William  Cowper  has  pro- 
nounced a  man  reprobate,  the  smoke  of  his 
burning  is  certain  to  ascend  up  for  ever 
and  ever,  stands  instead  of  much,  and  lends 
unction  to  the  hallowed  strain.  In  con- 
formity with  this  inspiration,  his  writing 
is  nervous  and  terse,  well  stored  with 
vigorous  stinging  single  lines;  and  his 
power  of  expressive  characterization, 
whether  in  moral  declaiming  or  in  de- 
scriptive work,  is  very  considerable : — and 
was  (at  any  rate  in  the  latter  class  of  pas- 
sages) even  more  noticeable  in  his  own 
day  than  it  is  in  ours.  Apart  from  his 
religion,  Cowper  (as  has  just  been  said) 
was  eminently  humane  and  gentle-hearted ; 
the  interest  which  he  took  in  his  tame 
hares  will  perhaps  be  remembered  when 
much  of  his  wielding  of  the  divine  thunder- 
bolts against  the  profane  shall  have  been 
forgotten.  ...  In  point  of  literary 
or  poetic  style,  Cowper  was  mainly  inde- 
pendent, and  the  pioneer  of  a  simpler  and 
more  natural  method  than  he  found  pre- 
vailing; his  didactic  or  censorial  poems 
may  be  regarded  as  formed  on  the  writings 
of  Churchill  rather  than  of  any  other  pred- 
ecessor.—  RossETTi,  William  Michael, 
1878,  Lives  of  Famous  Poets,  pp.  185,  186. 

An  amiable  piety  makes  his  **Task,"  a 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


391 


long  moralizing  poem  in  blank  verse,  at- 
tractive to  many  minds;  from  the  mere 
literary  point  of  view,  it  must  be  allowed 
to  be  a  feeble  production.  As  he  gained 
more  confidence  in  himself,  he  developed 
a  curious  sort  of  mild  feline  humor,  which 
appears  in  the  delightful  ballad  of  ''John 
Gilpin,"  and  in  several  shorter  pieces. 
The  strength  which  had  been  wanting  all 
his  life  came  to  him  near  its  close,  and  in- 
spired him  to  write  those  stanzas  of 
wondrous  majesty  and  beauty  which  have 
the  title  of  ''The  Castaway;"  unhappily 
it  was  the  strength  of  spiritual  despair. 
— Arnold,  Thomas,  1878,  English  Liter- 
ature, Encyclopcedia  Britannica^  Ninth 
Edition^  vol,  vii. 

The  pathos  of  Cowper's  life  and  his 
position  in  our  poetical  history  will  always 
lend  a  special  interest  to  his  work,  even 
though  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  regard 
a  poet  limited  as  he  was  as  a  poet  of  the 
first  order.  He  was  an  essentially  original 
writer,  owing  much  of  course  as  every 
writer  must  owe,  to  the  subtle  influences  of 
his  time,  but  deriving  as  little  as  ever 
poet  derived  from  literary  study.  .  .  . 
We  read  Cowper,  indeed,  not  for  his  pas- 
sion or  for  his  ideas,  but  for  his  love  of 
nature  and  his  faithful  rendering  of  her 
beauty ;  for  his  truth  of  portraiture,  for 
his  humour,  for  his  pathos;  for  the  re- 
fined honesty  of  his  style,  for  the  melan- 
choly interest  of  his  life,  and  for  the 
simplicity  and  the  lovelinesss  of  his  char- 
acter.— Ward,  Thomas  Humphry,  1880, 
The  English  Poets,  vol.  ni,  pp.  423,  433. 

His  pictures  of  social  life  are  as  truth- 
ful as  they  are  charming.  All  is  natural, 
forcible  and  pathetic,  humorous  at  times, 
and  frequently  desponding  and  gloomy; 
but  through  all  these  is  an  undertone  of 
unaffected  piety  that  rises  occasionally 
into  higher  utterances.  And  so  it  is  that 
his  popularity  has  never  been  on  the  de- 
cline. And  there  are  passages,  particu- 
larly of  domestic  life,  that  one  hears  per- 
petually quoted.  As  a  letter-writer,  no 
man  perhaps  has  ever  excelled  him.  His 
epistolary  style  is  the  finest  in  our  lan- 
guage, abounding  in  every  phase  of  senti- 
ment, humour,  sadness,  pathos,  liveliness, 
yet  all  spontaneous  and  natural. — Wal- 
ler, J.  F.,  1881,  Boswell  and  Johnson, 
Their  Companions  and  Contemporaries, 
p.  148. 

This  then  was  the  training  which  made 


a  poet  of  Cowper,  one  of  the  most  popular 
in  England — in  his  way  a  transforming  in- 
fluence, a  new  beginning  of  intellectual 
life  and  power.  Had  we  been  left  to  con- 
jecture what  lines  of  education  would  have 
been  the  best  on  which  to  raise  up  for  us 
the  precursor  of  a  new  poetical  age,  cer- 
tainly these  are  not  the  lines  which  we 
would  have  chosen.  Nor,  had  we  been 
asked  to  prophesy  what  were  the  works  to 
be  expected  from  a  man  so  exceptionally 
circumstanced — with  a  past  so  strangely 
chequered,  a  future  so  painfully  uncertain, 
a  mind  so  sensitive,  and  which  had  passed 
through  so  many  passionate  struggles — 
could  we  have  hit  upon  anything  half  so 
unlikely  as  the  actual  issue.  What  we 
should  have  looked  for  would  have  been 
some  profound  and  morbid  study  of  a  de- 
spairing soul,  some  terrible  pictures  like 
those  of  Job,  some  confusion  of  gloomy 
skies  and  storms,  and  convulsions  of 
nature.  That  anatomy  of  the  heart  which 
he  gives  us  in  his  various  narratives  of  his 
own  feelings,  that  minute  dissection  of 
quivering  nerve  and  tissue,  would  have 
been  what  we  should  have  looked  for  in  his 
poetry.  But  lo,  when  the  moment  came, 
and  the  prophet  was  softly  persuaded  and 
guided  into  the  delivery  of  his  burden,  it 
was  no  such  wild  exposition  of  the  terrors 
and  pangs  of  the  soul  that  came  to  his 
lips.  These  heavy  vapours  melted  and 
dispersed  from  the  infinite  sweet  blueness 
of  the  heavens :  he  forgot  himself  as  if  he 
had  never  been — and  forgot  all  those 
miseries  of  the  imagination,  those  bitter 
pangs  and  sorrows,  the  despair  and  dark- 
ness through  which  he  had  stumbled 
blindly  for  years.  A  soft  and  genial  free- 
dom entered  into  his  soul,  involuntary 
smiles  came  to  him,  light  to  his  eyes,  and 
to  his  steps  such  wandering  careless  grace, 
such  devious  gentle  ways,  as  no  one  had 
dreamed  of. — Oliphant,  Margaret  0. 
W.,  1882,  Literary  History  of  England  in 
the  End  of  the  Eighteenth  and  Beginning 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  i,  p.  49. 

Cowper  is  less  read  than  he  deserves  to 
be ;  but  he  has  this  glory,  that  he  has  ever 
been  the  favorite  poet  of  deeply  religious 
minds ;  and  his  history  is  peculiarly  touch- 
ing, as  that  of  one  who,  himself  plunged 
in  despair  and  madness,  has  brought  hope 
and  consolation  to  a  thousand  other  souls. 
— Farrar,  Frederick  William,  1883, 
With  the  Poets,  Preface,  p.  xviii. 


392 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


Cowper's  poetry  will  not  win  hosts  of 
admirers ;  no  societies  will  be  formed  for 
the  purpose  of  reading  papers  on  his 
verses  and  expounding  his  meaning ;  but 
the  reader  who  may  be  interested  in  other 
things  than  the  pomp  and  clatter  of  con- 
temporary poetry  will  be  rewarded  by 
occasional  tender,  simple  passages.  He 
will  detect  many  attractive  qualities  in  the 
poems,  but  he  is  tolerably  sure  not  to  be 
swept  off  his  feet  by  enthusiasm.  This 
is  generally  the  fate  of  a  reformer,  or  the 
first  man  who  writes  under  a  new  impulse. 
He  is  like  the  guide-post  where  roads 
divide;  he  points  the  way  which  others 
are  able  to  make  more  attractive,  and  is 
soon  forgotten.  We  overlook  Cowper's 
simple  record  of  nature  while  we  are  under 
the  influence  of  Wordsworth's  mightier 
verse,  and  we  grow  impatient  of  his  phi- 
losophy when  we  see  how  much  further 
later  poets  carried  the  notion  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man  which  he  was  one  of 
the  first  authoritatively  to  utter. — Perry, 
Thomas  Sergeant,  1883,  English  Litera- 
ture in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  437. 

Cowper  is  a  true  poet  of  a  very  rare 
type,  one  of  the  most  important  in  the  de- 
velopment of  English  poetry. — Harrison, 
Frederic,  1883-86,  The  Choice  of  Books 
and  Other  Literary  Pieces,  p.  381. 

The  greatest  things  in  this  world  are 
often  done  by  those  who  do  not  know  they 
are  doing  them.  This  is  especially  true 
of  William  Cowper.  He  was  wholly  un- 
aware of  the  great  mission  he  was  fulfill- 
ing ;  his  contemporaries  were  wholly  un- 
aware of  it.  And  so  temporal  are  the 
world's  standards,  in  the  best  of  times, 
that  spiritual  regenerators  are  not  gener- 
ally recognized  until  long  after  they  have 
passed  away,  when  the  results  of  what  they 
did  are  fully  ripe,  and  philosophers  begin 
to  trace  the  original  impulses. — Corson, 
Hiram,  1886,  An  Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  Robert  Browning^s  Poetry,  p.  12. 

It  would  be  scarcely  claiming  too  much 
if  we  set  down  the  whole  of  Cowper's 
original  poetry  (the  translation  of  Homer 
is  of  course  not  included)  as  belonging  to 
the  literature  of  the  Evangelical  Revival. 
No  doubt  the  fire  of  his  genius  would  have 
burnt  brightly,  whatever  his  religious 
sentiments  might  have  been.  In  the  pro- 
ductions of  his  elegant  pen  we  should, 
under  any  circumstances,  have  recognised 
at  least  the  disjecti  membra  poetce.  But, 


as  a  matter  of  fact,  his  Christian  convic- 
tions were  the  mainspring  which  set  the 
whole  machinery  of  his  poetical  work  in 
motion.  It  was  this  which  gave  coherence 
and  symmetry  and  soul  to  it  all.  Abstract 
the  religious  element  from  his  composi- 
tions, and  they  all  fall  to  pieces ;  but,  in 
fact,  it  is  impossible  to  do  so.  With  the 
exception  of  one  or  two  lighter  pieces, 
there  is  an  undercurrent  of  Christian 
sentiment  running  through  and  inseparable 
from  them  alL— Overton,  John  Henry, 
1886,  The  Evangelical  Revival  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  127. 

The  moral  meditations  of  Young  had 
comprised  much  vigorous  declamation  of 
native  English  growth.  Cowper,  a  far 
greater  poet,  expressed  in  purer  and 
simpler  language  thoughts  with  more  of 
substantial  worth,  as  well  as  a  strain  of 
sentiment,  manly,  religious,  and  gravely 
affectionate.  In  him,  too,  we  find  an 
admirable  fidelity  to  outward  nature  in  de- 
tail ;  although  with  her  grander  forms,  un- 
endeared  by  association,  he  had  little  sym- 
pathy ;  while  ideal  representations  of  scen- 
ery are  no  more  to  be  found  in  his  poetry 
than  ideal  conceptions  of  character. — 
De  Vere,  Aubrey,  1887.  Essays  Chiefly 
on  Poetry,  vol.  ii,  p.  120. 

Cowper  is  less  read  than  he  deserves  to 
be,  but  he  has  this  glory,  that  he  has  ever 
been  the  favourite  poet  of  deeply  religious 
minds. —  Saunders,  Frederick,  1887, 
The  Story  of  Some  Famous  Books,  p.  112. 

Cowper  has  probably  few  readers  now. 
One  sometimes  meets  with  an  elderly 
lady,  brought  up  in  an  Evangelical  family, 
who, having  been  made  to  learn  the  "Moral 
Satires"  and  "The  Task"  by  heart  when  a 
child,  still  remembers  a  good  deal  of  them, 
and  cherishes  for  the  poet  of  Evangelicism 
the  tender  affections  which  gathers  in  old 
age  round  the  things  which  belongs  to 
childhood.  But  we  have  most  of  us  ceased 
to  be  Evangelical, and  most  of  us  who  love 
poetry  having  come  under  the  spell  of 
Goethe  and  of  the  lesser  poets  of  the  nine- 
tenth  century,  find  poor  Cowper  a  little 
cramped,  a  little  narrow,  and,  to  tell  the 
truth,  a  little  dull.  Yet  there  are  pas- 
sages in  Cowper's  poetry  which  deserve  to 
live  and  will  live, and  which  will  secure  him 
a  place,  not.indeed  among  English  poets  of 
the  first  rank,  but  high  among  those  of  the 
second.  The  pity  is  that  they  run  great 
risk  of  being  buried  and  lost  forever  in  the 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


393 


wilderness  of  sermons  which  fills  up  such 
a  large  part  of  ''The  Progress  of  Error" 
and ' '  The  Task. "  It  is  very  hard  to  write 
sermons  that  will  live,  and,  as  a  writer  of 
sermons,  I  am  afraid  Cowper  is  likely  to 
take  his  place  on  the  very  peaceful  and 
dusty  upper  shelf  in  our  libraries  Nvhere 
the  divines  of  the  last  century  repose. 
But  he  deserves  a  better  fate  than  this, 
and  all  lovers  of  English  poetry  ought  to 
do  what  they  can  to  save  him  from  it. — 
Bailey,  J.  C,  1889,  William  Cowper, 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  vol.  60,  p.  261. 

Cowper's  virtue  was  in  his  simplicity 
and  genuineness,  rare  qualities  then ;  his 
good  fortune  was  in  never  belonging  to  the 
literary  set  or  bowing  to  the  town  taste ; 
hence  in  a  time  the  most  barren  in  English 
literature,  he  gave  us  a  half  dozen  fine 
poems  that  stand  far  beyond  all  contem- 
porary rivalry,  and  some  private  letters  of 
the  best  style  and  temper.  When,  how- 
ever, the  question  comes  as  to  the  in- 
trinsic value  of  these  letters,  it  must  be 
confessed  that  though  they  please  the 
taste  they  do  not  interest  the  mind  except 
in  a  curious  and  diverting  way.  They  are 
less  the  letters  of  a  poet  than  of  a  village 
original,  a  sort  of  schoolmaster  or  clergy- 
man manque,  of  sound  sense,  tender  heart 
and  humane  perception,  but  the  creature  of 
a  narrow  sphere. — Woodberry,  George 
Edward,  1890,  Studies  in  Letters  and 
Life,  p.  227. 

Direct,  easeful,  chaste — Cowper's  best 
work  is  all  this,  and  more;  he  had  the 
foundation  of  common  sense,  without 
which  the  other  gifts  of  song  go  for  little 
or  nothing.  Given  common  sense  together 
with  spontaneity  and  taste,  and  genuine 
poetry  is  assured.  Beyond  these  qualifi- 
cations Cowper  reveals  both  humor, — 
though  humor,  perhaps,  may  be  an  integral 
part  of  taste — and  pathos,  two  essential 
forces  seldom  found  separated.  And 
having  enumerated  thus  far,  we  have  but 
to  add  imagination,  and  we  have  the  outfit 
for  a  poet  of  the  first  order.  But  it  will 
not  do  to  claim  for  Cowper  great  imagina- 
tive power,  nor  can  we  credit  him  with 
that  certainty,  that  continuity  of  inspira- 
tion which  stamps  a  master  of  the  guild. 
We  shall  look  to  him  in  vain  for  the  sub- 
lime; furthermore,  we  shall  find  that  if 
he  can  move  lightly  and  gracefully  on 
levels  not  the  highest,  he  can  also  plod 
there,  and  that  right  heavily.    To  transfer 


the  figure  from  the  feet  to  the  hands,  the 
fingers  are  naturally  nimble,  but  suddenly 
on  go  the  Methodist  mittens,  and  we  are 
in  for  a  pull  of  theologic  fumbling. — 
Cheney,  John  Vance,  1892,  A  Study  of 
Cowper,  The  Chautauquan,  vol.  15,  p.  405. 

There  is  no  more  interesting  poet  than 
Cowper,  and  hardly  one  the  area  of  whose 
influence  was  greater.  No  man,  it  is  un- 
necessary to  say,  courted  popularity  less, 
yet  he  threw  a  very  wide  net,  and  caught 
a  great  shoal  of  readers.  For  twenty 
years  after  the  publication  of  "The  Task" 
in  1785,  his  general  popularity  never 
flagged,  and  even  when  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world  it  was  eclipsed,  when  Cowper  became 
in  the  opinion  of  fierce  Byronians  and 
moss-trooping  Northerners,  ''a  coddled 
Pope"  and  a  milksop,  our  great,  sober, 
Puritan  middle-class  took  him  to  their 
warm  firesides  for  two  generations  more. 
.  .  .  Had  Cowper  not  gone  mad  in  his 
thirty-second  year,  and  been  frightened 
out  of  the  world  of  trifles,  we  should  have 
had  another  Prior,  a  wittier  Gay,  an 
earlier  Praed,  an  English  La  Fontaine. — 
Birrell,  Augustine,  1892,  Res  Judicatce, 
pp.  90,  94. 

Cowper,  the  herald  of  Wordsworth,  may 
perhaps  be  described  as  a  reformer  of 
poetry,  but  it  is  more  significant  of  his 
historical  position  to  describe  him  as  an 
essayist  in  verse.— Minto,  William,  1894, 
The  Literature  of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed.. 
Knight,  p.  132. 

I  am  in  a  state  of  great  excitement  about 
Cowper.  Reading  him  right  through  I  was 
more  than  ever  struck  with  his  innumer- 
able felicities.  Yet  how  very  terribly  he 
sinks !  The  style  sinks,  but  still  more  the 
thought.  I  imagined  that  his  fine  taste 
had  piloted  him  through  the  theological 
mare  mortuum  of  his  age  and  school  with 
comparative  safety.  But  really,  it  is  not 
so.  He  is  often  quite  abominable;  so 
rude,  so  insolent.  He  sends  his  antagon- 
ists to  the  Devil ;  literally,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken,  tells  them  to  go  to  H — 11 ;  exults 
over  them,  sneers,  jeers,  jokes.  His  mild- 
est attitude  is  a  **sarve  them  right,"  and 
his  idea  of  God  as  the  owner  of  some 
patent  sort  of  peep-show,  which,  if  we 
don't  appreciate,  he  will  d — n  our  eyes 
for  a  set  of  God  knows  what,  is  absolutely 
Swiftian  in  its  utter  vulgarity.  What  a 
destestable  poison  has  penetrated  his 
vitals !   Mind,  it  is  not  the  doctrine,  but 


394 


WILLIAM  COWPER 


the  swagger  and  infernal  rudeness  that 
offend  me.  The  style  too  becomes  in- 
fected; with  all  this  ghastly  machinery 
of  unreason,  he  takes  it  upon  him  to  be 
flippant.  Such  "awful  mirth"  is  almost 
unparalleled  in  literature.  He  even  as- 
sumes an  athletic,  or  pseudo-athletic  vig- 
our of  contemptuous  denunciation. — 
Brown,  Thomas  Edward,  1895,  To  S.  T. 
Irwin,  July  16 ;  Letters,  vol.  ii,  p.  109. 

Critics  are  agreed  that  we  shall  not  rank 
him  among  the  great  poets ;  but  he  comes 
nearer  to  their  rank  than  anybody  in  his 
day  believed  possible.  He  is  so  true ;  he 
is  so  tender;  he  is  so  natural.  If  in  his 
longer  poems  there  is  sometimes  a  lack  of 
last  finish,  and  an  overplus  of  language — 
there  is  a  frankness  of  utterance  and  a 
billowy  undulation  of  movement  that  have 
compensating  charms.  He  loves  Nature 
as  a  boy  loves  his  play ;  his  humanities  are 
wakened  by  all  her  voices.  He  not  only 
seizes  upon  exterior  effects  with  a  painter's 
eye  and  hand,  but  he  has  a  touch  which 
steals  deeper  meanings  and  influences  and 
transfers  them  into  verse  that  flows  softly 
and  quietly  as  summer  brooks.  He  cannot 
speak  or  rhyme  but  the  odors  of  the  coun- 
try cling  to  his  words. — Mitchell,  Don- 
ald G.,  1895,  English  Lands  Letters  and 
Kings,  Queen  Anne  and  the  Georges,  p.  254. 

Several  of  Cowper's  short  poems  are 
inimitable.  He  writes  so  very  like  a 
gentleman. — Locker-Lampson,  Freder- 
ick, 1896,  My  Confidences,  p.  178. 

William  Cowper's  first  poems  were  some 
of  the  "Olney  Hymns,"  1779,  and  in  these 
the  religious  poetry  of  Charles  Wesley 
was  continued.  The  profound  personal 
religion,  gloomy  even  to  insanity  as  it 
often  became,  which  fills  the  whole  of 
Cowper's  poetry,  introduced  a  theological 
element  into  English  poetry  which  con- 
tinually increased  till  it  died  out  with 
Browning  and  Tennyson.  His  didactic  and 
satirical  poems  in  1782  link  him  backwards 
to  the  last  age.  His  translation  of  Homer, 
1791,  and  of  shorter  pieces  from  the  Latin 
and  Greek,  connects  him  with  the  classical 
influence,  his  interest  in  Milton  with  the 
revived  study  of  the  English  poets.  The 
playful  and  gentle  vein  of  humour  which 
he  showed  in  "John  Gilpin"  and  other 
poems,  opened  a  new  kind  of  verse  to  poets. 
With  this  kind  of  humour  is  connected  a 
simple  pathos  of  which  Cowper  is  a  great 
master.    The  ' '  Lines  to  Mary  Unwin' '  and 


to  his  "Mother's  Picture"  prove,  with  the 
work  of  Blake,  that  pure  natural  feeling 
wholly  free  from  artifice  had  returned  to 
English  song.  A  new  element  was  also 
introduced  by  him  and  Blake — the  love  of 
animals  and  the  poetry  of  their  relation  to 
maj^^l^in  plentifully  worked  by  after 
po|^^^«greatest  work  was  the  ''Task." 
— I^^^IStopford  a.,  1896,  English 
Literature,  p.  223. 

Cowper,  even  more  than  most  writers, 
deserves  and  requites  consideration  under 
the  double  aspect  of  matter  and  form.  In 
both  he  did  much  to  alter  the  generally 
accepted  conditions  of  English  poetry ;  and 
if  his  formal  services  have  perhaps  re- 
ceived less  attention  than  they  merit,  his 
material  achievements  have  never  been  de- 
nied.—Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A  His- 
tory of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  p.  4. 

Such  were  the  simple  elements  of  Cow- 
per's landscape.  They  have  no  special 
attraction  that  is  not  shared  by  hundreds 
of  other  similar  scenes  in  the  Oolitic  tracts 
of  England.  To  the  cursory  visitor  they 
may  even  seem  tame  and  commonplace. 
And  yet  for  us,  apart  from  any  mere 
beauty  they  may  possess,  they  have  been 
for  ever  glorified  and  consecrated  by  the 
imagination  of  the  poet.  We  see  in  them 
the  natural  features  which  soothed  his 
sorrow  and  gladdened  his  heart,  and  which 
became  the  sources  of  an  inspiration  that 
breathed  fresh  life  into  the  poetry  of 
England.  The  lapse  of  time  has  left  the 
scene  essentially  unchanged.  We  may 
take  the  same  walks  that  Cowper  loved, 
and  see  the  same  prospects  that  charmed 
his  eyes  and  filled  his  verse.  In  so  follow- 
ing his  steps,  we  note  the  accuracy  and 
felicity  of  his  descriptions,  and  appreciate 
more  vividly  the  poetic  genius  which,  out 
of  such  simple  materials,  could  work  such 
a  permanent  change  in  the  attitude  of  his 
countrymen  towards  nature. —  Geikie, 
Sir  Archibald,  1898,  Types  of  Scenery 
and  their  Influence  on  Literature,  p.  13. 

The  cold  indifference  of  the  moderns 
towards  Cowper  is  largely  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  has  left  no  love  poetry  behind  him. 
For  this  reason  they  may  find  him  unin- 
teresting, and  they  regard  him  pretty 
much  as  he  says  his  contemporaries  and 
former  associates  did:  "They  think  of 
me  as  of  the  man  in  the  moon,  and  whether 
I  have  a  lantern,  a  dog  and  a  faggot,  or 
whether  I  have  neither  of  these  desirable 


COWPER—WARTON 


395 


accommodations,  is  to  them  a  matter  of 
perfect  indifference. ' '  Whether  his  heart 
was  torn  with  the  agonies  of  love  or  not, 
Cowper  does  not  tell  us.  He  has  left  no 
confessions  of  this  nature.  His  appeal  is 
not  to  our  passionate  'prentice  years,  but 
to  our  maturity,  when  having  si|jj|^,  we 
have  learnt  our  lesson,  and  Pj^^^H 
to  pass  out  of  the  petty  circlg^l^jHRves 
into  the  study  of  life's  larger^mole. — 
Law,  Alice,  1900,  William  Cowper,  Fort- 
nightly Review,  vol.  73,  p.  111. 

Cowper  was  pre-eminently  a  poet  of 
feelings;  he  may  have  been  melancholy, 
but  he  pointed  out  to  his  readers  how  they 
were  themselves  subjects  of  emotion.  He 
owed  a  debt  to  Providence,  and  he  rebuked 
the  people  for  their  follies.  In  doing  so 
he  was  regardless  of  his  own  fame  and  of 
their  opprobrium.  He  gave  them  toler- 
able advice,  and  strove  to  awaken  them 
from  their  apathy  to  a  sense  of  their  duty 
towards  their  neighbours.  First,  of  poets, 
since  the  days  of  Milton,  to  champion  the 
sacredness  of  religion,  he  was  the  fore- 
runner of  a  new  school  that  disliked  the 
political  satires  of  the  disciples  of  Pope, 
and  aimed  at  borrowing  for  their  lines  of 
song  from  the  simple  beauties  of  a  perfect 
nature. — Spender,  A.  Edmund,  1900, 
The  Centenary  of  Cowper,  The  Westminster 
Review,  vol.  153,  y.  545. 


Cowper  knew  every  landmark  about 
Olney  and  weaved  many  a  one  into  his 
verse.  He  loved  Nature  in  his  gentle 
way,  and  her  influence  must  often  have 
been  a  healing  one,  when  thoughts  of  those 
dark  insane  fits,  which  turned  his  homely 
life  into  a  tragedy,  hovered  about  his 
mind.  He  did  not  observe  her  with  so 
nice  an  eye  as  poor  Clare  the  peasant, 
who  beginning  in  gladness  also  ended  in 
the  despondency  and  madness  which  a  poet 
has  declared  to  be  the  lot  of  poets ;  and  I 
have  always  had  my  doubts  about  the 
nightingale  which  he  believed  he  heard  in 
full  song  on  New  Year's  Day.  And  yet 
the  "Winter  Walk  at  Noon,"  among  other 
poems,  has  lines  and  descriptions  worth 
remembering.  The  rich  laburnum — ''la- 
burnum," as  Tennyson  put  it,  "drooping- 
wells  of  fire" — and  the  leafless  but  lovely 
mezereon  and  the  myriad  blossomed  yellow 
broom  of  full  summertide — these  and 
many  other  features  in  the  pageant  of  the 
spring  and  summer  he  noted  and  set  forth 
with  a  lover's  eye,  if  in  rather  stilted 
language  and  in  somewhat  too  much  the 
form  of  a  catalogue  to  please  us  to-day. 
Cowper  belonged  as  a  poet  of  nature  rather 
to  the  Thomson  than  the  Wordsworth 
school.— Dew AR,  George  A.  B.,  1900, 
William  Cowper,  The  Saturday  RevieWy. 
vol.  89,  p.  521. 


Joseph.  Warton 

1722-1800 

Born  at  Dunsfold,  Surrey,  was  the  son  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Warton  (1688-1745), 
vicar  of  Basingstoke  and  Oxford  professor  of  Poetry.  In  1740  he  passed  from  Win- 
chester to  Oriel,  and,  rector  of  Winslade  from  1748,  returned  to  Winchester  as  second 
master  in  1755,  and  was  its  head  1766-93.  His  preferments  were  a  prebend  of  St. 
Paul's,  the  living  of  Thorley,  a  prebend  of  Winchester,  and  the  rectories  of  Easton  and 
Upham.  His  "Odes"  (1746)  marked  a  reaction  from  Pope.  An  edition  of  Virgil 
(1753),  with  translation  of  the  "Eclogues"  and  "Georgics,"  gained  him  a  high  repu- 
tation. He  was,  like  his  brother  Thomas,  a  member  of  the  Literary  Club.  In  1756 
appeared  vol.  i.  of  his  "Essay  on  Pope"  (vol.  ii.  in  1782),  with  its  distinction  between 
the  poetry  of  reason  and  the  poetry  of  fancy.  Later  works  were  editions  of  Pope 
(1797)  and  Dryden.  See  the  panegyrical  "Memoir"  by  Wooll  (1806). — Patrick 
AND  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  956. 


That  ardent  mind  which  had  so  emi- 
nently distinguished  the  exercise  of  his 
public  duties,  did  not  desert  him  in  the 
hours  of  leisure  and  retirement ;  for  in- 
activity was  foreign  to  his  nature.  His 
parsonage,  his  farm,  his  garden,  were  cul- 
tivated and  adorned  with  the  eagerness 
and  taste  of  undiminished  youth.  His 


lively  sallies  of  playful  wit,  his  rich  stores 
of  literary  anecdote,  and  the  polished  and 
habitual  ease  with  which  he  imperceptibly 
entered  into  the  various  ideas  and  pursuits 
of  men,  rendered  him  an  acquaintance 
both  profitable  and  amusing;  whilst  his 
unaffected  piety  and  unbounded  charity 
stamped  him  a  pastor  adored  by  his 


396 


JOSEPH  WARTON 


parishioners.  Difficult  indeed  would  it 
be  to  decide  whether  he  shone  in  a  de- 
gree less,  in  this  social  character,  than  in 
the  closest  of  criticism  or  the  chair  of  in- 
struction.— WooLL,  John,  1806,  Memoirs 
of  Warton. 

I  knew  Joseph  Warton  well.  When 
Matthias  attacked  him  in  *'The  Pursuits 
of  Literature"  for  reprinting  some  loose 
things  in  his  edition  of  Pope,  Joseph  wrote 
a  letter  to  me,  in  which  he  called  Matthias 
''his  pious  critic," — rather  an  odd  ex- 
pression to  come  from  a  clergyman. — He 
certainly  ought  not  to  have  given  that 
letter  of  Lord  Cobham. — Rogers,  Samuel, 
1855,  Table-Talk,  p.  133. 

He  remained  a  schoolmaster  for  thirty- 
eight  years.  As  a  teacher  Warton  achieved 
little  success.  He  was  neither  an  exact 
scholar  nor  a  disciplinarian.  Thrice  in  his 
headmastership  the  boys  openly  mutinied 
against  him,  and  inflicted  on  him  ludicrous 
humiliations.  The  third  insurrection  took 
place  in  the  summer  of  1793,  and,  after 
ingloriously  suppressing  it,  Warton  pru- 
dently resigned  his  post.  His  easy  good 
nature  secured  for  him  the  warm  affection 
of  many  of  his  pupils,  among  whom  his 
favourites  were  William  Lisle  Bowles  and 
Richard  Mant.  Although  the  educational 
fame  of  the  school  did  not  grow  during  his 
regime,  his  social  and  literary  reputation 
gave  his  office  increased  dignity  and  im- 
portance. In  1778  George  IH  visited  the 
college,  Warton's  private  guests  on  the 
occasion  included  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  and 
Garrick. — Lee,  Sidney,  1899,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography^  vol.  Lix,  p.  429. 
H  S  E 

JOSEPHUS  WARTON,  S.  T.  P. 

HUJUS  ECCLESI^ 

Prebendarius  : 

SCHOL^  WiNTONIENSIS 

Per  annos  fere  triginta 
Informator  : 
Poeta  fervidus,  facilis,  expolitus  : 
Criticus  eruditus,  Prespicax,  elegans: 
Obiit  xxiii°  Feb.  MDCCC, 
^TAT.  LXXVIII. 
Hoc  qualecunque 
Pietatis  Monumentum 
prieceptori  optimo, 
Desideratissimo, 

WiCCAMICI  SUI 

p.  c. 

—  Inscription  on  Tomb,  Winchester 
Cathedral. 


ESSAY  AND  EDITION  OF  POPE. 

Is,  I  think,  the  most  extraordinary  work 
I  ever  read,  and  is  indeed  everything 
but  what  it  promises.  The  writer  seems 
to  have  copied,  and  impudently  enough 
printed,  his  commonplace  book  of  anec- 
dotes.ani.  remarks  upon  various  writers. 
Some. -par^  are  indeed  critical,  but  his 
criticrsma^^^fr-e  not  in  my  opinion  always 
just,  and  there  is  but  little  anywhere  to 
be  found  that  can  be  called  new. — 
Charlemont,  Lord,  1782,  Letter  to  Ed- 
mond  Malone,  Oct.  4,  Life  by  Prior,  p.  96. 

Though  by  nature  one  of  the  most  candid 
and  liberal  of  critics,  continues,  as  a  biogra- 
pher, to  indulge  that  prejudice  which  had 
early  induced  him,  in  his  popular ''Essay" 
on  this  illustrious  poet,  to  endeavour  to 
sink  him  a  little  in  the  scale  of  poetical 
renown :  not,  I  believe,  from  any  envious 
motive,  but  as  an  affectionate  compliment 
to  his  friend  Young,  the  patron  to  whom 
he  inscribed  his  Essay. — Hayley,  Wil- 
liam, 1803,  The  Life  and  Posthumous 
Writings  of  William  Cowper,  vol.  u,p.  157. 

Dr.  Joseph  Warton  was  an  exquisite 
scholar,  of  very  general  reading,  a  man 
of  the  purest  taste,  and  of  some  genius ; 
yet  it  is  obvious  that  he  had  not  clearly  set- 
tled in  his  own  mind  the  theoretic  prin- 
ciples of  poetry,  otherwise  he  would  not 
have  wavered  in  so  feeble  a  manner,  in 
finally  drawing  up  a  summary  of  the  poet- 
ical merits  of  Pope,  in  his  elegant  Essay'* 
on  that  poet. — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel 
Egerton,  1824,  Recollections  of  Foreign 
Travel,  Aug.  6,  vol.  i,  p.  257. 

He  was  seventy-five  when  he  published 
his  edition  of  Pope,  and  to  save  himself 
trouble  he  apportioned  out  the  old  farrago 
in  notes.  Profuse  in  digressions,  he  is 
sparing  of  needful  explanations.  His  turn 
was  for  the  lighter  portions  of  criticism 
and  biography,  and  most  of  his  apposite 
remarks  are  critical  opinions.  They  are 
often  just,  but  never  profound,  for  he  had 
neither  fervid  feelings  nor  a  robust  under- 
standing, and  his  highest  qualities  are  a 
fair  poetical  taste,  and  a  tolerable  acquaint- 
ance with  ancient  and  modern  authors. — 
Elwin,  Whitwell,  1871,  ed.,  The  Works 
of  Alexander  Pope,  Introduction,  vol.  i, 
p.  xxiii. 

His  delay  in  following  up  the  first  volume 
of  his  ''Essay"  with  a  second,  and  the 
long  period  of  forty  years  which  elapsed 
between  his  first  volume  and  his  edition, 


JOSEPH  WARTON 


397 


have  led  to  its  being  asserted  that  he  ab- 
stained, from  fear  of  Warburton.  This 
assertion  is  not  supported  by  Dr.  Johnson, 
who,  when  asked  the  reason  of  Warton's 
delay  in  bringing  out  the  second  volume 
of  his  ''Essay, "  said,  he  supposed  ''it  was 
because  he  could  not  persuade  the  world 
to  be  of  his  opinion  about  Pope."  But 
Warton  may,  very  likely,  have  been  afraid 
of  Warburton.  If  he  was,  such  fear  would 
have  been  no  imputation  on  his  courage 
and  honour.  He  may,  nay,  he  must,  have 
feared  Warburton,  not  as  cowed  by  his 
superiority,  but  as  a  just  and  reasonable- 
minded  man  fears  the  contact  of  the 
irrepressible  slanderer.  He  feared  dirt, 
not  confutation.  It  was  impossible  to 
suppress  Warburton,  and  Warton  was  too 
refined  a  scholar  to  fight  him  with  his  own 
weapons  of  scurrility  and  abuse.  When 
a  man  is  incurably  wrong-headed,  the  only 
resource  is  to  avoid  him.  If  it  seems  un- 
handsome in  Warton  to  have  spoken  his 
opinion  of  the  Bishop  after  his  death, 
having  preserved  silence  for  so  many 
years,  it  should  be  remembered  that  what 
might  have  been  presumptuous  in  him  at 
thirty-five,  when  he  was  only  beginning  to 
be  known,  was  no  longer  so  at  seventy- 
five,  when  he  had  a  long  and  honourable 
career  of  a  life  devoted  to  learning  behind 
him.  .  .  .  Strange  to  say,  though 
Warton's  Pope  was  published  in  1797,  and 
though  it  has  been  superseded  in  the  mar- 
ket, it  has  never  yet  been  improved  upon. 
— Pattison,  Mark,  1872-89,  Pope  and 
His  Editors,  Essays,  ed.  Nettleship,  vol.  ii, 


Have  you  seen  the  works  of  two  young 
authors,  a  Mr.  Warton  and  a  Mr.  Collins, 
both  writers  of  Odes?  It  is  odd  enough, 
but  each  is  the  half  of  a  considerable  man, 
and  one  the  counterpart  of  the  other.  The 
first  has  but  little  invention,  very  poetical 
choice  of  expression,  and  a  good  ear.  The 
second,  a  fine  fancy,  modelled  upon  th^ 
antique,  a  bad  ear,  great  variety  of  words, 
and  images  with  no  choice  at  all.  They 
both  deserve  to  last  some  years  but  will 
not.— Gray,  Thomas,  1746,  Letter  to 
Thomas  Wharton,  Dee,  27;  WorkSy  ed. 
Gosse,  vol.  II,  p.  159. 

To  every  classical  reader,  indeed.  War- 
ton's  Virgil  will  afford  the  richest  fund  of 
instruction  and  amusement;  and  as  a 
professional  man,  I  hesitate  not  to  declare, 


that  I  scarcely  know  a  work,  to  the  upper 
classes  of  schools,  so  pregnant  with  the 
most  valuable  advantages:  as  it  imparts 
information,  without  the  encouragement 
of  idleness ;  and  crowns  the  exertions  of 
necessary  and  laudable  industry  with  the 
acquisition  of  a  pure  and  unadulterated 
taste. — WooLL,  John,  1806,  Memoirs  of 
Warton,  p.  28. 

The  power  which  feels,  and  the  power 
which  originates  poetry,  are  totally  dis- 
tinct. The  former  no  writer  seems  to 
have  possessed  with  more  exquisite  pre- 
cision, than  Dr.  Warton ;  and  I  do  not  mean 
to  deny  that  he  possessed  the  latter  in  a 
considerable  degree :  I  only  say  that  his 
powers  of  execution  do  not  seem  to  have 
been  equal  to  his  taste. — Brydges,  Sir 
Samuel  Egerton,  1807,  Censura  Liter- 
aria,  vol.  Ill,  p.  199. 

On  this  small  collection  of  Lyric  verse 
the  fame  of  Dr.  Warton,  as  a  poet,  princi- 
pally rests.  Of  the  seventeen  Odes,  how- 
ever, of  which  it  is  composed,  there  are 
but  two  entitled  to  an  elevated  rank  for 
their  lofty  tones  and  high  finish ;  the  Odes 
"To  Fancy"  and  "On  reading  Mr.  West's 
Pindar,"  and  of  these  the  first  is  much 
the  superior.  It  abounds,  indeed,  in  a  suc- 
cession of  strongly  contrasted  and  high- 
wrought  imagery,  clothed  in  a  versification 
of  the  sweetest  cadence  and  most  brilliant 
polish.  .  .  .  The  studies  and  propensities 
of  Warton  peculiarly  fitted  him  for  a  trans- 
lator of  this  portion  of  Virgil.  His  knowl- 
edge of  the  language  of  his  original  was 
intimate  and  critical ;  he  was  well  versed 
^  in  the  manners,  customs,  and  mythology  of 
the  ancients ;  he  had  a  strong  relish  of  the 
tender  and  sympathetic;  his  taste  was 
delicately  pure  and  chastised,  and  his 
versification  correctly  harmonious.  W^ith 
these  qualifications,  he  has  produced  a 
translation  of  the  Georgics  which,  in 
taste,  costume,  and  fidelity,  in  sweetness, 
tenderness,  and  simplicity,  has  far  ex- 
ceeded any  previous  attempt,  and  has  only 
been  rivalled  by  the  version  of  Mr.  Sotheby. 
— Drake,  Nathan,  1810,  Essays,  Illus- 
trative of  the  Rambler,  Adventurer,  and 
Idler,  vol.  ii,  pp.  117,  123. 

As  a  critic.  Dr.  Warton  is  distin- 
guished by  his  love  of  the  fanciful  and 
romantic.  He  examined  our  poetry  at 
a  period  when  it  appeared  to  him  that 
versified  observations  on  familiar  life  and 
manners  had  usurped  the  honours  which 


398 


WAR  TON— MONT  A  G  U 


were  exclusively  due  to  the  bold  and  in- 
ventive powers  of  imagination.  .  .  . 
The  school  of  the  Wartons,  considering 
them  as  poets,  was  rather  too  studiously 
prone  to  description.  The  doctor,  like  his 
brother,  certainly  so  far  realized  his  own 
ideas  of  inspiration,  as  to  burden  his  verse 
with  few  observations  on  life  which  oppress 
the  mind  by  their  solidity.  To  his  brother 
he  is  obviously  inferior  in  the  graphic  and 
romantic  style  of  composition,  at  which 
he  aimed;  but  in  which,  it  must  never- 
theless be  owned,  that  in  some  parts  of 
his  ''Ode  to  Fancy''  he  has  been  pleasingly 
successful. — Campbell,  Thomas,  1819, 
Specimens  of  the  British  Poets. 

His  reputation  as  a  critic  and  a  scholar 
has  preserved  his  poetry  from  neglect. 
Of  his  Odes,  that  to  Fancy,  written  when 
he  was  very  young,  is  one  that  least  dis- 
appoints us  by  a  want  of  poetic  feeling. 
Yet  if  we  compare  it  with  that  by  Collins, 
on  the  Poetical  Character,  we  shall  see  of 
how  much  higher  beauty  the  same  subject 
was  capable.  In  the  ''Ode  to  Evening," 
he  has  again  tried  his  strength  with  Col- 
lins. There  are  some  images  of  rural  life 
in  it  that  have  the  appearance  of  being 
drawn  from  nature,  and  which  therefore 
please.'.  .  .  In  his  "  Dying  Indian, " 
he  has  produced  a  few  lines  of  extraordi- 
nary force  and  pathos.  The  rest  of  his 
poems,  in  blank  verse,  are  for  the  most 
part  of  an  indifferent  structure. — Cary, 
Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45,  Lives  of 
the  English  Poets,  From  Johnson  to  Kirke 
White,  pp.  177,  178. 

One  of  the  ripest  scholars  and  soundest 
critics  England  has  produced. —Cleve- 
land, Charles  D.,  1853,  English  Liter- 
ature of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  p.  19. 


Joseph  Warton  was  not  one  of  those 
original  men  of  genius  who  rouse  our 
curiosity  and  leave  their  mark  on  their 
age.  Johnson,  with  far  less  learning,  and 
Gray,  who  left  only  a  few  hundred  lines  of 
fragmentary  poetry,  will  count  as  more 
remarkable  men  than  Warton.  But  if, 
from  want  of  force  of  character,  Warton 
does  not  hold  a  first  place  among  his  con- 
temporaries, he  will  always  claim  the  re- 
gard of  students  of  our  literature,  both 
for  what  he  was  himself,  and  for  the  new 
direction  which  he  impressed  on  poetical 
criticism  in  this  country. — Pattison, 
Mark,  1872-89,  Pope  and  His  Editors, 
Essays,  ed.  Nettleship,  vol.  ii,  p.  369. 

What  Warton  laid  down  as  principles  in 
his  prose  essays,  he  tried  to  exemplify  in 
his  verse.  He  turned  directly  away  from 
Classicism,  and  drew  his  inspiration  from 
fresh  out-door  nature  and  from  meditative 
melancholy.  Perhaps  he  is  the  first  con- 
sciously romantic  poet  in  the  eighteenth 
century. — Phelps,  William  Lyon,  1893, 
The  Beginnings  of  the  English  Romantic 
Movement,  p.  92. 

Warton  deserves  remembrance  as  a 
learned  and  sagacious  critic.  He  was  a 
literary,  not  a  philological,  scholar.  His 
verse,  although  it  indicates  a  true  ap- 
preciation of  natural  scenery,  is  artificial 
and  constrained  in  expression.  He  was 
well  equipped  for  the  role  of  literary  his- 
torian, but  his  great  designs  in  that  field 
never  passed  far  beyond  the  stage  of  pre- 
liminary meditation.  It  was  as  a  leader 
of  the  revolution  which  overtook  literary 
criticism  in  England  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury that  his  chief  work  was  done.— Lee, 
Sidney,  1899,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  LIX,  p.  430. 


Elizabeth  Montagu 

1720-1800 

Born  at  York,  Oct.  2,  1720 :  died  at  Montagu  House,  London,  Aug.  25,  1800.  An 
English  author  and  social  leader.  On  Aug  5,  1742,  she  married  Edward  Montagu, 
grandson  of  the  first  Earl  of  Sandwich.  After  1750  she  held  her  salon  in  Hill  street, 
Mayfair.  The  epithet  "blue-stocking"  was  first  applied  to  her  assemblies.  Among 
her  visitors  were  Lord  Lyttelton,  Burke,  Garrick,  and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds.  Her 
younger  associates  included  Hannah  More  and  Fanny  Burney.  In  1760  she  contributed 
three  dialogues  to  Lyttelton's  "Dialogues  of  the  Dead."  She  visited  Paris  after  the 
peace  of  1763.  In  1769  she  wrote  an  essay  on  the  "Genius  of  Shakspere"  in  answer 
to  Voltaire.  In  1776  she  built  Montagu  House,  now  No.  22  Portman  Square,  where 
she  died.  (This  was  not  the  Montagu  House  upon  the  site  of  which  the  British  Museum 
was  built.)— Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  700, 


ELIZABETH  MONTAGU 


399 


PERSONAL 

The  husband  of  Mrs.  Montagu,  of 
Shakespeareshire,  is  dead,  and  has  left  her 
an  estate  of  seven  thousand  pounds  a  year 
in  her  own  power.  Will  you  come  and  be 
candidate  for  her  hand  ?  I  conclude  it  will 
be  given  to  a  champion  at  some  Olympic 
games;  and  were  I  she,  I  would  sooner 
marry  you  than  Pindar.  —  Walpole, 
Horace,  1775,  Letter  to  William  Mason; 
Letters,  ed.  Cunninghairiy  vol.  vi,  p.  217. 

Just  returned  from  spending  one  of  the 
most  agreeable  days  of  my  life,  with  the 
female  Maecenas  of  Hill-street;  she  en- 
gaged me  five  or  six  days  ago  to  dine  with 
her,  and  had  assembled  half  the  wits  of  the 
age.  The  only  fault  that  charming  woman 
has,  is,  that  she  is  fond  of  collecting  too 
many  of  them  together  at  one  time.  There 
were  nineteen  persons  assembled  at  dinner, 
but  after  the  repast,  she  has  a  method  of 
dividing  her  guests,  or  rather  letting  them 
assort  themselves,  into  little  groups  of  five 
or  six  each.  I  spent  my  time  in  going 
from  one  to  the  other  of  these  little  socie- 
ties, as  1  happened  more  or  less  to  like  the 
subjects  they  were  discussing.  Mrs. 
Scott,  Mrs.  Montagu's  sister,  a  very  good 
writer,  Mrs.  Carter,  Mrs.  Barbauld,  and  a 
man  of  letters,  whose  name  I  have  for- 
gotten, made  up  one  of  these  little 
parties.  When  we  had  canvassed  two  or 
three  subjects,  I  stole  off  and  joined  in 
with  the  next  group,  which  was  composed 
of  Mrs.  Montagu,  Dr.  Johnson,  the  Provost 
of  Dublin,  and  two  other  ingenious  men. 
— More,  Hannah,  1776,  Letter  to  her 
Sister,  Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts,  vol.  I,  p.  44. 

Mrs.  Montague  wants  to  make  up  with 
me  again.  I  dare  say  she  does ;  but  I  will 
not  be  taken  and  left  even  at  the  pleasure 
of  those  who  are  much  nearer  and  dearer 
to  me  than  Mrs.  Montague.  We  want  no 
flash,  no  flattery.  I  never  had  more  of 
either  in  my  life,  nor  ever  lived  half  so 
happily :  Mrs.  Montague  wrote  creeping  let- 
ters when  she  wanted  my  help,  or  foolishly 
thought  she  did,  and  then  turned  her  back 
upon  me  and  sent  her  adherents  to  do  the 
same. — Thrale,  Hester  Lynch  (Mrs. 
Piozzi),  1789,  Journal,  May  1 ;  Autobiog- 
raphy, ed.  Hay  ward,  p.  107. 

To  me,  on  all  occasions,  ever  since  1771, 
when  I  first  became  acquainted  with  her, 
she  has  been  a  faithful  -and  affectionate 
friend  especially  in  seasons  of  distress  and 
difficulty.    You  will  not  wonder,  then. 


that  her  death  afflicts  me.  For  some  years 
past  a  failure  in  her  eyes  had  made  writing 
very  painful  to  her ;  but  for  not  less  than 
twenty  years  she  was  my  punctual  corre- 
spondent. She  was  greatly  attached  to 
Montagu,  who  received  his  name  from  her, 
and  not  less  interested  in  my  other  son, 
and  in  everything  that  related  to  my 
family.  I  need  not  tell  you  what  an  ex- 
cellent writer  she  was :  you  must  have  seen 
her  book  on  Shakespeare,  as  compared  with 
the  Greek  and  French  dramatic  writers.  1 
have  known  several  ladies  eminent  in 
literature,  but  she  excelled  them  all ;  and 
in  conversation  she  had  more  wit  than  any 
other  person,  male  or  female,  whom  I  have 
ever  known.  These,  however,  were  her 
slighter  accomplishments:  what  was  in- 
finitely more  to  her  honour,  she  was  a 
sincere  Christian,  both  in  faith  and  in 
practice,  and  took  every  proper  oppor- 
tunity to  show  it;  so  that  by  her  ex- 
ample and  influence  she  did  much  good. — 
Beattie,  James,  1799,  Letter  to  Rev.  Dr, 
Laing,  March  7;  Forbes'  Life  of  Beattie, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  162. 

At  the  same  time  of  which  I  speak,  the 
gens  de  Mres,  or  Blue  Stockings,"  as  they 
were  commonly  denominated,  formed  a 
very  numerous,  powerful,  compact  phalanx 
in  the  midst  of  London.  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Montague  was  then  the  Madame  du  Deffand 
of  the  English  capital ;  and  her  house  con- 
stituted the  central  point  of  union,  for  all 
those  persons  who  already  were  known,  or 
who  emulated  to  become  known  by  their 
talents  and  productions.  Her  supremacy 
.  .  .  was  indeed  established  on  more  solid 
foundations  than  those  of  intellect,  and 
rested  on  more  tangible  materials  than  any 
with  which  Shakspeare  himself  could  fur- 
nish her.  Though  she  had  not  as  yet  begun 
to  construct  the  splendid  mansion  in  which 
she  afterwards  resided  near  Portman 
Square,  but  lived  in  an  elegant  house  in 
Hill  Street  .  .  .  Mrs.  Montague  was 
accustomed  to  open  her  house  to  a  large 
company  of  both  sexes,  whom  she  fre- 
quently entertained  at  dinner.  A  ser- 
vice of  plate,  and  a  table  plentifully 
covered,  disposed  her  guests  to  admire  the 
splendour  of  her  fortune,  not  less  than  the 
lustre  of  her  talents.  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Montague,  in  1776,  verged  tow^ards  her 
sixtieth  year.  But  her  person,  which  was 
thin,  spare,  and  in  good  preservation,  gave 
her  an  appearance  of  less  antiquity.  From 


400 


ELIZABETH  MONTAGU 


the  infirmities  often  attendant  on  advanced 
life,  she  seemed  to  be  almost  wholly  ex- 
empt. All  the  lines  of  her  countenance 
bespoke  intelligence,  and  her  eyes,  were 
accommodated  to  her  cavSt  of  features, 
which  had  in  them  something  satirical  and 
severe,  rather  than  amiable  or  inviting. 
.  .  .  Destitute  of  taste  in  dispos- 
ing the  ornaments  of  her  dress,  she 
nevertheless  studied  or  affected  those 
aids,  more  than  would  seem  to  have 
become  a  woman  possessing  a  philo- 
sophic mind,  intent  on  higher  pursuits 
than  toilet.  Even  when  approaching  to 
four  score,  this  female  weakness  still  ac- 
companied her;  nor  could  she  relinquish 
her  diamond  necklace  and  bows,  which  .  .  . 
formed  on  evenings  the  perpetual  ornament 
of  her  emaciated  person.  I  used  to  think 
that  these  glittering  appendages  of  opu- 
lence, sometimes  helped  to  dazzle  the  dis- 
putants, whom  her  arguments  might  not 
always  convince. .  .  .  Notwithstanding  the 
defects  that  I  have  enumerated,  she  pos- 
sessed a  masculine  understanding,  enlight- 
ened, cultivated,  and  expanded  by  the 
acquaintance  of  men,  as  well  as  of  books. 
Many  of  the  most  illustrious  persons  in 
rank,  no  less  than  in  ability,  under  the 
reigns  of  George  II.  and  III.,  had  been  her 
correspondents,  friends,  companions  and 
admirers.  —  Wraxall,  Sir  Nathaniel 
William,  1815,  Historical  Memoirs  of  My 
Own  Time,  from  1772  to  1784,  pp.  64,  65. 

She  was  equal  to  conversation  on  every 
subject;  but  she  assumed  that  dogmatic 
and  presumptuous  tone  which  is  well  known 
as  peculiar  to  learned  English  ladies,  and 
even  to  young  English  tourists. — Schlos- 
SER,  Friedrich  Christoph,  1823,  His- 
tory of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  tr.  Davison, 
pt.  ii.  ch.  i. 

Her  conversational  powers  were  of  a 
truly  superior  order;  strong,  just,  clear, 
and  often  eloquent.  Her  process  in  argu- 
ment, notwithstanding  an  earnest  solici- 
tude for  pre-eminence,  was  uniformly 
polite  and  candid.  But  her  reputation  for 
wit  seemed  always  in  her  thoughts,  mar- 
ring their  natural  flow,  and  untutored  ex- 
pression. No  sudden  start  of  talent  urged 
forth  any  precarious  opinion ;  no  vivacious 
new  idea  varied  her  logical  course  of 
ratiocination.  Her  smile  though  most 
generally  benignant,  was  rarely  gay ;  and 
her  liveliest  sallies  had  a  something  of 
anxiety  rather  than  of  hilarity— till  their 


success  was  ascertained  by  applause.  Her 
form  was  stately,  and  her  manners  were 
dignified.  Her  face  retained  strong  remains 
of  beauty  throughout  life ;  and  though  its 
native  cast  was  evidently  that  of  severity, 
its  expression  was  softened  off  in  discourse 
by  an  almost  constant  desire  to  please. 
.  .  .  Taken  for  all  in  all,  Mrs.  Montagu 
was  rare  in  her  attainments ;  splendid  in 
her  conduct ;  open  to  the  calls  of  charity ; 
forward  to  precede  those  of  indigent 
genius ;  and  unchangeably  just  and  firm  in 
the  application  of  her  interest,  her  princi- 
ples, and  her  fortune,  to  the  encourage^ 
ment  of  loyalty,  and  the  support  of  virtue. 
— D'Arblay,  Madame  (Fanny  Burney), 
1832,  Memoirs  of  Doctor  Burney. 

Mrs.  Montagu  is  one  of  the  best  speci- 
mens on  record  of  that  most  comprehensive 
character — a  woman  of  the  world,  for  she 
was  of  the  world,  yet  not  corrupted  by  it. 
Her  wit,  displayed  in  the  girlish  effusions 
of  a  satire,  rather  the  result  of  high  spirits 
than  of  a  sarcastic  tone,  improved  as  age 
advanced.  Passionately  fond  of  society,  a 
lover  of  the  great,  she  displayed,  neverthe- 
less, a  perfect  contentment  when  deprived 
of  excitement  by  any  accident ;  and,  whilst 
she  courted  the  great,  she  was  courteous 
and  bountiful  to  the  small. — Thomson, 
Katherine,  1848,  The  Literary  Circles  of 
the  Last  Century,  Eraser's  Magazine,  vol. 
37,  p.  73. 

Mrs.  Montague's  parties  were  pleasant, 
no  doubt,  for  she  got  together  the  people 
best  worth  knowing ;  and  though  she  liked 
flattery,  and  loved  to  drape  and  pose  her- 
self as  the  chief  Muse  of  a  new  British 
Parnassus,  she  was  essentially  a  gentle- 
woman, full  of  kindness  and  benevolence, 
standing  stoutly  up  for  her  friends,  and 
always  ready  to  help  unknown  and  strug- 
gling people  with  her  patronage,her  advice, 
and  her  money.  If  she  quarrelled  with 
Johnson  when  in  his  ''Lives  of  the  Poets" 
he  decried  one  of  her  idols,  Lyttelton,  she 
not  the  less  kept  up  her  annuity  to  poor 
blind  Miss  Williams.  If  her  ''Essay  on 
Shakspere"  is  not  very  profound,  it  shows 
at  least  sounder  appreciation  of  the  great 
dramatist  than  the  criticisms  of  Johnson, 
who  abused  it. — Leslie,  Charles  Rob- 
ert and  Taylor,  Tom,  1865,  Life  and 
Times  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  vol.  i, 
p.  452. 

But  even  in  the  days  of  her  maidenhood, 
when  she  was  glad  in  her  youth  and  in  her 


ELIZABETH  MONTAGU 


401 


beauty,  and  conscious  of  her  intellect,  yet 
unconscious  of  the  pleasures,  duties,  and 
trials  before  her,  yet  when  she  feared  she 
might  live  idle  and  die  vain,  she  said,  ''If 
ever  I  have  an  inscription  over  me,  it  shall 
be  without  a  name,  and  only, — Here  lies 
one  whom  having  done  no  harm,  no  one 
should  censure ;  and,  having  done  no  good, 
no  one  can  commend ;  who,  for  past  folly, 
only  asks  oblivion."  She  lived,  however, 
to  do  much  good,  to  make  great  amends  for 
small  and  venial  follies,  and  by  the  mag- 
nificent usefulness,  which  little  Burney  has 
recorded,  to  merit  such  pains  as  it  may 
cost  a  poor  chronicler  to  rescue  her  name 
and  deeds  from  the  oblivion  which  she 
asked  in  the  pleasant  days  of  her  bright 
youth  and  her  subduing  beauty. — Doran, 
John,  1873,  A  Lady  of  the  Last  Century, 
p.  356. 

Other  ladies — Mrs.  Montagu's  friend 
the  Duchess  of  Portland,  Mrs.  Ord,  Mrs. 
Vesey,  wife  of  Agmondesham  Vesey,  Mrs. 
Boscawen,  wife  of  the  admiral,  and  Mrs. 
Greville,  wife  of  Fulke  Greville — endeav- 
oured to  rival  Mrs.  Montagu's  entertain- 
ments; but  for  nearly  fifty  years  she 
maintained  a  practically  undisputed  su- 
premacy as  hostess  in  the  intellectual 
society  of  London,  and  to  her  assemblies 
was,  apparently  for  the  first  time,  applied 
the  now  accepted  epithet  of  ''blue-stock- 
ing. ' '  Two  explanations  of  the  term  have 
been  suggested.  According  to  the  ordi- 
nary account,  which  was  adopted  by  Sir 
William  Forbes  in  his  "Life  of  Beattie," 
in  1806  (i.  210),  full  dress  was  not  in- 
sisted on  at  Mrs.  Montagu's  assemblies, 
and  Benjamin  Stillingfleet  who  regu- 
larly attended  them,  as  well  as  the 
rival  assemblies  presided  over  by  Mrs. 
Vesey  or  Mrs.  Boscawen,  habitually  in- 
fringed social  conventions  by  appearing  in 
blue  worsted  instead  of  black  silk  stock- 
ings ;  consequently.  Admiral  Boscawen,  a 
scoffer  at  his  wife's  social  ambitions,  is 
stated  to  have  applied  the  epithet  "blue- 
stockings" to  all  ladies'  conversaziones. 
On  the  other  hand,  Lady  Crewe,  daughter 
of  Mrs.  Greville,  who  was  one  of  Mrs. 
Montagu's  rival  hostesses,  stated  that  the 
ladies  themselves  at  Mrs.  Montagu's 
parties  wore  "blue-stockings  as  a  distinc- 
tion, "in  imitation  of  a  fashionable  French 
visitor,  Madame  de  Polignac. — Lee,  Sid- 
ney, 1894,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XXXVIII,  p.  241. 

26  G 


ESSAY  ON  THE  GENIUS  OF 
SHAKESPEARE 

Mrs.  Montague,  a  lady  distinguished  for 
having  written  an  Essay  on  Shakspeare, 
being  mentioned, — Reynolds:  "I  think 
that  essay  does  her  honour."  Johnson. 
' '  Yes,  sir,  it  does  her  honour ;  but  it  would 
do  nobody  else  honour.  I  have,  indeed, 
not  read  it  all.  But  when  I  take  up  the 
end  of  a  web,  and  find  it  packthread,  I  do 
not  expect,  by  looking  further,  to  find  em- 
broidery. Sir,  I  will  venture  to  say  there 
is  not  one  sentence  of  true  criticism  in  her 
book."  Garrick:  "But,  sir,  surely  it 
shows  how  much  Voltaire  has  mistaken 
Shakspeare,  —  which  nobody  else  has 
done. ' '  Johnson  :  * '  Sir,  nobody  else  has 
thought  it  worth  while.  And  what  merit 
is  there  in  that?  You  may  as  well  praise 
a  schoolmaster  for  whipping  a  boy  who 
has  construed  ill.  No,  sir ;  there  is  no  real 
criticism  in  it, — none  showing  the  beauty 
of  thought  as  formed  on  the  workings  of  the 
human  heart."  .  .  .  One  day  at  Sir  Joshua's 
table,  when  it  was  related  that  Mrs. 
Montague,  in  an  excess  of  compliment  to  the 
author  of  a  modern  tragedy  (Braganza?), 
had  exclaimed,  "I  tremble  for  Shaks- 
peare," Johnson  said,  "When  Shakspeare 
has  got — [ Jephson  ?]  for  his  rival  and  Mrs. 
Montague  for  his  defender,  he  is  in  a  poor 
state  indeed." — Johnson,  Samuel,  1769, 
Life  by  Boswell. 

The  most  elegant  and  judicious  piece  of 
criticism  which  the  present  age  has  pro- 
duced.—Warton,  Thomas,  1778-81,  The 
History  of  English  Poetry. 

I  no  longer  wonder  that  Mrs.  Montagu 
stands  at  the  head  of  all  that  is  called 
learned,  and  that  every  critic  veils  his 
bonnet  to  her  superior  judgment.  I  am 
now  reading  and  have  reached  the  middle 
of  her  essay  on  the  genius  of  Shakspeare 
— a  book  of  which,  strange  as  it  may  seem, 
though  I  must  have  read  it  formerly,  I  had 
absolutely  forgot  the  existence.  The 
learning,  the  good  sense,  the  sound  judg- 
ment, and  the  wit  displayed  in  it  fully 
justify,  not  only  my  compliment,  but  all 
compliments  that  either  have  been  already 
paid  to  her  talents  or  shall  be  paid  here- 
after. Voltaire,  I  doubt  not,  rejoiced  that 
his  antagonist  wrote  in  English,  and  that 
his  countrymen  could  not  possibly  be 
judges  of  the  dispute.  Could  they  have 
known  how  much  she  was  in  the  right. 


402 


ELIZABETH  MONTAGU 


and  by  how  many  thousand  miles  the  Bard 
of  Avon  is  superior  to  all  their  dramatists, 
the  French  critic  would  have  lost  half  his 
fame  among  them. — Cowper,  William, 
1788,  Letter  to  Lady  Hesketh,  May  27. 

Considering  it  as  a  piece  of  the  second- 
ary or  comparative  species  of  criticism ; 
and  not  of  that  profound  species  which 
alone  Dr.  Johnson  would  allow  to  be* 'real 
criticism."  It  is,  besides,  clearly  and 
elegantly  expressed,  and  has  done  effectu- 
ally what  it  professed  to  do;  namely, 
vindicated  Shakspeare  from  the  misrepre- 
sentations of  Voltaire;  and  considering 
how  many  young  people  were  misled  by 
his  witty,  though  false  observations,  Mrs. 
Montagu's  Essay"  was  of  service  to 
Shakspeare  with  a  certain  class  of  readers, 
and  is,  therefore,  entitled  to  praise. — 
Bos  WELL,  James,  1791-93,  Life  of  Sam- 
uel Johnson,  note. 

Hurd  and  Lord  Karnes,  especially  the 
former,  may  be  reckoned  among  the  best 
of  this  class ;  Mrs.  Montagu,  perhaps,  in 
her  celebrated  Essay,  not  very  far  from 
the  bottom  of  the  list. — Hallam,  Henry, 
1837-39,  Introduction  to  the  Literature 
of  Europe,  pt,  iii,  ch.  vi,  par.  54. 

Mrs.  Montague  was  the  Minerva,  for  so 
she  was  complimented  on  this  occasion, 
whose  celestial  spear  was  to  transfix  the 
audacious  Gaul.  Her  Essay  on  the 
Writings  and  Genius  of  Shakespeare, 
compared  with  the  Greek  and  French 
dramatic  poets,"  served  for  a  popular 
answer  to  Voltaire.  This  accomplished 
lady,  who  had  raised  a  literary  coterie 
about  her,  which  attracted  such  fashion- 
able notice  that  its  title  has  survived  its 
institution,  found  in  ''the  Blue-stocking 
Club"  choral  hymns  and  clouds  of  incense 
gathering  about  the  altar  in  Portman 
Square!  The  volume  is  deemed  "a 
wonderful  performance, ' '  by  those  echoes 
of  contemporary  pre-possessions,  the  com- 
pilers of  dictionary-biography:  even  the 
poet  Cowper  placed  Mrs.  Montague  "at 
the  head  of  all  that  is  called  learned." — 
Disraeli,  Isaac,  1841,  Shakespeare,  Amen- 
ities of  Literature. 

LETTERS 

Mrs.  Montagu's  [Letters]  are  lively  and 
ingenious,  but  not  natural. — Mackintosh, 
Sir  James,  1808,  Life,  vol.  i,  ch.  viii. 

I  think  very  highly  of  them.  One  of 
their  chief  merits  is  series  juncturaque. 
Nothing  can  be  more  easy  and  natural  than 


the  manner  in  which  the  thoughts  rise  one 
out  of  the  other,  even  where  the  thoughts 
may  appear  rather  forced,  nor  is  the 
expression  ever  hard  or  laboured.  I  see 
but  little  to  object  to  in  the  thoughts  them- 
selves, but  nothing  can  be  more  natural  or 
graceful  than  the  manner  in  which  they 
are  put  together.  The  flow  of  her  style 
is  not  less  natural,  because  it  is  fully 
charged  with  shining  particles,  and 
sparkles  as  it  flows. — Windham,  William, 
1809,  Diary,  Dec.  5. 

The  merit  of  the  pieces  before  us  seems 
to  us  to  consist  mainly  in  the  great  gaiety 
and  vivacity  with  which  they  are  written. 
The  wit,  to  be  sure,  is  often  childish,  and 
generally  strained  and  artificial ;  but  still 
it  both  sparkles  and  abounds ;  and  though 
we  should  admire  it  more  if  it  were  better 
selected,  or  even  if  there  were  less  of  it, 
we  cannot  witness  this  profuse  display  of 
spirits  and  ingenuity  without  receiving  a 
strong  impression  of  the  talents  and 
ambition  of  the  writer.  The  faults  of  the 
letters,  on  the  other  hand,  are  more 
numerous.  In  the  first  place,  they  have, 
properly  speaking,  no  subjects.  They 
are  all  letters  of  mere  idleness,  friendship, 
and  flattery.  There  are  no  events,— no 
reasonings, — no  anecdotes  of  persons  who 
are  still  remembered, — no  literature,  and 
scarcely  any  original  or  serious  opinions. 
.  .  .  There  are  great  faults  in  the  vol- 
umes before  us ;  and  that  we  do  not  exactly 
perceive  the  necessity  of  reading  the  bad 
letters  before  we  are  favoured  with  the 
good.— Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1809, 
Mrs.  Montagues  Letters,  Edinburgh  Review, 
vol.  15,  pp.  76,  87. 

I  am  now  reading  the  third  and  fourth 
volumes  of  Mrs.  Montague's  "Letters." 
To  me,  who  have  lived  through  all  the  time 
she  writes  of,  they  are  interesting, — in- 
dependent of  the  wit  and  talent, — as  re- 
calling a  number  of  persons  and  events 
once  present  to  my  mind :  they  are  also, 
I  think,  very  entertaining,  though,  as  let- 
ters, somewhat  studied.  —  Barbauld, 
Anna  L^titia,  1813,  Works,  vol.  ii,  p.  139. 

In  her  own  generation  Mrs.  Montagu 
was  without  a  superior  in  the  art  of  letter 
writing. — Scoones,  W.  Baptiste,  1880, 
Four  Centuries  of  English  Letters,  p.  277. 

GENERAL 

These  letters  do  great  credit  both  to 
her  head  and  heart ;  they  are  written  in 
an  easy  and  perspicuous  style ;  are  filled 


MONTAGU—BLAIR 


403 


with  judicious  and  pertinent  reflections 
upon  the  passing  events  and  the  great 
men  of  the  times;  and,  with  her  ''Essay 
on  Shakspeare,"  give  her  no  mean  ranlc 
among  English  authors.  If  not  a  profound 
critic,  she  was  certainly  an  acute  and  in- 
genious one,  possessing  judgment  and 


taste  as  well  as  learning;  and  if  not  of 
such  versatile  talents  as  her  namesake, 
Lady  Mary  Wortley,  she  is  an  example  of 
much  higher  moral  purity  both  in  her 
writings  and  character.  —  Cleveland, 
Charles  D.,  1853,  English  Literature  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  p.  25. 


Hugh.  Blair 

1718-1800 

Born  at  Edinburgh  7th  April  1718,  in  1730  entered  the  university,  and  in  1741  was 
licensed  as  a  preacher.  After  occupying  the  churches  of  Collessie  in  Fife,  Canongate, 
and  Lady  Tester's,  he  was  promoted  in  1758  to  one  of  the  charges  of  the  High  Church, 
Edinburgh.  In  1759  he  commenced  a  series  of  university  lectures  on ''Composition ;" 
and  in  1762  he  was  appointed  to  a  new  regius  chair  of  Rhetoric  and  Belles-lettres, 
with  a  salary  of  £70  a  year.  He  resigned  this  post  in  1783,  and  published  his 
^'Lectures,"  which  obtained  a  reputation  far  beyond  their  merits,  and  one  that  time 
has  by  no  means  confirmed.  His  "Sermons"  (1777)  enjoyed  the  approval  not  only  of 
Dr.  Johnson,  but  of  George  III.,  who  bestowed  on  Blair  in  1780  a  pension  of  £200  a 
year.  Blair  died  December  27,  1800. — Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's 
Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  103. 


PERSONAL 

Dr.  Blair  was  a  different  kind  of  man 
from  Robertson,  and  his  character  is  very 
justly  delineated  by  Dr.  Finlayson,  so  far 
as  he  goes.  Robertson  was  most  saga- 
cious, Blair  was  most  naif.  Neither  of 
them  could  have  been  said  to  have  either 
wit  or  humor.  Of  the  latter  Robertson 
had  a  small  tincture — Blair  had  hardly  a 
relish  for  it.  Robertson  had  a  bold  and 
ambitious  mind,  and  a  strong  desire  to 
make  himself  considerable;  Blair  was 
timid  and  unambitious,  and  withheld  him- 
self from  public  business  of  every  kind, 
and  seemed  to  have  no  wish  but  to  be  ad- 
mired as  a  preacher,  particularly  by  the 
ladies.  His  conversation  was  so  infantine 
that  many  people  thought  it  impossible, 
at  first  sight,  that  he  could  be  a  man 
of  sense  or  genius.  He  was  as  eager 
about  a  new  paper  for  his  wife's  drawing- 
room,  or  his  own  new  wig,  as  about  a 
new  tragedy  or  a  new  epic  poem. — Car- 
lyle,  Alexander,  1753-56-1860,  Auto- 
biography, p.  236. 

Saturday  morning  proving  rainy,  I  could 
not  resist  the  temptation  of  staying  till 
Sunday,  and  I  heard  Dr.  Robertson  in  the 
morning,  and  Dr.  Blair  in  the  afternoon. 
They  are  neither  of  them  orators,  but  Dr. 
Robertson  has  a  serious,  unaffected  manner 
which  pleased  me  very  much.  Dr.  Blair 
is  very  pompous  in  his  delivery,  and 
all  the  great  and  fashionable  attend 
his  church.     He  gave  us  a  sermon  on 


censoriousness,  which  I  understand  is  soon 
to  be  published  with  some  others,  in  a 
third  volume. — Rogers,  Samuel,  1784, 
Letter,  July  21 ;  Early  Life  by  Clay  den,  p.  79. 

With  Dr.  Blair  I  am  more  at  ease.  I 
never  respect  him  with  humble  venera- 
tion ;  but  when  he  kindly  interests  himself 
in  my  welfare,  or  still  more,  when  he  de- 
scends from  his  pinnacle,  and  meets  me  on 
equal  ground  in  conversation,  my  heart 
overflows  with  what  is  called  liking. — 
When  he  neglects  me  for  the  mere  carcass 
of  greatness,  or  when  his  eye  measures 
the  difference  of  our  points  of  elevation, 
I  say  to  myself,  with  scarcely  any  emotion. 
What  do  I  care  for  him,  or  his  pomp  either? 
—  Burns,  Robert,  1787,  Commonplace 
Book,  Apr.  9. 

In  Edinburgh  none  was  more  famous  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
than  Dr.  Hugh  Blair.  His  dingy  church 
was  attended  by  the  most  fashionable  when 
he  preached ;  his  little,  dark  class-room  at 
college  was  full  of  the  most  cultured  when 
he  lectured;  every  tea-table  was  silent 
when  he  spoke;  every  supper-party  was 
deferential  as  he  conversed.  An  unevent- 
ful life  of  unbroken  health  and  prosperity 
was  the  fortune  of  the  preacher-critic  of 
Scotland.  ...  He  was  accepted  as  the 
arbiter  of  taste.  Poems  and  treatises  were 
submitted  for  his  judgment,  and  his  opinion 
was  considered  infallible.  Home  brought 
to  him  his  "Douglas,"  Blacklock  his 
poems,  Hume  his  essays,  and  we  know  how 


404 


HUGH  BLAIR 


in  later  years  his  verdict  on  Burns'  poems 
was  awaited  with  anxiety.  He  was  the 
literary  accoucheur  of  Scotland.  At  the 
same  time  patrons  conferred  with  him 
on  suitable  moderate  presentees"  for 
parishes,  and  town  councils  consulted  him 
on  candidates  for  professorial  chairs.  Is 
it  surprising  that  the  popular  preacher, 
the  respected  critic,  the  deferred-to 
guide,  had  his  constitutional  vanity 
strengthened,  and  that  all  this  homage 
made  him  more  pompous  and  certain  of 
his  infallibility,  especially  as  he  was 
utterly  devoid  of  any  sense  of  humour  ? — 
Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
pp.  121,  126. 

SERMONS 

I  love  ''Blair's Sermons."  Though  the 
dog  is  a  Scotchman,  and  a  Presbyterian, 
and  every  thing  he  should  not  be,  I  was 
the  first  to  praise  them. — Johnson,  Sam- 
uel, 1781,  Life  by  Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol. 
IV,  p.  113. 

Great  merit  they  undoubtedly  have ;  but 
I  cannot  discover  in  them  that  sublime 
simplicity  of  manner  and  style,  which  I 
have  long  thought  essential  to  such  com- 
positions.—Beattie,  James,  1783,  Letter 
to  the  Bishop  of  Worcester,  Sept.  18 ;  Life, 
ed.  Forbes,  vol.  n,  p.  308. 

We  have  no  modern  sermons  in  the 
English  language  that  can  be  considered 
as  very  eloquent.  The  merits  of  Blair 
(by  far  the  most  popular  writer  of  sermons 
within  the  last  century)  are  plain  good 
sense,  a  happy  application  of  scriptural 
quotation,  and  a  clear  harmonious  style, 
richly  tinged  with  scriptural  language. 
He  generally  leaves  his  readers  pleased 
with  his  judgment,  and  his  just  observa- 
tions on  human  conduct,  without  ever 
rising  so  high  as  to  touch  the  great  pas- 
sions, or  kindle  any  enthusiasm  in  favour 
of  virtue.  For  eloquence  we  must  ascend 
as  high  as  the  days  of  Barrow  and  Jeremy 
Taylor :  and  even  there,  while  we  are  de- 
lighted with  their  energy,  their  copious- 
ness, and  their  fancy,  we  are  in  danger 
of  being  suffocated  by  a  redundance  which 
abhors  all  discrimination,  which  compares 
till  it  perplexes,  and  illustrates  till  it  con- 
founds.— Smith,  Sydney,  1802,  Dr. 
Rennet,  Edinburgh  Review,  Essays,  p.  6. 

No  other  sermons  in  Great  Britain  have 
been  followed  by  so  splendid  a  success  as 
the  once  famous,  now  forgotten,  discourses 


of  Hugh  Blair.  Neither  of  Tillotson,  nor 
Jeremy  Taylor  in  past  times,  nor  of  Arnold 
or  Newman  or  even  Frederick  Robertson 
in  our  own  time,  can  be  recorded,  as  of 
Blair,  that  they  were  translated  into  al- 
most all  the  languages  of  Europe,  and  won 
for  their  author  a  public  reward  from  the 
Crown.  Nor  was  it  only  the  vulgar  public 
that  was  satisfied.  Even  the  despot  of 
criticism  (fastidious  judge,  zealous  High- 
churchman,  fanatically  English  as  he  was), 
the  mighty  Samuel  Johnson,  who  had  a 
few  years  before  declared  that  no  Scottish 
clergyman  had  written  any  good  work  on 
religious  subjects,  pronounced,  after  his 
perusal  of  Blair's  first  sermon,  "I  have 
read  it  with  more  than  approbation — to 
say  it  is  good  is  to  say  too  little." — 
Stanley,  Arthur  Penrhyn,  1872,  Lec- 
tures on  the  History  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land, p.  143. 

They  are  not  so  much  sermons  as  essays, 
composed  by  a  professor  of  rhetoric  to 
illustrate  the  principles  of  his  art.  For 
unction  there  was  mere  mouthing ;  instead 
of  the  solid  common  sense  of  earlier  writ- 
ers, an  infinite  capacity  for  repeating  the 
feeblest  of  platitudes;  their  style  seems 
to  be  determined  by  an  attempt  at  the  easy 
flow  of  the  Addisonian  period,  disturbed  by 
a  recollection  of  Johnsonian  grandilo- 
quence; the  morality  can  scarcely  be 
dignified  by  the  name  of  prudential,  unless 
all  prudence  be  summed  up  in  the  great 
commandment,  be  respectable;  the  the- 
ology is  retained  rather  to  give  a  faint 
seasoning  to  the  general  insipidity  of 
moral  commonplace  than  seriously  to  in- 
fluence the  thought ;  and  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  a  philosophical  argument  is  some 
feeble  echo  of  Pope's ''Essay  on  Man." 
Blair,  in  short,  is  in  theology  what  Hayley 
was  in  poetry — a  mere  washed-out  retailer 
of  second-hand  commonplaces,  who  gives 
us  the  impression  that  the  real  man  has 
vanished,  and  left  nothing  but  a  wig  and 
gown. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History 
of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  II,  p.  346. 

They  are  perhaps  grammatically  correct 
in  composition,  but  they  are  monotonous 
in  style,  and  as  for  grasp  of  thought  or 
reasoning,  elevated  emotion,  or  impas- 
sioned eloquence,  they  have  none. — Mack- 
intosh, John,  1878-96,  The  History  of 
Civilisation  in  Scotland,  vol.  iv,  p.  216. 

Of  his  sermons,  which  were  originally 


HUGH  BLAIR 


405 


published  in  five  volumes,  it  may  be  said 
that  they  were  unduly  praised  at  the  time 
of  their  appearance,  and  that  they  are  as 
unduly  neglected  now.  Samuel  Johnson 
called  them  "auro  magis  aurei;"  and 
King  George  the  Third,  who  was  a  great 
patron  of  Blair,  and  who  gave  him  a  pen- 
sion of  two  hundred  pounds  a  year,  is  re- 
ported to  have  often  said  that  he  wished 
to  hear  that  the  Bible  and  Blair's  sermons 
were  in  the  hands  of  every  youth  in  the 
United  Kingdom.  These  opinions  from 
the  leader  of  literature  and  the  leader  of 
fashion  may  perhaps  account  in  some 
degree  for  the  number  of  editions  through 
which  Blair's  sermons  passed ;  while  the 
fact  that  the  distinctive  features  of  the 
Gospel  are  largely  absent  from  them  may 
explain  the  oblivion  into  which  now  they 
have  fallen.  But  for  style  and  method 
they  may  still  be  studied  with  advantage, 
though  they  do  not  now,  of  course,  hold 
the  same  relatively  high  place  in  these 
respects  which  they  did  at  the  date  of 
their  publication.  They  have  a  distinc- 
tively modern  cast,  and  his  mode  of  open- 
ing up  and  dividing  a  subject  is  often 
felicitous  and  suggestive.  In  matter, 
however,  they  are  exceedingly  defective. 
—Taylor,  William  M.,  1887,  The  Scot- 
tish Pulpit,  p.  155. 

LECTURES  ON  RHETORIC  AND 
BELLES-LETTRES 

1783 

They  were  originally  designed  for  the 
initiation  of  youth  into  the  study  of  belles 
lettres,  and  of  composition.  With  the 
same  intention  they  are  now  published; 
and,  therefore,  the  form  of  Lectures,  in 
which  they  were  at  first  composed,  is  still 
retained.  The  author  gives  them  to  the 
world,  neither  as  a  work  wholly  original, 
nor  as  a  compilation  from  the  writings  of 
others.  On  every  subject  contained  in 
them,  he  has  thought  for  himself.  He 
consulted  his  own  ideas  and  reflections: 
and  a  great  part  of  what  will  be  found  in 
these  Lectures  is  entirely  his  own.  At 
the  same  time  he  availed  himself  of  the 
ideas  and  reflections  of  others,  as  far  as 
he  thought  them  proper  to  be  adopted. 
To  proceed  in  this  manner,  was  his  duty 
as  a  public  professor.  It  was  incumbent 
on  him  to  convey  to  his  pupils  all  the 
knowledge  that  could  improve  them;  to 
deliver  not  merely  what  was  new,  but  what 
might  be  useful,  from  whatever  quarter 


it  came.  He  hopes,  that  to  such  as  are 
studying  to  cultivate  their  taste,  to  form 
their  style,  or  to  prepare  themselves  for 
public  speaking  or  composition,  his 
Lectures  will  afford  a  more  comprehensive 
view  of  what  relates  to  these  subjects 
than,  as  far  as  he  knows,  is  to  be  received 
from  any  one  book  in  our  language. — 
Blair,  Hugh,  1783,  Lectures  on  Rhetoric 
and  Belles-Lettres,  Preface. 

These  ''Lectures  on  Rhetoric"  have 
been  for  several  years  known  to  the  public. 
They  were  printed  by  their  excellent 
author,  in  the  latter  period  of  his  life, 
after  he  had  retired  from  the  discharge  of 
his  academical  duties.  They  contain  an 
accurate  analysis  of  the  principles  of 
literary  composition,  in  all  the  various 
species  of  writing :  a  happy  illustration  of 
those  principles  by  the  most  beautiful  and 
apposite  examples,  drawn  from  the  best 
authors  both  ancient  and  modern ;  and  an 
admirable  digest  of  the  rules  of  elocution, 
as  applicable  to  the  oratory  of  the  pulpit, 
the  bar,  and  the  popular  assembly.  They 
do  not  aim  at  the  character  of  a  work 
purely  original ;  for  this,  as  the  author 
justly  considered,  would  have  been  to 
circumscribe  their  utility;  neither,  in 
point  of  style,  are  they  polished  with  the 
same  degree  of  care  that  the  author  has 
bestowed  on  some  of  his  other  works,  as, 
for  example,  his  ''Sermons :"  Yet  so 
useful  is  the  object  of  these  lectures,  so 
comprehensive  their  plan,  and  such  the 
excellence  of  the  matter  they  contain, 
that,  if  not  the  most  splendid,  they  will 
perhaps  prove  the  most  durable  monument 
of  their  author's  reputation. — Tytler, 
Alexander  Fraser,  1806-14,  Memoirs 
of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Lord  Karnes, 
vol.  I,  p.  275. 

Will  always  be  esteemed  valuable  as  an 
exercise  of  correct  taste,  and  an  accumu- 
lation of  good  sense,  on  the  various 
branches  of  the  art  of  speaking  and  writ- 
ing. ...  In  the  first  place,  with  re- 
spect to  the  language,  though  the  selec- 
tion of  words  is  proper  enough,  the  ar- 
rangement of  them  in  the  sentences  is  often 
in  the  utmost  degree  stifle  and  artificial. 
It  is  hardly  possible  to  depart  further  from 
any  resemblance  to  what  is  called  a  living 
or  spoken  style,  which  is  the  proper  diction 
at  all  events  for  popular  addresses,  if  not 
for  all  the  departments  of  prose  composi- 
tion.   Instead  of  the  thought  throwing 


406 


HUGH  BLAIR 


itself  into  words,  by  a  free,  instantaneous, 
and  almost  unconscious  action,  and  pass- 
ing off  in  that  easy  form,  it  is  pretty  ap- 
parent there  was  a  good  deal  of  handicraft 
employed  in  getting  ready  proper  cases 
and  trusses,  of  various  but  carefully 
measured  lengths  and  figures,  to  put  the 
thoughts  into,  as  they  came  out,  in  very 
slow  succession,  each  of  them  cooled  and 
stiffened  to  numbness  in  waiting  so  long  to 
be  dressed.  ...  In  the  second  place, 
there  is  no  texture  in  the  composition. 
The  sentences  appear  often  like  a  series  of 
little  independent  propositions,  each  satis- 
fied with  its  own  distinct  meaning,  and 
capable  of  being  placed  in  a  different  part 
of  the  train,  without  injury  to  any  mutual 
connection,  or  ultimate  purpose,  of  the 
thoughts.  The  ideas  relate  to  the  subject 
generally,  without  specifically  relating  to 
one  another.— Foster,  John,  1807-56, 
Critical  Essays^  ed.  Ryland,  vol.  I.  pp.  82, 
84,  85. 

Though  not  equal  to  Campbell's  Phi- 
losophy of  Rhetoric"  in  depth  of  thought 
or  in  ingenious  original  research,  they  are 
written  in  a  most  pleasing  style,  convey 
a  large  amount  of  valuable  information, 
suggest  many  most  useful  hints,  and  con- 
tain an  accurate  analysis  of  the  principles 
of  literary  composition  in  almost  every 
species  of  writing,  and  an  able  digest  of 
the  rules  of  eloquence  as  adapted  to  the 
pulpit,  the  bar,  or  to  popular  assemblies. 
In  short,  they  form  an  admirable  system 
of  rules  for  forming  the  style  and  cultiva- 
ting the  taste  of  youth ;  and  the  time  will 
be  far  distant,  if  it  ever  arrives,  when  they 
shall  cease  to  be  a  text-book  in  every  well- 
devised  course  of  study  for  a  liberal  educa- 
tion.— Cleveland,  Charles  D.,  1853, 
English  Literature  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, p.  30. 

Deserves  special  mention  for  his  lectures 
on  Rhetoric  and  Belles-Lettres, "  which 
for  a  long  time  constituted  the  principal 
text-book  on  those  subjects  in  our  schools 
and  colleges.  A  better  understanding  of 
the  true  scope  of  rhetoric  as  a  science  has 
caused  this  work  to  be  superseded  by  later 
text-books.  Blair's  lectures  treat  princi- 
pally of  style  and  literary  criticism,  and 
are  excellent  for  their  analysis  of  some  of 
the  best  authors,  and  for  happy  illustra- 
tions from  their  works. — Coppee,  Henry, 
1872,  English  Literature,  Considered  as 
an  Interpreter  of  English  History,  p.  370. 


His  ''Rhetoric"  is  a  very  vapid  per- 
formance compared  with  Campbell's. — 
MiNTO,  William,  1872-80,  Manual  of 
English  Prose  Literature,  p.  475. 

The  chair  of  Belles-Lettres  was  filled  by 
the  accomplished  Dr.  Hugh  Blair,  whose 
lectures  remain  one  of  the  best  samples  of 
the  correct  and  elegant,  but  narrow  and 
frigid  style,  both  of  sentiment  and  criti- 
cism, which  then  flourished  throughout 
Europe,  and  nowhere  more  than  in  Edin- 
burgh.— Shairp,  John  Campbell,  1879, 
Robert  Burns  (English  Men  of  Letters), 
p.  44. 

His  position  as  a  critic  was  improved 
by  the  publication  in  1783  of  his '  'Lectures 
on  Rhetoric  and  Belles  Lettres,"  which 
made  him  the  literary  pope  of  Scotland. — 
Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  129. 

GENERAL 
A  tiresome  critic,  in  the  French  style : 
he  w^as  placed  far  below  Johnson. — Cha- 
teaubriand, Franqois  Rene  Vicomte 
DE,  1831,  Sketches  of  English  Literature, 
vol  II,  p.  269. 

Looked  at  the  "Life  of  Hugh  Blair  ;"— 
a  stupid  book,  by  a  stupid  man,  about  a 
stupid  man.  Surely  it  is  strange  that  so 
poor  a  creature  as  Blair  should  ever  have 
had  any  literary  reputation  at  all.  The 
"Life"  is  in  that  very  vile  fashion  which 
Dugald  Stewart  set; — not  a  life,  but  a 
series  of  disquisitions  on  all  sorts  of  sub- 
jects.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington, 
1850,  Journal,  Nov,  5 ;  Life  and  Letters, 
ed.  Trevelyan. 

The  lectures  expressed  the  canons  of 
taste  of  the  time  in  which  Addison,  Pope, 
and  Swift  were  recognised  as  the  sole 
models  of  English  style,  and  are  feeble  in 
thought,  though  written  with  a  certain 
elegance  of  manner.  A  tenth  edition 
appeared  in  1806,  and  they  have  been 
translated  into  French.  The  same  quali- 
ties are  obvious  in  the  sermons,  which  for 
a  long  time  enjoyed  extraordinary  popu- 
larity. .  .  .  The  sermons  were  trans- 
lated into  many  languages,  and  until  the 
rise  of  a  new  school  passed  as  the  models 
of  the  art.  They  are  carefully  composed ; 
he  took  a  week  over  one  (Boswell's  Tour, 
ch.  iii),  and  they  are  the  best  examples 
of  the  sensible,  if  unimpassioned  and 
rather  affected,  style  of  the  moderate 


BLAIR— MA  CKNIGHT 


407 


divines  of  the  time.  They  have  gone 
through  many  editions. — Stephen,  Les- 
lie, 1886,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  V,  p.  160. 

The  only  reason  for  mentioning  Blair 
amid  so  many  of  his  betters  is  that  he  wrote 
popular  lectures  on  rhetoric,  in  which  he 
said  a  deal  about  proportioning  the  sen- 
tence, but  nothing  about  the  paragraph ; 
and  one  is  curious  to  see  if  such  men  as 
Blair,  Campbell,  and  Kames,  personally 
followed  paragraph  law.    Blair's  smooth 


Shaftesburian  style  leads  him  securely 
from  sentence  to  sentence ;  he  writes 
nearly  six  monotonous  sentences  to  the 
paragraph ;  he  follows  the  loose  order  of 
procedure  in  the  paragraph,  and  observes 
the  law  of  unity.  In  brief,  it  is  strange 
that  such  mildly  correct  rhetoricians  as 
he,  wrote  respectable  paragraphs,  but, 
amid  the  multitude  of  their  stylistic  theo- 
ries, had  no  theory  of  the  process. — 
Lewis,  Edwin  Herbert,  1894,  The  His- 
tory of  the  English  Paragraph,  p.  120. 


James  Macknight 

1721-1800 

An  eminent  Scotch  divine,  was  born  in  Ayrshire  in  1721.  He  studied  in  the 
University  of  Glasgow,  but,  like  many  of  the  Presbyterian  divines  both  of  his  own  coun- 
try and  of  England,  went  abroad,  and  finished  his  studies  at  Leyden.  On  his  return 
he  entered  the  ministry  in  the  Scotch  Church  (in  1753)  as  pastor  of  Maybole,  in  Ayr- 
shire. Here  he  spent  sixteen  years,  during  which  time  he  prepared  three  works :  "A 
Harmony  of  the  Gospels"  (Lond.  1756,  2  vols.  4to),  with  copious  illustrations,  being, 
in  fact,  a  life  of  Christ,  embracing  everything  which  the  evangelists  have  related  con- 
cerning him: — "A  New  Translation  of  the  Epistles"  (published  in  1795  in  4  vols.  4to, 
and  later  in 6  vols.  8vo.) :— and  ''Truth  of  Gospel  History"  (1763,  4to).  These  works 
were  favorably  received,  and  are  to  this  day  highly  esteemed.  The  ''Harmony"  has 
been  repeatedly  printed,  and  to  the  later  editions  there  are  added  several  dissertations 
on  curious  points  in  the  history  or  antiquities  of  the  Jews.  The  theology  of  them  is 
what  is  called  moderately  orthodox.  For  these  his  valuable  services  to  sacred  liter- 
ature Dr.  Macknight  received  the  rewards  in  the  power  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  to 
give.  The  Degree  of  D.  D.  was  conferred  upon  him  by  the  University  of  Edinburgh. 
In  1769  he  was  removed  from  Maybole  to  the  more  desirable  parish  of  Jedburgh,  and 
in  1772  he  became  one  of  the  ministers  at  Edinburgh.  Here  he  continued  for  the 
remainder  of  his  life,  useful  in  the  ministry  and  an  ornament  to  the  Church.  He  died 
Jan.  13,  1800. — Worman,  J.  H.,  1873,  Cyclopcedia  of  Biblical,  Theological  and  Eccle- 
siastical Literature,  eds.  MClintock  and  Strong,  vol.  v,  p.  624. 


PERSONAL 

I  think  I  see  his  large,  square,  bony 
visage,  his  enormous  white  wig,  girdled 
by  many  tiers  of  curls,  his  old,  snulTy 
black  clothes,  his  broad,  flat  feet,  and  his 
thread-bare  iDlue  greatcoat.  ...  He 
rarely  walked  without  reading.  His  elbows 
were  stuck,  immovably  onto  his  haunches, 
on  which  they  rested  as  brackets  and 
enabled  him  to  form  a  desk  for  his  book. 
In  this  attitude  he  shuffled  forward  (in  the 
Meadows)  at  the  rate  of  half  an  inch 
each  step ;  moving  his  rigid,  angular  bulk 
straight  forward,  without  giving  place  to 
any  person  or  thing,  or  being  aware  indeed 
that  there  was  anything  in  the  world  ex- 
cept himself  and  his  volume. — Cockburn, 
Henry  Thomas  Lord,  1854-6,  Memorials 
of  His  Time. 

An  estimable  and  learned  divine,  whose 


"Harmony  of  the  Gospels"  was  regarded 
in  its  day  as  a  marvel  of  criticism,  though 
simple  folk  wondered  that  the  doctor 
should  write  a  book  to  "make  four  men 
agree  who  never  cast  oot." — Graham, 
Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish  Men  oj  Let- 
ters in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  429. 

GENERAL 

Dr.  Macknight  closely  adheres  to  the 
principle  of  Osiander ;  but  his  paraphrase 
and  commentary  contain  so  much  useful 
information  that  his  "Harmony"  has  long 
been  regarded  as  a  standard  book  among 
divines.  It  is  in  the  lists  of  Bishops 
Watson  and  Tomline.  The  preliminary 
disquisitions  greatly  enhance  its  value. — • 
Horne,  Thomas  Hartwell,  1818-39, 
A  Manual  of  Biblical  Bibliography,  p.  133. 

This  ['^Harmony"]  is  the  most  valuable 
work  of  the  kind  in  the  English  language. 


408 


MA  CKNIGHT—STEEVENS 


Less  violence  is  done  to  the  text  of  the 
Evangelists  than  by  most  harmonies ;  and 
the  evangelical  narratives,  by  being 
minutely  compared,  often  very  happily 
illustrate  one  another.  .  .  .  His  pre- 
liminary observations  contain  useful  in- 
formation :  his  notes  are  seldom  profound : 
and  the  paraphrase  contains  sentiments 
v\7hich  do  not  accord  with  the  doctrine  of 
the  Evangelists.  .  .  .  This  is  one  of 
the  most  useful  [''Apostolical  Epistles"] 
and  one  of  the  most  dangerous  books  on 
the  New  Testament, — which  has  thrown 
considerable  light  on  the  Epistles,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  has  propagated  most  per- 
nicious views  of  their  leading  doctrines. 
.  .  .  As  a  critical  work  it  is  entitled 
to  rank  high.  .  .  .  His  notes  discover 
very  considerable  acquaintance  with  sacred 
criticism,  and,  had  they  contained  less  of 
his  erroneous  theology,  would  have  been 
very  valuable.— Orme,  William,  1824, 
Bibliotheca  Biblica. 

Nor  let  the  name  of  Macknight  be  for- 
gotten. His  works  are,  indeed,  the  more 
exclusive  property  of  the  disciplined  theo- 
logical student ;  but  the  general  reader  will 
do  well  to  secure  his  inviting  quartos  upon 
the  Gospels  and  Epistles  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. In  these  he  will  find  learning  with- 
out pedantry,  and  piety  without  enthu- 
siasm. In  short,  no  theological  collection 
can  be  perfect  without  them.  If  any  man 
may  be  said  to  have  exhausted  his  subject, 
it  is  Macknight. — Dibdin,  Thomas  Frog- 
NALL,  1824,  The  Library  Companion. 

Balmer — 'Tray,  sir,  do  you  admire 
Macknight  as  a  commentator?"  Hall  — 
"Yes,  sir,  I  do,  very  much:  I  think 
it  would  be  exceedingly  difficult,  indeed, 
to  come  after  him  in  expounding  the 
apostolic  epistles.  I  admit,  at  the  same 
time,  that  he  has  grievous  deficiencies: 
there  is  a  lamentable  want  of  spirituality 
and  elevation  about  him.    He  never  sets 


his  foot  in  the  other  world  if  he  can  get 
a  hole  to  step  into  in  this ;  and  he  never 
gives  a  passage  a  meaning  which  would 
render  it  applicable  and  useful  in  all  ages 
if  he  can  find  in  it  any  local  or  temporary 
allusion.  He  makes  fearful  havoc,  sir,  of 
the  text  on  which  you  preached  to-day. 
His  exposition  of  it  is  inimitably  absurd." 
The  text  referred  to  was  Ephesians  i.  8 : 
"Wherein  he  hath  abounded  towards  us  in 
all  wisdom  and  prudence;"  and  the  "wis- 
dom and  prudence"  are  explained  by 
Macknight,  not  of  the  wisdom  of  God  as 
displayed  in  the  scheme  of  redemption,  but 
of  the  wisdom  and  prudence  granted  to  the 
apostles  to  enable  them  to  discharge  their 
office.— Hall,  Robert,  1819-23,  Miscel- 
laneous ■  Gleanings  from  Mr,  HalVs  Con- 
versational Remarks  by  Rev.  Robert  Balmer y 
Works ^  ed.  Gregory,  vol.  VI,  p.  121. 

This  work  ["Truth  of  Gospel  History 
Shewed"]  is  admitted  by  the  best  judges 
to  be  a  performance  as  useful  and  instruct- 
ive as  any  we  have  on  that  important  sub- 
ject.—Lowndes,  William  Thomas,  1839, 
British  Librarian. 

McKnight's  "Harmony"  is  one  of  the 
standard  works  in  the  literature  of  the 
subject.  .  .  .  McKnight  on  the  "Epis- 
tles" is  also  one  of  the  standard  works 
which  every  theologian  wishes  to  have  in 
his  library.  Neither  of  these  works  is  ex- 
haustive or  final.  The  science  of  her- 
meneutics  have  made  great  advance  since 
McKnight' s  day.  Yet  they  are  works  of 
great  ability  and  of  original  research  and 
no  interpreter  even  now  can  safely  pass 
them  by  as  superseded. — Hart,  John  S., 
1872,  A  Manual  of  English  Literature, 
p.  373. 

His  style  had  little  elegance  or  orna- 
ment, but  it  is  clear  and  pertinent  to  the 
subject. — Mackintosh,  John,  1878-96, 
The  History  of  Civilisation  in  Scotland, 
vol.  IV,  p.  216. 


George  Steevens 

1736-1800 

Shakspeare  scholar ;  born  at  Stepney,  London,  May  10,  1736;  was  educated  at  King's 
College,  Cambridge ;  devoted  himself  to  Shakspearean  studies,  and  in  1766  published, 
in  4  vols.  8vo,  "Twenty  of  the  Plays  of  Shakspeare,  being  the  whole  number  printed 
in  Quarto  during  his  Lifetime,"  etc.,  which  led  to  his  association  with  Dr.  Johnson 
in  an  annotated  edition  published  in  1773  under  their  joint  names.  Afterward,  in  con- 
junction with  Issac  Reed,  he  prepared  two  new  editions  (1785  and  1793).  His  editions 
remained  the  standard  for  the  text  for  almost  fifty  years.    He  also  assisted  in  the 


GEORGE  STEEVENS 


409 


preparation  of  the  **Biographia  Dramatica,"  and  furnished  contributions  to  Nichols's 
"Biographical  Anecdotes  of  Hogarth."  Died  at  Hampstead,  Jan.  22,  1800. — Beers, 
Henry  A.,  rev.  1897,  Johnson's  Universal  Cyclopcedia,  vol.Yii,  p.  735. 


PERSONAL 

His  slaver  so  subtle  no  med'cine  allays, 
It  kills  by  kind  paragraphs,  poisons  with 
praise. 

The  "Chronicle,"  James,  but  too  truly  can 
tell 

How  the  malice  of   man  can  fetch  poison 
from  Hell. 

— Bryant,  Jacob,  1789,  Verses  to  Horace 
Walpole. 

If  we  possessed  the  secret  history  of  the 
literary  life  of  George  Steevens,  it  would 
display  an  unparalleled  series  of  arch 
deception  and  malicious  ingenuity.  He 
has  been  happily  characterized  by  Gifford, 
as ' '  the  Puck  of  Commentators !' '  Steevens 
is  a  creature  so  spotted  over  with  literary 
forgeries  and  adulterations,  that  any  re- 
markable one  about  the  time  he  flourished 
may  be  attributed  to  him.  They  were  the 
habits  of  a  depraved  mind,  and  there  was 
a  darkness  in  his  character  many  shades 
deeper  than  belonged  to  Puck ;  even  in  the 
playfulness  of  his  invention,  there  was 
usually  a  turn  of  personal  malignitj%  and 
the  real  object  was  not  so  much  to  raise 
a  laugh,  as  to  ''grin  horribly  a  ghastly 
smile,"  on  the  individual.  It  is  more 
than  rumoured,  that  he  carried  his  ingen- 
ious malignity  into  the  privacies  of  domes- 
tic life;  and  it  is  to  be  regretted,  that 
Mr.  Nichols,  who  might  have  furnished 
much  secret  history  of  this  extraordinary 
literary  forger,  has,  from  delicacy,  muti- 
lated his  collective  vigour. — Disraeli, 
Isaac,  1824,  On  Puck  the  Commentator^ 
Curiosities  of  Literature. 

I  have  elsewhere  called  Steevens  the 
Puck  of  Commentators;  and  I  know  not  that 
I  could  have  described  him  more  graphic- 
ally. Yet  in  this,  strict  justice,  I  fear,  is 
hardly  done  to  Puck.  Both  delighted  to 
mislead,  and  both  enjoyed  the  fruits  of 
their  mischievous  activity ;  but  the  frank 
and  boisterous  laugh,  the  jolly  hoh !  hoh ! 
hoh !  of  the  fairy  hobgoblin  degenerated 
in  his  follower  to  a  cold  and  malignant 
grin,  which  he  retired  to  his  cell  to  enjoy 
alone.  Steevens  was  an  acute  and  appre- 
hensive mind,  cankered  by  envy  and  de- 
based. —  Gifford,  William,  1827,  ed. 
Dramatic  Works  of  Ford,  Introduction, 
vol.  I. 

George  Steevens  and  Cumberland  .  .  . 
would  have  echoed  the  praises  of  the  man 


whom  they  envied,  and  then  have  sent  to 
the  newspapers  anonymous  libels  upon 
him.  —  Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington, 
1843,  Oliver  Goldsmith,  Critical  and  His- 
torical Essays. 

As  a  critic,  he  has  several  qualifications 
— a  scholar,  a  wit,  of  ready  perceptions,  an 
appetite  for  work,  and  not  indisposed  to 
those  antiquarian  pursuits  required  by  the 
undertaking.  He  did  not,  however,  intend 
so  wide  a  range  in  research  as  the  subject 
of  this  Memoir  had  in  view ;  nor  was  he  of 
course  so  successful.  Neither  did  he  in  a 
private  capacity  win  the  favourable  opinion 
of  contemporaries.  He  had  the  unhappy 
art  of  making  enemies.  He  is  represented 
as  sarcastic,  ill-natured,  jealous,  envious, 
self-sufficient,  and  while  occasionally  prone 
to  a  kind  of  generous  action,  quite  as  ready 
to  evince  bitter  malignity  for  small  or 
fancied  offences.  —  Prior,  Sir  James, 
1861,  Life  of  Edmond  Malone,  Editor  of 
Shakespeare,  p.  48. 

But  Steevens' s  irrepressible  saturnine 
humour  overshadowed  his  virtues.  In 
conversation,  even  with  intimates,  he  reck- 
lessly sacrificed  truth  to  cynicism.  Dr. 
Parr,  who  was  well  disposed  towards  him, 
said  he  was  one  of  the  wisest,  most  learned, 
but  most  spiteful  of  men.  Johnson,  the 
most  indulgent  of  his  friends,  admitted 
that  he  was  mischievous,  but  argued  that 
he  would  do  no  man  an  essential  injury. 
When  Lord  Mansfield  remarked  that  one 
could  only  believe  half  of  what  Steevens 
said,  the  doctor  sagely  retorted  that  no 
one  could  tell  which  half  deserved  cre- 
dence.— Lee,  Sidney,  1898,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  liv,  p.  145. 

EDITION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 
Steevens  is  a  dangerous  guide  for  such 
as  do  not  look  well  about  them.  His  errors 
are  specious ;  for  he  was  a  man  of  ingenu- 
ity :  but  he  w^as  often  wantonly  mischiev- 
ous, and  delighted  to  stumble  for  the  mere 
gratification  of  dragging  unsuspecting  in- 
nocents into  the  mire  with  him.  He 
was,  in  short,  the  very  Puck  of  com- 
mentators.—  Gifford,  William,  1811, 
Ford's  Dramatic  Works,  Quarterly  Review, 
vol.  6,  p.  478. 

The  sources  whence  they  drew  their 
waters  were  muddy ;  and  Steevens,  who 


410 


GEORGE  STEEVENS 


affected  more  gayety  in  his  chains  than  his 
brothers  in  the  Shakespearian  galley,  with 
bitter  derision  reproached  his  great  coad- 
jutor Malone,  whom  he  looked  on  with 
the  evil  eye  of  rivalry  for  drawing  his 
knowledge  from  ''books  too  mean  to  be 
formally  quoted."  The  commentators 
have  encumbered  the  poet,  who  often  has 
been  but  a  secondary  object  of  their 
lucubrations ;  for  they  not  only  write  notes 
on  Shakespeare,  but  notes,  and  bitter  ones 
too,  on  one  another.  This  commentary 
has  been  turned  into  a  gymnasium  for  the 
public  sports  of  friendly  and  of  unfriendly 
wrestlers ;  where  some  have  been  so  earn- 
est, that  it  is  evident,  that,  in  measuring 
a^cast,  they  congratulated  themselves  in 
the  language  of  Orlando:  "If  ever  he 
goes  alone  again,  I'll  never  wrestle  for 
prize  more." — Disraeli,  Isaac,  1841, 
Shakespeare,  Amenities  of  Literature. 

And  this  then  is  the  text  of  Shakspere 
that  England  has  rejoiced  in  for  half  a 
century !  These  are  the  labours,  whether 
of  correction  or  of  critical  opinion,  that 
have  made  Shakspere  ''popular."  The 
critical  opinions  have  ceased,  we  believe, 
to  have  any  effect  except  amongst  a  few 
pedantic  persons,  who  fancy  that  it  is 
cleverer  to  dispraise  than  to  admire.  But 
the  text  as  corrupted  by  Steevens  is  that 
which  is  generally  put  into  the  hands  of  the 
readers  of  Shakspere.  The  number  of  the 
editions  of  the  text  alone  of  Shakspere 
printed  during  the  present  century  is  by 
no  means  inconsiderable ;  and  of  these  edi- 
tions, which  are  constantly  multiplying, 
there  are  many  thousand  copies  year  by 
year  supplying  the  large  and  increasing 
demand  for  a  knowledge  of  our  greatest 
poet.  With  very  few  exceptions,  indeed, 
all  these  editions  are  copies  of  some  edition 
whose  received  text  is  considered  as  a 
standard — even  the  copying  of  typograph- 
ical errors.  That  received  text,  to  use 
the  words  of  the  title-page  of  what  is  called 
the  trade  edition,  is,  "From  the  text  of 
the  corrected  copies  left  by  the  late  George 
Steevens,  Esq.,  and  Edmund  Malone,  Esq." 
If  we  were  to  suppose,  from  this  title,  that 
Steevens  and  Malone  had  agreed  together 
to  leave  a  text  for  the  benefit  of  posterity, 
we  should  be  signally  deceived.  The  re- 
ceived text  is  that  produced  by  Steevens, 
when  he  fancied  himself  "at  liberty  to  re- 
store some  apparent  meaning  to  Shaks- 
pere's  corrupted  lines,  and  a  decent  flow 


to  his  obstructed  versification."  Malone 
was  walking  in  his  own  track,  that  of  ex- 
treme caution,  and  an  implicit  reliance  on 
the  very  earliest  copies.  The  text  of  his 
edition  of  1821,  though  deformed  with 
abundant  marks  of  carelessness,  is  an 
honest  text,  if  we  admit  the  principle 
upon  which  it  is  founded.  But  the 
text  of  Steevens,  in  which  the  peculiar 
versification  of  Shakspere,  especially 
its  freedom,  its  vigour,  its  variety  of 
pause,  its  sweetness,  its  majesty,  are 
sacrificed  to  what  he  called  "polished 
versification, "  has  been  received  for  nearly 
half  a  century  as  the  standard  text. — ■ 
Knight,  Charles,  1849,  Studies  of  Shaks- 
pere, p.  551. 

Steevens  is  one  of  the  most  acute  and 
accomplished  of  Shakespeare's  commenta- 
tors ;  but  rarely  have  abilities  and  acquire- 
ments been  put  to  more  unfruitful  use. 
To  show  his  ability  to  suggest ' '  ingenious' ' 
readings,  he  wantonly  rejected  the  obvi- 
ous significance  of  the  text,  and  perverted 
the  author's  meaning,  or  destroyed  the  in- 
tegrity of  his  work.  He  was  witty,  and 
not  only  launched  his  shafts  at  his  fellow- 
commentators,  but  turned  them  against  his 
author,  and,  most  intolerable  of  all,  at- 
tempted to  substitute  his  own  smartness 
for  Shakespeare's  humor.  He  had  an  ac- 
curate— mechanically  accurate — ear,  and 
ruthlessly  mutilated,  or  patched  up  Shakes- 
peare's lines  to  a  uniform  standard  of  ten 
syllables. — White,  Richard  Grant,  1854, 
Shakespeare's  Scholar,  p.  18, 

The  main  business  of  Steevens's  life  was 
the  systematic  study  and  annotation  of 
Shakespeare's  works.  .  .  .  The  younger 
man  brought  to  his  task  exceptional  dili- 
gence, method,  and  antiquarian  knowledge 
of  literature.  His  illustrative  quotations 
from  rare  contemporary  literature  were 
apter  and  more  abundant  than  any  to  be 
met  with  elsewhere.  But  his  achievement 
exhibited  ingrained  defects  of  taste  and 
temper.  He  spoke  scornfully  of  the 
labours  of  many  predecessors,  and  espe- 
cially of  those  of  Edward  Capell,  one  of  the 
most  capable. — Lee,  Sidney,  1898,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  Liv, 
p.  144. 

GENERAL 
This  gentleman,  whose  memory  will  be 
handed  down  to  posterity  as  long  as  com- 
mentaries on  Shakspeare  exist,  followed 
his  usual  mode  of  conduct  with  respect  to 


STEEVENS— ROBINSON 


411 


the  fabricated 'manuscripts:  he  did  not 
boldly  enter  the  lists;  but,  like  a  mole, 
worked  in  secret;  and,  when  occasion 
served,  stung  with  the  subtlety  of  a  viper. 
— Whether  this  gentleman  lent  his  friendly 
aid  to  Mr.  Malone,  in  the  course  of  his  In- 
quiry, I  will  not  pretend  to  say,  though  I 
rather  conceive,  that  upon  that  occasion, 
the  rival  commentators,  like  the  two  kings 
of  Brentford,  "smelt  at  one  nosegay, ' '  and 


buried  their  private  feelings  in  the  general 

attempt  to  crush  that  which  would  have 
proved  so  many  of  their  labours  of  non 
effect  had  it  passed  current  with  the 
world.— Ireland,  William  Henry,  1805, 
Confessions,  p.  227. 

He  was  acute  and  well  read  in  dramatic 
literature,  but  prone  to  literary  mystifica- 
tion and  deception. — Chambers,  Robert, 
1876,  Cyclopcedia  of  English  Literature. 


Mary  Robinson 

1758-1800 

Mary  Robinson,  also  called  Maria,  1758-1800,  the  daughter  of  an  American  sea- 
captain  named  Darby,  but  a  native  of  Bristol,  England,  was  married  at  fifteen  to  Mr. 
Robinson,  whose  pecuniary  difficulties  caused  his  wife  to  try  her  fortune  on  the  stage. 
Whilst  performing  in  the  character  of  Perdita  (a  name  which  she  subsequently  assumed 
in  amatory  correspondence),  she  attracted  the  attention  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
(afterwards  George  IV.),  then  in  his  18th  year.  An  intimacy  of  two  years  with  this 
person  was  followed  by  one  equally  reprehensible  with  an  officer  of  the  army.  She 
pub.  a  vol.  of  'Toems"  in  1775,  8vo;  Captivity,  a  Poem,  and  Celadon  and  Lydia,  a 
Tale,"  1777,  4to;  2  more  vols,  of  Poems,"  8vo,  in  1791 ;  a  number  of  single  poems, 
novels,  plays,  pamphlets,  &c.,  between  1775  and  1799;  and  "The  False  Friend,"  1799 
4  vols,  12mo.  "The  Effusions  of  Love, "  purporting  to  be  her  correspondence  with 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  was  pub.  in  177 — ,  8vo;  her  "Lyrical  Tales"  appeared  in  1800, 
cr.  8vo;  her  "Memoirs,"  written  by  herself,  were  pub.  after  her  death  in  1801,  4 
vols.  12mo.  (also  1826,  12mo;  and  again  with  Charlotte  Clarke's  "Autobiographv," 
18mo.  and  12mo) ;  her  "Poems,"  1803,  2  vols,  12mo;  and  the  "Poetical  Works  of  the 
late  Mrs.  Robinson,  now  first  collected,"  were  pub.  by  her  daughter,  Mary  Robinson, 
in  1806,  3  vols.  p.  8vo.  —  Allibone,  S.  Austin,  1870,  Critical  Dictionary  of  English 
Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  1839. 


PERSONAL 

Charles  Fox  is  languishing  at  the  feet 
of  Mrs.  Robinson.  George  Selwyn  says, 
"Who  should  the  Man  of  the  People  live 
with,  but  with  the  Woman  of  the  People  ?  " 
— Walpole,  Horace,  1782,  To  the  Earl 
of  Harcourt,  Sept.  7 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunning- 
ham, vol.  VIII,  p.  276. 
So  melting  is  thy  lute's  soft  tone, 

Each  breast  unused  to  feel  desire. 
Confesses  bliss  before  unknown. 

And  kindles  at  the  sacred  fire ! 
So  cliaste,  so  eloquent  thy  song. 

So  true  each  precept  it  conveys, 
That  e'en  the  Sage  shall  teach  the  Young 

To  take  their  lesson  from  thy  lays. 
And  when  thy  pen's  delightful  art 

Paints  with  soft  touch  Love's  tender  flame ; 
Thy  verse  so  melts  and  mends  the  heart, 

Tliat,  taught  by  thee,  we  prize  his  name. 
— BuRGOYNE,  Gen.  John,  1791,  To  Mrs. 
Robinson. 

Farewell  to  the  nymph  of  my  heart ! 

Farewell  to  the  cottage  and  vine ! 

From  these,  with  a  tear,  I  depart. 

Where  pleasure  so  often  was  nwie. 


Remembrance  shall  dwell  on  her  smile, 

And  dwell  on  her  lute  and  her  song ; 

That  sweetly  my  hours  to  beguile, 

Oft  echoed  the  valleys  along. 

Once  more  the  fair  scene  let  me  view. 

The  grotto,  the  brook,  and  the  grove. 

Dear  valleys,  for  ever  adieu ! 

Adieu  to  the  Daughter  of  Love ! 
— Wolcot,  John,  1800,  A  Pastoral  Elegy 
on  the  Death  of  Mrs.  Robinson. 

*'Nay,  but  thou  dost  not  know  her  might, 
The  pinions  of  her  soul,  how  strong! 
But  many  a  stranger  in  my  height 
Hath  sung  to  me  her  magic  song. 

Sending  forth  his  ecstasy 

In  her  divinest  melody, 
And  hence  I  know  her  soul  is  free. 
She  is,  where'er  she  wills  to  be, 

Unfetter'd  by  mortality! 

Now  to  'the  haunted  beach'  can  fly, 
Beside  the  threshold  scourg'd  with  waves, 
Now  where  the  maniac  wildly  raves, 

Pale  Moon,  thou  spectre  of  the  ski/ ! 
No  wind  tliat  hurries  o'er  my  height 
Can  travel  with  so  swift  a  flight. 

I  too,  methinks,  might  merit 

The  presence  of  her  spirit ! 


412 


MARY  ROBINSON 


To  me  too  might  belong 
The  honour  of  her  song  and  witching  melody, 

Which  most  resembles  me, 

Soft,  various,  and  sublime, 

Exempt  from  wrongs  of  time!  " 
Thus  spake  the  mighty  mount,  and  I 
Made  answer,  with  a  deep  drawn  sigh: — 
"Thou  ancient  Skiddaw!  by  this  tear, 
I  would,  I  would,  that  she  were  here!" 

—Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1800,  A 
Stranger  Minstrel. 

Deathless  was  to  be  the  young  Prince's 
love,  and  his  munificence  was  to  be  equal 
to  his  truth.  In  proof  of  the  latter,  he 
gave  her  a  bond  for  £20,000,  to  be  paid 
to  her  on  his  coming  of  age.  In  a  few 
months  he  attained  his  majority,  refused  to 
pay  the  money,  and  made  no  secret  to  the 
lady  of  his  deathless  love  having  altogether 
died  out.  He  passed  her  in  the  park, 
affecting  not  to  know  her ;  and  the  spirited 
young  woman,  who  had  given  up  a  lucra- 
tive profession  for  his  sake,  flung  a  remark 
at  him,  in  her  indignation,  that  ought  to 
have  made  him  blush,  had  he  been  to  that 
manner  born.  However,  she  was  not  alto- 
gether abandoned.  The  patriotic  Whig 
statesman,  Charles  Fox,  obtained  for  the 
Prince's  cast-off  favourite  an  annuity  of 
£300, — out  of  the  pockets  of  a  tax-paying 
people !  .  .  .  There  was  good  in  this 
hapless  creature.  Throughout  life,  she 
was  the  loving  and  helping  child  of  her 
mother,  the  loving  and  helpful  mother  of 
her  child,  for  both  of  whom  she  laboured 
ungrudgingly,  to  the  last.  Hannah  More, 
herself,  would  not  harshly  construe  the 
conduct  of  her  pupil.  *'I  make  the  great- 
est allowance  for  inexperience  and  novel 
passions,"  was  the  comment  of  Horace 
Walpole.  **Poor  Perdita!"  said  Mrs. 
Siddons,  ^*I  pity  her  from  my  very  heart !" 
— Dor  AN,  John,  1863,  Annals  of  the  Eng- 
lish Stage,  vol,  ii,  p.  214. 

The  actress  had  made  great  way  in 
public  favour — she  was  becoming  a  favour- 
ite with  the  town.  She  was  not  powerful, 
perhaps,  but  she  was  certainly  pleasing ; 
not  a  great  artist  but  a  very  graceful  one. 
She  could  not  take  the  public  by  storm ; 
but  she  could  win  them  gradually,  holding 
them  just  as  securely  at  last.  It  was 
difficult  to  resist  the  beauty  of  her  face 
and  form — the  charm  of  her  voice.  More 
than  these  was  not  required  in  many  of 
her  characters.  She  had  no  genius,  but 
she  had  a  cultivated  cleverness  which  did 
nearly  as  ;_weli.    She  was  very  lovely. 


dressed  beautifully,  could  be  arch  and 
sparkling,  or  tender  and  pathetic.  The 
good-natured  audience  demanded  no  more 
— they  gave  her  their  hands  and  hearts 
without  further  question,  thundering  their 
applause.— Cook,  Dutton,  1865-81,  Poor 
Perdita,  Hours  with  the  Players,  vol.  i,  p.  73. 

Of  all  the  black  spots  that  rest  upon 
the  character  of  this  prince,  there  are  few 
blacker  than  his  treatment  of  this  un- 
fortunate lady ;  and  how  little  blame  was 
considered  to  attach  to  her,  by  those  whom 
envy  and  malice  did  not  render  partial 
judges,  is  proved  by  the  sympathy  and 
friendship  which  she  obtained  from  many 
persons  of  high  standing  in  society. — 
Baker,  Henry  Barton,  1879,  English 
Actors  from  Shakespeare  to  Macready,  vol. 
II,  p.  95. 

GENERAL 
As  an  authoress,  she  displays  very  con- 
siderable powers,  but,  being  one  of  the 
Delia  Cruscan  school,  she  was  mercilessly 
attacked  by  Gifford.— Rowton,  Frederic, 
1848,  The  Female  Poets  of  Great  Britain, 
p.  166. 

There  were  in  her  day  many  admirers  of 
her  writings,  though  they  have  since  sunk 
into  comparative  f orgetf ulness,  and  justly, 
as  they  are  not  characterized  by  merit 
sufficient  to  warrant  praise. — Bethune, 
George  W.,  1848,  The  British  Female 
Poets,  p.  85. 

Perdita  was  not  idle ;  she  wrote  poems 
and  novels :  the  former,  tender  in  senti- 
ment and  expression ;  the  latter,  not  with- 
out power  and  good  sense.  She  had  under- 
taken to  supply  the  Morning  Post  with 
poetry,  when  she  died. — Doran,  John, 
1863,  Annals  of  the  English  Stage,  vol.  ii, 
p.  214. 

As  an  author  she  was  credited  in  her 
own  day  with  the  feeling,  taste,  and  ele- 
gance, and  was  called  the  English  Sappho. 
Some  of  her  songs,  notably  Bounding 
Billow,  cease  thy  motion,"  Lines  to  him 
who  well  understood  them,"  and  **The 
Haunted  Beach, ' '  enjoyed  much  popularity 
in  the  drawing-room;  but  though  her 
verse  has  a  certain  measure  of  facility,  it 
appears,  to  modern  tastes,  jejune,  affected, 
and  inept.  Wolcott  (Peter  Pindar)  and 
others  belauded  her  in  verse,  celebrating 
her  graces,  which  were  real,  and  her 
talents,  which  were  imaginary. — Knight, 
Joseph,  1897,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xlix,  p.  33. 


413 


Charles  Johnstone 

1719?-180U? 

Charles  Johnstone,  novelist,  descended  from  branch  of  the  Johnstones  of  Annan- 
dale,  Dumfriesshire,  born  at  Carrigogunnel  in  the  county  of  Limerick  about  1719, 
was  educated  in  the  university  of  Dublin,  where,  however,  he  does  not  appear  to  have 
taken  a  degree.  He  was  called  to  the  bar,  but  extreme  deafness  prevented  his  practice 
except  as  a  chamber  lawyer,  and  not  succeeding  in  that  branch  of  the  profession,  he  had 
recourse  to  literature  for  his  support.  His  chief  work,  entitled  ''Chrysal,  or  the 
Adventures  of  a  Guinea,"  and  frequently  reprinted,  appeared  in  4  vols.,  London, 
1760-5.  The  first  and  second  volumes  had  been  written  during  a  visit  to  the  Earl  of 
Mount-Edgcumbe  in  Devonshire.  The  book  pretended  to  reveal  political  secrets,  and 
to  expose  the  profligacy  of  well-known  public  characters.  It  soon  attracted  attention 
as ''the  best  scandalous  chronicle  of  the  day."  In  May  1782  Johnstone  sailed  for 
India,  and  very  narrowly  escaped  death  by  shipwreck  on  the  voyage.  He  found  em- 
ployment in  writing  for  the  Bengal  newspaper  press,  under  the  signature  of  "Oneir- 
opolos."  He  became  in  time  joint  proprietor  of  a  journal,  and  is  said  to  have  acquired 
considerable  property.  He  died  at  Calcutta  about  1800.  Johnstone  was  also  the 
author  of  1.  ''The  Reverie,  or  a  Flight  to  the  Paradise  of  Fools,"  2  vols.  London, 
1762.  2.  "The  History  of  Arbases,  Prince  of  Betlis,"  2  vols.  1774.  3.  "The 
Pilgrim,  or  a  Picture  of  Life,"  2  vols.  1775.  4.  "History  of  John  Juniper,  Esq., 
aZias  Juniper  Jack, "  3  vols.  1781. — Blacker,  B.  H.,  1892,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xxx,  p.  73. 


GENERAL 

His  talents  were  of  a  lively  and  com- 
panionable sort,  and  as  he  was  much  abroad 
in  the  world,  he  had  already,  in  his  youth, 
kept  such  general  society  with  men  of  all 
descriptions,  as  enabled  him  to  trace  their 
vices  and  follies  with  a  pencil  so  power- 
ful. .  .  .  His  language  is  firm  and 
energetic — his  power  of  personifying 
character  striking  and  forcible,  and  the 
persons  of  his  narrative  move,  breathe,  and 
speak,  in  all  the  freshness  of  life.  His 
sentiments  are,  in  general,  those  of  the 
bold,  high-minded,  and  indignant  censor  of 
a  loose  and  corrupted  age.  .  .  .  Feeling 
and  writing  under  the  popular  impression 
of  the  moment,  Johnstone  has  never  failed 
to  feel  and  write  like  a  true  Briton,  with 
a  sincere  admiration  of  his  country's  laws, 
an  ardent  desire  for  her  prosperity,  and 
a  sympathy  with  her  interests,  which  more 
than  atone  for  every  error  and  prejudice. 
— Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1821,  Charles 
Johnstone. 

As  Dr.  Johnson — to  whom  the  manu- 
script was  shewn  by  the  bookseller — ad- 
vised the  publication  of  the  "Adventures 
of  a  Guinea,"  and  as  it  experienced  con- 
siderable success,  the  novel  may  be  pre- 
sumed to  have  possessed  superior  merit. 
It  exhibits  a  variety  of  incidents,  related 
in  the  style  of  Le  Sage  and  Smollett,  but 
the  satirical  portraits  are  overcharged, 
and  the  author,  like  Juvenal,  was  too  fond 


of  lashing  and  exaggerating  the  vices  of 
his  age.— Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cydo- 
pcedia  of  English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

A  depraved  mind  only  could  find  any 
pleasure  in  reading  "Chrysal,"  and  who- 
ever is  obliged  to  read  it  from  cover  to 
cover  for  the  purpose  of  describing  it  to 
others,  must  find  himself,  at  the  end  of  his 
task,  in  sore  vexation  of  spirit.  Human 
depravity  is  never  an  agreeable  subject 
for  a  work  of  entertainment,  and  while 
Swift's  genius  holds  the  reader  fascinated 
with  the  horror  of  his  Yahoos,  the  ability 
of  a  Manley  or  a  Johnstone  is  not  sufficient 
to  aid  the  reader  in  wading  through  their 
vicious  expositions  of  corruption.  It 
must  be  said  that  Johnstone  had  some  ex- 
cuse. If  he  were  to  satirize  society  at 
all,  it  was  better  that  he  should  do  it 
thoroughly ;  that  he  should  expose  official 
greed  and  dishonesty,  the  orgies  of 
Medenham  Abbey,  the  infamous  extortions 
of  trading  justices,  in  all  their  native  ugli- 
ness. It  must  be  said  that  the  time  in 
which  he  lived  presented  many  features  to 
the  painter  of  manners  which  could  not 
look  otherwise  than  repulsive  on  his  can- 
vas. But  his  zeal  to  expose  the  vices  of 
his  age  led  him  into  doing  great  injustice 
to  some  persons,  and  into  grossly  libelling 
others.  He  imputed  crimes  to  individuals 
of  which  he  could  have  had  no  knowledge ; 
and  he  shamefully  misrepresented  the 
Methodists  and  the  Jews.    If  Johnstone 


414 


JOHNSTONE— ORME  • 


had  wished  to  see  how  offensive  a  book  he 
might  write,  and  how  disgusting  and  in- 
decent a  book  the  public  of  his  day  would 
read  and  applaud,  he  might  well  have 
brought  ''Chrysal"  into  the  world.  If  he 
had  intended,  by  exposing  crime,  to  check 
it,  he  had  better  have  burned  his  manu- 
script. He  has  added  one  other  corruption 
to  those  he  exposed,  and  one  other  evi- 
dence of  the  lack  of  taste  and  decency 


which  characterized  his  time.— Tucker- 
man,  Bayard,  1882,  A  History  of  Prose 
Fiction,  p.  240. 

This  savage  and  gloomy  book,  which, 
perhaps,  took  its  form  from  a  reminiscence 
of  Addison's  "Adventures  of  a  Shilling," 
in  the  Tattler,  was  a  very  clever  follow- 
ing of  Smollett  in  his  most  satiric  mood. 
— GossE,  Edmund,  1888,  A  History  of 
Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  p,  271. 


Robert  Orme 

1728-1801 

Author  of  a  ''History  of  British  India,"  was  the  son  of  John  Orme,  surgeon  in 
Bombay,  and  was  born  at  Anjengo,  Travancore,  in  June  1728.  He  w^as  sent  to  Harrow 
school  in  1736,  and  in  1742  to  a  school  near  London  to  obtain  an  education  preparing 
him  for  commercial  pursuits.  In  1744  he  became  a  clerk  in  the  East  India  Company's 
service  in  Calcutta.  In  1752  he  went  to  Madras,  and  in  the  following  year  he  returned 
home  with  Lord  Clive,  with  whom  he  lived  on  terms  of  close  intimacy.  His  knowledge 
of  Indian  affairs  gave  him  considerable  influence  with  the  company.  Returning  to 
Madras  in  1755,  he  was  appointed  a  member  of  the  council,  and  in  this  position  took 
an  active  part  in  directing  the  military  operations  in  the  Carnatic  in  1755-59.  By 
the  court  of  directors  he  was  appointed  to  succeed  Lord  Pigot  in  the  government  of 
Madras,  and  in  1757-59  he  was  commissary-general.  In  the  latter  year  bad  health 
compelled  him  to  quit  India,  and  he  took  up  his  residence  in  London,  where  he  occupied 
himself  in  writing  a  ''History  of  the  Military  Transactions  of  the  British  Nation  in 
Indostan  from  1745,"  the  first  volume  appearing  in  1763,  the  second  in  1775,  and  the 
third  in  1778.  In  acknowledgment  of  his  services  he  was  appointed  historiographer 
to  the  East  India  Company  with  a  salary  of  £400  a  year.  In  1770  he  was  chosen  a 
fellow  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries.  He  died  at  Ealing  13th  January  1801. — Baynes, 
Thomas  Spencer,  ed.,  1884,  The  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  vol.  xvii,  p.  853. 


PERSONAL 

A  bust  of  Orme  at  the  age  of  forty-six, 
made  in  1774  by  J.  Nollekens,  R.  A.,  was 
bequeathed  to  the  East  India  Company ;  an 
engraving  of  it  forms  the  frontispiece  to 
Orme's" Historical  Fragments,"  ed.  1805. 
His  face  is  described  as  expressing  shrewd- 
ness and  intelligence.  Orme  bad  a  taste 
for  painting  and  sculpture,  and  was  a  lover 
of  Handel.— Wroth,  Warwick,  1895, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol.  xui, 
p.  257. 

HISTORY  OF  BRITISH  INDIA 

1763-78 

Orme,  inferior  to  no  English  historian 
in  style  and  power  of  painting,  is  minute 
even  to  tediousness.  In  one  volume  he 
allots,  on  an  average,  a  closely-printed 
quarto  page  to  the  events  of  every  forty- 
eight  hours.  The  consequence  is  that  his 
narrative,  though  one  of  the  most  authentic 
and  one  of  the  most  finely  written  in  our 
language,  has  never  been  very  popular,  and 
is  now  scarcely  ever  read. — Macaulay, 


Thomas  Babington,  1840,  Sir  John  Mai- 
corn's  Life  of  Lord  Clive,  Edinburgh  Re- 
view;  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays, 

Colonel  Newcome's  favourite  work. — 
Thackeray,  William  Makepeace,  1854- 
5,  The  Newcomes. 

As  a  writer,  he  had  formed  his  taste  in 
the  school  of  Robertson.  He  had  some 
imagination,  much  clearness,  a  pure  dic- 
tion, and  many  agreeable  qualities.  He 
was  truthful,  accurate^  and  desirous  in 
every  particular  to  avoid  exaggeration, 
and  to  prepare  a  reliable  narrative  of  a 
series  of  remarkable  events.  .  .  .  Orme's 
style,  manner,  and  subject  seem  to  have 
delighted  his  contemporaries.  Robertson 
and  Sir  William  Jones  unite  in  praising 
them  highly,  and  Sterne  speaks  in  graceful 
praise,  in  a  letter  to  his  daughter,  of  Mr. 
Orme's  agreeable  History.  Although  he 
was  no  philosopher,  nor  gifted  with  any 
remarkable  learning  or  originality,  he  was 
honest,  truthful,  and  sincere  Some  of 
his  descriptions,  too,  are  written  with  a 


ORME—  WA  KEFIELD 


415 


simplicity  and  natural  power  that  remind  Accurate  and    perspicuous.  —  Craik, 

one  strongly  of  Herodotus.— Lawrence,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Compendious  History 

Eugene,  1855,  Lives  of  the  British  His-  of  English  Literature  and  of  the  English 

torians,  vol.  ii,  pp.  314,  316.  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  360. 


Gilbert  Wakefield 

1756-1801 

English  divine;  born  at  Nottingham,  Feb.  22,  1756;  died  in  London,  Sept.  9,  1801. 
He  was  graduated  at  Cambridge,  1776,  obtained  a  fellowship ;  took  holy  orders,  left 
(1786),  and  violently  assailed  the  Established  Church.  He  joined  no  other  communion. 
From  1779  to  1783  he  was  classical  tutor  in  the  dissenting  academy  at  Warrington, 
and  for  a  year  (1790-91)  the  same  in  the  dissenting  academy  at  Hackney.  His  later 
views  were  Unitarian.  Gentle  in  domestic  life,  he  yet  was  acrimonious  in  controversy. 
He  published  editions  of  Bion  and  Moschus,  Virgil  and  Lucretius,  and  many  original 
books,  of  which  may  be  mentioned,  *'An  enquiry  into  the  opinions  of  the  Christian 
writers  of  the  three  first  centuries  concerning  the  person  of  Christ,"  London,  1784, 
(only  vol.  1  printed) ;  ''Enquiry  into  the  expediency  and  propriety  of  social  worship," 
1791  (in  which  he  takes  strong  ground  against  it) ;  ''Translations  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment," 1791,  3  vols.  (2d.  ed.,  1795,  2  vols,  reprinted,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  1820),  "An 
examination  of  the  Age  of  Reason,  by  Thomas  Paine, "  1794.— Shafp-Herzog,  eds., 
1883,  Religious  Encyclopcedia,  vol.  iii,  p.  2470. 


PERSONAL 

I  was  introduced  into  this  planet  on 
February  22,  1756,  in  the  parsonage  house 
of  St.  Nicholas,  in  Nottingham,  of  which 
church  my  father  was  rector.  .  .  . 
From  my  earliest  infancy  I  was  endowed 
with  affections  unusually  composed,  with 
a  disposition  grave  and  serious.  I  was  in- 
spired from  the  first  with  a  most  ardent 
desire  of  knowledge,  such  as  I  believe  hath 
never  been  surpassed  in  any  breast,  nor 
for  a  moment  impaired  in  mine.  .  .  . 
At  the  age  of  three  years,  I  could  spell  the 
longest  words,  say  my  catechism  without 
hesitation,  and  read  the  gospels  with  flu- 
ency.— Wakefield,  Gilbert,  1772,  Auto- 
biography. 

He  had  the  pale  complexion  and  mild 
features  of  a  saint,  was  a  most  gentle 
creature  in  domestic  life,  and  a  very 
amiable  man;  but  when  he  took  part  in 
political  or  religious  controversy,  his  pen 
was  dipped  in  gall. — Robinson,  Henry 
Crabbe,  1799,  Diary,  Reminiscences  and 
Correspondence. 

Porson  was  never  at  any  pains  to  conceal 
his  extreme  contempt  for  Wakefield. 
There  was  at  one  time  a  seeming  sort  of 
friendly  communication ;  but  whilst  Wake- 
field aimed  at  being  thought  on  a  level  with 
Porson  in  point  of  attainments,  this  latter 
must  unavoidably  have  felt  the  conscious- 
ness of  his  own  great  superiority. — Indeed, 
the  difference  between  them  was  immense. 


Without  disparagement  to  Wakefield,  his 
warmest  advocates  must  acknowledge, 
that  although  he  formed  his  opinions 
hastily,  he  never  failed  to  vindicate  them 
with  peremptory  decision.  In  consequence 
of  this  eagerness  and  haste,  his  criticisms 
were  frequently  erroneous,  and  his  con- 
clusions false;  neither,  if  detected  in 
error,  would  his  pride  allow  him  either  to 
confess,  or  retract  his  fault. — Beloe, 
William,  1817,  The  Sexagenarian,  vol.  i, 
p.  222. 

He  did  himself  less  than  justice  in  his 
writings;  but  his  private  life  was  spot- 
lessly pure,  pre-eminently  true,  and  great 
in  qualities  which  only  those  who  knew 
him  intimately  and  enjoyed  his  friendship 
had  the  opportunity  of  knowing.  It  con- 
veys a  disagreeable  impression  of  himself 
in  his  autobiography  (a  work  now  almost 
unknown),  but  this  impression  those  who 
loved  him  declare  to  be  quite  a  false  one, 
due  only  to  his  unfortunate  manner  of  ex- 
pressing himself  and  a  want  of  moderation 
and  judgment.  That  stern  obedience  to 
conscience  which,  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, brought  him  to  Dorchester  Goal, 
would  certainly,  in  the  fifteenth,  have 
gained  him  a  martyr's  death;  since  he 
never  hesitated  for  a  moment  to  sacrifice 
what  he  held  most  dear  to  his  intense  and 
ardent  conviction  of  truth. — AIartix, 
Mary  E.,1883,  Memories  of  Seventy  Years, 
by  One  of  a  Literary  Family,  p.  176. 


416 


GILBERT  WAKEFIELD 


■ 


GENERAL 


Wakefield  possesses  exquisite  taste  and 
a  most  luxuriant  fancy,  as  a  critic ;  and 
one  grieves  that  he  should  ever  have  mis- 
applied his  powers  to  politics  and  religion. 
—Green,  Thomas,  1779-1810,  Diary  of 
a  Lover  of  Literature. 

His  ravages  on  Virgil  and  Horace,  in 
his  late  editions  of  them  are  often  as 
shocking  to  taste  as  to  truth. — Mathias, 
Thomas  James,  1797,  The  Pursuits  of  Lit- 
erature, Eighth  ed.,  p.  113,  note. 

The  late  Gilbert  Wakefield  is  an  instance 
where  the  political  and  theological  opin- 
ions of  a  recluse  student  tainted  his  pure 
literary  works.  Condemned  as  an  enraged 
Jacobin  by  those  who  were  Unitarians  in 
politics,  and  rejected  because  he  was  a 
Unitarian  in  religion  by  the  orthodox,  poor 
Wakefield's  literary  labours  were  usually 
reduced  to  the  value  of  waste-paper.  We 
smile,  but  half  in  sorrow,  in  reading  a  letter, 
where  he  says,  "I  meditate  a  beginning 
during  the  winter,  of  my  criticisms  on  all 
the  ancient  Greek  and  Latin  authors,  by 
small  piece-meals,  on  the  cheapest  possible 
paper,  and  at  the  least  possible  expense  of 
printing.  As  I  can  never  do  more  than 
barely  indemnify  myself,  I  shall  print  only 
250  copies."  He  half  ruined  himself  by 
his  splendid  edition  of  Lucretius,  which 
could  never  obtain  even  common  patronage 
from  the  opulent  friends  of  classical  litera- 
ture. Since  his  death  it  has  been  re- 
printed, and  is  no  doubt  now  a  marketable 
article  for  the  bookseller;  so  that  if  some 
authors  are  not  successful  for  themselves, 
it  is  a  comfort  to  think  how  useful, 
in  a  variety  of  shapes,  they  are  made 
so  to  others.  Even  Gilbert's  "contracted 
scheme  of  publication"  he  was  compelled 
to  abandon !  Yet  the  classic  erudition  of 
Wakefield  was  confessed,  and  is  still  re- 
membered.— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1814,  Po- 
litical Criticism,  Quarrels  of  Authors,  note. 

The  design  of  Mr.  Wakefield  in  the  plan 
of  this  work  ["Silva  Critica"]  was  the 
union  of  theological  and  classical  learn- 
ing,— the  illustration  of  the  Scriptures  by 
light  borrowed  from  the  philology  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  as  a  probable  method 
of  recommending  the  books  of  revelation 
to  scholars. —HoRNE,  Thomas  Hartwell, 
1818-39,  A  Manual  of  Biblical  Bibliog- 
raphy. 

Some  of  the  emendations  [''Silva 
Critica"]  are  too  conjectural,  and  discover 


the  natural  boldness  of  the  author;  but 
his  criticisms  often  afford  a  clear  and 
happy  solution  of  difficulties  which  have 
hitherto  proved  insuperable.  The  com- 
plete work  is  now  become  scarce. — Orme, 
William,  1824,  Bibliotheca  Biblica. 

A  scholar,  and  an  ardent  and  multifa- 
rious one,  Gilbert  Wakefield  undoubtedly 
was ;  but,  with  his  talents  and  attainments, 
we  regret  that  a  more  elegant  and  interest- 
ing air  is  not  given  to  the  pages  of  his 
biography :  and  while  the  sincerity  of  his 
religious  principles,  and  the  integrity  of 
his  private  life,  cannot  fail  to  be  readily 
admitted,  it  must  be  regretted  that  these 
excellent  qualities  did  not  produce  a  more 
placable  temper  in  argument,  and  a  more 
peaceful  tone  in  literary  and  political  con- 
troversies. Why  should  human  beings, 
gifted  as  was  Gilbert  Wakefield,  dip  their 
pens  in  gall,  when  there  is  abundance  of 
milk  within  their  reach?  And  why  do 
eminently  intellectual  characters  seem  to 
strive  their  utmost  to  make  us  disgusted 
with  the  pursuits  and  consolations  of 
Literature?  Nevertheless,  let  Gilbert 
Wakefield's  biography  find  a  place  upon 
the  shelves  of  the  curious — for  a  sum  some- 
what less  than  a  sovereign. — Dibdin, 
Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The  Library 
Companion,  p.  561. 

Person  felt  much  respect  for  Gilbert 
Wakefield's  integrity,  but  very  little  for 
his  learning.  When  Wakefield  put  forth 
the  "Diatribe  Extemporalis"  on  Person's 
edition  of  the  "Hecuba,"  Person  said,  "If 
Wakefield  goes  on  at  this  rate,  he  will 
tempt  me  to  examine  his 'Silva Critica.' 
I  hope  that  we  shall  not  meet ;  for  a  violent 
quarrel  would  be  the  consequence."  — 
Wakefield  was  a  very  agreeable  and  enter- 
taining companion.  "  'My  Lucretius,' "he 
once  said  to  me,  ''is  my  most  perfect  pub- 
lication,— it  is,  in  fact,  'Lucretius  Resti- 
tutus.'  "  He  was  a  great  walker ;  he  has 
walked  as  much  as  forty  miles  in  one  day ; 
and  I  believe  that  his  death  was  partly 
brought  on  by  excessive  walking,  after  his 
long  confinement  in  Dorchester  goal. 
What  offended  Wakefield  at  Person  was, 
that  Person  had  made  no  mention  of  him 
in  his  notes.  Now,  Person  told  Burney 
expressly,  that  out  of  pure  kindness  he  had 
forborne  to  mention  Wakefield;  for  he 
could  not  have  cited  any  of  his  emendations 
without  the  severest  censure. — Maltby, 
William,  1854,  Porsoniana. 


WAKEFIELD -CHAPONE 


417 


Gilbert  Wakefield  was  a  man  who  re- 
ceived scanty  justice.  His  contemporaries 
condemned  him  as  hot-headed,  arrogant, 
and  eccentric,  though  they  contemptuously 
admitted  his  honesty.  He  was  weak 
enough,  they  declared,  to  fall  in  love  with 
the  opinions  for  which  he  made  sacrifices, 
and  would,  so  they  argued,  have  ceased  to 
love  them  had  they  been  generally  ac- 
ceptable. He  was  as  dogmatic  about 
trifles  as  about  serious  matters;  ''he  was 
as  violent  against  Greek  accents  as  he  was 
against  the  Trinity,  and  anathematised 
the  final  v  as  strongly  as  episcopacy." 
He  had,  in  short,  that  love  of  petty 
crotchets  which  distinguishes  men  of  his 
temperament,  and  which  flourishes  in  rev- 
olutionary periods.  He  was  a  teetotaler 
and  vegetarian  in  the  good  old  days  of  port 
wine  and  roast  beef,  and  had  he  lived  a 
generation  later  would  doubtless  have  been 
at  the  head  of  numerous  societies  for  the 
regeneration  of  mankind.  Our  ancestors 
dealt  him  shorter  and  sharper  measure. — 
Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History  of  Eng- 
lish Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
vol.  I,  p.  441. 

Wakefield  possessed  accurate  scholar- 
ship and  acuteness  of  intellect,  but  lacked 
judgment ;  he  was  violent  in  his  prejudices, 
and  bitter  in  his  animosities ;  and  he  re- 
belled against  authority,  equally  in  church, 
in  state,  and  in  letters.  His  writings  are 
valuable,  not  for  his  conclusions,  but  for 
the  sharpness  of  his  criticism. — Hart, 
John  S.,  1872,  A  Manual  of  English  Lit- 
erature, p.  359. 

He  was  one  of  those  not  very  uncommon 
men  who,  personally  amiable,  become 
merely  vixenish  when  they  write :  and  his 
erudition  was  much  more  extensive  than 
sound.  But  he  edited  several  classical 
authors,  not  wholly  without  intelligence 


and  scholarship,  and  his  ''Silva  Critica,'" 
a  sort  of  variorum  commentary  from 
profane  literature  on  the  Bible,  was  the 
forerunner,  at  least  in  scheme,  of  a 
great  deal  of  work  which  has  been  seen 
since. — Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A 
History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature. 

He  holds  a  distinct  position  in  the  his- 
tory of  English  scholarship.  As  a  scholar, 
he  had  decided  merits  and  conspicuous  de- 
fects. He  had  abundance  of  good  taste, 
extensive  general  knowledge,  and  great 
industry;  but  these  qualifications  were 
counterbalanced  by  the  excessive  haste  and 
temerity  of  his  conclusions.  His  reputa- 
tion would  be  higher  if  he  had  been  a  ^ 
severer  critic  of  himself.  He  measured 
swords  with  Porson  with  a  light  heart, 
and  when  Porson  published  his  "Hecuba" 
in  1787,  Wakefield  immediately  assailed 
the  work  in  a  ''Diatribe  Extemporalis. " 
The  result  was  a  more  or  less  discourteous 
controversy,  which  went  on  simmering  in 
Porson's  notes  to  the ' '  Orestes' '  and  in  the 
second  edition  of  the  "Hecuba;"  and  an 
estrangement  followed.  .  .  .  Wakefield's 
best  known  works  are  the"Silva  Critica" 
and  the  editions  of  "Lucretius,"  both  of 
which  show  him  alike  at  his  best  and  his 
worst.  The  former  is  a  medley  of  critical 
and  illustrative  comment  on  classical  pas- 
sages, acute,  ingenious,  and  widely  in- 
formed, but  here  and  there  disfigured  by 
serious  blunders  that  a  little  thought  would 
have  corrected.  It  was  his  chief  fault  as  a 
scholar  that  he  carried  his  love  of  emenda- 
tion to  an  absurd  degree,  and  fairly  justified 
Person's  remark  that  "no  author  escaped 
his  rage  for  correction."  "Lucretius," 
although  Wakefield's  greatest  work,  was 
published  at  a  loss. — Brodribb,  A.  A., 
1899,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  Lvni,  pp.  454,  455. 


Hester  Chapone 

1727-1801 

Authoress,  daughter  of  Thomas  Mulso,  and  born  at  Twywell,  Northants, wrote  for  the 
"Rambler"  (No.  10),  "Adventurer,"  and  "Gentleman's  Magazine;"  but  is  now  chiefly 
remembered  by  her  "Letters  on  the  Improvement  of  the  Mind, "  (1772).  She  married 
an  attorney  in  1760,  but  next  year  was  left  a  widow.  See  her  Works  with  Life  (4 
vols.  1807).— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary, 
p.  200. 

PERSONAL  mwdX ;  but  she  is  deadly  ugly  to  be  sure  ;— 

I  went  one  evening  last  week  to  the  Dean  such  [an]  African  nose  and  lips,  and  such  a 
of  Winchester's,  where  we  met  Mrs.  clunch  figure! — Burney,  Charlotte  Ann, 
Chapone,  who  looked  less  forbidding  than    1781  ?  Journal,  ed.  Ellis,  June  21,  p.  298. 

27  c 


418 


CHAPONE—BAGE 


Mrs.Chapone  was  of  a  lively  and  sanguine 
temperament,  possessed  of  humour  and 
sagacity,  and  knowledge  of  the  world, 
which  made  her  an  entertaining  com- 
panion, and  a  sound  adviser.  Her  disposi- 
tion was  kind  and  amiable,  and  her  princi- 
ples were  excellent. — Brydges,  Sir  Sam- 
uel Egerton,  1807,  Censura  Literariay 
vol.  V,  p.  320. 

But  though  the  dignity  of  her  mind  de- 
manded, as  it  deserved,  the  respect  of  some 
return  to  the  visits  which  her  love  of 
society  induced  her  to  pay,  it  was  a  tete-a-tete 
alone  that  gave  pleasure  to  the  intercourse 
with  Mrs.  Chapone :  her  sound  understand- 
ing, her  sagacious  observations,  her  turn 
to  humour,  and  the  candour  of  her  alfec- 
tionate  nature,  all  then  came  into  play 
without  effort :  and  her  ease  of  mind,  when 
freed  from  the  trammels  of  doing  the 
honours  of  reception,  seemed  to  soften  off, 
even  to  herself,  her  corporeal  infirmities. 
It  was  thus  that  she  struck  Dr.Burney  with 
the  sense  of  her  worth ;  and  seemed  por- 
traying in  herself  the  original  example 
whence  the  precepts  had  been  drawn,  for 
forming  the  unsophisticated  female  char- 
acter, that  are  displayed  in  the  author's 
Letters  on  the  Improvement  of  the  Mind." 
— D'Arblay,  Madame  (Fanny  Burney), 
1832,  Memoirs  of  Doctor  Burney, 

GENERAL 
Mrs.  Chapone' s    'Letters' '  are  written 
with  such  good  sense,  and  unaffected  hu- 
mility, and  contain  so  many  useful  observa- 
tions, that  I  only  mention  them  to  pay  the 


worthy  writer  this  tribute  of  respect.  I 
cannot,  it  is  true,  always  coincide  in  opin- 
ion with  her;  but  I  always  respect  her. — 

WOLLSTONECRAFT,  MaRY  (MrS.  GODWIN), 

1792,  Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Woman, 
p,  234. 

Nor  was  she  only  diligent  in  acquiring 
the  accomplishments  of  elegance  and  taste ; 
the  studies  of  philosophy  and  theology 
occupied  a  large  portion  of  her  time ;  for 
her  devotion  was  ardent,  and  her  reasoning 
powers  of  uncommon  strength.  Her  en- 
thusiastic love  of  genius,  and  her  scepticism 
with  regard  to  dogmatic  assertion,  led 
her,  while  very  young,  into  a  warm  ad- 
miration of  Richardson  the  author  of 

Clarissa, "  and  into  a  masterly  refutation 
of  his  arbitrary  opinions  on  parental  au- 
thority and  filial  obedience ;  a  correspond- 
ence which  has  been  lately  published,  and 
forms  a  most  respectable  proof  of  early 
proficiency  in  argumentative  discussion. — 
Drake,  Nathan,  1810,  Essays,  Illustra- 
tive of  the  Rambler,  Adventurer  and  Idler, 
vol.  II,  p.  154. 

Her  enthusiastic  love  of  genius  made  her 
a  warm  admirer  of  Richardson,  the  novel- 
ist, to  whom,  however,  she  could  not  sur- 
render her  opinions.  With  him  she  entered 
into  an  able  correspondence  on  the  subject 
of  filial  obedience ;  and  her  letters,  though 
written  at  the  age  of  twenty-two,  display 
much  ability,  and  strength  and  clearness 
of  mind.— Cleveland,  Charles  D.,  1853, 
English  Literature  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, p.  35. 


Robert  Bage 

1728-1801 

Born  at  Darley,  Derbyshire,  England,  Feb.  29,  1728 :  died  at  Tamworth,  England, 
Sept.  1,  1801.  An  English  novelist.  He  was  a  paper-manufacturer  by  trade,  and  did 
not  begiQ  to  write  before  the  age  of  fifty-three.  He  wrote  "Mount  Henneth"  (1781), 
*'Barham  Downs"  (1784),  ''Hermsprong,  or  Man  as  he  is  not"  (1796),  etc.— Smith, 
Benjamin  E.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  108. 


PERSONAL 

In  his  person,  Robert  Bage  was  some- 
what under  the  middle  size,  and  rather 
slender,  but  well  proportioned.  His  com- 
plexion was  fair  and  ruddy ;  his  hair  light 
and  curling;  his  countenance  intelligent, 
mild,  and  placid.  His  manners  were 
courteous,  and  his  mind  was  firm.  His 
integrity,  his  honour,  his  devotion  to  truth, 
were  undeviating  and  incorruptible;  his 
humanity,  benevolence,  and  generosity. 


were  not  less  conspicuous  in  private  life 
than  they  were  in  the  principal  characters 
in  his  works.  He  supplied  persons  he 
never  saw  with  money,  because  he  heard 
they  were  in  want.  He  kept  his  servants 
and  his  horses  to  old  age,  and  both  men  and 
quadrupeds  were  attached  to  him.  He 
behaved  to  his  sons  with  the  unremitting 
affection  of  a  father ;  but,  as  they  grew  up, 
he  treated  them  as  men  and  equals,  and 
allowed  them  that  independence  of  mind 


ROBERT  BAGE 


419 


and  conduct  which  he  claimed  for  himself. 
— HuTTON,  Catherine,  1821,  Novelist's 
Library,  ed.  Scott,  Life  of  Bage. 

We  have  the  testimony  of  Mr.  Hutton, 
his  most  intimate  friend,  that  in  private 
life  Bage  was  most  amiable,  but  he  adds 
with  regret  that  **he  laid  no  stress  upon 
revelation, ' '  and  was ' '  barely  a  christian. ' ' 
His  friends  were  deeply  attached  to  him, 
and  they  described  his  temper  as  open, 
mild,  and  sociable.  He  was  very  kind  to 
his  domestics,  who  lived  with  him  till  they 
were  old,  and  even  to  his  horses  when  they 
were  past  work.  —  Smith,  G.  Barnett, 
1885,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography^ 
vol.  II,  ».  392. 

1  GENERAL 

It  is  scarce  possible  to  read  him  without 
being  amused,  and,  to  a  certain  degree  in- 
structed. His  whole  efforts  are  turned  to 
the  development  of  human  character ;  and, 
it  must  be  owned,  he  possessed  a  ready  key 
to  it.  The  mere  story  of  the  novels  seldom 
possesses  much  interest — in  which  we  are 
interested;  and,  contrary  to  his  general 
case,  the  reader  is  seldom  or  never  tempted 
to  pass  over  the  dialogue  in  order  to  con- 
tinue the  narrative.  ...  A  light, 
gay,  pleasing  air,  carries  us  agreeably 
through  Bage's  novels ;  and  when  we  are 
disposed  to  be  angry  at  seeing  the  worse 
made  to  appear  the  better  reason,  we  are 
reconciled  to  the  author  by  the  ease  and 
good-humour  of  his  style. — Scott,  Sir 
Walter,  1821,  Robert  Bage. 

Bage's  novels  are  decidedly  inferior  to 
those  of  Holcroft,  and  it  is  surprising  that 
Sir  Walter  Scott  should  have  admitted 
them  into  his  ''British  Novelists,"  and  at 
the  same  time  excluded  so  many  superior 
works. — Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclo- 
pcedia  of  English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

Good  Mr.  Bage  near  Tamworth,  whom 
Godwin,  about  the  time  when  he  tried  to 
persecute  and  argue  Miss  Harriet  Lee  into 
marrying  him,  went  out  of  his  way  to  see, 
asking,  ''Are  not  such  men  as  much  worth 
visiting  as  palaces,  towns,  and  cathe- 
drals V  *  Bage  was  born  a  miller,  and  was 
a  well-to-do  person  with  paper-mills,  be- 
side those  that  ground  the  grain.  To  ' '  dis- 
sipate his  melancholy"  under  some  special 
trouble,  he  began  to  write  novels;  and 
afterward,  when  he  had  formed  the  habit, 
went  on  producing  them  methodically  one 
every  two  years,  as  children  are  born  in 
well-regulated  families.    Where  have  all 


those  children  of  the  fancy  gone  ?  ' '  Herm- 
sprong, "  which  Godwin  reports  to  be  "his 
sixth,"  very  much  indeed  as  if  it  had  been 
a  baby,  is  the  one  that  is  best  known. — 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  The 
Literary  History  of  England,  XVIII-XIX 
Century,  vol.  II,  /?.  316. 

The  writer  in  Chambers's  ^'Cyclopaedia 
of  English  Literature"  describes  Bage's 
novels  as  decidedly  inferior  to  those  of 
Holcroft,  with  whom  Bage  had  not  little  in 
common;  and  he  expresses  surprise  that 
Sir  Walter  Scott  should  have  admitted 
them  into  his  "Novelists'  Library."  But 
the  reader  will  feel  inclined  to  applaud  Sir 
Walter  for  granting  them  this  distinction. 
As  novels  they  may  not  interest  strongly 
by  their  plot,  but  there  is  a  distinct  origi- 
nality about  them.  They  were  chiefly  in- 
tended to  inculcate  certain  political  and 
philosophical  opinions.  Not  unfrequently, 
perhaps,  the  author's  strong  convictions 
betray  him  into  exaggeration.  But  touch- 
ing the  literary  power  of  his  works  there 
can  scarcely  be  two  opinions.  Considered 
altogether  apart  from  their  moral  and 
social  bearings,  the  novels  of  Bage  display 
an  unquestionable  power  in  drawing  and 
developing  character,  while  their  style  is 
always  entertaining  and  frequently  in- 
cisive.— Smith,  G.  Barnett,  1895,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  ii, 
p.  392. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  that  there  is 
genius  in  Bage ;  yet  he  is  a  very  remark- 
able writer,  and  there  is  noticeable  in  him 
that  singular  JiTi  de  siecle  tendency  which 
has  reasserted  itself  a  century  later.  An 
imitator  of  Fielding  and  Smollett  in  gen- 
eral plan, — of  the  latter  specially  in  the 
dangerous  scheme  of  narrative  by  letter, 
— Bage  added  to  their  methods  the  pur- 
pose of  advocating  a  looser  scheme  of 
morals  and  a  more  anarchical  system  of 
government.  In  other  words,  Bage, 
though  a  man  well  advanced  in  years  at 
the  date  of  the  Revolution,  exhibits  for  us 
distinctly  the  spirit  which  brought  the 
Revolution  about.  He  is  a  companion  of 
Godwin  and  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft ;  and 
though  it  must  be  admitted  that,  as  in 
other  cases,  the  presence  of  "impro- 
priety" in  him  by  no  means  implies  the 
absence  of  dulness,  he  is  full  of  a  queer 
sort  of  undeveloped  and  irregular  clever- 
ness.— Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A 
History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature. 


420 


Erasmus  Darwin 

1731-1802 

Born  at  Elston  Hall,  Notts,  12  Dec.  1731.  At  Chesterfield  School,  1741-50;  to  St. 
John's  Coll.,  Camb.,  1750;  Exeter  Scholar;  B.  A.,  1754.  To  Edinburgh  to  study 
medicine,  1754.  M.  B.,  Cambridge,  1755.  Settled  in  practice  in  Nottingham,  Sept. 
1756;  removed  to  Lichfield,  Nov,  1756.  Married  Mary  Howard,  Dec.  1757;  she  died, 
1770.  Married  Mrs.  Chandos-Pole,  1781 ;  lived,  first  at  her  estate,  Radbourne  Hall ; 
subsequently  at  Derby,  and  Breadsall  Priory,  near  Derby.  Died  suddenly,,  at  Bread- 
sail  Priory,  18  April  1802.  Buried  in  Breadsall  Church.  Works:  "Loves  of  the 
Plants''  (anon.,  pt.  ii.  of  Botanic  Garden"),  1789;  ^'Economy  of  Vegetation"  (anon., 
pt.  i.  of  Botanic  Garden")  1792;  "Zoonomia,"  1794-96;  "A  Plan  for  the  Conduct 
of  Female  Education  in  Boarding  Schools,"  1797;  "Phytologia,"  1800.  Posthumous: 
"The  Temple  of  Nature,"  1803;  "Collected  Poems,"  1807.  He  edited:  C.  Darwin's 
"Experiments establishing  a  Criterion,  etc.,"  1780.  Life:  by  A.  Seward,  1804;  by  E. 
Krause,  trans,  by  W.  S.  Dallas,  1879. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary 
of  English  Authors,  p.  74. 

PERSONAL 

Erasmus  Darwin,  M.  D.,  F.  R.  S. 

Borji  at  Elston,  near  Newark,  12th  Dec,  1 731, 
Died  at  the  Priory,  near  Derby,  1 0th  April, 
1802. 

Of  the  rare  union  of  Talents 
ichich  so  eminently  distinguished  him 
as  a  Physician,  a  Poet  and  Philosopher 
His  luritings  remain 
a  public  and  unfading  testimony. 
His  Widotv 
has  erected  his  monument 
in  memory  of 
the  zealous  benevolence  of  his  disposition, 
the  active  humanity  of  his  conduct, 
and  the  many  private  virtues 
tvhich  adorned  his  character. 

— Inscription  on  Tomb,  Breadsall  Church. 

Five  or  six  times  in  my  life  I  have  seen 
him  angry,  and  have  heard  him  express 
that  anger  with  much  real,  and  more  ap- 
parent vehemence,  more  than  men  of  less 
sensibility  would  feel  or  show.  But  then 
the  motive  never  was  personal.  When  Dr. 
Darwin  beheld  any  example  of  inhumanity 
or  injustice,  he  never  could  refrain  his  in- 
dignation; he  had  not  learnt,  from  the 
school  of  Lord  Chesterfield,  to  smother 
every  generous  feeling. — ^Edgeworth, 
Richard  LovELL,  1802,  Monthly  Magazine. 

I  think  all  those  who  knew  him,  will 
allow  that  sympathy  and  benevolence  were 
the  striking  features.  He  felt  very  sen- 
sibly for  others,  and,  from  his  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature,  he  entered  into 
their  feelings  and  sufferings  in  the  differ- 
ent circumstances  of  their  constitution, 
character,  health,  sickness,  and  prejudice. 
In  benevolence,  he  thought  that  almost 
all  virtue  consisted.  He  despised  the 
monkish  abstinences  and  the  hypocritical 


pretentions  which  so  often  impose  on  the 
world.  The  communication  of  happiness 
and  the  relief  of  misery  were  by  him  held  as 
the  only  standard  of  moral  merit.  Though 
he  extended  his  humanity  to  every  sentient 
being,  it  was  not  like  that  of  some  philoso- 
phers, so  diffused  as  to  be  of  no  effect ; 
but  his  affection  was  there  warmest  where 
it  could  be  of  most  service  to  his  family 
and  his  friends,  who  will  remember  the 
constancy  of  his  attachment  and  his  zeal 
for  their  welfare.— Keir,  James,  1802, 
Letter  to  Robert  Darwin,  May  12. 

He  was  somewhat  above  the  middle  size, 
his  form  athletic,  and  inclined  to  corpu- 
lence ;  his  limbs  too  heavy  for  exact  pro- 
portion. The  traces  of  a  severe  small- 
pox; features,  and  countenance,  which, 
when  they  were  not  animated  by  social 
pleasure,  were  rather  saturnine  than 
sprightly;  a  stoop  in  the  shoulders,  and 
the  then  professional  appendage,  a  large 
full-bottomed  wig,  gave,  at  that  early 
period  of  life,  an  appearance  of  nearly 
twice  the  years  he  bore.  Florid  health, 
and  the  earnest  of  good  humour,  a  sunny 
smile,  on  entering  a  room,  and  on  first 
accosting  his  friends,  rendered,  in  his 
youth,  that  exterior  agreeable,  to  which 
beauty  and  symmetry  had  not  been  pro- 
pitious. He  stammered  extremely,  but 
whatever  he  said,  whether  gravely  or  in 
jest,  was  always  well  worth  waiting  for, 
though  the  inevitable  impression  it  made 
might  not  always  be  pleasant  to  individual 
self-love.  Conscious  of  great  native  eleva- 
tion above  the  general  standard  of  intel- 
lect, he  became,  early  in  life,  sore  upon 
opposition,  whether  in  argument  or  con- 
duct, and  always  revenged  it  by  sarcasm 


OF  THt 

UNIVERSITY  of  1LUN0\S. 


ERASMUS  DARWIN 


421 


of  very  keen  edge.  Nor  was  he  less  im- 
patient of  sallies  of  egotism  and  vanity, 
even  when  they  were  in  so  slight  a  degree, 
that  strict  politeness  would  rather  tolerate 
than  ridicule  them.  Dr.  Darwin  seldom 
failed  to  present  their  caricature  in  jocose 
but  wounding  irony.  If  these  ingredients 
of  colloquial  despotism  were  discernible  in 
unworn  existence,  they  increased  as  it  ad- 
vanced, fed  by  an  ever-growing  reputation 
within  and  without  the  pale  of  medicine. 
— Seward,  Anna,  1804,  Memoir  of  the 
Life  of  Dr.  Darwin^  p.  1. 

We  all  hastened  to  the  window  to  see 
Dr.  Darwin,  of  whom  we  had  heard  so 
much,  and  whom  I  was  prepared  to  honor 
and  venerate,  in  no  common  degree,  as  the 
restorer  of  my  mother's  health.  What, 
then,  was  my  astonishment  at  beholding 
him,  as  he  slowly  got  out  of  the  carriage ! 
His  figure  was  vast  and  massive ;  his  head 
was  almost  buried  on  his  shoulders,  and  he 
wore  a  scratch-wig,  as  he  called  it,  tied 
up  in  a  little  bobtail  behind. — Schimmel- 
PENNiCK,  Mary  Anne,  1859,  Life,  ed. 
HankiUy  p.  205. 

Equally  eminent  as  philanthropist,  physi- 
cian, naturalist,  philosopher,  and  poet,  is 
far  less  known  and  valued  by  posterity  than 
he  deserves,  in  comparison  with  other  per- 
sons who  occupy  a  similar  rank.  It  is 
true  that  what  is  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant of  his  many-sided  endowments, 
namely  his  broad  view  of  the  philosophy  of 
nature,  was  not  intelligible  to  his  contem- 
poraries ;  it  is  only  now,  after  the  lapse  of 
a  hundred  years,  that  by  the  labours  of  one 
of  his  descendants  we  are  in  a  position  to 
estimate  at  its  true  value  the  wonderful 
perceptivity,  amounting  almost  to  divina- 
tion, that  he  displayed  in  the  domain  of 
biology.  For  in  him  we  find  the  same  in- 
defatigable spirit  of  research,  and  almost 
the  same  biological  tendency,  as  in  his 
grandson ;  and  we  might,  not  without  jus- 
tice, assert  that  the  latter  has  succeeded 
to  an  intellectual  inheritance,  and  carried 
out  a  programme  sketched  forth  and  left 
behind  by  his  grand-father. — Krause, 
Ernst,  1879,  The  Scientific  Works  of 
Erasmus  Darwin,  tr.  Dallas,  p.  132. 

His  correspondence  with  many  distin- 
guished men  was  large ;  but  most  of  the 
letters  which  I  possess  or  have  seen  are 
uninteresting,  and  not  worth  publication. 
Medicine  and  mechanics  alone  aroused  him 
to  write  with  any  interesto  .  .  .  Judging 


from  his  published  works,  letters,  and  all 
that  I  have  been  able  to  gather  about  him, 
the  vividness  of  his  imagination  seems  to 
have  been  one  of  his  pre-eminent  charac- 
teristics. This  led  to  his  great  originality 
of  thought,  his  prophetic  spirit  both  in 
science  and  in  the  mechanical  arts,  and  to 
his  over-powering  tendency  to  theorise 
and  generalise.  Nevertheless,  his  re- 
marks, hereafter  to  be  given,  on  the  value 
of  experiments  and  the  use  of  hypotheses 
show  that  he  had  the  true  spirit  of  a  philos- 
opher. That  he  possessed  uncommon 
powers  of  observation  must  be  admitted. 
The  diversity  of  the  subjects  to  which  he 
tended  is  surprising.  But  of  all"  his  char- 
acteristics, the  incessant  activity  or  energy 
of  his  mind  was,  perhaps,  the  most  re- 
markable.—Darwin,  Charles,  1879,  The 
Scientific  Works  of  Erasmus  Darwin  by 
Krause,  tr.  Dallas,  Preliminary  Notice, 
pp.  27,  48. 

THE  BOTANIC  GARDEN 
1781 

My  father  has  just  returned  from  Dr. 
Darwin's,  where  he  has  been  nearly  three 
weeks.  ...  He  saw  the  first  part  of 
Dr.  Darwin's  ^'Botanic  Garden;"  £900 
was  what  his  bookseller  gave  him  for  the 
whole  !—Edgeworth,  Maria,  1792,  Let- 
ters, vol.  I,  p.  21. 

I  wish  I  could  let  you  have  a  look  at  this 
fashionable  style  of  English  book,  as  I  have 
it  before  me  in  large  quarto  bound  in 
morocco.  It  weighs  exactly  five  and  a 
half  pounds,  as  I  know  by  having  convinced 
myself  of  this  yesterday.  Now  as  our 
pocket-books  weigh  about  as  much  in  half- 
ounces,  we  may,  in  this  respect,  also  be  as 
one  to  thirty-two  compared  with  the  Eng- 
lish, unless  indeed  we  on  our  part  were 
able  to  counterbalance  one  such  fashion- 
able English  giant  with  thirty -two  pocket- 
books.  It  is  splendidly  printed  on  smooth 
paper,  embellished  with  crazy,  allegorical 
engravings  by  Fuseli,  and  in  addition  to 
this  every  now  and  again  adorned  with 
illustrations  the  subjects  of  which  are 
taken  from  botany,  antiquarian  research, 
incidents  and  love-affairs  of  the  day ;  it  has 
introductions,  tables  of  contents,  notes 
below  the  text  and  notes  at  the  end  of  the 
text,  in  which  physics,  geography,  botany, 
manufacture  and  commerce,  but  more 
especially  the  names  of  dead  and  living 
celebrities  are  admirably  set  forth,  so  that 
from  ebb  and  flood  down  to  the  sympathetic 


422 


ERASMUS  DARWIN 


ink,  everything  can  be  readily  perceived 
and  understood.  .  .  .  Here,  therefore, 
you  have  the  plan  of  a  poem !  Such  must 
be  the  appearance  presented  by  a  didactic 
poem  which  is  not  only  to  teach  but  to  in- 
struct. You  will  now  be  able  to  imagine 
that  a  goodly  variety  of  descriptions,  of 
allegories  and  of  similes  is  to  be  found 
roaming  about  in  this  book,  and  that  there 
is  not  a  vestige  of  poetic  feeling  to  link 
the  poem  together.  The  versification,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  not  bad,  and  many  pas- 
sages possess  a  rhetorical  turn  peculiar  to 
the  metre.  In  part,  the  details  remind 
one  of  many  of  those  English  poets  whose 
works  are  of  didactic  and  narrative  order. 
How  pleased  the  English  blase  world  will 
be  with  certain  passages  when  it  sees  so 
much  theoretical  matter — of  which  it  has 
for  long  heard  faint  whisperings — sung 
aloud  to  it  in  the  well-known  rhythm !  I 
have  only  had  the  book  in  the  house  since 
last  night,  and,  in  truth,  find  it  beneath 
my  expectation,  for  I  am  really  in  favour 
of  Darwin.— Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang, 
1798,  Letter  to  Schiller,  Jan.  26;  Corre- 
spondence Between  Schiller  and  Goethe,  tr. 
Schmitz,  vol.  ii,  pp.  26,  27. 

Darwin's  book  would  probably  have  little 
success  in  Germany.  The  Germans  like 
sentiment,  and  the  more  trifling  it  is  the 
more  generally  welcome  it  is ;  but  this  play 
of  the  fancy  with  ideas,  this  realm  of 
allegory,  this  cold  intellectuality  and 
learning  disguised  in  verse,  could  not  be 
attractive  to  any  but  the  English  in  their 
present  state  of  frostiness  and  unconcern. 
The  work,  however,  shows  what  function 
is  wont  to  be  attributed  to  poetry,  and  is 
a  new  and  brilliant  triumph  to  the  philis- 
tines  over  their  poetical  adversaries. 
Otherwise  I  do  not  think  the  subject-matter 
inadmissible  and  wholy  inappropriate  for 
poetical  treatment.  The  miscarriage,  in 
this  case,  I  consider  altogether  the  poet's 
fault.  If  one  were,  at  the  very  outset,  to 
relinquish  all  idea  of  giving  so-called  in- 
struction, and  merely  endeavoured  to  bring 
nature,  in  its  rich  variety,  movement,  and 
co-operation,  within  reach  of  the  imagina- 
tion, and  set  forth  all  the  products  of 
nature  with  a  certain  love  and  reverence — 
paying  regard  to  the  independent  existence 
of  every  one  and  so  forth — then  a  lively 
interest  in  the  various  subjects  could  not 
fail  to  be  awakened —Schiller,  Johann 
Christoph  Friederich,  1798,  Letter  to 


Goethe,  Jan.  30;  Correspondence  Between 
Schiller  and  Goethe,  tr.  Schmitz,  vol.  n, 
p.  29. 

Only  a  few  years  have  elapsed,  since  the 
genius  of  the  author  of  *'The  Botanic 
Garden"  first  burst  on  the  public  notice  in 
all  its  splendour.  The  novelty  of  his  plan 
—an  imposing  air  of  boldness  and  origi- 
nality in  his  poetical  as  well  as  philosoph- 
ical speculations — and  a  striking  display 
of  command  over  some  of  the  richest 
sources  of  poetical  embellishment,  were 
sufficient  to  secure  to  him  a  large  share 
of  approbation,  even  from  the  most  fastid- 
ious readers,  and  much  more  than  suf-^ 
ficient  to  attract  the  gaze  and  the  indis-' 
criminating  acclamations  of  a  herd  of 
admirers  and  imitators.  Yet,  with  all 
these  pretentions  to  permanent  fame,  we 
are  much  deceived,  if  we  have  not  already 
observed,  in  that  of  Dr.  Darwin  the  visible 
symptoms  of  decay. — Thomson,  T.,  1803, 
The  Temple  of  Nature,  Edinburgh  Review, 
vol.  1,  p.  491. 

This  poem  ought  not  to  be  considered 
more  than  as  a  capriccio,or  sport  of  fancy, 
on  which  he  has  expended  much  labour  to 
little  purpose.  It  does  not  pretend  to 
anything  like  correctness  of  design,  or 
continuity  of  action.  It  is  like  a  picture 
of  Breughel's  where  every  thing  is  highly 
coloured,  and  every  thing  out  of  order. — 
Gary,  Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45,  Lives 
of  English  Poets,  p.  265. 

When  we  enter  ''The  Botanic  Garden" 
of  Darwin,  we  find  that  we  have  been  en- 
ticed back  into  the  wilderness  of  didactic 
verse:  while  this  masterly  versifier  ex- 
emplifies also,  almost  everywhere,  one  of 
the  most  common  of  poetical  errors; 
namely,  the  attempt  to  make  poetry  de- 
scribe minutely  the  sensible  appearances 
of  corporeal  objects,  instead  of  being  con- 
tent with  communicating  the  feelings 
which  those  objects  awaken. — Spalding, 
William,  1852-82,  A  History  of  English 
Literature,  p.  356. 

The  section  on  manures,  or  the  food  of 
plants,  is  the  sole  part  that  interests  the 
agriculturist,  and  it  is  much  too  refined 
for  the  grossness  of  the  farmer's  applica- 
tion of  the  articles.  No  new  fact  was 
elicited  and  established,  but  much  light 
was  cast  on  the  processes  that  had  been 
adopted.— Donaldson,  John,  1854,  Agri- 
cultural Biography. 


ERASMUS  DARWIN 


423 


Strangely  enough,  in  spite  of  her  cor- 
rect taste,  Mrs.  Barbauld  was  quite  fasci- 
nated by  Darwin's  ''Botanic  Garden"  when 
it  first  appeared,  and  talked  of  it  with 
rapture ;  for  which  I  scolded  her  heartily. 
— Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce. 

Nothing  is  done  in  passion  and  power ; 
but  all  by  filing,  and  scraping,  and  rubbing, 
and  other  painstaking.  Every  line  is  as 
elaborately  polished  and  sharpened  as  a 
lancet ;  and  the  most  effective  paragraphs 
have  the  air  of  a  lot  of  those  bright  little 
instruments  arranged  in  rows,  with  their 
blades  out,  for  sale.  You  feel  as  if  so  thick 
an  array  of  points  and  edges  demanded 
careful  handling,  and  that  your  fingers  are 
scarcely  safe  in  coming  near  them.  Dar- 
win's theory  of  poetry  evidently  was,  that 
it  was  all  a  mechanical  affair — only  a 
higher  kind  of  pin-making.  His  own 
poetry,  however,  with  all  its  defects,  is 
far  from  being  merely  mechanical.  The 

Botanic  Garden"  is  not  a  poem  which  any 
man  of  ordinary  intelligence  could  have 
produced  by  sheer  care  and  industry,  or 
such  faculty  of  writing  as  could  be  acquired 
by  serving  an  apprenticeship  to  the  trade 
of  poetry.  Vicious  as  it  is  in  manner,  it 
is  even  there  of  an  imposing  and  original 
character;  and  a  true  poetic  fire  lives 
under  all  its  affectations,  and  often  blazes 
up  through  them.  There  is  not  much,  in- 
deed, of  pure  soul  or  high  imagination  in 
Darwin ;  he  seldom  rises  above  the  visible 
and  material ;  but  he  has  at  least  a  poet's 
eye  for  the  perception  of  that,  and  a  poet's 
fancy  for  its  embellishment  and  exalta- 
tion. No  writer  has  surpassed  him  in  the 
luminous  representation  of  visible  objects 
in  verse;  his  descriptions  have  the  dis- 
tinctness of  drawings  by  the  pencil,  with 
the  advantage  of  conveying,  by  their  har- 
monious words,  many  things  that  no  pencil 
can  paint.  His  images,  though  they  are 
for  the  most  part  tricks  of  language  rather 
than  transformations  or  new  embodiments 
of  impassioned  thought,  have  often  at 
least  an  Ovidian  glitter  and  prettiness,  or 
are  striking  from  their  mere  ingenuity  and 
novelty. — Craik,  George,  1861,  A  Com- 
pendous  History  of  English  Literature  and 
of  the  English  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  382. 

Now  the  book  I  mean  shows  us  the 
scientific  faculty  and  the  poetic  faculty — 
and  no  weak  faculties  either— working 
along  together, not  merged,  not  chemically 


united,  not  lighting  up  matters  like  a 
star, — with  the  result,  as  seems  to  me,  of 
producing  the  very  funniest  earnest  book 
in  our  language.  It  is  ''The  Loves  of 
the  Plants, "  by  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin. — 
Lanier,  Sidney,  1881,  The  English  Novel, 
p.  191. 

For  all  Wordsworth's  exultant  prophecy 
on  the  harmony  of  Poetry  and  Science,  it 
cannot  be  said  that  any  very  assuring 
illustration  of  the  circumstance  has 
happened  before  his  date  or  since.  The 
"Botanical  Garden"  of  Erasmus  Darwin 
looms  almost  tragically  alone,  like  the  for- 
lorn desert  image  of  Shelley's  famous  son- 
net, as  a  warning,  if  not  a  menace,  to  all 
travellers  in  this  demesne. — Bayne,  Wil- 
liam, 1898,  James  Thomson  (Famous 
Scots  Series),  p.  62. 

ZOONOMIA 

1794-6 

If,  however,  the  doctrines  of  the  "Zoo- 
nomia"  are  not  always  infallible,  it  is  a 
work  which  must  spread  the  fame  of  its 
author  over  lands  and  seas,  to  whatever 
clime  the  sun  of  science  has  irradiated  and 
warmed.  The  "Zoonomia"  is  an  exhaust- 
less  repository  of  interesting  facts,  of  curi- 
ous experiments  in  natural  productions,  and 
in  medical  effects ;  a  vast  and  complicated 
scheme  of  disquisition,  incalculably  im- 
portant to  the  health  and  comforts  of  man- 
kind, so  far  as  they  relate  to  objects 
merely  terrestrial;  throwing  novel,  use- 
ful, and  beautiful  light  on  the  secrets  of 
physiology,  botanical,  chemical,  and  aero- 
logical.— Seward,  Anna,  1804,  Memoirs 
of  the  Life  of  Dr.  Darwin,  p.  68. 

The  second  part  of  the  Zoonomia  is 
occupied  with  an  enumeration  of  diseases, 
classified  on  the  above  principles,  illus- 
trated by  brief  reports  of  cases,  and  with 
suggestions  as  to  their  medical  treat- 
ment. All  diseases  are  morbid  motions, 
and  are  divided  into  four  classes,  as  those 
motions  are  irritative,  sensitive,  volun- 
tary, or  associative.  The  four  classes  are 
divided  into  eleven  orders,  founded  on  the 
increased,  diminution,  or  inversion  of  the 
motion.  The  eleven  orders  are  divided 
into  forty-one  genera,  thirty-seven  of 
which  are  founded  on  the  part  of  the  sj^stem 
affected,  the  other  four  on  the  fundamental 
classification.  Nothing  could  have  a  more 
admirable  simplicity  upon  paper ;  and  we 
must  pardon  those  who  hailed  it  with  the 


424 


ERASMUS  DARWIN 


enthusiastic  faith  that  the  Newton  of  mor- 
bid physiology  had  appeared  in  Erasmus 
Darwin.  .  .  .  Dr.  Darwin's  theory  of 
evolution  was  closely  connected  with  his 
scheme  of  classifying  diseases ;  the  most 
signal  defect  of  that  scheme  was  the  fail- 
ure to  recognize  any  other  differences  than 
differences  of  degree.  There  was  no 
sharpness  of  definition  anywhere.  It  is, 
I  confess,  patent  to  every  eye  that  some 
disorders  in  the  human  system  have  this 
indefinite  character.  There  seems  to  be 
no  dividing  line  between  the  highest  state 
of  health  and  complete  disorganization  and 
prostration ;  the  one  runs  into  the  other 
more  gradually  than  the  oaks  into  the 
chestnuts.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
are,  certainly,  some  diseases  which  are 
sharply  defined.  The  modern  microscope, 
modern  chemical  reagents,  and  the  modern 
spirit  of  experimental  science  are  pro- 
ducing indisputable  results  in  this  field. 
The  revulsion  from  Darwin's  method  of 
classifying  diseases  will,  we  think,  be 
followed  by  revulsion  from  its  method 
of  classifying  organic  beings.  —  Hill, 
Thomas,  1878,  Erasmus  Darwin,  Bibli- 
otheca  Sacra,  vol.  35,  pp.  470,  480. 

Like  Buffon,  Dr.  Darwin  had  no  wish  to 
see  far  beyond  the  obvious ;  he  missed  good 
things  sometimes,  but  he  gained  more  than 
he  lost ;  he  knew  that  it  is  always  on  the 
margin,  as  it  were,  of  the  self-evident  that 
the  greatest  purchase  against  the  nearest 
difficulty  is  obtainable.  His  life  was  not 
one  of  Herculean  effort,  but,  like  the  lives 
of  all  these  organisms  that  are  most  likely 
to  develop  and  transmit  a  useful  modifica- 
tion, it  was  one  of  well-sustained  activ- 
ity ;  it  was  a  long-continued  keeping  open 
of  the  windows  of  his  own  mind,  much 
after  the  advice  he  gave  to  the  Notting- 
ham weavers.  Dr.  Darwin  knew,  and,  I 
imagine,  quite  instinctively,  that  nothing 
tends  to  oversight  like  over-seeing.  He 
does  not  trouble  himself  about  the  origin 
of  life ;  as  for  the  perceptions  and  reason- 
ing faculties  of  animals  and  plants,  it  is 
enough  for  him  that  animals  and  plants  do 
things  which  we  say  involve  sensation  and 
consciousness  when  we  do  them  ourselves 
or  see  others  do  them.  If,  then,  plants 
and  animals  appear  as  if  they  felt  and 
understood,  let  the  matter  rest  there, 
and  let  us  say  they  feel  and  understand 
— being  guided  by  the  common  use  of 
language,  rather  than  by  any  theories 


concerning  brain  and  nervous  system. — 
Butler,  Samuel,  1879,  Evolution  Old  and 
New,  p.  197. 

The  ''Zoonomia  "  is  largely  devoted  to 
medicine,  and  my  father  thought  that  it 
had  much  influenced  medical  practice  in 
England ;  he  was  of  course  a  partial,  yet 
naturally  a  more  observant  judge  than 
others  on  this  point.  The  book  when  pub- 
lished was  extensively  read  by  the  medical 
men  of  the  day,  and  the  author  was  highly 
esteemed  by  them  as  a  practitioner. — 
Darwin,  Charles,  1879,  The  Scientific 
Works  of  Erasmus  Darwin,  by  Krause,  tr. 
Dallas,  Preliminary  Notice,  p.  105. 

GENERAL 

Milton  is  harmonious  to  me,  and  I  abso- 
lutely nauseate  Darwin's  poems. — Cole- 
ridge, Samuel  Taylor,  1796,  Letters, 
ed.  E.  H.  Coleridge,  vol.  i,  p.  164. 

Meantime  the  matter  and  diction  seemed 
to  me  characterized  not  so  much  by  poetic 
thoughts,  as  by  thoughts  translated  into 
the  language  of  poetry.  On  this  last  point, 
I  had  occasion  to  render  my  own  thoughts 
gradually  more  and  more  plain  to  myself, 
by  frequent  amicable  disputes  concerning 
Darwin's  Botanic  Garden,"  which,  for 
some  years,  was  greatly  extolled,  not  only 
by  the  reading  public  in  general,  but  even 
by  those,  whose  genius  and  natural  robust- 
ness of  understanding  enabled  them  after- 
wards to  act  foremost  in  dissipating  these 

painted  mists"  that  occasionally  rise 
from  the  marshes  at  the  foot  of  Parnassus. 
During  my  first  Cambridge  vacation,  I 
assisted  a  friend  in  a  contribution  for  a 
literary  society  in  Devonshire :  and  in  this 
I  remember  to  have  compared  Darwin's 
work  to  the  Russian  palace  of  ice,  glitter- 
ing, cold,  and  transitory. — Coleridge, 
Samuel  Taylor,  1817,  Biographia  Lit- 
eraria. 

Dr.  Darwin  has  splendidly  exemplified 
the  effects  of  his  own  theory,  which  cer- 
tainly includes  much  truth,  but  not  the 
whole  truth.  Endued  with  a  fancy  pecul- 
iarly formed  for  picture-poetry,  he  has 
limited  verse  almost  within  the  compass 
of  designing  and  modelling  with  visible 
colours  and  palpable  substances.  Even  in 
this  poetic  painting,  he  seldom  goes  be- 
yond the  brilliant  minuteness  of  the  Dutch 
school  of  artists,  while  his  groups  are  the 
extreme  reverse  of  theirs,  being  rigidly 
classical.  His  productions  are  undis- 
tinguished by  either  sentiment  or  pathos. 


ERASMUS  DARWIN 


425 


He  presents  nothing  but  pageants  to  the 
eye,  and  leaves  next  to  nothing  to  the 
imagination ;  every  point  and  object  being 
made  out  in  noonday  clearness,  where  the 
sun  is  nearly  vertical,  and  the  shadow 
most  contracted.  He  never  touches  the 
heart,  nor  awakens  social,  tender,-  or 
playful  emotions.— Montgomery,  James, 
1833,  Lectures  on  General  Literature, 
Poetry,  etc.,  p.  126. 

All  optic  nerve.— Browning,  Eliza- 
beth Barrett,  1842-63,  The  Book  of  the 
Poets. 

As  a  poet,  his  ''Botanic  Garden"  by  its 
tawdry  splendor  gained  him  a  tawdry  rep- 
utation ;  as  a  philosopher  his ''Zoonomia, 
or.  Laws  of  Organic  Life,"  gained  him  a 
reputation  equally  noisy  and  fleeting. — 
Lewes,  George  Henry,  1845-46,  Bio- 
graphical History  of  Philosophy,  p.  609. 

The  poet-laureate  of  botany. — Collier, 
William  Francis,  1861,  A  History  of 
English  Literature,  p.  352. 

Almost  every  single  work  of  the  younger 
Darwin  may  be  paralleled  by  at  least  a 
chapter  in  the  works  of  his  ancestor ;  the 
mystery  of  heredity,  adaptation,  the  pro- 
tective arrangement  of  animals  and  plants, 
sexual  selection,  insectivorous  plants,  and 
the  analysis  of  the  emotions  and  socio- 
logical impulses ;  nay,  even  the  studies  on 
infants  are  to  be  already  discussed  in  the 
writings  of  the  elder  Darwin.  But  at  the 
same  time  we  remark  a  material  difference 
in  their  interpretation  of  nature.  The 
elder  Darwin  was  a  Lamarckian,  or,  more 
properly,  Jean  Lamarck  was  a  Darwinian  of 
the  older  school,  for  he  has  only  carried 
out  further  the  ideas  of  Erasmus  Darwin, 
although  with  great  acumen ;  and  it  is  to 
Darwin  therefore  that  the  credit  is  due  of 
having  first  established  a  complete  system 
of  the  theory  of  evolution. — Krause, 
Ernst,  1879,  The  Scientific  Works  of  Eras- 
mus Darwin,  tr.  Dallas,  pp.  132. 

He  was  a  poet,  in  his  day  a  very  popular 
poet,  whose  works  went  through  many 
editions.  His  stately  verses  are  repugnant 
to  modern  taste,  and  it  is  hard  to  imagine 
them  ever  becoming  popular  again.  Yet 
this  is  in  a  great  measure  due  to  the  fact 
that  they  are  written  in  a  language  which 
is  wholly  gone  by,  and  which  in  the  ears 
of  those  educated  in  this  post-Words- 
worthian  age  sounds  stilted  and  pompous. 
Byron  called  the  author  of  the  ''Loves  of 


the  Plants"  a  "mighty  master  of  unmean- 
ing rhyme,"  but  this  is  unfair.  His 
poetry  is  anything  but  unmeaning.  It  is 
at  times  even  eloquent.  The  chief  defect 
that  would  be  found  with  it  nowadays 
(leaving  out  of  view  the  Johnsonese 
vocabulary  and  style)  would  be  that  it  is 
rather  rhetorical  than  poetical. — Sedg- 
wick, A.  G.,  1880,  Erasmus  Darwin,  The 
Nation,  vol.  30,  p.  254. 

Unfortunately  for  his  lasting  fame,  Dr. 
Darwin  was  much  given  to  writing  poetry ; 
and  this  poetry,  though  as  ingenious  as 
everything  else  he  did,  had  a  certain  false 
gallop  of  verse  about  it  which  has  doomed 
it  to  become  since  Canning's  parody  a  sort 
of  warning  beacon  against  the  worse 
faults  of  the  post-Augustan  decadence  in 
the  ten-syllabled  metre.  Nobody  now 
reads  the  "Botanic  Garden"  except  either 
to  laugh  at  its  exquisite  extravagances,  or 
to  wonder  at  the  queer  tinsel  glitter  of 
its  occasional  clever  rhetorical  rhapsodies. 
But  in  his  alternative  character  of  philo- 
sophic biologist,  rejected  by  the  age  which 
swallowed  his  poetry  all  applausive,  Eras- 
mus Darwin  is  well  worthy  of  the  highest 
and  deepest  respect,  as  a  prime  founder 
and  early  prophet  of  the  evolutionary 
system.  His ' '  Zoonomia, "  "  which,  though 
ingenious,  is  built  upon  the  most  absurd 
hypothesis" — as  men  still  said  only  thirty 
years  ago — contains  in  the  germ  the  whole 
theory  of  organic  development  as  under- 
stood up  to  the  very  moment  of  the  pub- 
lication of  the  "Origin  of  Species." — 
Allen,  Grant,  1885,  Charles  Darwin 
(English  Worthies),  p.  21. 

The  antithesis  to  Edmund  Waller  is 
Erasmus  Darwin.  ...  He  was,  indeed, 
an  extraordinary  being,  and  if  verve,  knowl- 
edge, a  brilliant  vocabulary,  and  boundless 
intellectual  assurance  could  make  any  man 
a  poet,  Darwin  might  have  been  one.  But 
he  has  no  imagination,  and  almost  every 
fault  of  style.  When  he  desires  to  seem 
glowing,  his  verses  have  the  effect  of  ice ; 
his  very  versification,  for  which  he  was 
once  greatly  admired,  is  so  monotonous 
and  so  exasperatingly  antithetical,  that  it 
reads  like  a  parody  of  the  verse  of  the 
earlier  classicists.  His  landscapes,  his 
sketches  of  character,  his  genre-pieces, 
his  bursts  of  enthusiasm,  are  all  of  them 
ruined  by  his  excessive  insincerity  of 
style,  his  lack  of  genuine  vivacity,  and  his 
unceasing  toil  and  tumidity  of  phrase.  In 


426 


DARWIN— MOORE 


his  abuse  of  personation,  as  in  many  otlier 
qualities,  he  is  the  typical  helot  of  eight- 
eenth-century poetry,  and  the  great 
temporary  success  of  his  amazing  poem  led 
to  the  final  downfall  of  the  school.  To 
rival  the  hortus  siccus  of  Darwin  was  more 
than  the  most  ambitious  of  grandiose 
poetasters  could  hope  to  do.— GossE,  Ed- 
mund, 1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury Literature,  pp.  328,  330. 

Darwin's  poetry  would  be  forgotten 
were  it  not  for-  Canning's  parody.  He 
followed  the  model  of  Pope,  just  passing 
out  of  favour,  for  his  versification,  and  ex- 
,  pounded  in  his  notes  the  theory  that 
poetry  should  consist  of  word-painting. 
He  had  great  facility  of  language,  but  the 
effort  to  give  an  interest  to  scientific 


didacticism  in  verse  by  elaborate  rhetoric 
and  forced  personification  was  naturally 
a  failure.  Darwin  would  not  have  shrunk 
from  Coleridge's  favourite  phrase,  "Inocu- 
lation, heavenly  maid. "  Yet  it  is  remark- 
able that  Darwin's  bad  poetry  everywhere 
shows  a  powerful  mind.  .  .  .  The  per- 
manent interest  in  his  writings  depends 
upon  his  exposition  of  the  form  of  evolu- 
tionism afterwards  expounded  by  Lamarck. 
He  caught  a  glimpse  of  many  observations 
and  principles,  afterwards  turned  to  ac- 
count by  his  grandson,  Charles  Darwin; 
but  though  a  great  observer  and  an  acute 
thinker,  he  missed  the  characteristic  doc- 
trine which  made  the  success  of  his  grand- 
son's scheme. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1888, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 


John  Moore 

1729-1802 

Born  at  Stirling,  a  minister's  son,  studied  medicine  and  practised  in  Glasgow, 
travelled  with  the  young  Duke  of  Hamilton  1772-78,  and  then  settled  in  London.  His 
"View  of  Society  in  France,  Switzerland,  Germany,  and  Italy"  (1779-81)  was  well 
received;  but  the  novel  "Zeluco"  (1789),  which  suggested  Byron's  "Childe  Harold," 
is  to-day  the  least  forgotten  of  his  works.  These  include  two  other  novels,  "Medical 
Sketches,"  and  books  on  the  French  Revolution.  Moore  died  at  Richmond. — Patrick 
AND  Groome,  eds.y  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  672. 


PERSONAL 

Moore  was  sagacious  as  a  physician,  and 
throughout  life  had  intense  enjoyment  in 
general  observation,  and  in  every  kind  of 
good  literature  and  good  society.  He  was 
universally  liked,  and  most  of  all  in  his  own 
house.  He  had  a  well-built  frame  and 
regular  features.— Moore,  Norman,  1894, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol. 
XXXVIII,  p.  365. 

ZELUCO 

1789 

This  character  is  well  contrived  to 
purge  the  selfish  and  malignant  passions, 
by  exhibiting  the  hideous  effect  of  their  un- 
restrained indulgence. — Green,  Thomas, 
1810,  Diary  of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 

I  now  leave  "Childe  Harold"  to  live  his 
day,  such  as  he  is ;  it  had  been  more  agree- 
able, and  certainly  more  easy,  to  have 
drawn  an  amiable  character.  It  had  been 
easy  to  varnish  over  his  faults,  to  make 
him  do  more  and  express  less;  but  he 
never  was  intended  as  an  example,  further 
than  to  show,  that  early  perversion  of  mind 
and  morals  leads  to  satiety  of  past  pleas- 
ures and  disappointment  in  new  ones,  and 
that  even  the  beauties  of  nature,  and  the 


stimulus  of  travel  (except  ambition,  the 
most  powerful  of  all  excitements)  are  lost 
on  a  soul  so  constituted,  or  rather  mis- 
directed. Had  I  proceeded  with  the  poem, 
this  character  would  have  deepened  as  he 
drew  to  the  close ;  for  the  outline  which  I 
once  meant  to  fill  up  for  him  was,  with 
some  exceptions,  the  sketch  of  a  modern 
Timon,perhaps  a  poetical  Zeluco. — Byron, 
Lord,  1813,  Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage, 
Addition  to  the  Preface. 

Dr.  Moore,  the  father  of  the  hero  of 
Corunna,  with  good  narrative  power,  some 
sly  humour,  and  much  observation  of  char- 
acter, would  have  been,  in  our  day,  a 
writer  of  the  Peacock  family.  Neverthe- 
less, to  one  who  is  accustomed  to  our  style 
of  things,  it  is  comic  to  read  the  dialogue 
of  a  jealous  husband,  a  suspected  wife,  a 
faithless  maid-servant,  a  tool  of  a  nurse,  a 
wrong-headed  pomposity  of  a  priest,  and 
a  sensible  physician,  all  talking  Dr.  Moore 
through  their  masks.  Certainly  an  Irish 
soldier  does  say  by  Jasus,  and  a  cockney 
footman  this  here  and  that  there ;  and  this 
and  the  like  is  all  the  painting  of  charac- 
ters which  is  effected  out  of  the  mouths 
of  the  bearers  by  a  narrator  of  great 


JOHN  MOORE 


427 


power.  I  suspect  that  some  novelists  re- 
pressed their  power  under  a  rule  that  a 
narrative  should  narrate,  and  that  the 
dramatic  should  be  confined  to  the  drama. 
— De  Morgan,  Augustus,  1872,  A  Budget 
of  Paradoxes,  p.  113. 

His  nover'Zeluco''  (published  in  1789) 
produced  a  powerful  impression  at  the 
time,  and  indirectly,  through  the  poetry 
of  Byron,  has  left  an  abiding  mark  on 
literature.  The  novel  would  in  these  days 
be  called  a  psychological  novel ;  it  is  a 
close  analysis  of  the  motives  of  a  head- 
strong, passionate,  thoroughly  selfish  and 
unprincipled  profligate.  It  is  full  of  inci- 
dent, and  the  analysis  is  never  prolonged 
into  tedious  reflections,  nor  suffered  to 
intercept  the  progress  of  the  story,  while 
the  main  plot  is  diversified  with  many 
interesting  episodes.  The  character  took 
a  great  hold  of  Byron's  imagination,  and 
probably  influenced  his  life  in  some  of  its 
many  moods,  as  well  as  his  poetry.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  the  common  opin- 
ion that  Byron  intended  *'Childe  Harold'' 
as  a  reflection  of  himself  cannot  be  cleared 
of  its  large  mixture  of  falsehood  with  a 
study  of  Moore's ''Zeluco."  Byron  said 
that  he  intended  the  Childe  to  be  "a  poetical 
Zeluco, "  and  the  most  striking  features  of 
the  portrait  were  undoubtedly  taken  from 
that  character.  At  the  same  time  it  is 
obvious  to  everybody  acquainted  with 
Moore's  novel  and  Byron's  life  that  the 
moody  and  impressionable  poet  often 
adopted  the  character  of  Zeluco,  fancied 
himself  and  felt  himself  to  be  a  Zeluco, 
although  he  was  at  heart  a  very  different 
man. — Baynes,  Thomas  Spencer,  ed., 
1884,  Encyclopcedia  Brittanica,  vol.  xvi, 
p.  830. 

Owing  to  the  praise  bestowed  on  it  by 
Mrs.  Barbauld,  has  been  far  too  generally 
accepted  as  one  of  the  most  notable  of 
eighteenth-century  novels.  Zeluco,  the 
Byronic  villain,  and  Laura,  his  amiable  and 
suffering  wife,  are  highly  conventional 
types  of  evil  and  of  good. — Raleigh, 
Walter,  1894,  The  English  Novel,  p.  193. 

The  book,  besides  the  unlucky  drawback 
that  almost  all  its  interest  lies  in  the 
latter  part,  has  for  hero  a  sort  of  lifeless 
monster  of  wickedness,  who  is  quite  as 
uninteresting  as  a  faultless  one  and  shows 
little  veracity  of  character  except  in  the 
minor  personages  and  episodes.  In  these, 
and  indeed  throughout  Moore's  work, 


there  is  a  curious  mixture  of  convention 
with  extreme  shrewdness,  of  somewhat 
commonplace  expression  with  a  remark- 
ably pregnant  and  humorous  conception. 
But  he  lacks  concentration  and  finish,  and 
is  therefore  never  likely  to  be  much  read 
again  as  a  whole. — Sal\tsbury,  George, 
1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  28. 

GENERAL 

Every  reader  ©f  extracts  from  the  writ- 
ings of  Dr.  Moore  must  feel  a  strong  desire 
to  become  more  intimately  acquainted 
with  an  author  so  conversant  with  men  and 
manners  and  so  eminent  for  the  benevo- 
lence of  his  heart  and  the  purity  of  his 
morals,  and  thus  be  irresistibly  induced  to 
purchase  all  his  works  and  place  them  in 
his  library  by  the  side  of  Johnson,  Field- 
ing, and  Smollett. — Prevost,  F.,  and 
Blagdon,  F.,  1803,  Mooriana. 

He  is  characterised  by  profound  knowl- 
edge of  the  world,  admirable  good  sense, 
intimate  acquaintance  with  human  nature, 
a  lively  imagination,  a  rich  vein  of  original 
humour,  and  an  incomparable  power  of 
representing  life  and  manners  with  dis- 
crimination, force,  and  delicacy. — An- 
derson, Robert,  1820,  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  John  Moore,  p.  49. 

As  an  author.  Dr.  Moore  was  more  dis- 
tinguished by  the  range  of  his  information 
than  by  its  accuracy  or  extent  upon  any 
particular  subject,  and  his  writings  did  not 
owe  their  celebrity  to  any  great  depth  or 
even  originality  of  thought.  As  a  novelist 
he  showed  no  extraordinary  felicity  in  the 
department  of  invention,  no  great  power 
of  diversifying  his  characters,  or  ease  in 
conducting  his  narrative.  The  main 
quality  of  his  works  is  that  particular 
species  of  sardonic  wit,  with  which  they 
are  indeed  perhaps  profusely  tinctured, 
but  which  frequently  confers  a  grace  and 
poignancy  on  the  general  strain  of  good 
sense  and  judicious  observation  that  per- 
vades the  whole  of  them. — Carlyle, 
Thomas,  1820-23,  Edinburgh  Encyclo- 
pcedia, Montaigne  and  other  Essays,  p.  44. 

The  popularity  of  the  work  [''View  of 
Society"]  was  mainly  owing  to  its  amusing 
sketches,  to  the  many  good  stories  which 
it  contains,  and  to  the  lively  and  animated 
style  in  which  the  whole  is  written. — 
HiLLARD,  George  Stillman,  1853,  Six 
Months  in  Italy. 


428 


James  Beattie 

1735-1803 

Born,  at  Laurencekirk,  Kincardine,  25  Oct.  1735.  To  Marischal  Coll.,  Aberdeen, 
1749;  M.  A.,  1753.  Schoolmaster  and  parish  clerk  at  Fordoun,  1753-58.  Contrib. 
to  Scots*  Magazine."  Master  of  Aberdeen  Grammar  School,  1758-60.  Professor  of 
Moral  Philosophy  and  Logic,  Marischal  Coll.,  1760-97.  Published  first  vol.  of  poems, 
1761.  First  visit  to  London,  1763.  Friendship  with  Gray  begun,  1765.  Married 
Mary  Dunn,  28  June  1767.  Hon.  D.  C.  L.,  Oxford,  9  July  1773.  Crown  pension  of 
£200,  Aug.  1773.  Refused  Professorship  of  Moral  Philosophy  at  Edinburgh,  1773. 
Active  literary  work.  Failing  health  from  1793.  Died,  18  Aug.  1803.  Buried  in  St. 
Nicholas  Churchyard,  Aberdeen.  Works :  * '  Original  Poems  and  Translations, ' '  1760 ; 
''Judgment  of  Paris,"  1765;  '' Verses  on  the  Death  of  Churchill,"  1765;  'Toems  on 
Several  Subjects,"  1766 ;  ''Essay  on  Truth,"  1770 ;  "The  Minstrel,"  pt.  l.(anon.)  1771 ; 
pt.  ii.,  1774;  "Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  1776;  "Essays,"  1776  (2nd  edn.  same 
year) ;  "Letter  to  the  Rev.  H.  Blair  .  .  .  on  the  Improvement  of  Psalmody,  in  Scotland" 
(anon.,  privately  printed),  1778;  "List  of  Two  Hundred  Scotticisms"  (anon.),  1779; 
"Dissertations,  Moral  and  Critical,"  1783;  "Evidences  of  the  Christian  Religion," 
1786;  "The  Theory  of  Language,"  1788;  "Elements  of  Moral  Science,"  vol.  1, 1790; 
vol.  11,  1793;  "Notes  on  Addison  (apparently  not  published),  1790.  Collected 
Poems:  1805,  1810,  1822,  1831,  etc.  He  edited:  "Essays  and  Fragments,"  by  his 
son,  J.  H.  Beattie  (privately  printed),  1794.  Life:  by  Bower,  1804;  by  Sir  W.  Forbes, 
1806. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  20. 


PERSONAL 
I  found  him  pleasant,  unaffected,  un- 
assuming, and  full  of  conversable  intelli- 
gence ;  with  a  round,  thick,  clunch  figure, 
that  promised  nothing  either  of  his  works 
or  his  discourse,  yet  his  eye,  at  intervals, 
.  .  .  shoots  forth  a  ray  of  genius  that  in- 
stantly lights  up  his  whole  countenance. 
His  voice  and  his  manners  are  particularly 
and  pleasingly  mild,  and  seem  to  announce 
an  urbanity  of  character  both  inviting  and 
edifying.  .  .  .  You  would  be  surpised  to 
find  how  soon  you  could  forget  that  he 
is  ugly  and  clumsy,  for  there  is  a  sort  of 
perfect  good-will  in  his  countenance  and 
his  smile,  that  is  quite  captivating. — 
D'Arblay,  Mme.  (Fanny  Burney),  1787, 
Diary,  July  13. 

MemoricB.  Sacrum. 
JAOOBI.  BEATTIE.  LL.D. 

Ethices. 

In  Academia.  Marescallana.  hujus.  Urbis. 
Per.  XLIII.  Annos. 
Professoris.  Meretissimi. 
Viri. 

Pietate.  Probitate.  Ingenio.  atque.  Doctrina. 
Prcestantis. 

Scriptoris.  Elegantissimi.  Poetce.  Suavissimi. 

Philosophi.  Vere.  Christiani. 
Natus.  est.  V.  Nov.  Anno.  MDCCXXXV. 
Obiit.  XVIII.  Aug.  MDCCCIII. 
Omnibus.  Liberis.  Orbus. 
Quorum.  Natu.  Maximus.  Jacobus.  Hay. 
Beattie. 
Vel.  a.  Puerilibus.  Annis. 
Patrio.  Vigens.  Ingenio. 


Novumque.  Decus.  Jam.  Addens.  Paterno. 
Suis.  Carissimus.  Patrice.  Flebilis. 
Lenta.  Tabe.  Consumptus.  Periit. 
Anno,  ^tatis.  XXIII. 
Geo.  et.  Mar.  Glennie. 
H.  M.  P. 

— Gregory,  James,  1803,  Inscription  on 
Monument,  Churchyard  of  St.  Nicholas, 
Aberdeen. 

I  am  happy  to  think,  that  the  moral 
effect  of  his  works  is  likely  to  be  so  power- 
fully increased  by  the  Memoirs  of  his  ex- 
emplary life,  which  you  are  preparing  for 
the  press,  while  the  respect  which  the  pub- 
lic already  entertains  for  his  genius  and 
talents,  cannot  fail  to  be  blended  with 
other  sentiments  still  more  flattering  to 
his  memory,  when  it  is  known  with  what 
fortitude  and  resignation  he  submitted  to  a 
series  of  trials,  far  exceeding  those  which 
fall  to  the  common  lot  of  humanity ;  and 
that  the  most  vigorous  exertions  of  his  mind 
were  made,  under  the  continued  pressure 
of  the  severest  domestic  affliction,  which 
a  heart  like  this  could  be  doomed  to 
suffer.— Stewart,  Dugald,  1806,  Letter 
to  Sir  William  Forbes,  Life  of  Beattie  by 
Forbes,  vol.  iii,  p.  255. 

Of  his  conduct  towards  his  unhappy 
wife,  it  is  impossible  to  speak  in  terms  of 
too  high  commendation.  It  has  already 
been  mentioned,  that  Mrs.  Beattie  had  the 
misfortune  to  inherit  from  her  mother, 
that  most  dreadful  of  all  human  ills,  a 


JAMES  BEATTIE 


429 


distempered  imagination,  which,  in  a  very 
few  years  after  their  marriage,  showed 
itself  in  caprices  and  folly,  that  embit- 
tered every  hour  of  his  life,  while  he 
strove  at  first  to  conceal  her  disorder  from 
the  world,  and,  if  possible,  as  he  has  been 
heard  to  say,  to  conceal  it  even  from  him- 
self ;  till  at  last  from  whim,  and  caprice, 
and  melancholy,  it  broke  out  into  down- 
right insanity, which  rendered  her  seclusion 
from  society  absolutely  necessary.  .  .  . 
When  I  reflect  on  the  many  sleepless  nights 
and  anxious  days,  which  he  experienced 
from  Mrs.  Beattie's  malady,  and  think  of 
the  unwearied  and  unremitting  attention 
he  paid  to  her,  during  so  great  a  number 
of  years,  in  that  sad  situation,  his  char- 
acter is  exalted  in  my  mind  to  a  degree 
which  may  be  equalled,  but  I  am  sure  never 
can  be  excelled,  and  makes  the  fame  of  the 
poet  and  the  philosopher  fade  from  my  re- 
membrance. ...  In  his  person.  Dr. 
Beattie  was  of  the  middle  size,  though  not 
elegantly,  yet  not  awkwardly  formed,  but 
with  something  of  a  slouch  in  his  gait. 
His  eyes  were  black  and  piercing,  with  an 
expression  of  sensibility,  somewhat  border- 
ing on  melancholy,  except  when  engaged 
in  cheerful  and  social  intercourse  with  his 
friends,  when  they  were  exceedingly  ani- 
mated. As  he  advanced  in  years,  and 
became  incapable  of  taking  his  usual  de- 
gree of  exercise,  he  grew  corpulent  and 
unwieldly,  till  within  a  few  months  of  his 
death,  when  he  had  greatly  decreased  in 
size.  When  I  last  saw  him,  the  diminu- 
tion of  his  form  was  but  too  prophetic  of 
the  event  that  soon  followed. — Forbes, 
Sir  William,  1806,  An  Account  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  James  Beattie^  vol. 
Ill,  pp.  176,  177,  187. 

Read  ''Beattie's  Life,"  by  Sir  Wm. 
Forbes  (from  Barjarg,  where  I  was  some 
days  ago),  Schneidermdssig,  religious 
' ' Gigmanity, "  yet  lovable,  pitiable,  in  many 
respects  worthy.  Of  all  literary  men, 
Beattie,  according  to  his  deserts,  was  per- 
haps (in  those  times)  the  best  rewarded ; 
yet  alas!  also,  at  length,  among  the  un- 
happiest.  How  much  he  enjoyed  that  is 
far  from  thee! — converse  with  minds  con- 
genial ;  an  element  not  of  black  cattleism^ 
but  of  refinement,  plenty,  and  encourage- 
ment. Repine  not ;  or,  what  is  more  to  be 
dreaded,  rebel  not. — Carlyle,  Thomas, 
1834,  Journal,  Feb.  9;  Life  by  Froude, 
vol.  II,  J).  327. 


Let  us  recall  his  black  and  piercing  eyes, 
''with  an  expression  of  sensibility  border- 
ing on  melancholy"  when  in  repose,  but 
brightening  into  animation  when  he  ad- 
dressed those  whom  he  loved.  He  after- 
wards— I  grieve  to  say  it  of  any  poet — 
grew  corpulent ;  but  at  this  time  he  carried 
with  him  to  those  levees  of  talent  a  spare 
person,  and  the  rare  qualities  of  a  mind 
which  I  shall  briefly  characterise.  His 
imagination  was,  perhaps,  subservient  to 
his  taste.  The  cultivation  of  his  mind 
had  been  carried  almost  to  what  human 
nature  can  conceive  of  perfection,  his 
chief  acquirements  being  in  moral  science. 
As  a  professor,  he  was  revered;  as  a 
friend  and  companion,  fondly  cherished. 
In  literature  he  held  an  eminent  place. 
The  deepest  piety,  a  true  sensibility  and 
gentleness,  and  a  humility  sincere  as  it 
was  rare,  softened  and  elevated  all  his 
mental  attributes.— Thomson,  Katherixe 
(Grace  Wharton),  1848,  The  Literary 
Circles  of  the  Last  Century,  Frasefs  Maga- 
zine, vol.  37,  p.  80. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  the  North  of 
Scotland  in  these  days,  there  was  not  one 
that  could  compete  with  Dr.  Beattie,  the 
recluse  professor  at  Aberdeen,  in  variety 
of  accomplishments;  for  he  was  an  ex- 
cellent classical  scholar,  a  veritable  poet, 
a  scientific  as  well  as  practical  musician, 
and  indefatigable  student,  and,  as  a  meta- 
physician, unsurpassed  at  that  epoch,  un- 
less it  were  by  his  friend  and  colleague, 
Dr.  Ried.— Gillies,  Robert  Pierce,  1851, 
Memoirs  of  a  Literary  Veteran. 

This  excellent  and  amiable  man ;  for  such 
he  was,  whatever  we  may  think  of  him  as 
a  writer.  Scepticism  was  at  this  time 
fashionable  among  the  wits  and  men  of 
letters.  It  was  thought  a  great  thing 
that  such  a  man  as  Beattie,  not  a  clergy- 
man, should  have  taken  up  the  pen  against 
Hume  and  Voltaire.  The  essay  had  won 
him  popular  fame,  royal  favour,  and  a  pen- 
sion. The  Edinburgh  Town  Council  had 
wooed  him  to  the  chair  of  moral  philos- 
ophy ;  the  Archbishop  of  York  had  solicited 
him  to  enter  the  Church  of  England. — 
Leslie,  Charles  Robert,  and  Taylor, 
Tom,  1865,  Life  and  Times  qf  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  vol.  ii,  p.  56. 

During  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  the  literary  traditions  of  the  most 
northerly  university  town  of  Scotland — 
the  city  of  John  Barbour  and  of  Hector 


430 


JAMES  BEATTIE 


Boece— were  honourably  upheld  by  a 
small  knot  of  poets.  Of  these  the  most 
academic  remains  the  most  famous.  Poet 
and  professor,  philosopher  and  man  of 
letters,  James  Beattie  was  no  less  dis- 
tinguished in  his  time  by  his  Minstrel" 
and  his  prose  "Essay  on  Truth"  than  by 
the  encouragement  and  help  which  he 
constantly  afforded  to  men  of  genius  less 
fortunately  placed.  Not  only  were  Ross 
and  Blacklock  substantially  indebted  to 
him  for  the  furtherance  of  their  literary 
fortunes,  but  constantly  in  the  literary 
history  of  the  time  one  comes  upon  hints 
and  helps  given  now  to  one  poet  and  now 
to  another,  which  again  and  again  bore 
valuable  fruit.  Beattie  indeed  may  be  said 
to  have  been  for  forty  years  a  gentle  and 
more  generous  Johnson,  at  once  the  liter- 
ary dictator  and  the  Maecenas  of  the  far 
north. — Eyre-Todd,  George,  1896,  Scot- 
tish Poetry  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol, 
II,  p.  1. 

ESSAY  ON  TRUTH 

1770 

I  am  not  at  all  surprised  to  hear,  that 
your  spirited  attack  on  the  head-quarters 
of  scepticism  has  drawn  upon  you  the  re- 
sentment of  Mr.  Hume  and  his  followers. 
— PORTEUS,  BiELBY,  1772,  Letter  to  Beat- 
tie  May  22 ;  Forbes^  Life  of  Beattie,  vol, 
I,  p,  293. 

I  have  lately  been  employed  in  reading 
Beattie  and  Blair's  "Lectures."  The 
latter  I  have  not  yet  finished.  I  find  the 
former  the  most  agreeable  of  the  two; 
indeed  the  most  entertaining  writer  upon 
dry  subjects  that  I  ever  met  with.  His 
imagination  is  highly  poetical,  his  lan- 
guage easy  and  elegant,  and  his  manner  so 
familiar,  that  we  seem  to  be  conversing 
with  an  old  friend,  upon  terms  of  the  most 
social  intercourse,  while  we  read  him.  .  .  . 
In  Blair  we  find  a  scholar ;  in  Beattie  both 
a  scholar  and  an  amiable  man ;  indeed  so 
amiable,  that  I  have  wished  for  his  ac- 
quaintance ever  since  I  read  his  book. — 
CowPER,  William,  1784,  Letter  to  Rev. 
John  Newton,  April  26 ;  Works,  ed.  Southey, 
vol.  Ill,  p.  103. 

Dr.  Beattie's  great  work,  and  that  which 
was  undoubtedly  the  first  foundation  of 
his  celebrity,  is  the  "Essay  on  the  Nature 
and  Immutability  of  Truth ;"  on  which  such 
unmeasured  praises  are  bestowed,  both  by 
his  present  biographer,  and  by  all  the 
author's  male  and  female  correspondents, 


that  it  is  with  difficulty  we  can  believe  that 
they  are  speaking  of  the  performance 
which  we  have  just  been  wearying  ourselves 
with  looking  over.  That  the  author's  in- 
tentions were  good,  and  his  convictions 
sincere,  we  entertain  not  the  least  doubt : 
but  that  the  merits  of  his  book  have  been 
prodigiously  overrated,  we  think,  is  equally 
undeniable.  It  contains  absolutely  noth- 
ing, in  the  nature  of  argument,  that  had 
not  been  previously  stated  by  Dr.  Reid  in 
his  "Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind ;"  and, 
in  our  opinion,  in  a  much  clearer  and  more 
unexceptionable  form. — Jeffrey,  Fran- 
cis Lord,  1807-44,  Life  of  Dr.  Beattie, 
Contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol. 
Ill,  p.  365. 

Beattie  is  among  the  philosophers  what 
the  Quaker  is  among  religious  sectaries. 
The  Kotvog  vov^,  or  common  sense,  is  the  spirit 
whose  illapses  he  sits  down  and  waits  for, 
and  by  whose  whispers  alone  he  expects  to 
be  made  wise.  It  has  sometimes  prompted 
him  well ;  for  there  are  admirable  passages 
in  the  Essay.  The  whole  train  of  his 
argument,  or  rather  his  invective,  in  the 
second  part,  against  the  sceptics,  is  irre- 
sistible.—Gary,  Henry  Francis,  1821- 
24-45,  Lives  of  English  Poets,  p.  310. 

The  book  was  received  very  favourably, 
passed  through  five  large  editions  in  four 
years,  and  was  translated  into  French, 
German,  Dutch,  and  Italian.  In  the  his- 
tory of  philosophy  it  has  not  the  slightest 
importance.  The  loose,  commonplace 
character  of  the  professor's  reasoning 
made  the  essay  popular  among  such  read- 
ers as  wish  to  be  thought  acquainted  with 
the  philosophy  of  the  day,  while  they  have 
neither  the  ability  nor  inclination  to  grap- 
ple with  metaphysical  problems.  Attacks 
on  Hume  in  singularly  bad  taste  abound 
throughout  the  book.  Hume  is  said  to 
have  complained  that  he  "had  not  been 
used  like  a  gentleman, ' '  and  this  probably 
is  the  only  notice  that  he  deigned  to  take 
of  th^e  professor's  labours. — Bullen,  A. 
H.,  1885,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  IV,  p.  23. 

The  book  had  an  enormous  vogue,  and 
procured  for  its  author  a  renown  which, 
however  evanescent,  was  for  the  moment 
astonishing.  But  it  was  in  England  rather 
than  in  Scotland  that  its  reception  was 
most  flattering.  .  .  .  But  as  a  fact 
the  book  was  but  a  piece  of  literary  flotsam 
such  as  is  often  cast  up  by  the  breaking 


JAMES  BEATTIE 


431 


waves  of  controversy.  As  a  philosophical 
disputant  Beattie  is  beneath  contempt. 
Occasionally  he  scores  a  good  point,  but 
it  may  almost  always  be  traced  to  Reid.  He 
makes  a  sound  accusation  against  the 
Scottish  school,  that  they  were  ignorant 
of  the  work  of  the  ancient  philosophers 
and  blind  to  their  merits;  but  the  accusa- 
tion is  one  which  he  was  utterly  incapable 
of  pushing  home.  The  book  is  indeed  a 
commonplace  and  frothy  mixture  of  popu- 
lar invective  and  almost  childish  argu- 
ment.—Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Cen- 
tury of  Scottish  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  219. 

THE  MINSTREL 

1771-74 

The  design  was  to  trace  the  progress  of 
a  Poetical  Genius,  born  in  a  rude  age,  from 
the  first  dawning  of  fancy  and  reason,  till 
that  period  at  which  he  may  be  supposed 
capable  of  appearing  in  the  world  as  a 
Minstrel,  that  is,  as  an  itinerant  Poet  and 
Musician ; — a  character  which,  according 
to  the  notions  of  our  forefathers,  was  not 
only  respectable,  but  sacred.  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  imitate  Spenser  in  the  meas- 
ure of  his  verse,  and  in  the  harmony, 
simplicity,  and  variety  of  his  composition. 
Antique  expressions  I  have  avoided;  ad- 
mitting, however,  some  old  words,  where 
they  seemed  to  suit  the  subject ;  but  I  hope 
none  will  be  found  that  are  now  obsolete, 
or  in  any  degree  not  intelligible  to  a  reader 
of  English  poetry.  To  those  who  may  be 
disposed  to  ask,  what  could  induce  me  to 
write  in  so  difficult  a  measure,  I  can  only 
answer  that  it  pleases  my  ear,  and  seems, 
from  its  Gothic  structure  and  original,  to 
bear  some  relation  to  the  subject  and  spirit 
of  the  Poem.  It  admits  both  simplicity 
and  magnificence  of  sound  and  of  language 
beyond  any  other  stanza  that  I  am  ac- 
quainted with.  It  allows  the  sententious- 
ness  of  the  couplet,  as  well  as  the  more 
complex  modulation  of  blank  verse.  What 
some  critics  have  remarked,  of  its  uni- 
formity growing  at  last  tiresome  to  the 
ear,  will  be  found  to  hold  true  only  when 
the  poetry  is  faulty  in  other  respects. — 
Beattie,  James,  1771,  The  Minstrel, 
Preface. 

I  read  the  ''Minstrel"  with  as  much 
rapture  as  poetry,  in  her  noblest,  sweetest 
charms,  ever  raised  in  my  soul.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  my  once  most-beloved  minstrel, 
Thomson,  was  come  down  from  heaven, 
refined  by  the  converse  of  purer  spirits 


than  those  he  lived  with  here,  to  let  me 
hear  him  sing  again  the  beauties  of  nature, 
and  the  finest  feelings  of  virtue,  not 
with  human,  but  with  angelic  strains. — 
Lyttelton,  Lord,  1771,  Letter  to  Mrs. 
Montagu,  March. 

I  am  charmed  with  * ' The  Minstrel, ' '  and 
have  circulated  its  fame.  I  have  enclosed 
a  note,  by  which  you  will  see  how  much  it 
pleased  Lord  Lyttelton.  I  have  sent  one 
into  the  country  to  Lord  Chatham ;  and  I 
wrote  immediately  to  a  person  who  serves 
many  gentlemen  and  ladies  with  new  books, 
to  recommend  it  to  all  people  of  taste.  I 
am  very  sorry  the  second  edition  of  Dr 
Beattie's  book  is  not  yet  in  town.  I  have 
recommended  it,  too,  to  many  of  our 
bishops  and  others;  but  all  have  com- 
plained this  whole  winter,  that  the  book- 
sellers deny  having  any  of  either  the  first 
or  second  edition. — Montagu,  Elizabeth, 
1771,  Letter  to  Dr.  John  Gregory,  March 
13 ;  Forbes'  Life  of  Beattie,  vol.  i,  p.  251. 

Nor  tremble  lest  the  tuneful  art  expire, 
While  Beattie  strikes  anew  old  Spenser's  lyre ; 
He,  best  to  paint  the  genuine  minstrel  knew, 
Who  from  himself  the  living  portrait  drew. 
—More,  Hannah,  1782,  Sensibility. 

I  thanked  you  in  my  last  for  Johnson ; 
I  now  thank  you,  with  more  emphasis,  for 
Beattie, — the  most  agreeable  and  amiable 
writer  I  ever  met  with ;  the  only  author  I 
have  seen,  whose  critical  and  philosophical 
researches  are  diversified  and  embellished 
by  a  poetical  imagination,  that  makes  even 
the  driest  subject  and  the  leanest,  a  feast 
for  an  epicure  in  books.  He  is  so  much 
at  his  ease,  too,  that  his  own  character 
appears  in  every  page;  and,  which  is  very 
rare,  we  see  not  only  the  writer,  but  the 
man;  and  that  man  so  gentle,  so  well- 
tempered,  so  happy  in  his  religion,  and  so 
humane  in  his  philosophy,  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  love  him,  if  one  has  the  least  sense  of 
what  is  lovely.  If  you  have  not  his  poem 
called  The  Minstrel, "  and  cannot  borrow 
it,  I  must  beg  you  to  buy  it  for  me ;  for, 
though  I  cannot  afl^ord  to  deal  largely  in 
so  expensive  a  commodity  as  books,  I  must 
afford  to  purchase  at  least  the  poetical 
works  of  Beattie.— Co WPER,  Willia3i, 
1784,  Letter  to  Rev.  William  Unwin,  April  5. 
No  gifts  have  I  from  Indian  coasts 

The  infant  year  to  iiail ; 
I  send  you  more  than  India  boasts, 
In  Edwin's  simple  tale. 
—Burns,  Robert,  1787,  To  Miss  Logan, 
with  Beattie's  Poems. 


432 


JAMES  BEATTIE 


It  was  his  supreme  delight  to  saunter 
in  the  fields  the  livelong  night,  contem- 
plating the  sky,  and  marking  the  approach 
of  day;  and  he  used  to  describe,  with 
peculiar  animation,  the  pleasure  he  re- 
ceived from  the  soaring  of  the  lark  in  the 
summer  morning.  A  beautiful  landscape 
which  he  has  magnificently  described  in 
the  twentieth  stanza  of  the  first  book  of 
the  "Minstrel,"  corresponds  exactly  with 
what  must  have  presented  itself  to  his 
poetical  imagination,  on  those  occasions, 
at  the  approach  of  the  rising  sun,  as  he 
would  view  the  grandeur  of  that  scene 
from  the  hill  in  the  neighbourhood  of  his 
native  village.  The  high  hill  which  rises 
to  the  west  of  Fordoun,  would,  in  a  misty 
morning,  supply  him  with  one  of  the 
images  so  beautifully  described  in  the 
twenty-first  stanza.  And  the  twentieth 
stanza  of  the  second  book  of  the  ''Min- 
strel" describes  a  night-scene  unquestion- 
ably drawn  from  nature,  in  which  he  prob- 
ably had  in  view  Homer's  sublime  descrip- 
tion of  the  moon,  in  the  eighth  book  of  the 
Iliad,  so  admirably  translated  by  Pope, 
that  an  eminent  critic  had  not  scrupled  to 
declare  it  to  be  superior  to  the  original. 
He  used,  himself,  to  tell,  that  it  was  from 
the  top  of  a  high  hill  in  the  neighbourhood 
that  he  first  beheld  the  ocean,  the  sight 
of  which,  he  declared,  made  the  most 
lively  impression  on  his  mind. — Forbes, 
Sir  William,  1806,  An  Account  of  the  Life 
and  Writings  of  James  Beattie,  vol.  i,  2?.  25. 

''Lives  there  the  man, "  who  has  a  heart 
to  feel,  and  an  understanding  to  appre- 
ciate, who  does  not  even  hug  the  "Min- 
strel" of  Beattie?  Most  sweet  and 
soothing  and  instructive  is  that  thoroughly 
picturesque  and  sentimental  poem,through- 
out :  while  the  stanza  exhibits  one  of  the 
happiest  of  modern  attempts  at  that  of  the 
Spencerian  structure. — Dibdin,  Thomas 
Frognall,  1824,  The  Library  Companion j 
p.  735,  note. 

His  fame  now  rests  upon  "The  Minstrel" 
alone.  Since  its  first  publication,  many 
poems  of  a  far  loftier  and  more  original 
character  have  been  produced  in  England ; 
yet  still  does  it  maintain  its  popularity ; 
and  still  in  Edwin,  that  happy  personifica- 
tion of  the  poetic  temperament,  do  young 
and  enthusiastic  readers  delight  to  recog- 
nize a  picture  of  themselves.  Though  we 
cannot  fail  to  regret  that  Beattie  should 
have  left  it  incomplete,  yet  we  do  not  long 


for  the  concluding  books  from  any  interest 
which  we  take  in  the  story,  such  as  is  ex- 
cited by  some  other  unfinished  works  of 
genius,  the  tale  of  "Cambuscan,"  for  in- 
stance, or  the  legend  of  "Christabel." 
In  "The  Minstrel,"  indeed,  there  is  but 
little  invention ;  it  is  a  poem  of  sentiment 
and  description,  conveying  to  us  lessons 
of  true  philosophy  in  language  of  surpris- 
ing beauty,  and  displaying  pictures  of 
nature,  in  her  romantic  solitudes,  painted 
by  a  master's  hand.— Dyce,  Alexander, 
ISSlf  Beattie^ s  Poems,  Aldine  ed.,  Memoir. 

No  poem  has  ever  given  more  delight  to 
minds  of  a  certain  class,  and  in. a  certain 
stage  of  their  progress  .  .  .  that  class 
a  high  one,  and  that  stage  perhaps  the 
most  delightful  in  the  course  of  their 
pilgrimage.  It  was  to  this  class  that  the 
poet  himself  belonged ;  the  scenes  which 
he  delineated  were  those  in  which  he  had 
grown  up,  the  feelings  and  aspirations 
those  of  his  own  boyhood  and  youth,  and 
the  poem  derived  its  peculiar  charm  from 
its  truth.— Southey,  Robert,  1835,  Life 
of  Cowper,  p.  340. 

This  afternoon  I  read  through  Beattie's 
"Minstrel,"  which  I  never  read  carefully 
before.  It  does  not  seem  to  me  in  most 
parts  to  possess  fire  enough — you  can't  see 
the  "kindling  touch"  of  genius  in  it. — 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  1837,  To  G.  B. 
Loring,  April  14 ;  Letters,  ed.  Norton,  vol. 
I,  p.  18. 

"The  Minstrel"  is  an  harmonious  and 
eloquent  composition,  glowing  with  poet- 
ical sentiment ;  but  its  inferiority  in  the 
highest  poetical  qualities  may  be  felt  by 
comparing  it  with  Thomson's  "Castle  of 
Indolence,"  which  is  perhaps  the  other 
work  in  the  language  which  it  most  nearly 
resembles,  but  which  yet  it  resembles  much 
in  the  same  way  as  gilding  does  solid  gold, 
or  as  colored  water  might  be  made  to  re- 
semble wine.— Craik,  George  L.,  1861, 
A  Compendious  History  of  English  Liter- 
ature and  of  the  English  Language,  vol.  11, 
p.  307. 

Beattie  had  not  the  same  power  of  lus- 
cious delineation,  nor  the  same  command 
over  language,  which  belonged  to  Thom- 
son ;  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  he  sometimes 
rises  to  a  strain  of  manly  force  and  dignity 
which  was  beyond  the  compass  of  the 
other.— Arnold,  Thomas,  1868-75,  Chau- 
cer to  Wordsworth,  p.  362. 


JAMES  BEATTIE 


433 


Of  James  Beattie  it  is  enough  to  record 
that  he  published  incoherent  fragments  of 
a  mock-antique  "Minstrel,"  in  the 
Spenserian  stanza. — Gosse,  Edmund,  1888, 
A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  327. 

His  thought  is  nowhere  great ;  it  verges 
on  originality,  but  is  never  conspicuously 
fresh  and  new.  ''The  Minstrel"  besides 
is  defective  in  the  execution  of  its  plan. 
The  idea  at  the  root  of  it  was  a  happy 
one;  and  Wordsworth  subsequently  gave 
partial  proof  of  what  might  be  done  with 
it.  But  Beattie  did  not  really  carry  out 
his  purpose.  The  figure  of  Edwin  remains 
a  mere  shadow ;  and  the  reader  cannot  be 
said  to  behold  the  growth  of  a  mind  whose 
features  are  nowhere  brought  before  his 
eye. — Walker,  Hugh,  1893,  Three  Cen- 
turies of  Scottish  Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  131. 

''The  Minstrel,"  like  "The  Seasons," 
abounds  in  insipid  morality,  the  common- 
places of  denunciation  against  luxury  and 
ambition,  and  the  praise  of  simplicity  and 
innocence. —Beers,  Henry  A.,  1898,  A 
History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  305. 

"The  Minstrel  or  the  Progress  of 
Genius' '  can  satisfy  only  the  most  moderate 
expectations,  or  the  least  fastidious  taste. 
There  is  absolutely  no  story ;  the  expres- 
sion is  seldom  or  never  striking,  and  the 
versification  (it  is  Spenserian),  though  not 
contemptible,  has  no  distinction.  But  all 
the  objects  of  the  early,  confused.  Roman- 
tic appetite — country  scenes,  woods, 
ruins,  the  moon,  chivalry,  mountains — 
are  dwelt  upon  with  a  generous  emotion, 
and  with  at  least  poetic  intention.  Above 
all,  Beattie  was  important  "for  them,^^  to 
apply  once  more  one  of  the  most  constantly 
applicable  of  critical  dicta.  His  time 
could  understand  him,  as  it  could  not  have 
understood  purer  Romanticism,  and  it  is 
probable  that,  for  an  entire  generation  at 
least,  and  perhaps  longer,  "The  Minstrel" 
served  to  bring  sometimes  near,  and  some- 
times quite,  to  poetry,  readers  who  would 
have  found  Coleridge  too  fragmentary, 
Shelley  too  ethereal,  and  both  too  remote. 
— Saintsbury,  George,  1898,  A  Short 
History  of  English  Literature,  p.  586. 

GENERAL 
Dr.  Beattie' s  style  is  singularly  free 
and  perspicuous,  and  adapted  in  the  highest 
degree  to  the  purpose  of  familiar  lectur- 
ing to  his  pupils ;  but  for  the  author  we 

28C 


should  deem  it  something  less  than  elegant, 
and  something  less  than  nervous.  In  early 
life  he  took  great  pains  to  imitate  Addison, 
whose  style  he  always  recommended  and 
admired.  .  .  .  In  many  parts  of  the  letters, 
we  are  constrained  to  perceive  a  degree 
of  egotism  inconsistent  with  the  dignity 
of  a  philosopher  or  a  man.  The  writer 
seems  unwilling  to  lose  any  opportunity 
of  recounting  the  attentions,  the  com- 
pliments, the  testimonies  of  admiration, 
which  he  has  received  from  individuals  or 
the  public.  The  complacency  v;ith  which 
he  expatiates  on  himself  and  his  perform- 
ances, is  but  imperfectly  disguised  by  the 
occasional  and  too  frequent  professions  of 
holding  himself  and  those  performances 
cheap.  This  is  a  very  usual  but  unsuc- 
cessful expedient,  with  those  who  have 
reflection  enough  to  be  sensible  that  they 
have  rather  too  much  ostentation,  but  not 
resolution  enough  to  restrain  themselves 
from  indulging  in  it. — Foster,  John, 

1807,  On  Memoir- Writing,  Critical  Es- 
says, ed.  Ryland,  vol.  I,  pp.  27,  28. 

He  wrote  English  better  than  any  other 
of  his  countrymen,  and  had  formed  his 
style  and  manner  of  composition  on  our 
Addison ;  but  what  he  admired  in  him  was 
his  tuneful  prose  and  elegant  expression. 
He  had  no  notion  of  that  writer's  original 
and  inimitable  humour. — Hurd,  Richard, 

1808,  Commonplace  Book,  Memoirs,  ed. 
Kilvert,  p.  244. 

The  few  of  his  poems  which  he  thought 
worthy  of  being  selected  from  the  rest, 
and  of  being  delivered  to  posterity,  have 
many  readers,  to  whom  perhaps  one  recom- 
mendation of  them  is  that  they  are  few. 
They  have,  however,  and  deservedly,  some 
admirers  of  a  better  stamp.  They  soothe 
the  mind  with  indistinct  conceptions  of 
something  better  than  is  met  with  in  ordi- 
nary life.  The  first  book  of  the  "Minstrel," 
the  most  considerable  amongst  them,  de- 
scribes with  much  fervour  the  enthusiasm 
of  a  boy  "smit  with  the  love  of  song, "  and 
awakened  to  a  sense  of  rapture  by  all  that 
is  most  grand  or  lovely  in  the  external 
appearance  of  nature.  It  is  evident  that 
the  poet  had  felt  much  of  what  he  de- 
scribes, and  he  therefore  makes  his  hearers 
feel  it.  Yet  at  times,  it  must  be  owned, 
he  seems  as  if  he  were  lashing  himself 
into  a  state  of  artificial  emotion. — Gary, 
Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45,  Lives  of 
English  Poets,  p.  313. 


434 


JAMES  BEATTIE 


On  the  whole,  Beattie  may  be  ranked 
beside,  or  near,  Campbell,  Collins,  Gray, 
and  Akenside.  Deficient  in  thought  and 
passion,  in  creative  power,  and  copious 
imagination,  he  is  strong  in  sentiment,  in 
mild  tenderness,  and  in  delicate  description 
of  nature.  Whatever  become  of  his  Essay 
on  Truth,  or  even  of  his  less  elaborate  and 
more  pleasing  Essays  on  Music,  Imagina- 
tion, and  Dreams,  the  world  can  never,  at 
any  stage  of  its  advancement,  forget  to 
read  and  admire  the  Minstrel' '  and  the 
Hermit,"  or  to  cherish  the  memory 
of  their  warm-hearted  and  sorely-tried 
author. — ^Gilfillan,  George,  1854,  ed. 
The  Poetical  Works  of  Beattie,  Blair  and 
Falconer,  p.  xxiv. 

Beattie,  a  metaphysical  moralist,  with  a 
young  girl's  nerves  and  an  old  maid's 
hobbies.— Taine,  H.  A.,  1871,  History  of 
English  Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun,  vol.  Ii, 
bk.  iii,  ch.  vii,  p.  220. 

His  style  has  considerable  power  of  the 
rotund  declamatory  order ;  copious,  high- 
sounding,  and  elegant ;  occasionally  in  its 
appeals  to  established  feeling  throwing 
out  rhetorical  interrogations,  followed  by 
brief,  abrupt  answers. — MiNTO,  William, 
1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose  Liter- 
ature, p.  474. 

His  poems  will  ever  hold  a  place  among 
the  classical  writings  of  Great  Britain. 
His  ''Minstrel"  and  his  ''Hermit"  are 
exquisite  poems  of  their  kind:  simple, 
graceful,  tender,  and  leaving  a  peaceful 
and  peace-giving  impression  on  the  mind ; 
and  therefore  not  likely  to  be  appreciated 
by  those  whose  tastes  were  formed  by  the 
passionate  and  startling  style  of  poetry 
introduced  in  the  next  page  by  Byron,  who 
was  at  school  in  Aberdeen  while  Beattie 
was  in  his  declining  years.  His  prose 
works  do  not  exhibit  much  grasp  or  depth 
of  thought,  but  are  characterized  by  much 
ease  and  elegance.  — •  McCosH,  James, 
1874,  The  Scottish  Philosophy,  p.  234. 

Beattie  also  wrote  odes,  but  any  inter- 
ference with  the  dust  that  has  settled  upon 
them  would  be  officious  and  unnecessary ; 
it  is  by  his  "Minstrel"  that  he  lives,  so  far 
as  he  can  be  said  to  live  at  all,  for  there 
is  no  great  delight  to  be  got  from  his  other 
poems.  "The  Minstrel,"  however,  has 
real  merit.  It  was  due  in  good  part  to  the 
influence  of  Speneer,  whom  he  greatly  ad- 
mired, but  even  in  beautiful  passages  we 


find  such  conventional  phrases  as  "glitter- 
ing waves  and  skies  in  gold  arrayed." 
Yet  in  the  first  book  we  find  very  genuine 
love  of  nature  expressed  with  real  poetical 
skill.— Perry,  Thomas  S.,  1880,  Gray, 
Collins  and  Beattie,  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol 
46,  p.  816. 

Beattie  is  perhaps  the  most  difficult  poet 
of  the  eighteenth  century  for  a  nineteenth- 
century  reader  to  criticise  sympathetic- 
ally. His  original  poetical  power  was 
almost  nil.  But  he  had  a  delicate  and 
sensitive  taste,  and  was  a  diligent  student 
of  the  works  of  Gray  and  Collins  on  the 
one  hand,  and  of  the  ballads  which  Percy 
had  just  published  on  the  other.  His 
earlier  poems  are  merely  so  many  varia- 
tions on  the  "Elegy"  and  the  "Ode  on  the 
Passions. ' '  His ' '  Judgment  of  Paris' '  and 
his  ''Lines  on  Churchill"  are  perhaps  those 
of  his  works  in  which  he  was  least  indebted 
to  others,  and  they  are  almost  worthless 
intrinsically,  besides  being  (at  least  the 
Churchill  lines)  in  the  worst  possible  taste. 
— Saintsbury,  George,  1880,  The  Eng- 
lish Poets,  ed.  Ward,  vol.  iii,  p.  396. 

Beattie 's  odes  are  feeble  echoes  of  "The 
Bard"  of  Gray  and  "The  Passions"  of 
Collins ;  his  "Judgment  of  Paris"  is  mere 
rhetoric;  his  imitation  of  Shakespeare's 
"Blow,  blow,  thou  winter  wind"  is  chiefly 
remarkable  for  the  number  of  technical 
faults  compressed  within  so  narrow  com- 
pass. "The  Minstrel"  itself  is  more 
noteworthy  as  a  symptom  than  for  its  in- 
trinsic merits. — Walker,  Hugh,  1893, 
Three  Centuries  of  Scottish  Literature,  vol. 
II,  p.  130. 

The  author  of  the  "Minstrel"  was  an 
honest  man  and  a  respectable  poet,  but  he 
prided  himself  too  much  on  what  he  called 
common  sense,  and  failed  to  see  that  in 
the  search  after  truth  other  and  even 
higher  faculties  may  be  also  needed. — 
Dennis,  John,  1894,  The  Age  of  Pope, 
p.  226. 

His  fame  to-day  is  as  a  tale  that  is  told. 
His  prose  works,  so  lauded  in  their  genera- 
tion, are  forgotten.  His  "Minstrel" 
lingers  still  with  a  slender  reputation 
after  its  days  of  glory,  and  its  author 
is  stamped  with  that  disastrous  title  of 
mediocrity — "a  pleasing  poet." — Graham, 
Henry  Grey,  1901,  James  Beattie,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  272. 


435 

Joseph  Ritson 

1752-1803 

Antiquary,  born  at  Stockton-on-Tees,  came  to  London  in  1775,  and  practised  as  a 
conveyancer,  but  was  enabled  to  give  most  of  his  time  to  antiquarian  studies.  He  was 
as  notorious  for  his  vegetarianism,  whimsical  spelling,  and  irreverence  as  for  his  attacks 
on  bigger  men  than  himself.  His  first  important  work  was  an  onslaught  on  Warton's 
"History  of  English  Poetry"  (1782).  He  assailed  (1783)  Johnson  and  Steevens  for 
their  text  of  Shakespeare,  and  Bishop  Percy  in  ''Ancient  Songs"  (1790);  in  1792 
appeared  his  ''Cursory  Criticisms"  on  Malone's  Shakespeare.  Other  works  were  "Eng- 
lish Songs"  (1783);  "Ancient  Popular  Poetry"  (1791);  "Scottish  Songs"  (1794); 
"Poems,"  by  Laurence  Minot  (1795);  "Robin  Hood  Ballads"  (1795);  and  "Ancient 
English  Metrical  Romances"  (1802).— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's 
Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  792. 


PERSONAL 
As  bitter  as  gall,  and  as  sharp  as  a  razor, 
And  feeding  on  herbs  as  a  Nebuchadnezzar, 
His  diet  too  acid,  his  temper  too  sour, 
Little  Ritson  came  out  with  his  two  volumes 
more. 

—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1823,  Song  of  One 
Volume  More. 

Coarse,  caustic,  clever ;  and,  am  I  to  sup- 
pose, not  amiable. — Lamb,  Charles,  1823, 
Ritson  Versus  John  Scott,  the  Quaker, 
p.  437. 

This  narrow-minded,  sour,  and  dogmat- 
ical little  word-catcher  had  hated  the  very 
name  of  a  Scotsman,  and  was  utterably 
incapable  of  sympathizing  with  any  of  the 
higher  views  of  his  new  correspondent. 
Yet  the  bland  courtesy  of  Scott  disarmed 
even  this  half -crazy  pedant ;  and  he  com- 
municated the  stores  of  his  really  valu- 
able learning  in  a  manner  that  seems  to 
have  greatly  surprised  all  who  had  hitherto 
held  any  intercourse  with  him  on  antiqua- 
rian topics. — Lockhart,  John  Gibson, 
1836,  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  ch.  x. 

Whose  wild  temper  and  vegetarian 
crotchets  have  found  a  more  permanent 
place  in  history  than  his  collections. — 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  The 
Literary  History  of  England,  XVIIIth- 
XlXth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  189. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  spots  in  all 
London  to  me  is  Bunhill  Fields  cemetery, 
for  herein  are  the  graves  of  many  whose 
memory  I  revere.  I  had  heard  that  Joseph 
Ritson  was  buried  here,  and  while  my 
sister.  Miss  Susan,  lingered  at  the  grave 
of  her  favorite  poet,  I  took  occasion  to 
spy  around  among  the  tombstones  in  the 
hope  of  discovering  the  last  resting-place 
of  the  curious  old  antiquary  whose  labors 
in  the  field  of  balladry  have  placed  me 
under  so  great  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  him. 


But  after  I  had  searched  in  vain  for  some- 
what more  than  an  hour  one  of  the  keepers 
of  the  place  told  me  that  in  compliance 
with  Ritson's  earnest  desire  while  living, 
that  antiquary's  grave  was  immediately 
after  the  interment  of  the  body  levelled 
down  and  left  to  the  care  of  nature,  with 
no  stone  to  designate  its  location.  So  at 
the  present  time  no  one  knows  just  where 
old  Ritson's  grave  is,  only  that  within  that 
vast  enclosure  where  so  many  thousand 
souls  sleep  their  last  sleep  the  dust  of  the 
famous  ballad-lover  lies  fast  asleep  in  the 
bosom  of  mother  earth. — Field,  Eugene, 
1895,  The  Love  Affairs  of  a  Bibliomaniac, 
p.  93. 

Ritson  combined  much  pedantry  with  his 
scholarship;  but  he  sought  a  far  higher 
ideal  of  accuracy  than  is  common  among 
antiquaries,  while  he  spared  no  pains  in 
accumulating  information.  Sir  Walter 
Scott  wrote  that  *'he  had  an  honesty  of 
principle  about  him  which,  if  it  went  to 
ridiculous  extremities,  was  still  respect- 
able from  the  soundness  of  the  founda- 
tion." But  Scott  did  not  overlook  his 
friend's  peculiarities,  and  in  verses  written 
for  the  Bannatyne  Club  in  1823  he  referred 
to  ''Little  Ritson" 

As  bitter  as  gall,  and  as  sharp  as  a  razor, 
And  feeding  on  herbs  as  a  Nebuchadnezzar. 
Ritson's  impatience  of  inaccuracy  led  him 
to  unduly  underrate  the  labours  of  his  con- 
temporaries, and  his  suspicions  of  impos- 
ture were  often  unwarranted.  But  his 
irritability  and  eccentricity  were  mainly 
due  to  mental  malady.  He  showed  when 
in  good  health  many  generous  instincts, 
and  he  cherished  no  personal  animosity 
against  those  on  whose  published  work  he 
made  his  splenetic  attacks.  With  Surtees, 
George  Baton,  Walter  Scott,  and  his 
nephew  he  corresponded  good -humour edly 


436 


JOSEPH  RITSON 


to  the  end.  He  produced  his  works  with 
every  typographical  advantage,  and  em- 
ployed Bewick  and  Stothard  to  illustrate 
many  of  them.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  of  his 
literary  ventures  proved  remunerative. 
In  person,  according  to  his  friend  Robert 
Smith,  Ritson  resembled  a  spider.  A  car- 
icature of  him  by  Gillray  represents  him 
in  a  tall  hat  and  a  long  closely  buttoned 
coat.— Lee,  Sidney,  1896,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  XLViii,  p.  330. 

GENERAL 

In  Theron's  form,  mark  Ritson  next  contend; 
Fierce,  meagre,  pale,    no  commentator's 
friend. 

— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed,,  p.  100. 

A  man  of  acute  observation,  profound 
research,  and  great  labour.  These  valu- 
able attributes  were  unhappily  combined 
with  an  eager  irritability  of  temper,  which 
induced  him  to  treat  antiquarian  trifles  with 
the  same  seriousness  which  men  of  the 
world  reserve  for  matters  of  importance, 
and  disposed  him  to  drive  controversies 
into  personal  quarrels,  by  neglecting,  in 
literary  debate,  the  courtesies  of  ordinary 
society.  It  ought  to  be  said,  however, 
by  one  who  knew  him  well,  that  this  irri- 
tability of  disposition  was  a  constitutional 
and  physical  infirmity,  and  that  Ritson's 
extreme  attachment  to  the  severity  of 
truth  corresponded  to  the  vigour  of  his 
criticisms  upon  the  labours  of  others. — 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1802-3,  Ancient 
Minstrelsy,  Introduction. 

Hear  how  this  puny  worm  lifts  its  feeble 
cry,  to  arraign  the  orders  of  nature,  and 
scoff  at  the  Omniscience,  which,  for  wise 
purposes,  though  quite  unknown  to  us, 
suffers  it  to  crawl  upon  the  earth.  .  .  . 
Before  taking  leave  of  this  nauseous 
performance,  a  few  words  remain  to  be 
added  upon  the  style,  in  which  so  many 
absurdities  are  delivered.  We  do  not 
mean  to  go  farther  than  the  external 
qualities, — the  matchless  ludicrousness  of 
the  orthography  and  typography.  .  .  . 
We  now  most  joyfully  leave  the  ''Essay 
on  Abstinence  from  Animal  Food"  to  that 
oblivion  which  awaits  it ;  and  from  which 
its  singularities,  however  gross  and 
wicked,  are  of  too  dull  a  cast  to  save  it. 
— Smith,  Sidney,  and  Brougham,  Henry 
Lord,  1803,  Ritson  on  Abstinence  From 
Animal  Food,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  2, 
pp.  135,  136. 


Ritson  is  the  oddest,  but  most  honest  of 
all  our  antiquarians. — Southey,  Robert, 
1803,  ToS.  T.  Coleridge,  March  14;  Life 
and  Correspondence. 

Mr.  Joseph  Ritson,  unilluminated  by  a 
particle  of  taste  or  fancy,  and  remarkable 
only  for  the  increasing  drudgery  with 
which  he  dedicated  his  life  to  one  of  the 
humblest  departments  of  literary  antiqui- 
ties, and  for  the  bitter  insolence  and  foul 
abuse  with  which  he  communicated  his  dull 
acquisitions  to  the  public.  .  .  .  Who- 
ever is  acquainted  with  that  strange,  but 
not  totally  useless,  book  ["Bibliographia 
Poetica"],  will  wonder  how  it  was  possible 
for  a  man,  with  such  a  fund  of  materials 
before  him,  to  compile  a  work  so  utterly 
lifeless  and  stupid,  so  uncheared  by  one 
single  ray  of  light,  or  one  solitary  flower 
admitted  even  by  chance  from  the  numer- 
ous and  varied  gardens  of  poetry  over 
which  he  had  been  travelling !  But,  poor 
unhappy  spirit,  thou  art  gone !  Perhaps 
thy  restless  temper  was  diseased:  and 
mayst  thou  find  peace  in  the  grave! — 
Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1805, 
Censura  Literaria,  vol.  i,  p.  54. 

Sycorax  was  this  demon;  and  a 
cunning  and  clever  demon  was  he !  I 
will  cease  speaking  metaphorically,  but 
Sycorax  was  a  man  of  ability  in  his  way. 
He  taught  literary  men,  in  some  measure, 
the  value  of  careful  research  and  faithful 
quotation ;  in  other  words,  he  taught  them 
to  speak  the  truth  as  they  found  her ;  and 
doubtless  for  this  he  merits  not  the  name 
of  demon,  unless  you  allow  me  the  privilege 
of  a  Grecian.  That  Sycorax  loved  the 
truth  must  be  admitted ;  but  that  he  loved 
no  one  else  so  much  as  himself  to  speak 
the  truth,  must  also  be  admitted. — Dib- 
din,  Thomas  Frognall,  1811,  The  Bibli- 
omania ;  or,  Book-Madness. 

Ritson,  the  late  antiquary  of  poetry  (not 
to  call  him  poetical)  amazed  the  world  by 
his  vituperative  railing  at  two  authors  of 
the  finest  taste  in  poetry,  Warton  and 
Percy;  he  carried  criticism,  as  the  dis- 
cerning few  had  first  surmised,  to  insanity 
itself;  the  character  before  us  only  ap- 
proached it.— Disraeli,  Isaac,  1812-13, 
The  Influence  of  a  Bad  Temper  in  Criti- 
cism, Calamities  of  Authors. 

As  to  the  rabid  Ritson,  who  can  describe 
his  vagaries  ?  What  great  arithmetician 
can  furnish  an  index  to  his  absurdities,  or 
what  great  decipherer  furnish  a  key  to  the 


RITSON— HOPKINS 


437 


principles  of  these  absurdities?  In  his 
very  title-pages, — nay,  in  the  most  obsti- 
nate of  ancient  technicalities, — he  showed 
his  cloven  foot  to  the  astonished  reader. 
Some  of  his  many  works  were  printed  in 
Pali-Mall ;  now,  as  the  world  is  pleased  to 
pronounce  that  word  Pel-Mel,  thus  and 
no  otherwise  (said  Ritson)  it  shall  be 
spelled  for  ever.  Whereas,  on  the  con- 
trary, some  men  would  have  said:  The 
spelling  is  well  enough,  it  is  the  public 
pronunciation  which  is  wrong.  .  .  . 
Volumes  would  not  suffice  to  exhaust  the 
madness  of  Ritson  upon  this  subject.  And 
there  was  this  peculiarity  in  his  madness, 
over  and  above  its  clamorous  ferocity, — ■ 
that,  being  no  classical  scholar  (a  meagre 
self-taught  Latinist  and  no  Grecian  at  all), 
though  profound  as  a  black-letter  scholar, 
he  cared  not  one  straw  for  ethnographic 
relations  of  words,  nor  for  unity  of  anal- 
ogy, which  are  the  principles  that  gener- 
ally have  governed  reformers  of  spelling. 
He  was  an  attorney  and  moved  constantly 
under  the  monomaniac  idea  that  an  action 
lay  on  behalf  of  misused  letters,  mutes, 
liquids,  vowels,  and  diphthongs,  against 
somebody  or  other  (John  Doe,  was  it,  or 
Richard  Roe  ?)  for  trespass  on  any  rights 
of  theirs  which  an  attorney,  might  trace, 
and  of  course  for  any  direct  outrage  upon 
their  persons.  Yet  no  man  was  more 
systematically  an  offender  in  both  ways 
than  himself, — tying  up  one  leg  of  a 
quadruped  word  and  forcing  it  to  run  upon 
three,  cutting  off  noses  and  ears  if  he 
fancied  that  equity  required  it,  and  living 
in  eternal  hot  water  with  a  language  which 
he  pretended  eternally  to  protect. — De 
Quince Y,  Thomas,  1847-60,  Orthographic 
Mutineers;  Works,  ed.  Masson,  vol.  XI, 
pp.  441,  442. 


A  man  of  ample  reading  and  excellent 
taste  in  selection,  and  who,  real  scholar 
as  he  was,  always  drew  from  original 
sources.— Lowell,  James  Russell,  1871, 
Library  of  Old  Authors,  My  Study  Win- 
dows, p.  359. 

Neither  Percy  nor  Warton  escaped  the 
strictures  of  Ritson,  that  ''black-letter 
dog,"  a  tame  and  affected  pedant  of  no 
critical  importance,  but  far  more  careful 
as  an  editor  than  either  of  them. — GossE, 
Edmund,  1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth 
Century  Literature,  p.  325. 

I  do  not  wonder  that  Ritson  and  Percy 
quarrelled.  It  was  his  misfortune  that 
Ritson  quarrelled  with  everybody.  Yet 
Ritson  was  a  scrupulously  honest  man ;  he 
was  so  vulgarly  sturdy  in  his  honesty  that 
he  would  make  all  folk  tell  the  truth  even 
though  the  truth  were  of  such  a  character 
as  to  bring  the  blush  of  shame  to  the  devil's 
hardened  cheek. — Field,  Eugene,  1895, 
The  Love  Affairs  of  a  Bibliomaniac,  p.  101. 

Joseph  Ritson  possessed  all  the  enthusi- 
asm, and  even  more  than  the  share  of 
eccentricity,  which  so  often  accompanies 
the  genius  of  the  antiquary.  .  .  . 
Violent  in  all  his  notions, — religious, 
moral,  and  political,  as  well  as  critical, — 
he  was  always  ready  to  fall  upon  others 
whose  opinions  were  at  variance  with 
truth,  or  at  least  with  his  own  view  of  it. 
As  his  learning  was  large  and  strictly 
accurate,  and  his  style  incisive,  he  was 
respected  and  disliked;  and  at  different 
times  War  burton,  Johnson,  Warton,  and 
Steevens  all  felt  the  edge  of  his  criticism. 
It  will  readily  be  supposed  that  Percy's 
ideas  of  the  duties  of  an  editor  did  not 
commend  themselves  to  Ritson. — Court- 
hope,  W.  J.,  1895,  A  History  of  English 
Poetry,  vol.  I,  p.  428. 


Samuel  Hopkins 

1721-1803 

A  Congregational  clergyman  of  Newport,  Rhode  Island,  the  founder  of  what  has  been 
called  Hopkinsian  Divinity,  which  differed  from  Calvinism  in  maintaining  the  free  agency 
of  sinners,  the  moral  inability  of  the  unregenerate,  and  ascribing  the  essence  of  sin  to 
the  disposition  and  purpose  of  the  mind.  His  views  had  great  influence  in  the  modifica- 
tion of  contemporary  thought.  He  was  a  strong  opponent  of  slavery,  and  his  influence 
procured  the  passage  of  a  law  prohibiting  the  importation  of  slaves  into  Rhode  Island. 
The  "System  of  Doctrine  contained  in  Divine  Revelation"  is  his  principal  work. 
Others  are,  "The  True  State  of  the  Unregenerate "Nature  of  True  Holiness ;"  "The 
Duty  and  Interest  of  American  States  to  Emancipate  their  Slaves."  »S'ee  "Life"  by 
Park ;  Mrs.  Stowe's  "Minister's  Wooing ;"  Sprague's  "Annals  of  the  American  Pulpit.'* 
—Adams,  Oscar  Fay,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  American  Authors,  p.  194. 


438 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS 


PERSONAL 

His  appearance  was  that  of  a  man  who 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  world.  I  can 
well  recollect  the  impression  which  he 
made  on  me  when  a  boy,  as  he  rode  on 
horseback  in  a  plaid  gown,  fastened  by  a 
girdle  round  his  waist,  and  with  a  study 
cap  on  his  head  instead  of  a  wig.  His  de- 
livery in  the  pulpit  was  the  worst  I  ever 
met  with.  Such  tones  never  came  from 
any  human  voice  within  my  hearing.  He 
was  the  very  ideal  of  bad  delivery.  Then 
I  must  say,  the  matter  was  as  often  unin- 
viting as  the  manner.  :^ .  .  .  His  manners 
had  a  bluntness,  partly  natural,  partly  the 
result  of  long  seclusion  in  the  country. 
We  cannot  wonder  that  such  a  man  should 
be  set  down  as  hard  and  severe.  But  he 
had  a  true  benevolence,  and  what  is  more 
worthy  of  being  noted,  he  was  given  to  a 
facetious  style  of  conversation. — Chan- 
NiNG,  William  Ellery,  1836,  Christian 
Worship,  Discourse  at  Newport,  R.  /., 
July  27 ;  Works,  vol.  iv,  p.  348,  note. 

As  to  his  personal  appearance,  my 
recollection  is,  that  he  was  rather  above 
the  middle  height,  somewhat  inclined  to  a 
plethoric  habit,  with  a  thoughtful  and  in- 
telligent expression  of  countenance.  He 
wore  a  black  cap,  and  seemed  to  me  very 
aged  and  infirm.  I  remember  to  have 
thought  his  preaching  exceedingly  dry  and 
abstract,  and  such  I  believe  was  the  esti- 
mate formed  of  it  by  those  whose  age  and 
acquirements  rendered  them  more  com- 
petent judges  than  I  was.  I  understand  that 
some  of  his  sermons  were  written  out,  but 
he  usually  preached  from  short  notes.  The 
effect  of  his  preaching  was  that  nearly  all 
the  young  people  of  the  town  went  to  other 
churches.  I  distinctly  recollect  that  there 
was  a  larger  proportion  of  aged  people  in 
his  congregation  than  I  remember  ever  to 
have  seen  in  any  other ;  and  there  was  a 
corresponding  gravity  and  solemnity  in 
their  appearance. — Pitman,  Benjamin  H., 
1851,  Letter  to  William  B.  Sprague,  Aug, 
18 ;  Annals  of  the  American  Pulpit,  vol.  i, 
p.  433. 

Nothing  in  the  history  of  Samuel  Hop- 
kins is  more  honorable  to  him,  than  his 
early,  fearless,  uncompromising  and  inde- 
fatigable testimony  against  the  slave  trade 
and  against  slavery.  We  commend  the 
consideration  of  his  heroic  example,  and 
the  study  of  his  works  on  this  subject,  to 
those  pastors  and  doctors,  who,  within  the 


last  three  years,  in  their  zeal  for  com- 
promise and  political  expediency,  have 
shown  themselves  recreant  to  the  cause  of 
liberty.  That  honest  old  man,  with  all 
his  metaphysics,  had  a  throb  under  the 
left  breast;"  and, with  all  his  logic, it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  deduce  from  the 
Scriptures,  or  from  his  own  theory  of  the 
nature  of  virtue,  any  apology  for  so 
atrocious  a  thing  as  the  system  of  slavery. 
Without  the  gift  of  eloquence,  without 
any  advantage  of  station  or  office,  without 
wealth,  without  personal  influence,  save  in 
a  restricted  range,  he  made  himself  felt, 
and  was  willing  to  be  hated,  as  a  defender 
of  the  needy  and  the  captive.  His  in- 
fluence in  this  respect  has  acted  upon 
thousands  of  minds  who  were  never  con- 
scious that  the  influence  which  moved  them 
came  from  so  obscure  a  source.  Guided 
by  no  impracticable  or  Jacobinical  theory, 
impelled  only  by  the  Divine  instinct  of 
equity  and  love,  he  demanded,  as  with  an 
inspired  earnestness,  justice  for  the 
wronged  and  liberty  for  all. — Bacon, 
Leonard,  1852,  Prof.  Park's  Memoir  of 
Hopkins,  New  Englander,  vol.  10,  p.  470. 

He  was  so  infirm,  during  at  least  a  part 
of  the  time  after  I  knew  him,  that  he  was 
unable  to  walk  to  the  house  of  God  with- 
out help.  He  was  rather  tall  and  some- 
what corpulent,  as  well  as  infirm ;  and  I 
well  remember  that  a  coloured  man  used 
to  put  his  shoulder  under  the  Doctor's 
arm,  and  thus  walk  with  him  to  his  pulpit, 
and  then  home  again  after  the  service.  I 
think  I  never  heard  him  preach  but  once, 
and  then  his  voice  and  manner,  owing  I 
suppose  to  his  bodily  infirmities,  were  ex- 
tremely feeble;  but  I  think  that,  in  his 
best  state,  he  had  not  much  animation  in 
the  pulpit.  I  visited  him  very  often,  and 
always  found  him  in  his  study,  and  always 
received  from  him  a  cordial  welcome.  He 
was  pleasant  and  instructive  in  conversa- 
tion, and  seemed  to  be  living  under  a 
habitual  sense  of  the  Divine  presence.  He 
was  evidently  deeply  affected  that  so  little 
apparent  success  had  attained  his  ministry, 
and  I  think  he  had  great  fears  as  to  what 
would  be  the  condition  of  his  society  after 
his  removal  from  them.  —  Bradley, 
Joshua,  1853,  Letter  to  William  B. 
Sprague,  July  15 ;  Annals  of  the  American 
Pulpit,  vol.  I,  p.  435. 

He  was  a  good  man.  His  own  phrase 
to  express  the  sum  total  of  virtue  was 


SAMUEL  HOPKINS 


439 


"disinterested  benevolence,"  and  he  lived 
it  as  faithfully  as  he  preached  it.  He  se- 
cured the  personal  esteem  and  love  of  those 
of  his  neighbors  who  differed  most  widely 
from  him  in  his  theological  views.  His 
great  mental  trait  was  that  which  was  so 
clearly  marked  upon  his  daily  life  that  he 
received  the  nick-name  Old  Honesty.  He 
was  humble,  and  honest  in  expressing  a 
depreciatory  opinion  of  his  own  services. 
He  was  honest  in  his  theological  convic- 
tions, and  thorough  in  carrying  them  out 
into  their'  manifold  ramifications.  So 
honest  was  he,  that  he  did  not  stop  always 
to  select  language  not  likely  unnecessarily 
to  offend.— Foster,  Frank  H.,  1886,  The 
Eschatology  of  the  New  England  Divines, 
Bibliotheca  Sacra,  vol.  43,  p.  711. 

GENERAL 

The  celebrity  of  the  author,  who,  with 
Edwards  and  Bellamy,  completes  the 
American  triumvirate  of  eminent  writers 
in  the  same  strain  of  divinity,  would  have 
rendered  this  work  [''System  of  Doc- 
trines"] much  more  popular  and  useful,  had 
he  kept  clear  of  a  bold  and  grating  state- 
ment,— that  ''God  has  foreordained  all  the 
moral  evil  which  does  take  place,"  and 
which  he  endeavours  to  defend  with  more 
ingenuity  than  success. — Williams,  Ed- 
ward, 1800,  The  Christian  Preacher. 

His  system,  however  fearful,  was  yet 
built  on  a  generous  foundation.  He  main- 
tained that  all  holiness,  all  moral  excel- 
lence, consists  in  benevolence,  or  disin- 
terested devotion  to  the  greatest  good. 
.  .  He  taught  that  sin  was  introduced 
into  the  creation,  and  is  to  be  everlastingly 
punished,  because  evil  is  necessary  to  the 
highest  good.  .  .  .  True  virtue,  as 
he  taught,  was  an  entire  surrender  of  per- 
sonal interest  to  the  benevolent  purposes 
of  God.  Self-love  he  spared  in  none  of  its 
movements. —  Channing,  William  El- 
LERY,  1836,  Christian  Worship,  Dis- 
course at  Newport,  R.  /.,  July  27. 

We  have  chosen  to  speak  of  Dr.  Hopkins 
as  a  philanthropist,  rather  than  a  theo- 
logian. Let  those  who  prefer  to  contem- 
plate the  narrow  sectarian,  rather  than  the 
universal  man,  dwell  upon  his  controversial 
works,  and  extol  the  ingenuity  and  logical 
acumen  with  which  he  defended  his  own 
dogmas,  and  assailed  those  of  others.  We 
honor  him,  not  as  the  founder  of  a  new 
sect,  but  as  the  friend  of  all  mankind; 
the  generous  defender  of  the  poor  and 


oppressed.  Great  as  unquestionably  were 
his  powers  of  argument,  his  learning,  and 
skill  in  the  use  of  the  weapons  of  theo- 
logic  warfare,  these  by  no  means  con- 
stitute his  highest  title  to  respect  and 
reverence.  As  the  product  of  an  honest 
and  earnest  mind,  his  doctrinal  disserta- 
tions have  at  least  the  merit  of  sincerity. 
They  were  put  forth  in  behalf  of  what  he 
regarded  as  truth ;  and  the  success  which 
they  met  with,  while  it  called  into  exercise 
his  profoundest  gratitude,  only  served  to 
deepen  the  humility  and  self-abasement  of 
their  author. — Whittier,  John  G.,  1849, 
Old  Portraits  and  Modern  Sketches,  p.  162. 

Hopkins  sought  to  add  to  the  five  points 
of  Calvinism  the  rather  heterogeneous  in- 
gredient that  holiness  consists  in  pure, 
disinterested  benevolence,  and  that  all  re- 
gard for  self  is  necessarily  sinful. — HiL- 
dreth,  Richard,  1849-54,  History  of 
the  United  States  of  America,  vol.  ii,  p.  597. 

Few  theologians  of  our  country  have 
exerted  a  wider  special  influence  than 
Samuel  Hopkins,  a  descendant  of  Governor 
Hopkins,  of  Connecticut,  and  the  chief  of 
the  Calvinistic  sect  of  Christians  known  as 
Hopkinsians.  .  .  .  Dr.  Hopkins  was 
an  inefficient  preacher.  His  pen,  and  not 
his  tongue,  was  the  chief  utterer  of  those 
sentiments  which  have  made  his  name 
famous  as  a  Calvinistic  theologian. — Loss- 
iNG,  Benson  J.,  1855-86,  Eminent  Amer- 
icans, p.  240. 

Hopkinsianism  is  Calvinism,  in  distinc- 
tion from  every  form  and  shade  of  Armin- 
ianism ;  and  yet  not  Calvinism,  in  precisely 
the  sense  of  Calvin,  or  of  the  Westminster 
Confession  of  faith.  It  is  a  modification 
of  some  of  the  points  of  old  Calvinism, 
presenting  them,  as  its  abettors  think,  in 
a  more  reasonable,  consistent,  and  scrip- 
tural point  of  light.  These  modifications 
originated  in  New  England,  more  than  a 
hundred  years  ago.  They  commenced 
with  the  first  President  Edwards,  and  were 
still  further  unfolded  in  the  teachings  of 
his  pupils  and  followers,  Hopkins,  Bellamy, 
West,  the  younger  Edwards,  Dr.  Emmons, 
and  Dr.  Spring.  The  name '^Hopkinsian" 
is  derived  from  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins  of 
Newport,  R.  I.,  and  was  fastened  upon 
those  who  sympathized  with  him,  not  by 
himself,  but  by  an  opponent. —  Pond, 
Enoch,  1862,  Hopkinsianism,  Bibliotheca 
Sacra,  vol.  19,  p.  633. 

The  progress  of  theology  during  the 


440 


HOPKINS— ADAMS 


thirty  years  which  followed  the  Revolution 
is  illustrated  by  the  works  of  many  men  of 
mark  in  their  profession,  and  by  two  men 
of  original  though  somewhat  crotchety 
religious  genius,  Samuel  Hopkins  and 
Nathaniel  Emmons.—  Whipple,  Edwin 
Percy,  1886,  American  Literature  and 
Other  Papers,  ed.  Whittier,  p.  29. 

He  expected  men  to  study  his  books  till 
they  got  the  great  sweep  and  purpose  of 
the  whole,  and  interpret  single  expressions 
by  his  general  meaning.  If  one  will  read 
him  thus,  and  do  him  the  justice  now  and 
then  to  re-state  his  thought  in  modern 
styles  of  expression,  the  grandeur  of  his 
fearless  consistency  will  impress,  as  much 
as  the  deep  solicitude  and  heart-searching 
faithfulness  of  this  preacher-theologian 
will  move  and  profit  in  the  reading. — 
Foster,  Frank  H.,  1886,  The  Eschatology 
of  the  New  England  Divines,  Bibliotheca 
Sacra,  vol  43,  p.  712. 

No  one  can  read  Hopkins's  writings  with- 
out perceiving  how  saturated  he  has  become 


with  Edwards's  thought.  Whether  he  is 
the  truest  interpreter  of  Edwards  may  be 
doubted,  however,  for  his  mind  was  cast 
in  a  different  mould.  Nor  does  it  appear 
that  Edwards  admitted  him,  after  all,  to 
complete  intellectual  intimacy ;  for  Hop- 
kins is  silent  as  the  grave  about  Edwards's 
more  recondite  philosophical  or  theological 
speculations.  .  .  .  Dr.  Hopkins  passed 
his  life  shut  up  to  his  own  reflections, 
within  the  narrow  precincts  of  his  theo- 
logical system.  He  had  learned  to  think 
vigorously  for  himself,  but  he  had  a  strange 
incapacity  for  seeing  how  other  people 
thought.  He  showed  no  concern  at  the 
great  revulsion  of  feelmg  which  was  all 
around  him  in  his  later  years.  He  had  no 
anticipation  of  a  truth  to  be  revealed  to 
the  coming  generation  which  would  shake 
the  principles  to  whose  advocacy  he  had 
devoted  his  life. — Allen,  Alexander  V. 
G.,  1891,  The  Transition  in  New  England 
Theology,  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol,  68,  pp. 
769,  777. 


Samnel  Adams 

1722-1803 

Patriot  and  orator ;  a  second  cousin  of  President  John  Adams ;  born  in  Boston,  Sept. 
27,  1722 ;  graduated  at  Harvard  College  in  1740 ;  and  became  a  merchant,  but  was 
not  successful  in  business,  and  soon  abandoned  it.  In  1765  he  was  chosen  to  represent 
Boston  in  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts,  in  which  he  distinguished  himself  by 
his  courage,  energy,  and  oratorical  talents,  and  acquired  great  influence.  Before  the 
Revolution  he  was  an  unflinching  advocate  of  the  popular  cause,  and  took  such  an  active 
part  in  political  meetings  that  he  was  one  of  the  two  leading  patriots  who  were  excepted 
from  a  general  pardon  offered  in  1775.  He  was  a  member  of  the  first  Continental 
Congress,  which  met  in  Sept.,  1774,  and  he  signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
in  1776.  He  remained  in  Congress  about  eight  years,  was  afterwards  elected  to  the 
Senate  of  Massachusetts,  and  was  a  member  of  the  State  convention  which  ratified 
the  Federal  Constitution  in  1788.  His  political  affinities  connected  him  with  the 
Republicans  (or  Jeffersonian)  party.  He  was  elected  Governor  of  Massachusetts  in 
1794,  was  re-elected  twice,  and  retired  to  private  life  in  1797.  He  died  Oct.  2,  1803. 
In  religion  he  was  a  decided  Calvinist. — Adams,  Charles  Kendall,  ed.,  1897,  John- 
son^s  Universal  Cyclopcedia,  vol.  I,  p.  43. 


PERSONAL 

The  Cromwell  of  New  England. — Decius, 
1779,  London  Morning  Post;  Moore^s 
Diary  of  the  Revolution,  vol.  ii,  p.  144. 

If  ever  a  man  was  sincerely  an  idolater 
of  republicanism,  it  was  Samuel  Adams; 
and  never  a  man  united  more  virtues  to 
give  respect  to  his  opinions.  He  has  the 
excess  of  republican  virtues, —untainted 
probity,  simplicity,  modesty,  and,  above 
all,  firmness.  He  will  have  no  capitulation 
with  abuses.  He  fears  as  much  the  despot- 
ism of  virtue  and  talents  as  the  despotism 


of  vice.  Cherishing  the  greatest  love  and 
respect  for  Washington,  he  voted  to  take 
from  him  the  command  at  the  end  of  a 
certain  time.  He  recalled  that  Csesar 
could  not  have  succeeded  in  overturning 
the  Republic  but  by  prolonging  the  com- 
mand of  the  army.  The  event  has  proved 
that  the  application  was  false ;  but  it  was 
by  a  miracle,  and  the  safety  of  a  country 
should  never  be  risked  on  the  faith  of  a 
miracle. — Brissot  de  Warville,  Jean  P., 
1790  ?  New  Travels  in  the  United  States. 
The  dignity  of  his  manners  was  well 


SAMUEL  ADAMS 


441 


expressed  by  the  majesty  of  his  counte- 
nance,— an  index  of  a  mind  never  debased 
by  grovelling  ideas  nor  occupied  in  contem- 
plating low  pursuits.  Yet  this  appearance 
was  accompanied  with  a  suavity  of  temper, 
qualifying  him  for  those  charities  and 
graces  so  highly  ornamental  to  the  most 
sublime  and  dignified  character.  Few  are 
there  who  better  discharge  the  social  rela- 
tions of  life  than  our  departed  friend; 
neither  would  it  be  easy  to  find  a  more 
tender  husband,  more  affectionate  parent, 
or  more  faithful  friend.  He  would  easily 
relax  from  severe  care  and  study,  to  enjoy 
the  delight  of  private  conversation.  Nor 
did  he  ever  omit  any  patronage  or  kindness 
due  to  any  in  the  circle  of  his  acquaintance 
which  was  in  his  power  to  execute.  So 
that  some  who  disliked  his  political  con- 
duct loved  and  revered  him  as  a  neighbor 
and  friend.— Teacher,  Thomas,  1803,  A 
Tribute  of  Respect  to  the  Memory  of  Sam- 
uel Adams,  LL.  D.,  A.  A.  S. 

It  has  been  lately  announced  to  the  pub- 
lic, that  one  of  the  earliest  patriots  of  the 
Revolution  has  paid  his  last  debt  to  Nature. 
I  had  hoped  that  some  other  gentleman, 
better  qualified  for  the  task,  would  have 
undertaken  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
House  to  this  interesting  event.  It  cannot 
indeed  be  a  matter  of  deep  regret  that 
one  of  the  first  statesman  of  our  country 
has  descended  to  the  grave  full  of  years  and 
full  of  honors;  that  his  character  and 
fame  are  put  beyond  the  reach  of  that  time 
and  chance  to  which  everything  mortal  is 
exposed.  But  it  becomes  this  House  to 
cherish  a  sentiment  of  veneration  for  such 
men,  since  such  men  are  rare,  and  to  keep 
alive  the  spirit  to  which  we  owe  the  Con- 
stitution under  which  we  are  now  deliber- 
ating. ...  I  feel  myself  in  every  way 
unequal  to  the  attempt  of  doing  justice  to 
the  merits  of  our  departed  countryman. 
Called  upon  by  the  occasion  to  say  some- 
thing, I  could  have  not  have  said  less.  I 
would  not,  by  any  poor  eulogium  of  mine, 
enfeeble  the  sentiments  which  pervades 
the  House,  but  content  myself  with  moving 
the  following  resolutions — Resolved  unani- 
mously, That  thi  s  House  is  penetrated  with  a 
full  sense  of  the  eminent  services  rendered 
to  his  country  in  the  most  arduous  times 
by  the  late  Samuel  Adams,  deceased,  and 
that  the  members  thereof  wear  crape  on 
the  left  arm  for  one  month  in  testimony 
for  the  national  gratitude  and  reverence 


towards  the  memory  of  that  undaunted  and 
illustrious  patriot. —  Randolph,  John, 
1803,  Speech  before  Congress,  Oct.  19. 

Altho'  my  high  reverence  for  Samuel 
Adams  was  returned  by  habitual  notices 
from  him  which  highly  flattered  me,  yet 
the  disparity  of  age  prevented  intimate 
and  confidential  communications.  I  always 
considered  him  as  more  than  any  other 
member  the  fountain  of  our  important 
measures.  And  altho'  he  was  neither  an 
eloquent  nor  easy  speaker,  whatever  he 
said  was  sound,  and  commanded  the  pro- 
found attention  of  the  House. — Jeffer- 
son, Thomas,  1819,  Letter  to  Benjamin 
Waterhouse,  Jan.  31 ;  Writings,  ed.  Ford, 
vol.  X,  p.  124. 

He  attached  an  exclusive  value  to  the 
habits  and  principles  in  which  he  had  been 
educated,  and  wished  to  adjust  wide  con- 
cerns too  closely  after  a  particular  model. 
One  of  his  colleagues  who  knew  him  well, 
and  estimated  him  highly,  described  him, 
with  goood-natured  exaggeration,  in  the 
following  manner :  Samuel  Adams  would 
have  the  State  of  Massachusetts  govern  the 
Union,  the  town  of  Boston  govern  Massa- 
chusetts, and  that  he  should  govern 
the  town  of  Boston,  and  then  the  whole 
would  not  be  intentionallv  ill-governed." 
—Tudor,  William,  1823,  The  Life  of 
James  Otis,  p.  274. 

No  single  man  did  so  much  to  promote 
the  success  of  the  Revolution. — McMas- 
TER,  John  Bach,  1883,  A  History  of  the 
People  of  the  United  States,  vol.  I,  p.  179. 

In  character  and  career  he  was  a  singu- 
lar combination  of  things  incongruous. 
He  was  in  religion  the  narrowest  of  Puri- 
tans, but  in  manner  very  genial.  He  was 
perfectly  rigid  in  his  opinions,  but  in  his 
expression  of  them,  often  very  compliant. 
He  was  the  most  conservative  of  men, 
but  was  regarded  as  were  the  abolition 
fanatics"  in  our  time,  before  the  emanci- 
pation proclamation.  Who  will  say  that 
his  uprightness  was  not  inflexible  ?  Yet 
a  wilier  fox  than  he  in  all  matters  of  polit= 
ical  manoeuvring  our  history  does  not 
show.  In  business  he  had  no  push  or 
foresight,  but  in  politics  was  a  wonder  of 
force  and  shrewdness.  In  a  voice  full  of 
trembling  he  expressed  opinions,  of  which 
the  audacity  would  have  brought  him  at 
once  to  the  halter  if  he  could  have  been 
seized.  Even  in  his  young  manhood  his 
hair  had  become  gray  and  his  hand  shook 


442 


SAMUEL  ADAMS 


as  if  with  paralysis ;  but  he  lived,  as  we 
shall  see,  to  his  eighty-second  year,  his 
work  rarely  interrupted  by  sickness,  serv- 
ing as  governor  of  Massachusetts  for 
several  successive  terms  after  he  had  lived 
his  three  score  and  ten  years,  almost  the 
last  survivor  among  the  great  pre-revolu- 
tionary  figures.  .  .  .  There  is  another 
character  in  our  history  to  whom  was  once 
given  the  title,  ''Father  of  America," — 
a  man  to  a  large  extent  forgotten,  his  re- 
putation overlaid  by  that  of  those  who 
followed  him, — no  other  than  this  man  of 
the  town-meeting,  Samuel  Adams.  As  far 
as  the  genesis  of  America  is  concerned, 
Samuel  Adams  can  more  properly  be  called 
the  ''Father  of  America"  than  Washing- 
ton.— HosMER,  James  K.,  1885,  Samuel 
Adams  (American  Statesmen), pp.S51  ,S7 A. 

"The  American  Cato;"  "The  Crom- 
well of  New  England;"  "The  Father  of 
America;"  "The  Last  of  the  Puritans ;" 
"The  Man  of  the  Revolution."— Frey, 
Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobriquets  and  Nick- 
names, p.  369. 

Samuel  was  stern,  serious,  and  deeply 
in  earnest.  He  seldom  smiled  and  never 
laughed.  He  was  uncompromisingly  re- 
ligious, conscientious,  and  morally  unbend- 
ing. In  his  life  there  was  no  soft  senti- 
ment. The  fact  that  he  ran  a  brewery 
can  be  excused  when  we  remember 
that  the  best  spirit  of  the  times  saw 
nothing  inconsistent  in  the  occupation; 
and  further  than  this  we  might  explain  in 
extenuation  that  he  gave  the  business  in- 
different attention  and  the  quality  of  his 
brew  was  said  to  be  very  bad.  In  religion 
he  swerved  not  nor  wavered.  He  was  a 
Calvinist  and  clung  to  the  five  points  with 
a  tenacity  at  times  seemingly  quite  un- 
necessary. .  .  .  Adams'  home  life 
was  simple  to  the  verge  of  hardship.  All 
through  life  he  was  on  the  ragged  edge 
financially,  and  in  his  latter  years  he  was 
for  the  first  time  relieved  from  pressing 
obligations  by  an  afflicting  event — the 
death  of  his  only  son,  who  was  a  surgeon 
in  Washington's  army.  The  money  paid 
to  the  son  by  the  Government  for  his  ser- 
vices gave  the  father  the  only  financial 
competency  he  ever  knew.  Two  daughters 
survived  him,  but  with  him  died  the  name. 
.  .  .  The  grave  of  Samuel  Adams  is 
viewed  by  more  people  than  that  of  any 
other  American  patriot.  In  the  old 
Granary  Burying  Ground,  in  the  very  centre 


of  Boston,  on  Tremont  Street,  there  where 
travel  congests,  and  two  living  streams 
meet  all  day  long,  you  look  through  the 
iron  fence,  so  slender  that  it  scarce  im- 
pedes the  view,  and  not  twenty  feet  from 
the  curb  is  a  simple  metal  disc  set  on  an 
iron  rod  driven  into  the  ground  and  on  it 
this  inscription.  "This  marks  the  grave 
of  Samuel  Adams."  For  many  years  the 
grave  was  unmarked,  and  the  disc  that 
now  denotes  it  was  only  recently  placed  in 
position  by  the  Sons  of  the  Revolution.— 
Hubbard,  Elbert,  1898,  Little  Journeys 
to  the  Homes  of  American  Statesmen,  pp. 
120,  142,  143. 

GENERAL 

As  a  writer,  he  was  indefatigable  when 
he  thought  his  literary  efforts  could  tend 
to  promote  his  liberal  and  patriotic  views ; 
and  although  most  of  his  productions  have 
suffered  that  oblivion,  to  which  the  best 
efforts  of  temporary  politics  are  generally 
destined,  those  which  remain,  or  of  which 
a  knowledge  is  yet  preserved,  give  abun- 
dant proof  of  the  strength  and  fervour  of 
his  diction,  the  soundness  of  his  politics, 
the  warmth  of  his  heart,  and  the  piety  and 
sincerity  of  his  devotion.  As  an  orator, 
he  was  peculiarly  fitted  for  the  times  and 
circumstances  on  which  he  had  fallen. 
His  language  was  pure,  concise  and  im- 
pressive ;  lie  was  more  logical  than  figura- 
tive; and  Eis  arguments  were  addressed 
rather  to  the  understanding  than  the  feel- 
ings: yet  these  he  could  often  deeply 
interest,  when  the  importance  and  dignity 
of  his  subject  led  him  to  give  free  vent  to 
the  enthusiasm  and  patriotic  ardour,  of 
which  his  heart  was  always  full ;  and  if  we 
are  to  judge  by  the  fairest  of  all  tests,  the 
effect  upon  his  hearers,  few  speakers  of 
ancient  or  modern  times,  could  be  named 
as  superior  to  him, — Sanderson,  John, 
1820-27,  Signers  to  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, vol.  I,  p.  57. 

Samuel  Adams  possessed  a  calm,  solid, 
and  yet  polished  mind.  There  is  a  wonder- 
ful lucidness  in  his  thought  and  phrase- 
ology; everything  about  his  composition 
is  plain,  forcible,  and  level  to  the  simplest 
comprehension.  Above  all  the  men  of  his 
day,  he  was  distinguished  for  sound  prac- 
tical judgment.  All  prominent  statesmen 
looked  to  him  for  counsel.  He  aided  Otis 
in  preparing  state  papers ;  and  a  direc- 
tion to  the  printers,  attached  to  some  of 
Josiah  Quincy 's  manuscripts,  reads — ' '  Let 


SAMUEL  ADAMS 


443 


Samuel  Adams,  Esq.,  correct  the  press." 
In  fact  there  were  few,  if  any,  important 
documents  published  between  1764  and 
1769,  in  Boston,  that  were  not  revised  by 
the  cool  and  solid  judgment  of  the  New 
Englmd  Phocion.  .  .  One  great  secret 
of  the  power  of  his  popular  address, 
probably,  lay  in  the  unity  of  his  purpose 
and  the  energy  of  his.  pursuit.  He  pas- 
sionately loved  freedom,  and  subordinated 
every  thing  to  its  attainment.  This  kind 
Of  inspiration  is  a  necessary  pre-requisite 
to  eminent  success.  I^amuel  Adams  had 
more  logic  in  his  composition  than 
rhetoric,  and  was  accustomed  to  convince 
the  judgment  rather  than  inflame  the 
passions ;  and,  yet,  when  the  occasion  de- 
manded, he  could  give  vent  to  the  ardent 
and  patriotic  indignation  of  which  his 
heart  was  often  full.— Magoon,  E.  L., 
1848,  Orators  of  the  American  Revolution^ 
pp.  102,  113. 

His  pen  was  early  employed  in  political 
discussion,  and  the  soundness  of  his  judg- 
ment, and  purity  of  his  thoughts,  made 
him  very  popular,  even  before  public 
affairs  called  his  patriotism  into  activity. 
— LossiNG,  Benson  J.,  1855-86,  Eminent 
Americans,  p.  76. 

His  state  papers  and  essays  in  the  public 
journals,  which  would  fill  volumes,  contain 
the  most  advanced  political  doctrines  of 
the  times  as  they  presented  themselves  to 
thinkers  and  actors  for  decision  and  ap- 
plication. It  is  impossible  to  touch  upon 
the  history  of  Massachusetts  without  meet- 
ing his  name.  He  took  a  leading  part  in 
the  Congress  that  separated  us  from  Eng- 
land ;  and,  having  from  the  beginning  cast 
in  his  lot  with  his  country,  never  shrunk 
from  the  labour,  the  sacrifices,  or  the 
perils  which  his  decision  involved. — 
Greene,  G.  W.,  1866,  Wells's  Life  and 
Services  of  Samuel  Adams,  North  Amer- 
ican Review,  vol.  102,  p.  615. 

It  is  probable  that  he  was  one  of  the 
most  voluminous  writers  whom  America 
has  as  yet  produced.  Some  twenty-five 
signatures  have  been  identified  as  used  by 
him  in  the  newspapers  at  different  times. 
At  the  same  moment  that  he  filled  the 
papers,  he  went  on  with  his  preparation  of 
documents  for  the  town  and  the  Assembly 
till  one  wonders  how  a  single  brain  could 
have  achieved  it  all.  If  those  writ- 
ings only  which  can  be  identified  were 
published,  the  collection  would  present  a 


formidable  array  of  polemical  documents, 
embracing  all  the  great  issues  out  of 
whose  discussion  grew  our  independence. 
They  were  meant  for  a  particular  purpose, 
to  shatter  British  oppression,  and  when 
that  purpose  was  secured,  their  author  was 
perfectly  careless  as  to  what  became  of 
them.  Like  cannon-balls  which  sink  the 
ship,  and  then  are  lost  in  the  sea,  so  the 
bolts  of  Samuel  Adams,  after  riddling 
British  authority  in  America,  must  be 
sought  by  diving  beneath  the  oblivion  that 
has  rolled  over  them.  Of  the  portion  that 
has  been  recovered,  these  pages  have  given 
specimens  enough  to  justify  a  high  esti- 
mate of  the  genius  and  accomplishments 
of  their  author.— Hosmer,  James  K.. 
1885,  Samuel  Adams  (American  States- 
men), p.  360. 

No  other  American  had  so  good  an  op- 
portunity to  mould  the  form  of  a  democracy 
in  its  best  condition,  and  Adams  made  the 
most  of  his  opportunity.  A  Calvinistic 
Congregationalist  in  religion,  he  applied 
to  politics  the  principles  of  equality  upon 
which  he  insisted  in  church  order.  Boston 
was  somewhat  leavened  with  aristocratic 
and  Tory  tendencies;  against  both  he 
fought  with  a  vigour  which  finally  tri- 
umphed. To  him  fell  a  work  in  the  North 
like  that  done  by  Thomas  Jefferson  in  the 
South.  Democratic  principles  carried 
too  far  become  communistic ;  but  extreme 
Federalism  endangers  the  rights  of  the 
people.  In  the  latter  Adams  saw  the 
greater  danger ;  and  his  work,  fortunately, 
came  at  a  time  when  the  centrifugal  force 
was  more  needed  than  the  centripetal. . .  . 
His  work  was  that  of  a  strong  personal 
force,  a  pioneer,  a  destroyer  of  oppression, 
and  upbuilder  of  liberty.  He  was  the 
central  figure  in  the  town-meeting;  he 
framed  and  voiced  its  policy ;  he  drew  up 
important  instructions  or  appeals  to  home 
and  foreign  officers  or  legislators ;  and  his 
pen  was  almost  constantly  in  his  hand,  for 
he  wrote  stirring  articles  for  the  people's 
newspaper  in  Boston.  His  signatures  were 
many;  now  he  was  ''Vindex,"  now 
''Valerius  Poplicola,"  now  "A  Son  of 
Liberty, ''  but  the  purport  of  his  utterances 
was  ever  the  same.  In  his  speeches, 
epistles,  or  memorials  he  put  the  spirit 
before  the  letter,  the  matter  before  the 
manner.- Richardson,  Charles  F.,1887, 
American  Literature,  1607-1885,  vol.  i, 
p.  179. 


444 


ADAMS— PRIESTLEY 


One  of  the  greatest  citizens  that  Massa- 
chusetts has  ever  produced,  the  man  who 
has  been  well  described  as  preeminently 
*'the  man  of  the  town  meeting,'' — Samuel 
Adams.  The  limitations  of  this  great  man, 
as  well  as  his  powers,  were  those  which 
belonged  to  him  as  chief  among  the  men 
of  English  race  who  have  swayed  society 
through  the  medium  of  the  ancient  folk 
mote.— FiSKE,  John,  1888,  The  Critical 
Period  of  American  History,  1783-1789, 
p.  318. 

The  first  colonial  orator  in  point  of  time 
was  Samuel  Adams,  but  the  record  of  his 
speeches  is  not  abundant.  The  central 
figure  of  the  Boston  town-meeting  he 
fought  toryism  and  federalism  with  equal 
vigor ;  but  reporters  did  not  frequent 
town-meetings,  or  think  the  utterances  of 
even  a  leader  worth  preserving.  For 
their  literary  merit  the  speeches  of  Adams 
would  not  have  been  recorded.  They  were 
the  straightforward,  energetic  sentiments 
of  an  earnest  man  who  had  no  time  to 
choose  his  words.  Back  of  these,  how- 
ever, was  the  tremendous  force  of  a  strong 
personal  character,  fired  with  enthusiasm 
for  freedom.  His  pen  served  him  as  often 
as  his  voice,  and  in  the  people's  newspaper 
in  Boston  and  in  the  Providence  Gazette 
he  published  predictions  and  opinions 
which  both  New  England  and  Old  might 
read,  causing  him  to  be  excluded  from  the 
general  offer  of  pardon  to  the  patriots 
made  by  the  Throne  the  year  before  the 
Revolution  broke  out.  His  name  belongs 
as  much  to  political  literature  as  to  ora- 
tory, by  reason  of  such  contributions  to 
the  public  press.  ...  In  point  of 
time  the  name  of  Samuel  Adams  heads  the 
roll  of  American  orators  and  statesmen, 
and  in  immediately  effecting  the  purpose 
they  had  in  mind  none  have  surpassed  him. 
His  was  a  practical  oratory  which  carried 
its  point  at  the  time  and  with  contempo- 
raries, even  though  it  has  not  been 
perpetuated  as  a  model  to  succeeding 


generations.  It  ended  in  action  and  the 
action  which  it  secured  was  the  establish- 
ment of  a  new  and  free  nation  on  the 
western  continent.  Measured  by  what  it 
accomplished  it  must  be  admitted  to  be 
among  the  greatest  achievements  of  human 
speech,  and  in  its  final  result  it  is  as  yet 
unmeasured. — Sears,  Lorenzo,  1895,  The 
History  of  Oratory,  pp.  306,  309. 

It  is  as  an  orator  that  he  deserves  men- 
tion in  a  history  of  American  literature, 
though  only  fragments  of  his  fiery  oratory 
have  come  down  to  us.  Tradition,  how- 
ever, mentions  him  as  a  speaker  to  be 
compared  with  Otis  and  Quincy. — Pattee, 
Fred  Lewis,  1896,  A  History  of  Amer- 
ican Literatvre,  p.  68. 

This  sleepless,  crafty,  protean  politician, 
for  nearly  a  third  of  a  century,  kept  flood- 
ing the  community  with  his  ideas,  chiefly 
in  the  form  of  essays  in  the  newspapers, 
— thereby  constantly  baffling  the  enemies 
of  the  Revolutionary  movement,  and  con- 
ducting his  followers  victoriously  through 
those  battles  of  argument  which  preceded 
and  then  for  a  time  accompanied  the 
battles  of  arms.  .  .  .  Whether  in  oral  or 
in  written  speech,  his  characteristics  were 
the  same, — simplicity,  acuteness,-  logical 
power,  and  strict  adaptation  of  means  to 
the  practical  end  in  view.  Nothing  was 
for  effect — everything  was  for  effective- 
ness. He  wrote  pure  English,  and  in  a 
style  severe,  felicitous,  pointed,  epigram- 
matic. Careful  as  to  facts,  disdainful  of 
rhetorical  excesses,  especially  conscious 
of  the  strategic  folly  involed  in  mere  over- 
statement, an  adept  at  implication  and  at 
the  insinuating  light  stroke,  he  had  never 
anything  to  take  back  or  to  apologize  for. 
.  .  .  Perhaps  no  long  public  career 
was  ever  more  perfectly  self-consistent 
than  his.  From  boyhood  to  old  age,  his 
master  principle  was  individualism. — 
Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  1897,  The  Literary 
History  of  the  American  Revolution,  1763- 
1783,  vol.  II,  pp.  9,  12,  13. 


Joseph  Priestley 

1733-1804 

Joseph  Priestley  was  born,  a  cloth-dresser's  son,  at  Fieldhead  in  Birstall  parish, 
Leeds,  13th  March  1733.  After  four  years  at  a  Dissenting  academy  at  Daventry,  in 
1755  he  became  Presbyterian  minister  at  Needham  Market,  and  wrote  ''The  Scripture 
Doctrine  of  Remission,"  denying  that  Christ's  death  was  a  sacrifice,  and  rejecting  the 
Trinity  and  Atonement.  In  1758  he  removed  to  Nantwich,  and  in  1761  became  a 
tutor  at  Warrington  Academy.    In  yearly  visits  to  London  he  met  Franklin,  who 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


445 


supplied  him  with  books  for  his ''History  of  Electricity'*  (1767).  In  1764  he  was  made 
LL.D.  of  Edinburgh,  and  in  1766  F.  R.  S.  In  1767  he  became  minister  of  a  chapel 
at  Mill  Hill,  Leeds,  where  he  took  up  the  study  of  chemistry.  In  1774,  as  literary 
companion,  he  accompanied  Lord  Shelburne  on  a  continental  tour,  and  published 
''Letters  to  a  Philosophical  Unbeliever."  But  at  home  he  was  branded  as  an  atheist  in 
spite  of  his  "Disquisition  relating  to  Matter  and  Spirit"  (1777j,  affirming  from  revela- 
tion our  hope  of  resurrection.  He  was  elected  to  the  French  Academy  of  Sciences  in 
1772  and  to  the  St.  Petersburg  Academy  in  1780.  He  became  in  that  year  minister 
of  a  chapel  at  Birmingham.  His  "History  of  Early  Opinions  concerning  Jesus  Christ" 
(1786)  occasioned  renewed  controversy.  His  reply  to  Burke's  "Reflections  on  the 
French  Revolution"  led  a  Birmingham  mob  to  break  into  his  house  and  destroy  its 
contents  (1791).  He  now  settled  at  Hackney,  and  in  1794  removed  to  America,  where 
he  was  heartily  received;  at  Northumberland,  Pa.,  he  died  6th  February  1804,  believ- 
ing himself  to  hold  the  doctrines  of  the  primitive  Christians,  and  looking  for  the  second 
coming  of  Christ.  Priestley  is  justly  called  the  father  of  pneumatic  chemistry ;  good 
authorities  (see  "Nature,"  XLII.  1890)  defend  the  priority  of  his  discovery  of  oxygen 
(1774)  and  of  the  composition  of  water  (1781),  and  deny  Lavoisier's  claim  to  be  con- 
sidered an  independent  discoverer.  See  Rutt's  edition  of  Priestley's  "Works" 
(1831-32),  including  Autobiographical  Memoir;  and  Martineau's  "Essay." — Patrick 
AND  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  762. 

When  I  wrote  my  last,  little  did  I  for- 
see  what  soon  after  happened ;  but  the  will 
of  God  be  done.  The  company  were  hardly 
gone  from  the  inn,  before  a  drunken  mob 
rushed  into  the  house,  and  broke  all  the 
windows.  They  then  set  fire  to  our  meet- 
ing-house, and  it  is  burned  to  the  ground. 
After  that  they  gutted,  and,  some  say, 
burned  the  old  meeting.  In  the  mean- 
time, some  friends  came  to  tell  me  that  I 
and  my  house  were  threatened,  and  another 
brought  a  chaise  to  convey  me  and  my 
wife  away.  I  had  not  presence  of  mind  to 
take  even  my  MSS. ;  and  after  we  were 
gone,  the  mob  came  and  demolished  every- 
thing, household  goods,  library,  and  ap- 
paratus. Indeed,  they  say  the  house  itself 
is  almost  demolished,  but  happily  no  fire 
could  be  got,  so  that  many  things,  but  I 
know  not  what,  will  be  saved.  We 
thought  that  when  it  was  day,  the  mob 
would  disperse,  and  therefore  we  kept  in 
the  neighbourhood ;  but  finding  they  rather 
increased,  and  grew  more  outrageous  with 
liquor,  we  were  advised  to  go  off,  and  are 
now  on  our  way  to  Heath.  My  wife 
behaves  with  wonderful  courage.  The 
recollection  of  my  lost  MSS.  pains  me  the 
most,  especially  my  Notes  on  the  New 
Testament,  which  I  wanted  only  five  days 
of  getting  all  transcribed.  But,  I  doubt 
not,  all  will  be  for  good  in  the  end.  I 
can  hardly  ever  live  at  Birmingham  again. 
— Priestley,  Joseph,  1791,  To  Rev.  T. 
Lindsey,  July  15 ;  Memoirs,  ed.  Rutt, 
vol.  I,  p.  123. 

Sir,  and  most  illustrious  associate,  the 


PERSONAL 

This  morning  an  express  arrived  at  the 
Secretary  of  State's  office  from  Birming- 
ham, with  an  account  that  a  great  number 
of  persons, to  the  amount  of  some  hundreds, 
who  were  in  opposition  to  the  Revolution- 
ists, had  assembled  on  Thursday  last  be- 
fore the  house  where  the  Society  dined, 
and  broke  all  the  windows.  They  then 
pulled  part  of  the  house  down,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  the  different  meeting-houses, 
which  they  laid  level  with  the  ground. 
After  which,  they  broke  into  the  house  of 
Dr.  Priestley,  took  everything  out,  burnt 
his  books,  drank  the  wine,  and  other  liquor 
found  in  his  cellars,  and,  when  the  express 
came  away,  were  demolishing  the  house  to 
the  foundation.  The  whole  town  was  in 
an  uproar.  ...  A  messenger  was  dis- 
patched to  His  Majesty  at  Windsor  with 
the  above  particulars. — London  Chron- 
icle, 1791,  July  14-16. 

Seeing,  as  I  passed,  a  house  in  ruins,  on 
inquiry  I  found  it  was  Dr.  Priestley's.  I 
alighted  from  my  horse,  and  walked  over 
the  ruins  of  that  laboratory  which  I  had 
left  home  with  the  expectation  of  reaping 
instruction  in;  of  that  laboratory,  the 
labours  of  which  have  not  only  illuminated 
mankind, but  enlarged  the  sphere  of  science 
itself ;  which  has  carried  its  master's  fame 
to  the  remotest  corners  of  the  civilized 
world ;  and  will  now,  with  equal  celerity, 
convey  the  infamy  of  its  destruction  to  the 
disgrace  of  the  age,  and  the  scandal  of 
the  British  name. — Young,  Arthur,  1791, 
Tour  through  Warwickshire, 


446 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


Academy  of  Sciences  have  charged  me  to 
express  the  grief  with  which  they  are 
penetrated  at  the  recital  of  the  persecution 
of  which  you  have  been  lately  the  victim. 
They  all  feel  how  much  loss  the  sciences 
have  experienced  by  the  destruction  of 
those  labours  which  you  had  prepared  for 
their  aggrandizement.  It  is  not  you,  Sir, 
who  have  reason  to  complain.  Your  virtue 
and  your  genius  still  remain  undiminished, 
and  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  human  in- 
gratitude to  forget  what  you  have  done 
for  the  happiness  of  mankind.  — Condor- 
CET,  M.,  1791,  Letter  to  Dr.  Priestley, 
July  30 ;  Memoirs,  ed.  Rutt,  vol,  i,  p.  127. 

His  love  to  man  was  great,  his  useful- 
ness greater.  I  have  been  informed  by 
the  faculty  that  his  experimental  discover- 
ies on  air,  applied  to  medical  purposes, 
have  preserved  the  lives  of  thousands ;  and, 
in  return,  he  can  scarcely  preserve  his 
own.  A  clergyman  attended  this  outrage, 
and  was  charged  with  examining  and  even 
pocketing  the  manuscripts.  I  think  he  paid 
the  Doctor  a  compliment,  by  showing  a  re- 
gard for  his  works.  I  will  farther  do  him 
the  justice  to  believe  he  never  meant  to 
keep  them,  to  invade  the  Doctor's  profes- 
sion by  turning  philosopher,  or  to  sell 
them,  though  valuable;  but  only  to  ex- 
change them  with  the  minister  for  prefer- 
ment.— Hutton,  William,  1791,^  A^arra- 
tive  of  the  Riots  in  Birmingham,  Life  of 
Hutton  by  Jewitt,  p.  228. 

The  mighty  dead 
Rise  to  new  life,  whoe'er  from  earliest  time 
With  conscious  zeal  had  urg'd  Love's  won- 
drous plan, 
Coadjutors  of  God.    To  Milton's  trump 
The  odorous  groves  of  earth,  reparadis'd, 
Unbosom  their  glad  echoes :  inly  hush'd, 
Adoring  Newton  his  serener  eye 
Raises  to  heaven:  and  he,  of  mortal  kind 
Wisest,  he  first  who  mark'd  the  ideal  tribes 
Down  the  fine  fibres  from  the  sentient  brain 
Roll  subtly  surging.    Pressing  on  his  steps, 
Lo!  Priestley  there,  patriot,  and  saint,  and 
sage. 

Whom  that  my  fleshly  eye  hath  never  seen, 
A  childish  pang  of  impotent  regret 
Hath  thrill' d  my  heart.    Him  from  his  native 
land 

Statesmen,  blood-stain'd,  and  priests  idola- 
trous. 

By  dark  lies  madd'ning  the  blind  multitude, 
Drove  with  vain  hate:    calm,  pitying  he 
retir'd, 

And  mus'd  expectant  on  these  promis'd  years. 

— Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1794, 
Religious  Musings. 


I  have  seen  Priestley.  I  love  to  see  his 
name  repeated  in  your  writings.  I  love 
and  honor  him,  almost  profanely. — Lamb, 
Charles,  1796,  To  Coleridge,  Letters,  ed. 
Ainger,  vol.  i,  p.  10. 

I  have  lived  much  among  the  friends  of 
Priestley,  and  learned  from  them  many 
peculiar  opinions  of  that  man,  who  speaks 
all  he  thinks.  No  man  has  studied 
Christianity  more,  or  believes  it  more 
sincerely.— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1797,  To 
John  May,  June  26 ;  Life  and  Correspond- 
ence, ch.  V. 

Yours  is  one  of  the  few  lives  precious 
to  mankind,  and  for  the  continuance  of 
which  every  thinking  .man  is  solicitous. 
Bigots  may  be  an  exception. — Jefferson, 
Thomas,  1801,  Letter  to  Joseph  Priestley, 
March21 ;  Writings,  ed.Ford,vol.\m, p.21. 

THIS  TABLET 

Is  consecrated  to  the  Memory  of  the 
REV.  JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY,  LL.D. 

by  his  affectionate  Congregation, 
in  Testimony 
of  their  Gratitude  for  his  faithful  Attention 
to  their  spiritual  Improvement, 
and  for  his  peculiar  Diligence  in  training  up  their 
Youth  to  rational  Piety  and  genuine  Virtue; 
of  their  Respect  for  his  great  and 
various  Talents, 
which  were  uniformly  directed  to  the  noblest 
Purposes  ; 
and  of  their  Veneration 
for  the  pure,  benevolent,  and  holy  Principles, 
which  through  the  trying  Vicissitudes  of  Life, 
and  in  the  awful  hour  of  Death, 
animated  him  with  the  hope  of  a  blessed 
Immortality. 
His  Discoveries  as  a  Philosopher 
will  never  cease  to  be  remembered  and  admired 
by  the  ablest  Improvers  of  Science. 
His  Firmness  as  an  Advocate  of  Liberty, 
and  his  Sincerity  as  an  Expounder  of  the 
Scriptures, 
endeared  him  to  many 
of  his  enlightened  and  unprejudiced 
Contemporaries. 
His  Example  as  a  Christian 
will  be  instructive  to  the  Wise,  and  interesting 
to  the  Good, 
of  every  Country,  and  in  every  Age. 
He  was  born  at  Fieldhead,  near  Leeds,  in 
Yorkshire,  March  24,  A.  D.,  1733, 
Was  chosen  a  Minister  of  this  Chapel, 
Dec.  31,  1780. 
Continued  in  that  office  Ten  Years  and  Six  Months. 
Embarked  for  America,  April  7,  1794. 
Died  at  Northumberland,  in  Pennsylvania, 
Feb.  6,  1804. 

— Parr,  Samuel,  Inscription  on  Tablet  at 
Birmingham. 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


447 


On  Monday  morning,  the  6th  of  Feb- 
ruary, after  having  lain  perfectly  still  till 
four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  he  called  to 
me,  but  in  a  fainter  tone  than  usual,  to 
give  him  some  wine  and  tincture  of  bark. 
I  asked  him  how  he  felt.  He  answered, 
he  had  no  pain,  but  appeared  fainting 
away  gradually.  About  an  hour  after,  he 
asked  me  for  some  chicken-broth,  of  which 
he  took  a  tea-cup  full.  His  pulse  was 
quick,  weak,  and  fluttering,  his  breathing, 
though  easy,  short.  About  eight  o'clock 
he  asked  me  to  give  him  some  egg  and 
wine.  After  this,  he  lay  quite  still  till  ten 
o'clock  when  he  desired  me  and  Mr. 
Cooper  to  bring  him  the  pamphlets  we  had 
looked  out  the  evening  before.  He  then 
dictated  as  clearly  and  distinctly  as  he 
had  ever  done  in  his  life,  the  additions 
and  alterations  he  wished  to  have  made  in 
each.  Mr.  Cooper  took  down  the  sub- 
stance of  what  he  said,  which,  when  he 
had  done,  I  read  to  him.  He  said  Mr. 
Cooper  had  put  it  in  his  own  language ;  he 
wished  it  to  be  put  in  his.  I  then  took  a 
pen  and  ink  to  his  bed-side.  He  then  re- 
peated over  again,  nearly  word  for  word, 
what  he  had  before  said ;  and  when  I  had 
done,  I  read  it  over  to  him.  He  said, 
*  *  That  is  right ;  I  have  now  done. ' '  About 
half  an  hour  after  he  desired,  in  a  faint 
voice,  that  we  would  move  him  from  the 
bed  on  which  he  lay  to  a  cot,  that  he  might 
be  with  his  lower  limbs  horizontal,  and  his 
head  upright.  He  died  in  about  ten 
minutes  after  we  had  moved  him,  but 
breathed  his  last  so  easy,  that  neither 
myself  nor  my  wife,  who  were  both  sitting 
close  to  him,  perceived  it  at  the  time. 
He  had  put  his  hand  to  his  face,  which 
prevented  our  observing  it.  — Priestley, 
Joseph,  Jr.,  1805-7,  Memoirs  of  Dr.  Joseph 
Priestley. 

Dr.  Priestley,  after  he  had  abjured  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  satisfied  himself  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  nothing  more  than  a  man ;  that 
the  scriptural  writers  were  no  more  in- 
spired than  himself ;  and  that  the  soul  of 
man  had  no  existence,  retained  the  same 
devout  passion  for  preaching,  praying, 
and  catechising,  which  he  acquired  while 
he  believed  in  the  Trinity  and  the  im- 
materiality of  the  sentient  principle  of  his 
nature.  .  .  .  We  have  already  said,  that 
we  believe  him  to  have  been  sincere  in 
the  singular  profession  of  faith  which 
he  promulgated;  and  therefore,  we  are 


constrained  to  respect  his  endeavours  to 
confirm  and  recommend  it.  But  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  regret  the  presumption  and 
infatuation  by  which  he  seems  to  have 
been  guided ;  and  we  are  afraid  that  the 
theological  speculations  of  a  man  of  great 
learning,  sagacity,  industry,  and  devotion, 
are  at  this  day  an  offence  to  the  serious, 
and  a  jest  to  the  profane. — Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1806,  Memoirs  of  Dr. 
Priestley,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  9,  pp, 
137,  161. 

Priestley  was  a  good  man,  though  his 
life  was  too  busy  to  leave  him  leisure  for 
that  refinement  and  ardour  of  moral  senti- 
ment, which  have  been  felt  by  men  of  less 
blameless  life.  Frankness  and  disin- 
terestedness in  the  avowal  of  his  opinion, 
were  his  point  of  honour.  In  other  re- 
spects his  morality  was  more  useful  than 
brilliant.  But  the  virtue  of  the  senti- 
mental moralist  is  so  over  precarious  and 
ostentatious,  that  he  can  seldom  be  en- 
titled to  look  down  with  contempt  on  the 
steady,  though  homely,  morals  of  the  house- 
hold.—  Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  1807, 
Journal,  Sep.  13;  Life,  ed.  Mackintosh, 
vol.  I,  ch.  vii. 

A  list  of  folks  that  kicked  a  dust, 

On  this  poor  globe,  from  Ptol.  the  First. 


The  Fathers,  ranged  in  goodly  row, 
A  decent,  venerable  show, 
Writ  a  great  while  ago,  they  tell  us, 
And  many  an  inch  o'ertop  their  fellows. 

Sermons,  or  politics,  or  plays. 
Papers  and  books,  a  stratiged  mixed  olio, 
From  shilling  touch  to  pompous  folio ; 
Answer,  remark,  reply,  rejoinder, 
Fresh  from  the  mint,  all  stamped  and  coined 
here. 


Forgotten  rhymes  and  college  themes, 
Wormeaten  plans  and  embryo  schemes, 
A  mass  of  heterogeneous  matter, 
A  chaos  dark,  nor  land  nor  water, 

— Barbauld,  Anna  L^titia,  1825,  An 
Inventory  of  the  Furniture  in  Dr.  Priest- 
ley's Study. 

Every  person  of  sober  mind,  whilst  com- 
miserating Dr.  Priestley  as  an  unfortunate 
man,  and  esteeming  him  as  a  very  ingenious 
one,  could  view  him  in  no  other  light  than 
as  the  victim  of  his  own  folly  and  misguided 
passions. — De  Quincey,  Thomas,  1831-57, 
Dr.  Samuel  Parr,  Works,  vol.  v,  p.  118. 

In  nothing  did  Dr.  Priestley's  mental 


448 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


and  moral  freedom  more  nobly  manifest 
itself  than  in  his  well-proportioned  love  of 
truth.  With  all  his  diversity  of  pursuit, 
he  did  not  think  all  truth  of  equal  import- 
ance, or  deem  the  diffusion  of  useful  knowl- 
edge an  excuse  for  withholding  the  more 
useful.  With  all  his  ardour  of  mind,  he 
did  not  look  at  an  object  till  he  saw  noth- 
ing else,  and  it  became  his  universe.  He 
made  his  estimate  deliberately;  and  he 
was  not  to  be  dazzled,  or  flattered,  or 
laughed  out  of  it.  In  his  laboratory,  he 
thought  no  better  of  chemistry  than  in  his 
pulpit ;  and  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  the 
French  Academicians,  no  worse  of  Chris- 
tianity than  by  the  firesides  of  his  own 
flock.  He  was  never  anxious  to  appear  in 
either  less  or  more  than  his  real  char- 
acter.— Martineau,  James,  1833-90,  Dr. 
Priestley,  Essays,  Reviews  and  Addresses, 
vol.  I,  p.  38. 

His  character  is  a  matter  of  no  doubt, 
and  it  is  of  a  high  order.  That  he  was  a 
most  able,  most  industrious,  most  success- 
ful student  of  nature,  is  clear ;  and  that 
his  name  will  for  ever  be  held  in  grateful 
remembrance  by  all  who  cultivate  physical 
science,  and  placed  among  those  of  its 
most  eminent  masters,  is  unquestionable. 
That  he  was  a  perfectly  conscientious  man 
in  all  the  opinions  which  he  embraced,  and 
sincere  in  all  he  published  respecting  other 
subjects,  appears  equally  beyond  dispute. 
He  was,  also,  upright  and  honourable  in 
all  his  dealings,  and  justly  beloved  by  his 
family  and  friends  as  a  man  spotless  in  all 
the  relations  of  life.  That  he  was 
governed  in  his  public  conduct  by  a  temper 
too  hot  and  irritable  to  be  consistent  either 
with  his  own  dignity,  or  with  an  amiable 
deportment,  may  be  freely  admitted ;  and 
his  want  of  self-command,  and  want  of 
judgment  in  the  practical  affairs  of  life, 
was  manifest  above  all  in  his  controversial 
history;  for  he  can  be  charged  with  no 
want  of  prudence  in  the  management  of 
his  private  concerns.  His  violence  and 
irritability,  too,  seems  equally  to  have  been 
confined  to  his  public  life,  for  in  private 
all  have  allowed  him  the  praise  of  a  mild 
and  attractive  demeanour;  and  we  have 
just  seen  its  great  power  in  disarming  the 
prejudices  of  his  adversaries. — Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1845-55,  Lives  of  Phi- 
losophers of  the  Time  of  George  IIL,  p.  89. 

I  was  intimately  acquainted  with  Dr. 
Priestley :  and  a  more  amiable  man  never 


lived ;  he  was  all  gentleness,  kindness,  and 
humility.  He  was  once  dining  with  me, 
when  some  one  asked  him  (rather  rudely) 
**How  many  books  he  had  published?" 
He  replied,  "Many  more,  sir,  than  I  should 
like  to  read."— Rogers,  Samuel,  1855, 
Recollections  of  Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  p.  122. 

A  man  of  admirable  simplicity,  gentle- 
ness, and  kindness  of  heart,  united  with 
great  acuteness  of  intellect.  I  can  never 
forget  the  impression  produced  on  me  by 
the  serene  expression  of  his  countenance. 
He,  indeed,  seemed  present  with  God  by 
recollection  and  with  man  by  cheerfulness. 

— SCHIMMELPENNICK,  MARY  AnNE,  1859, 

Life,  ed.  Hankin. 

The  sources  of  information  concerning 
the  life  of  Joseph  Priestley  are  numerous 
and  detailed.  His  philosophical  writings, 
his  theological  controversies,  his  liberal 
political  essays,  his  notable  discoveries  in 
chemistry,  and  even  his  misfortunes  in  the 
Birmingham  riots  of  1791,  that  caused  his 
eventual  expatriation,  kept  him  constantly 
before  the  public.  Being  both  affection- 
ately admired  and  cordially  hated,  per- 
secuted by  his  own  townsmen  yet  highly 
esteemed  by  continental  savants,  bitterly 
assailed  by  the  public  press  and  yet  the 
frequent  recipient  of  substantial  testi- 
monials of  esteem  from  active  and  influen- 
tial friends,  contemporary  publications 
portrayed  his  acts,  his  opinions,  and  his 
remarkable  talents.  Since  his  death  many 
men  of  letters  have  placed  on  record  their 
estimate  of  Priestley's  philosophy,  of  his 
theological  system,  of  his  political  tenets, 
and  of  his  contributions  to  science,  and, 
finally,  every  extended  dictionary  of  biog- 
raphy and  every  encyclopaedia,  in  three 
languages,  for  three-quarters  of  a  cen- 
tury, has  contained  a  sketch  of  his  life 
and  labors. — Bolton,  Henry  Carring- 
TON,  1892,  Scientific  Correspondence  of 
Joseph  Priestley,  p.  1. 

His  statue,  modelled  from  Fuseli's  por- 
trait, was  placed  in  the  Oxford  Museum  by 
a  committee  co-operating  with  Prince 
Albert;  his  name  figures  on  the  great 
frieze  surrounding  the  Palais  d'Industrie 
in  the  Champs  Elysees ;  and  Birmingham 
erected  a  statue  to  him  in  1874,  the  cen- 
tenary of  the  discovery  of  oxygen.  When 
this  statue  was  inaugurated,  my  mother, 
who  was  born  in  Pennsylvania,  was  prob- 
ably the  only  person  living  in  England  who 
could  personally  recall  Joseph  Priestley. 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


449 


She  was  seven  years  old  when  he  died.  He 
had  taught  her  to  read,  and  her  memory  of 
him  remained  perfectly  clear  and  vivid. 
The  delicate  features  of  the  old  man, 
framed  in  thin  locks  of  silvery  hair,  are 
recorded  in  the  portrait  by  Artaud  before 
me  as  I  write.  This  presentment,  rather 
than  any  of  those  by  Flaxman,  is  what  my 
mother  affirmed  to  be  the  real  grandfather 
she  remembered.— Belloc,  Bessie  Ray- 
NER,  1894-95,  In  a  Walled  Garden,  p.  25. 

He  composed  in  shorthand ;  his  rapid  pen 
never  left  his  meaning  doubtful;  a  turn 
for  epigram  is  the  chief  ornament  of  his 
style.  He  had  little  humour,  but  enjoyed 
a  remarkable  faculty  for  making  the  best 
of  things.  His  home  affections  were 
strong.  He  provided  a  maintenance  for 
his  younger  brother  Joshua  at  BirstalL 
Domestic  management  he  left  to  his  wife, 
speaking  of  himself  as  a  lodger  in  her 
house.  To  the  faults  of  his  memory  he 
often  alludes ;  it  is  curious  that  he  never 
learned  the  American  currency,  and  would 
say  to  a  shopkeeper,  ' '  You  will  give  me  the 
proper  change,  for  I  do  not  know  it. "  .  .  . 
In  person  Priestley  was  slim  but  large- 
boned  ;  his  stature  about  five  feet  nine,  and 
very  erect.  His  countenance  is  best  seen 
in  profile,  and  the  right  and  left  profiles 
differ  remarkably ;  the  front  face  is  heavy. 
He  wore  a  wig  till  he  settled  in  North- 
umberland, which  did  not  boast  of  a  hair- 
dresser.— Gordon,  Alexander,  1896, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol. 
XLVi,  p.  366. 

SCIENTIFIC  WORK 

Gentlemen,  it  is  with  great  satisfaction 
I  enter  upon  this  part  of  my  office,  to  con- 
fer, in  your  name,  the  prize-medal  of  this 
year  upon  a  member  of  this  Society,  so 
worthy  of  that  distinction.  It  is  with 
singular  pleasure  I  acquaint  you  that  the 
Rev.  Joseph  Priestley,  Doctor  of  Laws, 
has  been  found  at  this  time  the  best  en- 
titled to  this  public  mark  of  your  approba- 
tion, on  account  of  the  many  curious  and 
useful  experiments  contained  in  his  ''Ob- 
servations on  Different  Kinds  of  Air, "  read 
at  the  Society  in  March,  1772,  and  inserted 
in  the  last  complete  volume  of  your 
Transactions.  And  indeed.  Gentlemen, 
when  you  reflect  on  the  zeal  which  our 
worthy  brother  has  shewn  to  serve  the 
public,  and  to  do  credit  to  your  Institu- 
tion, by  his  numerous,  learned,  and  valu- 
able communications,  you  will,  I  imagine, 

29C 


be  inclined  to  think  that  we  have  been 
rather  slow  than  precipitate  in  acknowl- 
edging so  much  merit. — Pringle,  Sir 
John,  1773,  President's  Address  to  the 
Royal  Society. 

He  had  great  merit  in  the  contrivance  of 
his  apparatus,  which  was  simple  and  neat, 
to  a  degree  that  has  never  been  equalled ; 
and  the  indefatigable  industry  with  which 
he  pursued  his  researches,  would  entitle 
him  to  still  higher  praise,  if  he  had  com- 
bined with  it  the  patience  and  forecast 
by  which  so  much  labour  may  be  saved. 
The  truth  is,  however,  that  he  was  always 
too  much  occupied  with  making  experi- 
ments to  have  leisure,  either  to  plan  them 
beforehand  with  philosophical  precision, 
or  to  combine  their  results  afterwards  into 
systematic  conclusions.  He  was  so  im- 
patient to  be  doing ;  that  he  could  spare  no 
time  for  thinking;  and  erroneously  im- 
agined, that  science  w^as  to  be  forwarded 
rather  by  accumulating  facts,  than  by 
meditating  on  those  that  were  ascertained. 
— Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1806,  Memoirs 
of  Dr.  Priestley,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  9, 
p.  150. 

Dr.  Priestley  drew  no  conclusion  of  the 
least  value  from  his  experiments.  But 
Mr.  Watt,  after  thoroughly  weighing  them, 
by  careful  comparison  with  other  facts, 
arrived  at  the  opinion  that  they  proved  the 
composition  of  water.  This  may  justly  be 
said  to  have  been  the  discovery  of  that 
great  truth  in  chemical  science.  I  have 
examined  the  evidence,  and  am  convinced 
that  he  was  the  first  discoverer,  in  point  of 
time,  although  it  is  very  possible  that  Mr. 
Cavendish  may  have  arrived  at  the  same 
truth  from  his  own  experiments,  without 
any  knowledge  of  Mr.  Watt's  earlier  pro- 
cess of  reasoning. — Brougham,  Henry 
Lord,  1835,  Discourse  of  Natural  Theol- 
ogy, p.  106,  note. 

Whose  researches  were  devoted  almost 
exclusively  to  the  chemistry  of  the  gases. 
Their  results  are  recorded  in  six  volumes 
of  Experiments  and  Observations  on 
different  kinds  of  Airs,"  which  were  pub- 
lished between  1775  and  1786,  and  ^Yhich 
appear  to  have  enjoyed  an  uncommon  de- 
gree of  popularity.  They  are  written  in 
a  light  and  agreeable  style,  detailing  his 
successes  and  his  failures  with  equal  can- 
dour and  openness,  and  laying  open  his 
entire  chemical  mind  to  the  observation  of 
his  readers.    He  was  very  ingenious  in 


450 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


devising  experiments,  and  dexterous  in  his 
manipulations ;  and  though  the  processes 
which  he  followed  and  the  means  which  he 
had  at  his  command  were  generally  in- 
sufficient to  secure  that  minute  and  rigor- 
ous accuracy  which  is  equally  necessary 
for  the  establishment  of  great  truths  and 
the  exclusion  of  great  errors,  yet  it  may 
be  safely  asserted  that  few  persons  have 
contributed  so  great  a  number  of  valuable 
facts  to  the  science  of  chemistry.  He 
affected  no  profound  philosophical  views, 
and  the  character  of  his  mind  was  alto- 
gether unequal  to  them;  he  generally 
adopted  at  once  the  most  obvious  conclu- 
sions which  his  experiments  appeared  to 
justify,  and  he  modified  or  abandoned  them 
upon  further  investigation  with  almost 
equal  facility. — Croker,  John  Wilson, 
1845,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  77,  p.  119. 

Priestley's  reputation  as  a  man  of 
science  rests  upon  his  numerous  and  im- 
portant contributions  to  the  chemistry  of 
gaseous  bodies ;  and  to  form  a  just  esti- 
mate of  the  value  of  his  work — of  the  ex- 
tent to  which  it  advanced  the  knowledge 
of  fact  and  the  development  of  sound 
theoretical  views — we  must  reflect  what 
chemistry  was  in  the  first  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  .  .  .  It  is  a  trying 
ordeal  for  any  man  to  be  compared  with 
Black  and  Cavendish,  and  Priestley  cannot 
be  said  to  stand  on  their  level.  Never- 
theless, his  achievements  are  not  only 
great  in  themselves,  but  truly  wonderful,  if 
we  consider  the  disadvantages  under  which 
he  laboured.  Without  the  careful  scien- 
tific training  of  Black,  without  the  leisure 
and  appliances  secured  by  the  wealth  of 
Cavendish,  he  scaled  the  walls  of  science 
as  so  many  Englishmen  have  done  before 
and  since  his  day;  and  trusting  to  mother 
wit  to  supply  the  place  of  training,  and  to 
ingenuity  to  create  apparatus  out  of  wash- 
ing tubs,  he  discovered  more  new  gases 
than  all  his  predecessors  put  together  had 
done.  He  laid  the  foundations  of  gas 
analysis ;  he  discovered  the  complementary 
actions  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  upon 
the  constituents  of  the  atmosphere ;  and, 
finally,  he  crowned  his  work,  this  day  one 
hundred  years  ago,  by  the  discovery  of 
that  ''pure  dephlogisticated  air"  to  which 
the  French  chemists  subsequently  gave 
the  name  of  oxygen.  .  .  .  That 
Priestley's  contributions  to  the  knowledge 
of  chemical  fact  were  of  the  greatest 


importance,  and  that  they-  richly  deserved 
all  the  praise  that  has  been  awarded  to 
them  is  unquestionable ;  but  it  must,  at  the 
same  time,  be  admitted  that  he  had  no 
comprehension  of  the  deeper  significance 
of  his  work ;  and,  so  far  from  contribu- 
ting anything  to  the  theory  of  the  facts 
which  he  discovered,  or  assisting  in  their 
rational  explanation,  his  influence  to  the 
end  of  his  life  was  warmly  exerted  in 
favour  of  error. — Huxley,  Thomas  Henry, 
1874,  Joseph  Priestley,  Macmillan's  Mag- 
azine, vol.  30,  pp.  477,  478. 

Priestley  is  mainly  remembered  by  his 
theological  controversies  and  his  contribu- 
tions to  the  history  of  pneumatic  chem- 
istry. I  have  nothing  to  tell  you  of  his 
merits  as  a  controversialist,  except  to  say 
that  some  of  his  argumentative  pieces  are 
among  the  most  forcible  and  best  written 
of  his  literary  productions.  It  is  on  his 
chemical  work  that  his  reputation  will 
ultimately  rest :  this  will  continue  to  hand 
down  his  name  when  all  traces  of  his  other 
labours  are  lost.  He  has  frequently  been 
styled  the  Father  of  Pneumatic  Chemistry  ; 
and  although  we  may  question  the  pro- 
priety of  the  appellation  when  we  call  to 
mind  the  labours  of  Van  Helmont,  of  Boyle, 
and  of  Hales,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
Priestley  did  more  to  extend  our  knowl- 
edge of  gaseous  bodies  than  any  preceding 
or  successive  investigator.  .  .  .  The 
knowledge  which  Priestley,  as  he  tells  us, 
imparted  to  the  French  chemists  was  used 
by  them  with  crushing  effect  against  his 
favourite  theory.  The  discovery  of  oxygen 
was  the  death  blow  to  phlogiston.  Here 
was  the  thing  which  had  been  groped  for 
for  years,  and  which  many  men  had  even 
stumbled  over  in  the  searching,  but  had 
never  grasped.  Priestley  indeed  grasped 
it,  but  he  failed  to  see  the  magnitude  and 
true  importance  of  what  he  had  found.  It 
was  far  otherwise  with  Lavoisier.  He  at 
once  recognised  in  Priestley's  new  air  the 
one  fact  needed  to  complete  the  overthrow 
of  Stahl's  doctrine ;  and  now  every  strong- 
hold of  phlogistonism  was  in  turn  made  to 
yield.  Priestley,  however,  never  surren- 
dered, even  when  nearly  every  phlogistian 
but  he  had  given  up  the  fight  or  gone  over 
to  the  enemy.  When  age  compelled  him 
to  leave  his  laboratory  he  continued  to 
serve  the  old  cause  in  his  study,  and  almost 
his  last  publication  was  his  ''Doctrine 
of  Phlogiston  Established."  —  Thorpe, 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


451 


Thomas  E.,  1874-94,  Joseph  Priestley, 
Essays  in  Historical  Chemistry,  pp.  35,  51. 

Foremost  in  the  number  of  those  who 
after  Black  distinguished  themselves  as 
pneumatic  chemists,  was  Dr.  J.  Priestley. 
His  first  discovery,  made  in  1772,  was 
nitric  oxide  gas,  which  he  soon  employed 
in  the  analysis  of  air.  .  .  .  Besides 
nitric  oxide  and  nitrogen,  Priestley  first 
made  known  sulphurous  acid  gas,  gaseous 
ammonia  and  hydrochloric  acid,  and  carbon 
monoxide ;  and  he  it  was  who,  by  showing 
that  the  condition  of  ammoniacal  gas  and 
of  common  air  is  altered  by  the  transmis- 
sion of  electric  sparks,  led  to  Berthollet's 
analysis  of  ammonia,  and  Cavendish's  dis- 
covery of  the  composition  of  nitric  acid. 
— Butler,  F.  H.,  1877,  Chemistry,  Ency- 
clopcedia  Britannica,  JSlinth  ed.,  vol.  V, 
p.  400. 

Priestley  was  just  the  man  who  was 
wanted  in  the  early  days  of  chemical 
science.  By  the  vast  number,  variety  and 
novelty  of  his  experimental  results,  he 
astonished  scientific  men — he  forcibly  drew 
attention  to  the  science  in  which  he 
laboured  so  hard ;  by  the  brilliancy  of  some 
of  his  experiments  he  obliged  chemists  to 
admit  that  a  new  field  of  research  was 
opened  before  them,  and  the  instruments 
for  the  prosecution  of  this  research  were 
placed  in  their  hands ;  and  even  by  the  un- 
satisfactoriness  of  his  reasoning  he  drew 
attention  to  the  difficulties  and  contradic- 
tions of  the  theories  which  then  prevailed 
in  chemistry.  That  the  work  of  Priestley 
should  bear  full  fruit  it  was  necessary  that 
a  greater  than  he  should  interpret  it,  and 
should  render  definite  that  which  Priestley 
had  but  vaguely  shown  to  exist.  The  man 
who  did  this,  and  who  in  doing  it  really 
established  chemistry  as  a  science,  was 
Lavoisier.— Mum,  M.  M.  Pattison,  1883, 
Heroes  of  Science,  Chemists,  p.  75. 

Priestley's  eminent  discoveries  in  chem- 
istry were  due  to  an  extraordinary  quick- 
ness and  keenness  of  imagination  combined 
with  no  mean  logical  ability  and  manipula- 
tive skill.  But,  owing  mainly  to  lack  of 
adequate  training,  he  failed  to  apprehend 
the  full  or  true  value  of  his  great  results. 
Carelessness  and  haste,  not  want  of  critical 
power,  led  him,  at  the  outset,  to  follow 
the  retrograde  view  of  Stahl  rather  than 
the  method  of  Boyle,  Black,  and  Cavendish. 
The  modification  of  the  physical  properties 
of  bodies  by  the  hypothetical  electricity 


doubtless  led  him  to  welcome  the  theory 
of  a  "phlogiston"  which  could  similarly 
modify  their  chemical  properties.  Priest- 
ley was  content  to  assign  the  same  name 
to  bodies  with  different  properties,  and  to 
admit  that  two  bodies  with  precisely  the 
same  properties,  in  other  respects  differ- 
ent in  composition  (''Considerations  .  .  . 
on  Phlogiston,"  1st  edit,  p.,  17).  Though 
often  inaccurate,  he  was  not  incapable  of 
performing  exact  quantitative  experi- 
ments, but  he  was  careless  of  their  inter- 
pretation. .  .  .  Priestley  is  unjust 
to  himself  in  attributing  most  of  his  dis- 
coveries to  chance. — Hartog,  P.  J.,  1896, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol. 
XLVi,  p.  375. 

GENERAL 

Of  Dr.  Priestley's  theological  works, 
he  (Johnson)  remarked,  that  they  tended 
to  unsettle  everything,  and  yet  settled 
nothing. — Maxwell,  William,  1770, 
BoswelVs  Life  of  Johnson,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  ii, 
p.  142. 

It  is  a  mortifying  proof  of  the  infirmity 
of  the  human  mind,  in  the  highest  improve- 
ment of  its  faculties  in  the  present  life, 
that  such  fallacies  in  reasoning,  such  mis- 
construction of  authorities,  such  distorted 
views  of  facts  and  opinions,  should  be 
found  in  the  writings  of  a  man,  to  whom, 
of  all  men  in  the  present  age,  some 
branches  of  the  experimental  sciences  are 
the  most  indebted. — Horsley,  Samuel, 
1783,  Letters  in  Answer  to  Priestley. 

The  Bishop  (Percy)  wishes  Mr.  Pinker- 
ton  would  carefully  read  Dr.  Priestley's 

Institutes  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Re- 
ligion," in  2  vols.  8vo,  before  he  decides 
that  all  of  that  school  have  given  up  the 
Old  Testament,  as  Mr.  Pinkerton  seems 
to  hint  in  a  former  letter  ;  but  indeed  he 
wishes  Mr.  Pinkerton  would  read  them  on 
other  accounts. — Percy,  Thomas,  To  John 
Pinkerton,  Feb.  28,  1787 ;  Nichols's  Illus- 
trations of  Literary  History,  voLvm,  p.  135. 

The  religious  tenets  of  Dr.  Priestley 
appear  to  me  erroneous  in  the  extreme ; 
but  I  should  be  sorry  to  suffer  any  differ- 
ence of  sentiment  to  diminish  my  sensi- 
bility to  virtue,  or  my  admiration  of  genius. 
From  him  the  poisoned  arrow  will  fall 
pointless.  His  enlightened  and  active 
mind,  his  unwearied  assiduity,  the  ex- 
tent of  his  researches,  the  light  he  has 
poured  into  almost  every  department  of 
science,  will  be  the  admiration  of  that 


452 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


period,  when  the  greater  part  of  those  who 
have  favoured,  or  those  who  have  opposed 
him  will  be  alike  forgotten. — Hall,  Rob- 
ert, 1791,  Christianity  Consistent  With  a 
Love  of  Freedom. 

I  do  not  wonder  at  Johnson's  displeasure 
when  the  name  of  Dr.  Priestley  was  men- 
tioned ;  for  I  know  no  writer  who  has  been 
suffered  to  publish  more  pernicious  doc- 
trines. 1  shall  instance  only  three.  First, 
''Materialism;"  by  which  mind  is  denied 
to  human  nature  ;  which,  if  believed,  must 
deprive  us  of  every  elevated  principle. 
Secondly,  ''Necessity;"  or  the  doctrine 
that  every  action,  whether  good  or  bad, 
is  included  in  an  unchangeable  and  unavoid- 
able system ;  a  notion  utterly  subversive 
of  moral  government.  Thirdly,  that  we 
have  no  reason  to  think  that  the  future 
world  (which,  as  he  is  pleased  to  inform 
us,  will  be  adapted  to  our  merely  improved 
nature),  will  be  materially  different  from 
this ;  which,  if  believed,  would  sink 
wretched  mortals  into  despair,  as  they 
could  no  longer  hope  for  the  "rest  that 
remaineth  for  the  people  of  God,"  or  for 
that  happiness  which  is  revealed  to  us  as 
something  beyond  our  present  conceptions, 
but  would  feel  themselves  doomed  to  a  con- 
tinuation of  the  uneasy  state  under  which 
they  now  groan.  I  say  nothing  of  the 
petulant  intemperance  with  which  he  dares 
to  insult  the  venerable  establishments  of 
his  country.  As  a  specimen  of  his  writ- 
ings, I  shall  quote  the  following  passage, 
which  appears  to  me  equally  absurd  and 
impious,  and  which  might  have  been  re- 
torted upon  him  by  the  men  who  were 
prosecuted  for  burning  his  house.  ...  My 
illustrious  friend  was  particularly  resolute 
in  not  giving  countenance  to  men  whose 
writings  he  considered  as  pernicious  to 
society.  I  was  present  at  Oxford  when 
Dr.  Price,  even  before  he  had  rendered 
himself  so  generally  obnoxious  by  his  zeal 
for  the  French  revolution,  came  into  a 
company  where  Johnson  was,  who  instantly 
left  the  room.  Much  more  would  he  have 
reprobated  Dr.  Priestley.  Whoever  wishes 
to  see  the  perfect  delineation  of  this 
"Literary  Jack  of  all  Trades"  may  find  it 
in  an  ingenious  tract,  entitled  "A  Small 
Whole-Length  of  Dr.  Priestley,"  printed 
for  Rivingtons,  in  St.  PauPs  Churchyard. 
— BoswELL,  James,  1791-93,  Life  of 
Samuel  Johnson^  ed.  Hilly  voL  iv,  pp.  274, 
275,  note. 


Let  Dr.  Priestley  be  confuted  where 
he  is  mistaken ;  let  him  be  exposed  where 
he  is  superficial ;  let  him  be  repressed 
where  he  is  dogmatical ;  let  him  be  rebuked 
where  he  is  censorious.  But  let  not  his 
attainments  be  depreciated,  because  they 
are  numerous  almost  without  parallel. 
Let  not  his  talents  be  ridiculed,  because 
they  are  superlatively  great.  Let  not  his 
morals  be  vilified,  because  they  are  cor- 
rect without  austerity,  and  exemplary 
without  ostentation ;  because  they  present, 
even  to  common  observers,  the  innocence 
of  a  hermit,  and  the  simplicity  of  a  patri- 
arch ;  and  because  a  philosophic  eye  will 
at  once  discover  in  them  the  deep-fixed 
root  of  virtuous  principle,  and  the  solid 
trunk  of  virtuous  habit. — Parr,  Samuel, 
1792,  Letter  from  Irenopolis  to  the  Inhabit- 
ants of  Eleutheropolis. 
To  thee  the  slander  of  a  passing  age 
Imports  not.  Scenes  like  these  hold  little 
space 

In  his  large  mind,  whose  ample  stretch  of 
thought 

Grasps  future  periods. — Well  canst  thou 
afford 

To  give  large  credit  for  that  debt  of  fame 
Thy  country  owes  thee.    Calm  thou  canst 
consign  it 

To  the  slow  payement  of  that  distant  day, — 
If  distant, — when  thy  name,  to  Freedom's 
joined, 

Shall  meet  the  thanks  of  a  regenerate  land. 
— Barbauld,  Anna  L^titia,  1792,  To 
Dr.  Priestley,  Dec.  29. 

In  his  "History  of  the  Corruptions  of 
Christianity,"  Dr.  Priestley  threw  down 
his  two'  gauntlets  to  Bishop  Hurd  and  Mr. 
Gibbon.  I  declined  the  challenge  in  a 
letter  exhorting  my  opponent  to  enlighten 
the  World  by  his  philosophical  discoveries, 
and  to  remember  that  the  merit  of  his 
predecessor  Servetus  is  now  reduced  to  a 
single  passage,  which  indicates  the  smaller 
circulation  of  the  blood  through  the  lungs, 
from  and  to  the  heart.  Instead  of  listen- 
ing to  this  friendly  advice,  the  dauntless 
philosopher  of  Birmingham  continues  to 
fire  away  his  double  battery  against  those 
who  believe  too  little  and  those  who 
believe  too  much.  From  my  replies  he 
has  nothing  to  hope  or  fear;  but  his 
Socinian  shield  has  repeatedly  been  pierced 
by  the  spear  of  the  mighty  Horsley,  and 
his  trumpet  of  sedition  may  at  length 
awaken  the  magistrates  of  a  free  country. 
— Gibbon,  Edward,  1793,  Autobiography, 
note. 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


453 


Though  king-bred  rage  with  lawless  Tumult 
rude 

Have  driv'n  our  Priestley  o'er  the  ocean  swell ; 
Though  Superstition  and  her  wolfish  brood 
Bay  his  mild  radiance,  impotent  and  fell; 
Calm  in  his  halls  of  brightness  he  sliall  dwell  I 
For  lo !  Religion  at  his  strong  behest 
Disdainful  rouses  from  the  Papal  spell, 
And  flings  to  Earth  her  tinsel -glittering  vest, 
Her  mitred  state  and  cumbrous  pomp  unholy ; 
And  Justice  wakes  to  bid  th'  oppression  wail, 
That  ground  th'  ensnared  soul  of  patient 
Folly; 

And  from  her  dark  retreat  by  Wisdom  won, 
Meek  Nature  slowly  lifts  her  matron  veil 
To  smile  with  fondness  on  her  gazing  son ! 

—Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1794, 
Sonnet  to  Priestley,  Dee.  11. 

I  am  at  present  re-re-reading  Priestley's 
Examination  of  the  Scotch  Doctors :  how 
the  rogue  strings  'em  up !  three  together  ! 
You  have  no  doubt  read  that  clear,  strong, 
humorous,  most   entertaining   piece  of 
reasoning.    If  not,  procure  it,  and  be  ex- 
quisitely amused.    I  wish  I  could  get  more 
of  Priestley's  works. — Lamb,  Charles, 
1797,  To  Coleridge,  Jan.  2;  Letters,  ed. 
Ainger,  vol.  I,  p.  57. 
If  I  may  write,  let  Proteus  Priestley  tell. 
He  writes  on  (dl  things,  but  on  nothing  well ; 
Who,  as  the  daemon  of  the  day  decrees, 
Air,  books,  or  water  makes  with  equal  ease. 
May  not  I  strive  amid  this  motley  throng, 
All  pale  and  pensive  as  I  muse  along? 
— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  50. 

The  attack  of  Dr.  Priestley,  however, 
gave  him  [Beattie]  no  concern.  He  ap- 
pears, indeed,  by  his  correspondence  with 
his  friends  to  have  formed,  at  first,  the 
resolution  of  replying  to  it ;  and  he  speaks 
as  if  he  had  already  prepared  his  materials, 
and  of  being  altogether  in  such  a  state  of 
forwardness,  and  to  be. fully  ready  for  the 
task.  On  farther  consideration,  however, 
he  abandoned  the  idea,  and  he  no  doubt 
judged  wisely.  For,  while  Dr.  Priestley's 
Examination  "  is  now  never  heard  of, 
the  Essay  on  Truth"  remains  a  classical 
work,  of  the  highest  reputation  and 
authority.— Forbes,  Sir  William,  1806, 
An  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of 
James  Beattis,  vol.  ii,  p.  96. 

Dr.  Priestley  has  written  more,  we 
believe,  and  on  a  greater  variety  of  sub- 
jects, than  any  other  English  author ;  and 
probably  believed,  as  his  friend  Mr.  Cooper 
appears  to  do  at  this  moment,  that  his 
several  publications  were  destined  to  make 


an  sera  in  the  respective  branches  of 
speculation  to  which  they  bore  reference. 
We  are  not  exactly  of  that  opinion  :  But 
we  think  Dr.  Priestley  a  person  of  no  com- 
mon magnitude  in  the  history  of  Eng- 
lish literature.— Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord, 
1806-44,  Priestley,  Contributions  to  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  iii,  p.  338. 

No  man  living  had  a  more  affectionate 
respect  for  him.  In  religion,  in  politics, 
in  physics,  no  man  has  rendered  more 
service. — Jefferson,  Thomas,  1807,  To 
Thomas  Cooper,  July  9;  Writings,  ed. 
Ford,  vol.  IX,  p.  102. 

His  work  [''Notes  on  all  the  Books  of 
Scripture"]  contains  many  invaluable  notes 
and  observations,  particularly  on  the  phi- 
losophy, natural  history,  geography,  and 
chronology  of  the  Scriptures ;  and  to  these 
subjects  few  men  in  Europe  were  better 
qualified  to  do  justice. — Clarke,  Adam, 
1810-26,  Comment  on  the  Bible. 

As  to  his  theological  creed,  it  could  not 
justify  the  usage  he  received ;  for  though 
he  led  the  way  to  an  open  determined 
avowal  of  socinianism,  no  patron  of  liberty 
of  conscience  will  impute  this  to  him  as  a 
civil  crime ;  nor  should  the  friends  of  the 
orthodox  creed  condemn  him  for  the  frank- 
ness which  rendered  him  the  real,  though 
unintentional  friend  of  the  truth,  which 
has  triumphed  ever  since  Priestley  tore 
the  mask  of  concealment  from  error,  and 
bade  it  be  honest.  The  reflections  which 
he  poured  upon  evangelical  sentiments, 
were  often  bitter  enough,  indeed ;  but  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  charges  brought 
against  him  and  his  creed;  and  it  was 
Horsley  rather  than  Priestley,  who  en- 
listed the  depraved  passions  of  men,  and 
the  cruel  prejudices  of  party  politics,  to 
contend  in  the  arena,  which  should  have 
been  occupied  solely  by  the  authority  of 
revelation,  and  the  evidence  of  unimpas- 
sioned  argument. —  BoGUE,  David,  and 
Bennett,  James,  1812,  History  of  Dis- 
senters from  the  Revolution  in  1688  to  the 
year  1808,  vol.  iv,  p.  433. 

The  celebrated  natural  philosopher, 
Joseph  Priestley,  criticised  at  the  same 
time  both  Hume  and  his  antagonists.  He 
may  be  said  to  have  been  more  successful 
with  the  latter,  whose  instinctive  principles 
he  justly  styled  qualitates  occultce.  In  op- 
position to  Hume  he  alleged  a  proof  of  the 
existence  of  the  Divinity,  which  was  un- 
tenable.  He  was  a  rank  Determinist ;  and, 


454 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


consistently  with  his  principles,  contro- 
verted, as  Hartley  had  done,  the  doctrine 
of  free  agency,  and  endeavoured  to  estab- 
lish a  system  of  materiality  of  the  soul. — 
Tenneman,  William  Gottlieb,  1812-52, 
A  Manual  of  the  History  of  Philosophy,  tr. 
Johnson,  ed.  MorelL 

Neglecting  accordingly,  all  the  pre- 
sumptions for  a  future  state,  afforded  by 
a  comparison  of  the  course  of  human 
affairs  with  the  moral  judgments  and 
moral  feelings  of  the  human  heart;  and 
overlooking,  with  the  same  disdain,  the 
presumptions  arising  from  the  narrow 
sphere  of  human  knowledge,  when  com- 
pared with  the  indefinite  improvement 
of  which  our  intellectual  powers  seem  to 
be  susceptible,  this  acute  but  superficial 
writer  attached  himself  exclusively  to  the 
old  and  hackneyed  pneumatological  argu- 
ment ;  tacitly  assuming  as  a  principle,  that 
the  future  prospects  of  man  depend  en- 
tirely on  the  determination  of  a  physical 
problem,  analogous  to  that  which  was  then 
dividing  chemists  about  the  existence  or 
non-existence  of  phlogiston.  In  the  actual 
state  of  science,  these  speculations  might 
well  have  been  spared. — Stewart,  Du- 
GALD,  1815-21,  First  Preliminary  Dis- 
sertation, Encyclopcedia  Britannica. 

Charmed  with  the  discoveries  of  science, 
and  eager,  by  prompt  and  unreserved  com- 
munication, to  diffuse  as  far  as  possible, 
their  beneficial  influence,  he  was  yet  su- 
premely attracted  to  the  discoveries  of 
revelation.  Hence  his  unvarying  purpose, 
**by  labour  and  patience,  through  evil  re- 
port, and  through  good  report, "  and  even 
when  flesh  and  heart  were  failing,  to  pro- 
mote, in  the  most  enlarged  sense  of  the 
expression,  "the  greatest  good  of  the 
greatest  number a  sentiment  with  which 
he  had  the  honour,  by  one  of  his  earliest 
publications,  to  inspire  that  philosopher 
and  philanthropist,  who  has  lately  left  the 
world,  after  devoting  himself  in  death,  as 
in  life,  to  its  service ;  but  whose  memory 
will  remain,  unless,  again,  in  the  dispensa- 
tions of  an  inscrutable  Providence,  ''dark- 
ness shall  cover  the  earth,  and  gross  dark- 
ness the  people."— RuTT,  John  Towil, 
1832,  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Joseph 
Priestley,  vol.  I,  pt.  ii,  p.  533. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  versatility 
was  the  great  characteristic  of  Dr.  Priest- 
ley's genius.  Singularly  quick  of  appre- 
hension, he  made  all  his  acquisitions  with 


facility  and  rapidity ;  and  hence  he  derived 
a  confidence  in  the  working-power  of  his 
own  mind,  and  a  general  faith  in  the  suf- 
ficiency of  the  human  faculties  as  instru- 
ments of  knowledge,  which  led  him  on  to 
achievement  after  achievement  in  the  true 
spirit  of  intellectual  enterprise. — Marti- 
neau,  James,  1833-90,  Dr.  Priestley, 
Essays,  Reviews  and  Addresses,  vol.  I, 
p.  17. 

He  is  one  of  the  most  voluminous  writers 
of  any  age  or  country,  and  probably  he  is 
of  all  voluminous  writers  the  one  who 
has  the  fewest  readers. —  Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1845-55,  Lives  of  Philoso- 
phers of  the  Times  of  George  HI,  p.  74. 

Priestley's  mind  was  objective  to  an  ex- 
treme ;  he  could  fix  his  faith  upon  nothing, 
which  had  not  the  evidence  of  sense  in 
some  way  or  other  impressed  upon  it. 
Science,  morals,  politics,  philosophy,  re- 
ligion, all  came  to  him  under  the  type  of 
the  sensational.  The  most  spiritual  ideas 
were  obliged  to  be  cast  into  a  material 
mould  before  they  could  commend  them- 
selves to  his  judgment  or  conscience. 
His  intellect  was  rapid  to  extraordinary 
degree ;  he  saw  the  bearings  of  a  question 
according  to  his  own  principles  at  a  glance, 
and  embodied  his  thoughts  in  volumes 
whilst  many  other  men  would  hardly  have 
sketched  out  their  plan.  All  this,  though 
admirable  in  the  man  of  action,waLS  not  the 
temperament  to  form  the  solid  metaphysi- 
cian, nay,  it  was  precisely  opposed  to 
that  deep  reflective  habit,  that  sinking  into 
one's  own  inmost  consciousness,  from 
which  alone  speculative  philosophy  can 
obtain  light  and  advancement. — Morell, 
J.  D.,  1846-7,  An  Historical  and  Critical 
View  of  the  Speculative  Philosophy  of  Europe 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  p.  101. 

Dr.  Priestley's  metaphysical  creed  em- 
braces four  leading  doctrines :  he  adopted 
the  theory  of  vibrations,  the  association 
of  ideas,  the  scheme  of  philosophical 
necessity,  and  the  soul's  materiality.  On 
all  these  topics  he  has  furnished  us  with 
extended  dissertations;  and,  whatever 
opinions  may  be  ascertained  of  any  or  all 
of  them,  there  are  few  persons  but  will 
readily  admit  the  Doctor  has  displayed 
both  great  zeal  and  great  ability  in  de- 
fence of  them.— Blakey,  Robert,  1848, 
History  of  the  Philosophy  of  Mind,  vol.  III. 

His  style  is  idiomatic,  compact,  incisive, 
and  vigorous.    He  is  eminently  easy  to 


JOSEPH  PRIESTLEY 


455 


follow ;  he  usually  describes  the  progress 
of  his  thoughts,  explains  by  what  circum- 
stances he  was  led  to  take  such  and  such 
a  view,  and  thus  introduces  us  from  the 
known  to  the  unknown  by  an  easy  grada- 
tion.—Minto,  William,  1872-80,  Manual 
of  English  Prose  Literature,  p.  474. 

Priestley  possessed  one  of  those  restless 
intellects  which  are  incapable  of  confining 
themselves  to  any  single  task,  and,  un- 
fortunately, incapable  in  consequence  of 
sounding  the  depths  of  any  philosophical 
system.  Urged  partly  by  his  natural  bent, 
and  partly,  it  may  be,  constrained  by  the 
pressure  of  poverty,  he  gave  to  the  world 
a  numerous  series  of  dissertations  which, 
with  the  exception  of  his  scientific  writ- 
ings, bear  the  marks  of  hasty  and  super- 
ficial thought.  As  a  man  of  science  he 
has  left  his  mark  upon  the  intellectual 
history  of  the  century ;  but,  besides  being 
a  man  of  science,  he  aimed  at  being  a 
metaphysician,  a  theologian,  a  politician, 
a  classical  scholar,  and  a  historian.  With 
an  amazing  intrepidity  he  plunged  into 
tasks  the  effective  performance  of  which 
would  have  demanded  the  labours  of  a 
lifetime.  With  the  charge  of  thirty 
youths  on  his  hands  he  proposes  to  write 
an  ecclesiastical  history,  and  soon  after- 
wards observes  that  a  fresh  translation  of 
the  Old  Testament  would  "not  be  a  very 
formidable  task.''  He  carried  on  all 
manner  of  controversies,  upon  their  own 
ground,  with  Horsley  and  Bradcock,  with 
his  friend  Price,  with  Beattie  and  the 
Scotch  philosophers,  with  Gibbon  and  the 
sceptics;  and  yet  often  laboured  for  six 
hours  a  day  at  his  chemical  experiments. 
So  discursive  a  thinker  could  hardly  do 
much  thorough  work,  nor  really  work  out 
or  co-ordinate  his  own  opinions.  Pushing 
rationalism  to  conclusions  which  shocked 
the  orthodox,  he  yet  retained  the  most 
puerile  superstitions.  He  disbelieved  in 
the  inspiration  of  the  Apostles,  and  found 
fault  with  St.  Paul's  reasoning,  but  had 
full  faith  in  the  phophecies,  and  at  a  late 
period  of  his  life  expected  the  coming  of 
Christ  within  twenty  years.  Nelson's 
victories  were  to  f  ufill  the  predictions  con- 
tained in  the  19th  chapter  of  Isaiah,  and 
he  suspected  that  Napoleon  was  the  de- 
liverer promised  to  Egypt.  In  his  youth 
he  had  become  convinced,  as  he  tells  us, 
of  the  falsity  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Atone- 
ment and  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  and 


**of  all  idea  of  supernatural  interference 
except"  (a  singular  exception!)  ''for  the 
purpose  of  miracles."  Near  half  a  cen- 
tury's familiarity  with  theological  specu- 
lation failed  to  emancipate  his  mind  from 
the  bondage  of  half-truths.  It  would  be 
in  vain,  therefore,  to  anticipate  any  great 
force  or  originality  in  Priestley's  specula- 
tions. At  best,  he  was  a  quick  reflector 
of  the  current  opinions  of  his  time  and 
class,  and  able  to  run  up  hasty  theories  of 
sufficient  apparent  stability  to  afford  a 
temporary  refuge  amidst  the  storm  of  con- 
flicting elements.— Stephen,  Leslie,  1876, 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  vol.  I,  p.  430. 

If  we  choose  one  man  as  a  type  of  the 
intellectual  energy  of  the  century,  we 
could  hardly  find  a  better  than  Joseph 
Priestley,  though  his  was  not  the  greatest 
mind  of  the  century.  His  versatility, 
eagerness,  activity,  and  humanity;  the 
immense  range  of  his  curiosity,  in  all 
things  physical,  moral,  or  social ;  his  place 
in  science,  in  theology,  in  philosophy,  and 
in  politics;  his  peculiar  relation  to  the 
Revolution,  and  the  pathetic  story  of  his 
unmerited  sufferings,  may  make  him  the 
hero  of  the  eighteenth  century. — Harri- 
son, Frederic,  1883,  The  Choice  of  Books 
and  Other  Literary  Pieces,  p.  369. 

The  style  of  this  author  is  adequate  to 
his  thought.  There  is  little  flexibility  or 
vivacity;  the  diction  is  heavy,  and  oc- 
casionally the  preacher  bestows  on  us  the 
tediousness  and  prolixity  too  frequently 
associated  with  sermons.  He  has  usually 
something  to  prove,  and,  if  he  does  not 
prove  it,  the  fault  is  not  in  the  manner  but 
in  the  matter  of  statement. — Bonar, 
James,  1895,  English  Prose,  ed.  Craik, 
vol.  IV,  p.  438. 

His  labours  culminated  in  the  ''History 
of  Early  Opinions  concerning  Jesus 
Christ"  (1786).  Writing  as  a  sectary, 
he  damaged  at  the  outset  his  claim  to 
scrutinise  in  the  scientific  spirit  the  course 
of  thought  in  Christian  antiquity ;  but  he 
was  one  of  the  first  to  open  the  way  to  the 
study  of  doctrinal  development,  and  while 
proclaiming  his  own  bias  with  rare  frank- 
ness, he  submitted  his  historical  judgments 
to  the  arbitrament  of  further  research. 
His  account  of  the  origin  of  Arianism,  as 
a  novel  system,  has  stood  the  test.  What 
was  special  in  his  method  was  the  endeav- 
our, discarding  the  speculations  of  the 


456 


PRIESTLEY— HAMIL  TON 


fathers,  to  penetrate  to  the  mind  of  the 
common  Christian  people.  He  broke  en- 
tirely with  the  old  application  of  the 
principle  of  private  judgment,  maintaining 
that  a  purely  modern  interpretation  of 
Scripture  is,  ipso  facto,  discredited,  and  the 
meaning  attached  to  it  by  the  earliest  age. 


if  ascertainable,  must  be  decisive.  A 
good  summary  of  his  position  is  in  his 
Letters"  (1787)  to  Alexander  Geddes  the 
Roman  catholic  scholar,  who  had  addressed 
him  as  his  *  ^fellow-disciple  in  Jesus.'* — 
Gordon,  Alexander,  1896,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  XLVI,  p.  362. 


Alexander  Hamilton 

1757-1804 

Alexander  Hamilton  was  born  in  the  Island  of  Nevis,  in  the  West  Indies,  January 
11,  1757.  His  father  was  a  merchant  from  Scotland ;  his  mother  was  the  daughter  of 
a  French  Huguenot ;  and  the  sons  appear  to  have  inherited,  in  equal  measure,  the  vigour 
and  endurance  of  the  one  race  and  the  address  and  vivacity  of  the  other.  His  educa- 
tion was  not  at  all  systematic,  but  his  active  mind  instinctively  found  its  proper  stimu- 
lants, and  he  began  to  show  his  great  natural  powers  at  an  early  age.  While  attending 
to  his  studies  at  Columbia  College,  in  New  York  city,  the  war  broke  out,  and  he  entered 
the  patriot  army  as  a  captain  of  artillery.  In  1777  he  was  made  aide-de-camp  to 
General  Washington,  and  distinguished  himself  by  his  ability  in  correspondence  as 
well  as  by  active  personal  service  in  the  field.  At  the  close  of  the  war  he  commenced 
the  practice  of  law  in  New  York.  His  chief  work,  as  an  author,  was  a  series  of 
papers  entitled  "The  Federalist,"  of  which  he  wrote  the  greater  number — an  elaborate 
exposition  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  These  papers,  though  necessarily 
abstruse  in  character,  are  perspicuous  in  style  and  powerful  in  reasoning.  He  was  the 
first  secretary  of  the  treasury,  and  in  that  position  he  displayed  unrivalled  skill.  .  .  . 
After  six  years'  service  Hamilton  retired  from  office,  and  resumed  the  practice  of  his 
profession.  As  he  had  opposed  Aaron  Burr,  first  in  his  endeavours  to  become  presi- 
dent, and  afterwards  in  his  canvass  for  the  office  of  governor  of  New  York,  that  un- 
scrupulous demagogue,  maddened  by  defeat,  challenged  him  tQ  fight  a  duel.  Hamilton 
fell  at  the  first  fire,  and  died  the  next  day,  July  12,  1804.— Underwood,  Francis  H., 
1872,  A  Hand-Book  of  English  Literature,  American  Authors,  p.  29. 


PERSONAL 
Hamilton  has  a  very  boyish,  giddy  man- 
ner.— Maclay,  William,  1790,  Sketches 
of  Debate  in  the  First  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  p.  238. 

In  every  relation  which  you  have  borne 
to  me  I  have  found  that  my  confidence  in 
your  talents,  exertions,  and  integrity  has 
been  well  placed.  I  the  more  freely  tender 
this  testimony  of  my  approbation  because 
I  speak  from  opportunities  of  information 
which  cannot  deceive  me  and  which  furnish 
satisfactory  proof  of  your  title  to  public 
regard. —  Washington,  George,  1795, 
Letter  to  Hamilton  on  his  Resignation. 

The  son  of  the  camp-girl. — Callender, 
J.  T.,  1800,  The  Prospect  Before  the  United 
States. 

On  my  expected  interview  with  Colonel 
Burr,  I  think  proper  to  make  some  remarks 
explanatory  of  my  conduct,  motives,  and 
views.  I  was  certainly  desirous  of  avoiding 
this  interview  for  the  most  cogent  of 
reasons.    First — My  religious  and  moral 


principles  are  strongly  opposed  to  the 
practice  of  duelling;  and  it  would  ever 
give  me  pain  to  shed  the  blood  of  a  fellow 
creature  in  a  private  combat  forbidden  by 
the  laws.  Secondly — My  wife  and  children 
are  extremely  dear  to  me,  and  my  life  is 
of  the  utmost  importance  to  them  in  vari- 
ous views.  Thirdly — I  feel  a  sense  of 
obligation  toward  my  creditors,  who,  in 
case  of  accident  to  me,  by  the  forced  sale 
of  my  property,  may  be  in  some  degree 
sufferers.  I  did  not  think  myself  at 
liberty,  as  a  man  of  probity,  lightly  to  ex- 
pose them  to  hazard.  Fourthly — I  am  con= 
scious  of  no  ill-will  to  Colonel  Burr  distinct 
from  political  opposition,  which,  as  I 
trust,  has  proceeded  from  pure  and  up- 
right motives.  Lastly — I  shall  hazard 
much,  and  can  possibly  gain  nothing,  by 
the  issue  of  the  interview.  ...  I 
have  resolved,  if  our  interview  is  conducted 
in  the  usual  manner,  and  it  pleases  God  to 
give  me  the  opportunity,  to  reserve  and 
throw  away  my  first  fire,  and  I  have 
thoughts  even  of  reserving  my  second  fire, 


0  ^ 


Il 

Q  OQ 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


457 


and  thus  giving  a  double  opportunity  to 
Colonel  Burr  to  pause  and  reflect.  It  is 
not,  however,  my  intention  to  enter  into 
any  explanations  on  the  ground.  Apology, 
from  principle,  I  hope,  rather  than  pride, 
is  out  of  the  qustion.  To  those  who,  with 
me,  abhorring  the  practice  of  duelling, 
may  think  that  I  ought  on  no  account  to 
have  added  to  the  number  of  bad  examples, 
I  answer  that  my  relative  situation,  as  well 
in  public  as  private,  enforcing  all  the  con- 
siderations which  constitute  what  men  of 
the  world  denominate  honor,  imposed  on 
me  (as  I  thought)  a  peculiar  necessity  not 
to  decline  the  call.— Hamilton,  Alexan- 
der, 1804,  Paper  Prepared  the  Evening 
Before  his  Duel  with  Aaron  Burr. 

Brethren  of  the  Cincinnati — there  lies 
our  chief!  Let  him  still  be  our  model. 
Like  him,  after  long  and  faithful  public 
services,  let  us  cheerfully  perform  the 
social  duties  of  private  life.  Oh !  he  was 
mild  and  gentle.  In  him  there  was  no 
offence;  no  guile.  His  generous  hand  and 
heart  were  open  to  all.  Gentleman  of  the 
bar — you  have  lost  your  brightest  orna- 
ment. Cherish  and  imitate  his  example. 
While,  like  him,  with  justifiable,  and  with 
laudable  zeal,  you  pursue  the  interests  of 
your  clients,  remember,  like  him,  the 
eternal  principle  of  justice.  Fellow- 
citizens — you  have  long  witnessed  his  pro- 
fessional conduct,  and  felt  his  unrivalled 
eloquence.  You  know  how  well  he  per- 
formed the  duties  of  a  citizen — you  know 
that  he  never  coarted  your  favor  by  adula- 
tion or  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  judgment. 
You  have  seen  him  contending  against  you, 
and  saving  your  dearest  interests  as  it 
were,  in  spite  of  yourselves.  And  you 
now  feel  and  enjoy  the  benefits  resulting 
from  the  firm  energy  of  his  conduct.  Bear 
this  testimony  to  the  memory  of  my  de- 
parted friend.  I  charge  you  to  protect  his 
fame.  It  is  all  he  has  left — all  that  these 
poor  orphan  children  will  inherit  from 
their  father.  —  Morris,  Gouverneur, 
1804,  Funeral  Oration  by  the  Dead  Body 
of  Hamilton. 

The  tears  that  flow  on  this  fond  recital 
will  never  dry  up.  My  heart,  penetrated 
with  the  rememberance  of  the  man,  grows 
liquid  as  I  write,  and  I  could  pour  it  out 
like  water.  I  could  weep  too  for  my 
country,  which,  mournful  as  it  is,  does  not 
know  the  half  of  its  loss.  It  deeply  la- 
ments, when  it  turns  its  eyes  back,  and 


sees  what  Hamilton  v;as;  but  my  soul 
stiffens  with  despair  when  I  think  what 
Hamilton  would  have  been.  ...  No 
man  ever  more  disdained  duplicity,  or  car- 
ried frankness  further  than  he.  .  .  . 
Virtue  so  rare,  so  pure,  so  bold,  by  its 
very  purity  and  excellence  inspired  sus- 
picion as  a  prodigy.  His  enemies  judged 
of  him  by  themselves;  so  splendid  and 
arduous  were  his  services,  they  could  not 
find  it  in  their  hearts  to  believe  that  they 
were  disinterested.  .  .  .  The  name 
of  Hamilton  would  have  honoured  Greece 
in  the  age  of  Aristides.  May  heaven  the 
guardian  of  our  liberty,  grant  that  our 
country  may  be  fruitful  of  Hamiltons,  and 
faithful  to  their  glory! — Ames,  Fisher, 
1804,  Sketch  of  the  Character  of  Alexander 
Hamilton. 

Melancholy,  most  melancholy  news  for 
America — the  premature  death  of  her 
greatest  man,  Major-General  Hamilton! 
.  .  .  His  most  stupendous  talents  which 
set  him  above  rivalship,  and  his  integrity, 
with  which  intrigue  had  not  the  hardihood 
to  tamper,  held  him  up  as  the  nation's 
hope  and  as  the  terror  of  the  unprincipled. 
—Mason,  John  M.,  1804,  Letter  to  a 
Friend  in  Scotland,  Aug.  11. 

TO  the  memory  of 
ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 
The  corporation  of  Trinity  have 
erected  this 
Monument 
In  testimony  of  their  respect 

FOR 

The  patriot  of  incorruptible  integrity 

The  soldier  of  approved  valour 
The  statesman  of  consummate  wisdom 
Whose  talents  and  virtues  will  be 
admired 

BY 

Grateful  posterity 
Long  after  this  marble  shall  have 
mouldered  to 
Dust 

He  died  July  12th,  1804,  aged  47. 
— Inscription  on  Tomb,  Trinity  Church- 
yard, New  York. 

The  model  of  eloquence  and  the  most 
fascinating  of  orators.  With  all  his  fail- 
ings, he  possessed  a  high  and  ennobled 
spirit,  and  acquired  an  influence  from  his 
overwhelming  talents  which  death  alone 
swept  away.— Story,  Joseph,  1810,  Let- 
ter to  Mrs.  Story,  Feb.  7 ;  Life  and  Letter 
vol.  I,  p.  196. 


458 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


Bastard  brat  of  a  Scotch  peddler. — 
Adams,  John,  1813,  Letter  to  Thomas 
Jefferson, 

Of  Mr.  Hamilton  I  ought,  perhaps,  to 
speak  with  some  restraint,  though  my  feel- 
ings assure  me  that  no  recollection  of 
political  collisions  could  control  the  jus- 
tice due  to  his  memory.  That  he  possessed 
intellectual  powers  of  the  first  order,  and 
the  moral  qualifications  of  integrity  and 
honor  in  a  captivating  degree,  has  been 
decreed  to  him  by  a  sufferage  now  univer- 
sal.—Madison,  James,  1831,  Letter  to 
J.  K.  Paulding,  April ;  Writings  of  James 
Madison,  vol.  iv,  p.  176. 

He  was  under  middle  size,  thin  in  person, 
but  remarkably  erect  and  dignified  in  his 
deportment.  His  bust,  seen  in  so  many 
houses,  and  the  pictures  and  prints  of  him, 
make  known,  too  generally,  the  figure  of 
his  face,  to  make  an  attempt  at  descrip- 
tion expedient.  His  hair  was  turned  back 
from  his  forehead,  powdered,  and  collected 
in  a  club  behind.  His  complexion  wac 
exceedingly  fair,  and  varying  from  this 
only  by  the  almost  feminine  rosiness  of  his 
cheeks.  His  might  be  considered,  as  to 
figure  and  color,  an  uncommonly  hand- 
some face.  When  at  rest,  he  had  rather 
a  severe  and  thoughtful  expression ;  but 
when  engaged  in  conversation,  it  easily 
assumed  an  attractive  smile.  .  .  . 
The  eloquence  of  Hamilton  was  said  to 
be  persuasive  and  commanding ;  the  more 
likely  to  be  so,  as  he  had  no  guide  but  the 
impulse  of  a  great  and  rich  mind,  he  hav- 
ing had  little  opportunity  to  be  trained  at 
the  bar,  or  in  popular  assemblies.  Those 
who  could  speak  of  his  manner  from  the 
best  opportunities  to  observe  him  in  public 
and  private,  concurred  in  pronouncing  him 
a  frank,  amiable,  high-minded,  open- 
hearted  gentleman.  He  was  capable  of 
inspiring  the  most  afl^ectionate  attach- 
ment ;  but  he  could  make  those  whom  he 
opposed,  fear  and  hate  him  cordially.  He 
was  capable  of  intense  and  effectual  ap- 
plication, as  is  abundantly  proved  by  his 
public  labours.  But  he  had  a  rapidity  and 
clearness  of  perception,  in  which  he  may 
not  have  been  equalled.  One  who  knew 
his  habits  of  study,  said  of  him,  that  when 
he  had  a  serious  object  to  accomplish,  his 
practice  was  to  reflect  on  it  previously ; 
and  when  he  had  gone  through  this  labour, 
he  retired  to  sleep,  without  regard  to  the 
hour  of  the  night,  and  having  slept  six  or 


seven  hours,  he  rose,  and  having  taken 
strong  coffee,  seated  himself  at  his  table, 
where  he  would  remain  six,  seven,  or 
eight  hours;  and  the  product  of  his 
rapid  pen  required  little  correction  for  the 
press.  ...  In  private  and  friendly 
intercourse,  he  is  said  to  have  been  ex- 
ceedingly amiable,  and  to  have  been  affec- 
tionately beloved.— Sullivan,  William, 
1834,  Familiar  Letters  on  the  Public  Men 
of  the  Revolution. 

Among  his  brethern  Hamilton  was  in- 
disputably preeminent.  This  was  univer- 
sally conceded.  He  rose  at  once  to  the 
loftiest  heights  of  professional  eminence, 
by  his  profound  penetration,  his  power  of 
analysis,  the  comprehensive  grasp  and 
strength  of  his  understanding,  and  the 
firmness,  frankness,  and  integrity  of  his 
character.  We  may  say  of  him,  in  refer- 
ence to  his  associates,  as  was  said  of 
Papinian,  omnes  longo  post  se  intervallo 
reliquerit. — Kent,  James,  1836,  Address 
before  the  Law  Associationy  New  York, 
Oct.  21. 

In  Hamilton's  death  the  Federalists  and 
the  country  experienced  a  loss  second  only 
to  that  of  Washington.  Hamilton  pos- 
sessed the  same  rare  and  lofty  qualities, 
the  same  just  balance  of  soul,  with  less, 
indeed,  of  Washington's  severe  simplicity 
and  awe-inspiring  presence,  but  with  more 
of  warmth,  variety,  ornament,  and  grace. 
If  the  Doric  in  architecture  be  taken 
as  the  symbol  of  Washington's  character, 
Hamilton  belonged  to  the  same  grand  style 
as  developed  in  the  Corinthian, — if  less 
impressive,  more  winning.  If  we  add  Jay 
for  the  Ionic,  we  have  a  trio  not  to  be 
matched,  in  fact,  not  to  be  approached,  in 
our  history,  if,  indeed,  in  any  other.  Of 
earth-born  Titans,  as  terrible  as  great, — 
now  angels,  and  now  toads  and  serpents, 
— there  are  everywhere  enough.  Of  the 
serene  benign  sons  of  the  celestial  gods, 
how  few  at  any  time  have  walked  the 
earth !  —  Hildreth,  Richard,  1849-52, 
History  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
vol.  II,  p.  526. 

His  wife  survived  him,  in  widowhood, 
fifty  years.  She  died  on  the  9th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1854,  at  the  age  of  ninety-seven  years 
and  three  months.— Lossing,  Benson  J., 
1855-86,  Eminent  Americans,  p.  214. 

As  General  Greene  one  day,  on  his  way 
to  Washington's  headquarters,  was  pass- 
ing through  a  field,  — then  on  the  outskirts 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


459 


of  the  city,  now  in  the  heart  of  its  busiest 
quarters,  and  known  as  "the  Park," — he 
paused  to  notice  a  provincial  company  of 
artillery,  and  was  struck  with  its  able  per- 
formances, and  with  the  tact  and  talent  of 
its  commander.  He  was  a  mere  youth, 
apparently  about  twenty  years  of  age, 
small  in  person  and  stature,  but  remark- 
able for  his  alert  and  manly  bearinoj.  It 
was  Alexander  Hamilton. — Irving,  Wash- 
ington, 1855,  Life  of  Washington,  vol.  ii, 
p.  237. 

Two  peculiar  charms  belong  to  the  life 
of  Hamilton  as  compared  with  his  contem- 
porary soldiers  and  statesmen, — his  youth 
and  his  gifts  of  expression.  The  variety 
of  his  services,  his  exalted  patriotism,  and 
his  untarnished  honor  endeared  his  genius 
to  the  highest  order  of  minds ;  while  his 
errors,  however  they  may  diminish  his 
glory  to  the  eye  of  the  moralist  and  the 
Christian,  add  yet  another  effective  ele- 
ment to  his  nature  as  a  subject  for  delinea- 
tion. His  were  errors  of  passion,  not  of 
calculation,  and  prove  him  weak,  not  in- 
human. This  weakness  contrasted  with 
the  moral  consistency  of  Washington,  this 
yielding  to  the  wiles  of  love  and  the  soph- 
istry of  a  false  code  of  honor,  associated 
as  it  is  with  the  pre-eminent  merits  and 
transcendant  abilities  of  Hamilton,  gives 
an  extraordinary  pathos  to  the  drama  of 
his  life.  Circumstances  here  blend  with 
character,  tears  and  triumph,  admiration 
with  sorrow,  to  produce  the  highest 
tragedy  of  human  existence. — Tucker- 
man,  EE^RYT.,lSbS,  Alexander  Hamilton, 
North  American  Review,  vol.  86,  p.  371. 

Alexander  Hamilton  was  of  small  stat- 
ure, not  above  five  feet  five  inches,  accord- 
ing to  my  recollection.  His  countenance, 
without  being  handsome,  was  full  of  intel- 
ligence, and  his  powers  of  conversation 
distinguished.  I  heard  him  at  the  bar  on 
one  occasion  plead  before  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  the  constitu- 
tional right  of  Congress  to  tax  carriages 
and  other  excisable  articles,  in  opposition 
to  a  party  in  Virginia ;  and  no  advocate 
that  I  ever  heard  acquitted  himself  so  well. 
Talleyrand-Perigord  sat  not  far  from  me 
as  a  listener. — Breck,  Samuel,  1862-77, 
Recollections,  ed.  Scudder,  p.  210. 

He  had  a  good  heart,  but  with  it  the 
pride  and  the  natural  arrogance  of  youth, 
combined  with  an  almost  over-weening 
consciousness  of  his  powers,  so  that  he 


was  ready  to  find  fault  with  the  adminis- 
tration of  others,  and  to  believe  that  things 
might  have  gone  better  if  the  direction 
had  rested  with  himself.  Bold  in  the 
avowal  of  his  own  opinions,  he  was  fear- 
less to  provoke,  and  prompt  to  combat  op- 
position. It  was  not  his  habit  to  repine 
over  lost  opportunities.  His  nature  in- 
clined him  rather  to  prevent  what  seemed 
to  him  coming  evils  by  timely  action. — 
Bancroft,  George,  1874,  History  of  the 
United  States,  vol.  X,  p.  409. 

It  is  a  highly  interesting  fact,  that  A.  D. 
1797,  one  of  the  foremost  men  of  the 
United  States,  a  person  who  valued  himself 
upon  his  moral  principle,  and  was  accepted 
by  a  powerful  party  at  his  own  valuation 
in  that  particular,  should  have  felt  it  to 
be  a  far  baser  thing  to  cheat  men  of  their 
money  than  to  despoil  women  of  their 
honor.  In  this  pamphlet  he  puts  his 
honorable  wife  to  an  open  shame,  and 
publishes  to  the  world  the  frailty  of  the 
woman  who  had  gratified  him ;  and  this  to 
refute  a  calumny  which  few  would  have 
credited.  His  conduct  in  this  affair 
throws  light  upon  his  political  course.  He 
could  be  false  to  women  for  the  same 
reason  that  he  could  disregard  the  will  of 
the  people.  He  did  not  look  upon  a  woman 
as  a  person  and  an  equal  with  whom  faith 
was  to  be  kept,  any  more  than  he  recog- 
nized the  people  as  the  master  and  the 
owner  whose  will  was  law.  Original  in 
nothing,  he  took  his  morals  from  one  side 
of  the  Straits  of  Dover,  and  his  politics 
from  the  other.— Barton,  James,  1874, 
Life  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  p.  534. 

I  frankly  acknowledge  that  I  began  this 
work  with  a  deep  admiration  both  for  the 
character  and  the  intellect  of  Hamilton, 
and  that  sentiment  has  strengthened  as  I 
have  proceeded  in  the  study  of  his  career. 
.  .  .  Hamilton  was  a  man  who  excited 
no  moderate  feelings  either  of  affection  or 
animosity.  His  adherents  worshipped 
him  as  a  kind  of  human  deity ;  his  oppo- 
nents assailed  him  as  if  he  had  been  an  in- 
carnate fiend.  He  was  loved  as  man  has 
seldom  been  loved,  and  hated  as  a  man 
free  from  the  charge  of  any  fearful  crime 
against  his  fellow-men  has  seldom  been 
hated.  The  language  of  moderation  has 
never  yet  been  used  concerning  him. — 
Morse,  John  T.,  Jr.,  1876,  The  Life  of 
Alexander  Hamilton,  vol.  l.  Preface,  pp. 
viii,  ix. 


460 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


There  is  something  very  attractive  to  us 
as  we  contemplate  him  during  those  early 
years  of  which  we  have  written.  We  con- 
fess that  we  like  to  think  of  him  as  he 
there  appears, — constant  to  the  purpose 
of  a  noble  life.  The  world  was  all  before 
him.  He  was  not  the  creature  of  circum- 
stance, nor  its  servant.  He  chose  his 
path,  and  never  turned  back.  We  are 
pleased  when  we  think  of  him  as  the  earn- 
est student, — the  boy  that  was  willing  to 
risk  his  life,  though  not  his  character,  to 
exalt  his  station, — as  the  youth  that  knew 
himself,  confided  in  his  own  understanding 
and  strength,  and  yet  never  ventured 
beyond  his  ability, — as  one  who  depended 
not  on  genius  alone,  but  brought  to  his  aid 
on  every  occasion  the  practical  experience 
of  actual  knowledge, — and  as  the  friend 
whose  ardor  no  adversity  could  chill  and 
whose  faithfulness  no  reverse  of  fortune 
could  alienate.— Shea,  George,  1879, 
The  Life  and  Epoch  of  Alexander  Hamil- 
ton, p.  430. 

In  person  Hamilton  was  well  made,  of 
light  and  active  build,  but  very  small, 
much  below  the  average  height.  His 
friends  were  wont  to  call  him  the  little 
lion;"  and  it  is  somewhat  remarkable  that 
his  stature  seems  to  have  interfered  so 
slightly,  if  at  all,  with  his  success  as  an 
orator.  .  .  .  The  man  was  impressive. 
Inches  of  stature  and  of  girth  were  lack- 
ing, but  he  was  none  the  less  full  of 
dignity.  In  this,  of  course,  his  looks 
helped  him.  His  head  was  finely  shaped, 
symmetrical  and  massive.  His  eyes  were 
dark,  deep-set,  and  full  of  light  and  fire. 
He  had  a  long,  rather  sharp  nose,  a  well- 
shaped,  close-set  mouth,  and  a  strong,  firm 
jaw.  The  characteristics  of  the  spare, 
clean-cut  features  are  penetration  and 
force.  There  is  a  piercing  look  about  the 
face  even  in  repose ;  and  when  Hamilton 
was  moved  a  fire  came  into  his  eyes  which 
we  are  told  had  a  marvellous  effect.  But 
it  was  the  soul  which  shone  through  his 
eyes,  and  animated  his  mobile  counte- 
nance, that  made  him  so  effective  in 
speech.  As  men  listened  to  him,  they 
felt  profoundly  the  mastery  of  the  strong 
nature,  the  imperious  will,  and  the  pas- 
sionate energy  which  gave  such  force  to 
his  pathos,  to  his  invective  and  to  the  even 
flow  of  clear,  telling  argument.  ... 
In  private  life  Hamilton  was  much  beloved 
and  most  attractive.    He  talked  well  and 


freely.  He  was  open-hearted  and  hospita- 
ble, full  of  high  spirits  and  geniality.  In 
his  own  family  he  was  idolized  by  wife  and 
children.  The  affection  which  he  inspired 
in  all  who  knew  him  was  largely  due  to  the 
perfect  generosity  of  his  nature,  for  he 
gave  time  and  money  with  a  lavish  hand  to 
all  who  sought  his  aid.  He  carried  this 
habit  into  his  business  to  his  own  detri- 
ment. He  would  often  refuse  to  make  any 
charge  to  poor  clients,  and  never  could  be 
persuaded  to  accept  anything  beyond  a 
reasonable  and  modest  fee.  He  had  in 
truth  a  contempt  for  money,  and  while  he 
made  a  nation's  fortune,  he  never  made 
his  own. — Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  1882, 
Alexander  Hamilton  {American  States- 
men), pp.  272,  273,  274. 

His  temper  was  gentle ;  his  manner  en- 
gaging ;  his  spirit,  high  and  resolute,  was 
raised  above  the  influence  both  of  cupidity 
and  of  fear ;  his  parts  were  quick ;  his  in- 
dustry unwearied ;  his  attainments  various. 
He  was  at  once  a  skilful  officer,  a  brilliant 
pamphleteer,  an  active  political  leader,  an 
impressive  debater,  a  wise  statesman,  an 
able  financier,  a  political  economist  of 
rare  sagacity.  In  his  veins  was  mingled 
the  blood  of  two  distinctly  opposite  races. 
In  his  mind  and  character  were  combined 
the  choicest  traits  of  each.  From  his 
father,  a  cool,  deliberate,  calculating 
Scotchman,  he  inherited  the  shrewdness, 
the  logical  habits  of  thought,  which  con- 
stitute the  peculiar  glory  of  the  Scottish 
mind.  From  his  mother,  a  lady  of  French 
extraction,  and  daughter  of  a  Huguenot 
exile,  he  inherited  the  easy  manners,  the 
liveliness  and  vivacity,  the  keen  sense  of 
humor,  the  desire  and  ability  to  please, 
which  so  eminently  distinguish  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Celtic  race.  Born  within 
fifteen  degrees  of  the  equator,  the  rare 
powers  of  his  mind  ripened  in  him  at  a 
time  when,  in  the  natives  of  a  colder 
climate,  they  have  scarcely  begun  to 
bloom.  Since  the  time  of  William  of 
Orange  the  world  had  rarely  seen  an  in- 
stance of  so  mature  a  mind  in  so  young  a 
lad.— McM ASTER,  John  Bach,  1883,  A 
History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States, 
vol.  I,  p.  125. 

Inseparably  connected  with  the  political 
history  of  the  United  States— above  all 
other  kindred  events— is  that  memorable 
meeting  of  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Aaron 
Burr  at  Weehawken  (New  Jersey)  opposite 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


461 


the  city  of  New  York,  on  Wednesday 
morning,  about  seven  o'clock,  July  11, 
1804,  in  which  the  former  received  his 
antagonist's  bullet  in  a  vital  part,  and  from 
which  he  died  at  two  o'clock  Thursday 
afternoon.  No  event  of  the  kind — so  far 
as  can  be  discovered  by  the  author — in 
America,  or  elsewhere,  overproduced  such 
a  general  and  profound  sensation.  The 
intelligence  of  the  fall  of  the  illustrious 
Hamilton,  while  it  was  received  with 
marked  feeling  in  Europe,  even,  fell  like 
a  crushing  doom  upon  the  American 
people.  New  York  City  was  paralyzed, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  whole  country 
were  plunged  into  the  deepest  mourning. 
Great  multitudes  of  people  thronged  to 
New  York  to  witness  the  melancholy  cere- 
monies, and  to  take  part  in  the  funeral 
procession — which  was  very  large  and  very 
impressive.  This  took  place  on  Saturday, 
July  14.  The  funeral  address  was  de- 
livered by  Gouverneur  Morris,  from  a  plat- 
form in  front  of  Trinity  Church,  Broadway, 
in  the  presence  of  many  thousands  o,f  grief- 
stricken  people,  among  whom  were  four  of 
the  sons  of  the  deceased,  the  eldest  of 
whom  was  sixteen  and  the  youngest 
between  six  and  seven.  .  .  .  The 
weapons  used  by  Hamilton  and  Burr  are  at 
present  in  the  possession  of  a  citizen  of 
Rochester  (New  York).  For  more  than 
fifty  years  they  were  in  possession  of  the 
descendants  of  Hamilton,  who  gave  them 
to  the  mother  of  the  present  possessor, 
also  a  descendant  of  Hamilton.  In  ap- 
pearance they  are  very  formidable.  They 
are  horse-pistols"  of  English  manufac- 
ture, and  are  exactly  alike,  so  far  as  an 
ordinary  observer  can  discover.  The  one 
from  which  Burr  fired  the  fatal  missile  is 
marked  by  a  cross  filed  under  the  lower 
part  of  the  barrel.  They  do  not  in  any 
respect  resemble  any  modern  arm.  In 
handling  them  one  is  strongly  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  they  were  evidently  in- 
tended for  use  in  duels  where  the  partici- 
pants ''shot  to  kill"  and  not  to  obtain 
newspaper  notoriety  without  the  disa- 
greeable shedding  of  blood.  Although 
they  evidently  could  not  be  manipulated  so 
rapidly  as  the  modern  double-acting,  self- 
cocking  pistol,  they  are  capable  of  fatal 
execution,  as  they  carry  a  bullet  of  56 
calibre.  They  are  sixteen  inches  long. 
—Truman,  Ben  C,  1883,  The  Field  of 
Honor,  pp.  334,  354. 


To  the  student,  however,  the  military 
services  of  Alexander  Hamilton  shine  out 
like  new  stars,  giving  an  added  lustre  to 
his  fame.  He  sees  him  in  the  fog  and 
darkness  covering  that  masterful  retreat 
from  Long  Island.  He  hears  him  ask  per- 
mission of  his  chief  to  retake  Fort  Wash- 
ington with  but  a  handful  of  men.  Again 
he  appears  at  Monmouth,  correcting  Lee's 
blunders  and  winning  victory  from  defeat. 
Finally  at  Yorktown,  with  the  dash  of 
Ney,  the  magnetism  of  Napoleon,  and  the 
coolness  of  his  own  great  Washington,  he 
captures  a  redoubt  with  the  loss  of  scarcely 
a  man,  and  makes  the  surrender  of  Corn- 
wallis  a  necessity.  Such  is  the  brief  his- 
tory of  the  little  lion"  of  Nevis  on  the 
field  of  battle.  And  this  was  accomplished 
while  in  stature  and  in  age  he  was  yet  a 
boy. — HoTCHKiss,  William  H.,  1886, 
Alexander  Hamilton,  ed.  Dodge,  p.  142. 

No  name  from  the  rolls  of  our  struggle 
for  independence  and  our  binding  together 
as  a  nation  awakens  more  intense  interest 
or  opens  wider  fields  for  consideration  than 
that  of  Hamilton.  From  the  first  appear- 
ance of  the  youthful  student,  to  the  tragic 
hour  on  the  heights  of  Weehawken,  the 
story  has  the  attraction  of  romance,  and 
in  it  can  be  found  the  kindling  of  influences 
potent  not  only  for  then  but  for  all  time. 
In  the  very  beginning  of  his  plan  to  found 
an  institution  of  learning,  Samuel  Kirkland 
sought  the  counsel  of  Hamilton  and  re- 
ceived his  approval.  Hamilton  was  one  of 
the  first  trustees,  and  in  recognition  of 
his  encouragement  the  institution  received 
his  name.  It  is  fitting  that  this  College 
should  call  special  attention  to  Alexander 
Hamilton.  Soon  after  the  establishment 
of  prizes  for  English  essays,  the  Faculty 
announced  as  a  subject  for  the  Senior  class, 
"Alexander  Hamilton  as  a  Constitutional 
Statesman."  The  prize  on  this  subject 
was  awarded  in  a  vigorous  competition  to 
Franklin  H.  Head  of  the  Class  of  1856, 
who  evinced  in  College  the  marked  ability 
he  has  shown  so  fully  since.  In  1863,  the 
Senior  prizes  for  essays  having  been  with- 
drawn, Mr.  Head  established  the  prize 
called  by  his  name,  designating  that  the 
subject  for  this  Prize  Oration  year  by  year 
should  have  reference  to  the  character  and 
career  of  Alexander  Hamilton.  .  .  . 
It  is  believed  that  these  efforts  grouped 
about  the  life  of  Hamilton  will  be  of  in- 
terest to  many  and  will  at  least  show  how 


462 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


<;onstant  Hamilton  College  is  to  the  mem- 
ory of  the  great  leader. — Root,  Oren, 
1896,  Alexander  Hamilton,  Thirty-one 
Orations  Delivered  at  Hamilton  College 
from  1864  to  1895,  upon  the  Prize  Foun- 
dation Established  by  Franklin  Harvey 
Head,  A.  M.,  ed.  Dodge,  Introduction. 

The  funeral  took  place  from  the  house 
of  John  Church,  in  Robinson  Street,  near 
the  upper  Park.  Express  messengers  had 
dashed  out  from  New  York  the  moment 
Hamilton  breathed  his  last,  and  every  city 
tolled  its  bells  as  it  received  the  news. 
People  flocked  into  the  streets,  weeping 
and  indignant  to  the  point  of  fury. 
Washington's  death  had  been  followed  by 
sadness  and  grief,  but  was  unaccompanied 
by  anger,  and  a  loud  desire  for  vengeance. 
Moreover,  Hamilton  was  still  a  young  man. 
Pew  knew  of  his  feeble  health ;  and  that 
dauntless  resourceful  figure  dwelt  in  the 
liigh  light  of  the  public  imagination,  ever 
ready  to  deliver  the  young  country  in  its 
many  times  of  peril.  His  death  was 
lamented  as  a  national  calamity.  On  the 
day  of  the  funeral.  New  York  was  black. 
Every  place  of  business  was  closed.  The 
world  was  in  the  windows,  on  the  house- 
tops, on  the  pavements  of  the  streets 
through  which  the  cortege  was  to  pass : 
Robinson,  Beekman,  Peal,  and  Broadway 
to  Trinity  Church.  Those  who  were  to 
walk  in  the  funeral  procession  waited,  the 
Sixth  Regiment,  with  the  colours  and 
music  of  the  several  corps,  paraded,  in 
Robinson  Street,  until  the  standard  of  the 
Cincinnati,  shrouded  in  crepe,  was  waved 
before  the  open  door  of  Mr.  Church's 
house.  The  regiment  immediately  halted 
and  rested  on  its  reversed  arms,  until  the 
bier  had  been  carried  from  the  house  to 
the  centre  of  the  street,  when  the  proces- 
sion immediately  formed.  .  .  .  When 
the  procession  after  its  long  march  reached 
Trinity  Church  the  military  formed  in  two 
columns,  extending  from  the  gate  to  the 
corners  of  Wall  Street,  and  the  bier  was 
deposited  before  the  entrance.  Morris, 
surrounded  by  Hamilton's  boys,  stood  over 
it,  and  delivered  the  most  impassioned  ad- 
dress which  had  ever  leapt  from  that  bril- 
liant but  erratic  mind.  It  was  brief,  both 
because  he  hardly  was  able  to  control  him- 
self, and  because  he  feared  to  incite  the 
people  to  violence,  but  it  was  profoundly 
moving.  .  .  .  The  bells  tolled  until 
sundown.    The  city  and  the  people  wore 


mourning  for  a  month,  the  bar  for  six 
weeks.  In  due  time  the  leading  men  of 
the  parish  decided  upon  the  monument 
which  should  mark  to  future  generations 
the  cold  and  narrow  home  of  him  who  had 
been  so  warm  in  life,  loving  as  few  men 
had  loved,  exulted  in  the  wide  greatness  of 
the  empire  he  had  created. — Atherton, 
Gertrude  Franklin,  1902,  The  Con- 
queror, Being  the  True  and  Romantic  Story 
of  Alexander  Hamilton,  pp.  532,  533,  534. 

STATESMAN 
At  the  time  when  our  government  was 
organized  we  were  without  funds,  though 
not  without  resources.  To  call  them  into 
action  and  establish  order  in  the  finances, 
Washington  sought  for  splendid  talents, 
for  extensive  information,  and,  above  all, 
he  sought  for  sterling,  incorruptible  in- 
tegrity. All  these  he  found  in  Hamilton. 
— Morris,  Gouverneur,  1804,  Funeral 
Oration  by  the  dead  body  of  Hamilton, 

I  would  hope  and  may  not  disbelieve,  that 
Mr.  Hamilton's  attachment  to  the  Union 
was  of  that  stubborn,  inflexible  character 
which  under  no  circumstances  would  have 
found  him  arrayed  in  arms  against  it.  But 
in  the  events  of  Mr.  Hamilton's  life  a  com- 
parison of  his  conduct  with  his  opinions, 
in  more  than  one  instance,  exhibits  him  in 
that  class  of  human  characters  whose  sense 
of  rectitude  itself  is  swayed  by  the  im- 
pulses of  the  heart,  and  the  purity  of 
whose  virtue  is  tempered  by  the  baser 
metal  of  the  ruling  passion.  This  conflict 
between  the  influence  of  the  sensitive  and 
the  reasoning  faculty  was  perhaps  never 
more  strikingly  exemplified  than  in  the 
catastrophe  which  terminated  his  life,  and 
in  the  picture  of  his  soul  unveiled  by  this 
posthumous  paper. — Adams,  John  Quincy, 
1800-15,  Federalism. 

This  naturally  brought  Hamilton  into  his 
[Talleyrand]  thoughts,  and  of  him  he  spoke 
willingly,  freely,  and  with  great  admira- 
tion. In  the  course  of  his  remarks,  he 
said  that  he  had  known,  during  his  life, 
many  of  the  more  marked  men  of  his  time, 
but  that  he  had  never,  on  the  whole,  known 
one  equal  to  Hamilton.  I  was  much  sur- 
prised, as  well  as  gratified,  by  the  remark ; 
but  still  feeling  that,  as  an  American,  I 
was,  in  some  sort,  a  party  concerned  by 
patriotism  in  the  compliment,  I  answered, 
— with  a  little  reserve,  perhaps  with  a 
little  modesty,— that  the  great  military 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


463 


commanders  and  the  grest  statesmen  of 
Europe  had  dealt  with  much  larger  masses 
of  men,  and  much  wider  interests  than 
Hamilton  ever  had.  "Mais,  monsieur,'' 
the  Prince  instantly  replied,  ''Hamilton 
avail  devine  VEuropeJ' — TiCKNOR, George, 
1818,  Journal. 

That  he  possessed  intellectual  powers 
of  the  first  order,  and  the  moral  qualifica- 
tions of  integrity  and  honour  in  a  captivat- 
ing degree,  has  been  decreed  to  him  by  a 
suffrage  now  universal.  If  his  theory  of 
government  deviated  from  the  republican 
standard,  he  had  the  candour  to  avow  it, 
and  the  greater  merit  of  co-operating 
faithfully  in  maturing  and  supporting  a 
system  which  was  not  his  choice. — Mad- 
ison, James,  1831,  Letters,  vol.  iv,  p,  176. 

He  smote  the  rock  of  the  national  re- 
sources, and  abundant  streams  of  revenue 
gushed  forth.  He  touched  the  dead  corpse 
of  the  Public  Credit,  and  it  sprung  upon 
its  feet.  The  fabled  birth  of  Minerva  from 
the  brain  of  Jove  was  hardly  more  sudden 
or  more  perfect  than  the  financial  system 
of  the  United  States  as  it  burst  forth  from 
the  conception  of  Alexander  Hamilton. — ■ 
Webster,  Daniel,  1831,  Speech  at  a  Pub- 
lic Dinner  in  New  York,  Feb. 

Hamilton  must  be  classed  among  the 
men  who  have  best  known  the  vital 
principles  and  fundamental  conditions  of 
a  government, — not  of  a  government  such 
as  this  (France),  but  of  a  government 
worthy  of  its  mission  and  of  its  name. 
There  are  not  in  the  constitution  of  the 
United  States  an  element  of  order,  of  force, 
or  of  duration,  which  he  has  not  power- 
fully contributed  to  introduce  into  it  and 
caused  to  predominate. — GuizoT,  Fran- 
gois  Pierre  Guillaume,  1840,  An  Essay 
on  the  Character  of  Washington  and  His 
Influence  in  the  Revolution  of  the  United 
States  of  America, 

Among  all  the  remarkable  men  of  the 
Revolution,  we  know  of  no  one,  who,  for 
the  attributes  which  usually  mark  genius, 
was  more  distinguished.  He  was  endowed 
with  a  singularly  comprehensive  mind, 
which  enabled  him  to  originate  forms  of 
government  and  systems  of  administration, 
whilst  he  united  with  it  an  intrepidity  and 
an  ener'gy  equal  to  the  task  of  putting 
them  in  execution.  He  was  a  politician 
and  a  statesman,  without  possessing  those 
finer  and  more  delicate  feelings  of  lofty 


morality,  which,  while  they  do  honor  to 
a  public  man,  sometimes  go  far  to  impair 
his  means  of  usefulness.  To  Hamilton, 
men  appeared  always  as  instruments  to  be 
moved,  and  not  as  accountable  beings,  and 
theories  of  government  or  modes  of  policy 
were  regarded  simply  with  reference  to 
the  ends  which  might  be  attained  by  ap- 
filying  them.  The  consequence  was,  that 
however  bold  the  features  of  his  system 
were,  and  however  decidedly  beneficial  in 
its  application  to  the  interests  of  the 
country,  there  was  always  a  slight  taint 
of  earthly  morality  about  it,  which  de- 
prived him  of  the  share  in  the  public  con- 
fidence, which  he  may  now  be  regarded  as 
having  deserved.  Peculiarly  fitted  for  the 
difficult  duty  of  calling  a  government  into 
being,  he  was  capable,  at  the  same  time, 
of  understanding  the  bearings,  of  the  most 
comprehensive  principles  and  of  entering 
into  its  minutest  practical  detail.  Yet 
there  is  this  remarkable  peculiarity  about 
the  history  of  Mr.  Hamilton,  that,  whilst 
he  acted  a  most  important  and  honourable 
part  in  a  critical  period  of  our  national 
affairs,  there  was  not,  probably,  an  instant 
of  his  life  in  which  he  enjoyed  the  perfect 
sympathy  of  the  mass  of  the  people  of  the 
United  States. — Adams,  Charles  Fran- 
cis, 1841,  The  Madison  Papers,  North 
American  Review,  vol.  53,  p.  70. 

Where,  among  all  the  speculative  phi- 
losophers in  political  science  whom  the 
world  has  seen,  shall  we  find  a  man  of 
greater  acuteness  of  intellect,  or  more 
capable  of  devising  a  scheme  of  govern- 
ment which  should  appear  theoretically, 
perfect?  Yet  Hamilton's  unquestionable 
genius  for  political  disquisition  and  con- 
struction was  directed  and  restrained  by  a 
noble  generosity,  and  an  unerring  percep- 
tion of  the  practicable  and  the  expedient, 
which  enabled  him  to  serve  mankind  with- 
out attempting  to  force  them  to  his  own 
plans,  and  without  compelling  them  into 
his  own  views. — Curtis,  George  Ticknor, 
1854,  History  of  the  Origin,  Formation 
and  Adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  vol.  i,  p.  387. 

In  the  career  of  Hamilton  we  trace  the 
progress  of  the  Constitution,  from  its  first 
germ  in  the  mind  of  the  young  soldier, 
through  all  the  difficulties  of  its  establish- 
ment, and  the  trials  of  its  early  years, 
until  its  administration  passes  from  the 
control  of  its  authors,  to  fall  into  the  hands 


464 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


of  the  champions  of  an  absolute  democ- 
racy. But,  apart  from  all  political 
speculations,  the  story  of  Hamilton  him- 
self, his  character,  his  services,  and  his 
fate,  are  well  worthy  of  record  and  ought 
to  be  better  known  than  they  have  hitherto 
been — especially  in  that  England  which  he 
understood  with  the  instinct  of  genius, 
and  loved  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  high 
and  generous  nature.  Such  knowledge 
can  only  tend  to  the  honour  of  his  name, 
and  to  the  growth  of  kindly  feelings 
between  his  country  and  our  own. — 

RlETHMliLLER,  CHRISTOPHER  JaMES,  1864, 

Alexander  Hamilton  and  His  Contempora- 
ries, Dedication,  p.  iv. 

It  is  idle  to  speculate  on  what  **might 
have  been;''  but  we  may  be  permitted  to 
conjecture  that,  had  Hamilton  lived,  many 
of  the  evils  which  it  has  taxed  the  vitality 
of  the  States  to  survive,  and  others  of 
equal  magnitude,  against  which  they  still 
are  struggling,  would  have  been  averted 
or  mitigated.  But  when  he  fell,  in  a 
half-personal,  half-political  quarrel,  in  his 
thirty-fifth  year  [?]  (1804),  by  the  bullet 
of  the  infamous  demagogue  Aaron  Burr,  a 
blow  was  dealt  to  Western  civilisation,  only 
less  vital  and  lasting  than  to  that  of  Scot- 
land by  the  assassination  of  the  greatest 
of  the  Stuart  kings ;  for  Hamilton  had  no 
worthy  successor,  and  the  victory  lay 
henceforth  with  the  unscrupulous  man  of 
genius  who,  without  serious  let  or  hind- 
rance, assumed  the  control  of  the  national 
destinies.  —  Nichol,  John,  1880-85, 
American  Literature,  p.  74. 

Like  Napoleon,  Pitt,  and  so  many  others 
of  his  great  contemporaries,  Hamilton, 
instead  of  working  his  way  slowly  up, 
established  his  hold  upon  the  government 
and  direction  of  affairs  from  the  day  that 
he  was  admitted  to  a  share  in  them,  and 
leaped  at  a  bound  into  a  position  which  in 
quieter  times  men  attain  only  after  long 
years  of  patient  struggle.  His  influence 
seems  to  have  been  due  in  great  measure 
to  the  remarkable  sincerity  of  his  mind. 
His  nature  was  profoundly  truthful. — 
Sedgwick,  A.  G.,  1882,  Alexander  Ham- 
ilton, The  Nation,  vol.  34,  p.  445. 

There  is  one  man  in  the  political  history 
of  the  United  States  whom  Daniel  Webster 
regarded  as  his  intellectual  superior.  And 
this  man  was  Alexander  Hamilton ;  not  so 
great  a  lawyer  or  orator  as  Webster,  not 
so  broad  and  experienced  a  statesman,  but 


a  more  original  genius,  who  gave  shape 
to  existing  political  institutions.  He  was 
one  of  those  fixed  stars  which  will  forever 
blaze  in  the  firmament  of  American  lights, 
like  Franklin,  Washington,  and  Jefferson ; 
and  the  more  his  works  are  critically  ex- 
amined, the  brighter  does  his  genius  ap- 
pear. No  matter  how  great  this  country 
is  destined  to  be, — no  matter  what  illus- 
trious statesmen  are  destined  to  arise, 
and  work  in  a  larger  sphere  with  the  eyes 
of  the  world  upon  them, — Alexander 
Hamilton  will  be  remembered  and  will  be 
famous  for  laying  one  of  the  corner-stones 
in  the  foundation  of  the  American  struc- 
ture.—Lord,  John,  1885,  Beacon  Lights 
of  History,  vol.  iv,  p.  367. 

Alexander  Hamilton  was,  next  to  Frank- 
lin, the  most  consummate  statesman  among 
the  band  of  eminent  men  who  had  been 
active  in  the  Revolution,  and  who  after- 
ward labored  to  convert  a  loose  confedera- 
tion of  States  into  a  national  government. 
His  mind  was  as  plastic  as  it  was  vigorous 
and  profound.  It  was  the  appropriate  in- 
tellectual expression  of  a  poised  nature 
whose  power  was  rarely  obtrusive,  be- 
cause it  was  half  concealed  by  the  har- 
monius  adjustment  of  its  various  faculties. 
It  was  a  mind  deep  enough  to  grasp  prin- 
ciples, and  broad  enough  to  regard 
relations,  and  fertile  enough  to  devise 
measures.  Indeed,  the  most  practical  of 
our  early  statesmen  was  'also  the  most  in- 
ventive. He  was  as  ready  with  new  ex- 
pedients to  meet  unexpected  emergencies 
as  he  was  wise  in  subordinating  all  ex- 
pedients to  clearly  defined  principles.  In 
intellect  he  was  probably  the  most  creative 
of  our  early  statesmen,  as  in  sentiment 
Jefferson  was  the  most  widely  influential. 
— Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  1886,  Amer- 
ican Literature  and  Other  Papers,  ed. 
Whittier,  p.  14. 

One  cannot  note  the  disappearance  of 
this  brilliant  figure,  to  Europeans  the  most 
interesting  in  the  early  history  of  the  Re- 
public, without  the  remark  that  his  coun- 
trymen seem  to  have  never,  either  in  his 
lifetime  or  afterwards,  duly  recognized  his 
splendid  gifts.— Bryce,  James,  ISSS,  The 
American  Commonwealth,  vol.  I,  p.  641. 

Hamilton's  work  went  to  the  making  of 
the  American  State,  but  personally  he 
may  be  said  to  have  failed ;  for  when  death 
overtook  him  he  had  no  political  future, 
and  could  have  had  none,  unless  he  could 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


465 


have  readjusted  himself  entirely  to  the 
conditions  of  American  public  life. — 
Sumner,  William  Graham,  1890,  Alex- 
ander Hamilton  (Makers  of  America)^ 
Preface,  p.  iv. 

There  are  two  points  which  should  be 
clearly  understood ;  the  first,  that  Hamil- 
ton's character  as  a  private  individual  was 
currupt,  and  as  a  politician  full  of  plots, 
and  bitterness,  and  not  always  free  from 
treachery;  the  second,  and  his  views  of 
government  and  democratic  institutions 
were  such  that,  had  they  secured  predomi- 
nance, would  have  been  fatal  to  the  Re- 
public. At  the  present  moment  the  tend- 
encies most  likely  to  work  mischief  are 
Hamiltonian.  —  Powell,  E.  P.,  1891, 
Popular  Leaders  Past  and  Present,  The 
Arena,  vol.  3,  p.  579. 

No  emergency  found  him  at  a  loss,  and 
his  creative  intellect  brought  victory  out 
of  disaster.  The  symmetry  of  his  nature 
and  the  genuine  modesty  of  his  character 
veiled  the  extent  and  power  of  his  re- 
sources ;  he  sought  not  his  own  prosperity, 
but  that  of  the  measures  in  which  he  be- 
lieved, and  was  careless  though  others 
got  the  credit  of  his  success.  Practical 
in  his  objects  and  clear  in  their  expound- 
ing, he  conquered  opposition,  partly  by 
lucid  and  temperate  reasoning,  and  partly 
by  a  magnetic  force  of  intellectual  passion. 
— Hawthorne,  Julian,  and  Lemmon, 
Leonard,  1891,  American  Literature,  p.  31. 

His  promptness  rivalled  occasion,  and 
serried  obstinacy  yielded  to  his  intrepid 
assaults.  It  was  not  his  own  success  he 
sought,  but  the  triumph  of  a  mighty  cause. 
Had  he  preferred  power,  which  is  transient, 
to  influence,  which  endures ;  had  he  been 
a  partisan  rather  than  a  patriot,  a  self- 
seeker  rather  than  the  trustee  of  a  future 
beyond  even  his  hope  or  ken ;  had  he  been 
duplex,  where  he  was  open,  lucid  and 
sincere ;  then  he  had  not  impressed  his  in- 
dividuality upon  a  whole  America  as  the 
truest  translator  of  her  predestinate 
nationality.  ...  He  was  neither 
sophist  nor  paralogist.  He  dwelt  above 
manipulation,  and  compromise,  and  ex- 
pedient, and  formula,  and  all  mere  pass- 
ports. He  sought  the  underlying  princi- 
ples and  the  ultimate  reality.  His  soul 
went  into  his  plea.  With  warmth  and 
grace,  but  with  a  peculiar  logical  sim- 
plicity— a  clearness  that  became  clarity— 
and  with  the  unshaken  courage  of  one 

80  G 


compelled  by  conviction,  he  summoned  his 
facts  and  marshaled  his  reasons.  His  was 
the  strategy  of  unambushed  truth  and  the 
elastic  energy  of  a  direct  will.  .  .  . 
With  pen  as  with  voice  he  was  a  chief  of 
assemblies.  He  was  a  sharp  sword  and 
two-edged.  He  was  the  exponent  and 
champion  of  frank  and  fearless  argument. 
Malignity  might  vituperate,  but  he  did  not 
pause.  Malice  might  misrepresent  him, 
but  he  never  sulked.  Cunning  was  not  in 
him,  nor  little  envy,  nor  treachery.  He 
met  each  new  issue  as  it  arose,  and  his 
enemies  themselves  being  judges  he  was 
never  put  to  the  worst  in  free  and  open 
encounter.  .  .  .  Life,  fortune,  honor 
were  to  that  sacredly  rendered,  ungrudg- 
ingly, unweariedly,  unregrettingly,  and, 
thank  God,  with  absolute  success.  He 
had  no  secrets  from  his  country  ! — Stry- 
ker,  M.  Woolsey,  1895,  Address  at  the 
Hamilton  Club,  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  Jan.  11, 
pp.  9,  10,  11. 

Certainly  one  of  the  greatest  figures  in 
our  history  is  the  figure  of  Alexander 
Hamilton.  American  historians,  though 
compelled  always  to  admire  him,  often  in 
spite  of  themselves,  have  been  inclined, 
like  the  mass  of  men  in  his  own  day,  to 
look  at  him  askance.  They  hint,  when 
they  do  not  plainly  say,  that  he  was  not 
''American."  He  rejected,  if  he  did  not 
despise,  democratic  principles ;  advocated 
a  government  as  strong,  almost,  as  a  mon- 
archy; and  defended  the  government 
which  was  actually  set  up,  like  the  skilled 
advocate  he  was,  only  because  it  was  the 
strongest  that  could  be  had  under  the  cir- 
cumstances. He  believed  in  authority,  and 
he  had  no  faith  in  the  aggregate  wisdom 
of  masses  of  men.  He  had,  it  is  true, 
that  deep  and  passionate  love  of  liberty, 
and  that  steadfast  purpose  in  the  main- 
tenance of  it,  that  mark  the  best  English- 
men everywhere ;  but  his  ideas  of  govern- 
ment stuck  fast  in  the  old-world  politics, 
and  his  statesmanship  was  of  Europe  rather 
than  of  America.  And  yet  the  genius  and 
the  steadfast  spirit  of  this  man  were 
absolutely  indispensable  to  us.  No  one 
less  masterful,  no  one  less  resolute  than 
he  to  drill  the  minority,  if  necessary,  to 
have  their  way  against  the  majority,  could 
have  done  the  great  work  of  organization 
by  which  he  established  the  national 
credit,  and  with  the  national  credit  the 
national  government  itself.  —  Wilson, 


466 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


WOODROW,  1896,  Mere  Literature  and 
Other  Essays,  p.  188. 

The  most  precocious  statesman  of 
America,  if  not  of  the  world. — Bronson, 
Walter  C,  1900,  A  Short  History  of 
American  Literature,  p.  49. 

THE  FEDERALIST 

No  constitution  of  government  ever  re- 
ceived a  more  masterly  and  successful 
vindication.  I  know  not,  indeed,  of  any 
work  on  the  principles  of  free  government 
that  is  to  be  compared,  in  instruction  and 
intrinsic  value,  to  this  small  and  unpre- 
tending volume  of  the  Federalist;  not 
even  if  we  resort  to  Aristotle,  Cicero, 
Machiavel,  Montesquieu,  Milton,  Locke,  or 
Burke.  It  is  equally  admirable  in  the 
depth  of  its  wisdom,  the  comprehensiveness 
of  its  views,  the  sagacity  of  its  reflections, 
and  the  fearlessness,  patriotism,  candour, 
simplicity,  and  elegance,  with  which  its 
truths  are  uttered  and  recommended.  Mr. 
Justice  Story  acted  wisely  in  making  the 
Federalist  the  basis  of  his  Commentary. — 
Kent,  James,  1826-54,  Commentaries 
upon  American  Law. 

His  are  easily  distinguished  by  their 
superior  comprehensiveness,  practicalness, 
originality,  and  condensed  and  polished 
diction. — Griswold,  RuFUS  Wilmot,  1846, 
The  Prose  Writers  of  America,  p.  91. 

The  Federalist  originally  appeared  in  the 
columns  of  the  New  York  Daily  Advertiser. 
The  papers  were  collected  and  published 
in  two  neat  duodecimo  volumes,  by  J.  &  A. 
M'Lean,  New  York,  1788;  another  edition 
appeared  during  Hamilton's  Lifetime,  in 
1802,  from  the  press  of  George  F.  Hop- 
kins, New  York.  The  papers  were  also 
included  in  an  edition  of  Hamilton's 
works,  in  three  vols.,  by  Williams  & 
Whiting,  New  York,  1810.  In  1818,  an 
edition  was  published  by  Jacob  Gideon  at 
Washington,  which  embraced  the  revisions 
by  Madison  of  his  papers. — Duyckinck, 
Evert  A.  and  George  L.,  1855-65-75, 
Cyclopedia  of  American  Literature,  ed. 
Simons,  vol.  i,  p.  439,  note. 

It  was  from  him  that  the  Federalist  de- 
rived the  weight  and  the  power  which 
commanded  the  careful  attention  of  the 
country,  and  carried  conviction  to  the 
great  body  of  intelligent  men  in  all  parts 
of  the  Union. — Curtis,  George  Ticknor, 
1855,  History  of  the  Origin,  Formation 
and  Adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  vol.  I,  p.  417= 


On  the  whole,  the  Federalist"  is  a 
very  remarkable  instance  of  statesmanlike 
ability,  in  which  a  certain  amount  of 
pedantry  and  affectation  may  well  be  par- 
doned in  consideration  of  the  clearness 
with  which  the  conditions  of  a  great  polit- 
ical crisis  are  appreciated.  Hamilton, 
whose  influence  is  most  perceptible,  was 
by  far  the  ablest  representative  of  what 
may  be  called  the  English'  theory  of 
government  in  the  United  States ;  and  took 
no  inconsiderable  share  in  carrying  into 
execution  the  plan  which  he  had  so  ably 
defended. —Stephen,  Leslie,  1S16,  His- 
tory of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  260. 

These  are,  perhaps,  the  ablest  political 
essays  in  the  English  language ;  and  they 
are  like  some  of  the  great  speeches  of 
Burke,  in  that  they  were  intended  to  effect 
an  immediate  purpose  only  and  yet  have 
served  ever  since  as  a  perpetual  store- 
house of  political  wisdom. — Matthews, 
Brander,  1896,  An  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  American  Literature,  p.  221. 

The  effect  was  immediate  and  far-reach- 
ing. The  'federalist"  did  more  than  any 
other  writing  to  secure  the  adoption  and 
support  of  the  Constitution  throughout  the 
country.  It  is  a  profound  disquisition  on 
the  principles  of  our  government,  and  has 
since  been  quoted  as  of  the  highest 
authority  on  constitutional  questions. 
But  it  is  more  than  a  political  and  con- 
troversial treatise.  Its  masterly  style 
raises  it  to  the  rank  of  real  literature. 
Most  of  the  controversial  writings  of  the 
Revolutionary  Period  have  been  forgotten. 
Having  served  their  temporary  purpose, 
they  have  been  swept  into  oblivion.  But 
the  "Federalist"  endures  as  one  of  the 
masterpieces  of  the  human  reason.  Its 
sustained  power  is  wonderful.  The  argu- 
ment, clothed  in  elevated,  strong,  and 
sometimes  eloquent  language,  moves  for- 
ward with  a  mighty  momentum  that  sweeps 
away  everything  before  it.  It  is  hardly 
surpassed  in  the  literature  of  the  world 
as  a  model  of  masterful  popular  reasoning. 
By  this  production  Hamilton  won  for  him- 
self a  foremost  place  in  the  literature  of 
his  time.— Painter,  F.  V.  N.,  1897,  In- 
troduction to  American  Literature,  p.  87. 

As  a  series  of  formal  essays,  the** Feder- 
alist" groups  itself  roughly  with  the 
**Tatler,"  the  ** Spectator,"  and  those 
numerous  descendants  of  theirs  which  fill 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON  467 


the  literary  records  of  eighteenth-century 
England.  It  differs,  however,  from  all 
these,  in  both  substance  and  purpose. 
The  *'Tatler,"  the ''Spectator,"  and  their 
successors  dealt  with  superficial  matters 
in  a  spirit  of  literary  amenity :  the  ''Feder- 
alist" deals,  in  an  argumentative  spirit  as 
earnest  as  that  of  any  Puritan  divine,  with 
political  principles  paramount  in  our  his- 
tory ;  and  it  is  so  wisely  thoughtful  that  one 
may  almost  declare  it  the  permanent  basis 
of  sound  thinking  concerning  American 
constitutional  law.  Like  all  the  educated 
writing  of  the  eighteenth  century,  too,  it 
is  phrased  with  a  rhythmical  balance  and 
urbane  polish  which  gave  it  claim  to 
literary  distinction.  After  all,  however, 
one  can  hardly  feel  it  much  more  signifi- 
cant in  a  history  of  pure  letters  than  are 
the  opinions  in  which  a  little  later  Judge 
Marshall  and  Judge  Story  developed  and 
expounded  the  constitutional  law  which 
the  "Federalist"  commented  on.  Its 
true  character  appears  when  we  remember 
the  most  important  thing  published  in 
England  during  the  same  years, — the 
poetry  of  Robert  Burns.  The  contrast 
between  Burns  and  the  "Federalist"  tells 
the  whole  literary  story.  Just  as  in  the 
seventeenth  century  the  only  serious 
literature  of  America  was  a  phase  of  that 
half-historical,  half-theological  sort  of 
work  which  had  been  a  minor  part  of 
English  literature  generations  before ;  so 
in  the  eighteenth  century  the  chief  product 
of  American  literature  was  an  extremely 
ripe  example  of  such  political  pamphlet- 
eering as  in  England  had  been  a  minor 
phase  of  letters  during  the  period  of  Queen 
Anne.  Pure  letters  in  America  were  still 
to  come.— Wendell,  Barrett,  1900,  A 
Literary  History  of  America,  p.  118. 

GENERAL 
That  great  man,  whose  remarkable 
career  was  finished  at  the  point  when  most 
men  are  just  ready  for  action,  was  a  reader 
and  inquirer  in  political  economy  in  his 
twentieth  year.  In  his  twenty-fifth  year, 
in  such  leisure  as  the  camp  of  the  Revolu- 
tion afforded,  he  matured  a  scheme  for  a 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  and  became  a 
correspondent  of  Morris  on  that  subject. 
And,  finally,  at  the  age  of  thirty-four,  he 
produced,  as  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
his  great  reports  on  the  Public  Credit,  on 
a  National  Bank,  and  on  Manufactures, 
the  most  powerful  and  comprehensive 


discussion  of  the  national  finances  every 
made  under  our  government,  and  the  sub- 
ject, It  may  be  remembered,  of  one  of  Mr. 
Webster's  noblest  periods.  Those  reports 
bear  the  evidence  throughout  of  much 
reading  and  reflection  upon  the  experiences 
of  nations,  and  of  careful  meditation  on 
the  speculations  and  theories  of  previous 
writers.  .  .  .  Both  the  knowledge  of 
economic  questions  and  the  power  of  deal- 
ing with  them  exhibited  by  Hamilton  in 
these  discussions  warrant  us  in  setting  him 
down  as  a  writer  who,  under  other  condi- 
tions and  freed  from  the  pressure  of  public 
business,  might  have  been  expected  to 
make  some  positive  contribution  to  the 
development  of  economic  theory.  But  his 
few  crowded  years  left  him  little  oppor- 
tunity for  such  pursuits,  and  it  would  now 
be  hard  to  say  that  he  left  any  impression 
on  the  thought  of  the  world,  by  his  dealing 
with  this  subject.  His  reports  have  con- 
tinued to  be  the  arsenal  from  which  the 
advocates  of  special  measures  have  again 
and  again  drawn  forth  weapons  now  well 
worn;  but  systematic  political  economy 
cannot  be  said  to  owe  to  him  any  recog- 
nized principle,  any  discovery  in  method, 
or  indeed  any  influence  save  the  stimulus 
which  his  example  must  always  afford  to 
the  student  of  financial  history. — Dun- 
bar, Charles  F.,  1876,  Economic  Science 
in  America,  1776-1876,  North  American 
Review,  vol.  122,  pp.  130,  131. 

The  greatness  of  his  political  has  ob- 
scured the  memory  of  his  literary  fame : 
he  was  one  of  the  best  writers  of  his 
time.  He  wrote  in  the  periodic  style, 
sonorous,  often  weighty  and  austere.  He 
was  only  forty-seven  when  he  died;  yet 
his  literary  productions  fill  many  volumes, 
his  clear  intelligence  instructed  his  age. 
He  helped  to  form  the  Constitution,  and, 
although  not  pleased  with  some  of  its  pro- 
visions, defended  it  in  the  "Federalist" 
with  great  force  and  propriety.  His  pen 
was  never  at  rest ;  he  spared  few  of  his 
contemporaries;  his  integrity  was  un- 
doubted, his  patriotism  sincere;  his  in- 
fluence upon  the  fate  of  his  country  in- 
calculable.—Lawrence,  Eugene,  1880, 
A  Primer  of  American  Literature,  p.  42. 

During  our  rapid  advance  in  wealth  and 
influence  they  [Hamilton's  writings]  have 
shown  the  adaptive  powder  which  belongs 
to  principles  rather  than  expedients. 
Their  effect  has  been  far-reaching  and 


468 


ALEXANDER  HAMILTON 


permanent,  and  the  memory  of  their  author 
shall  be  as  lasting  as  the  Union  which  he 
helped  to  form.— Lang,  Philip  A.,  1880, 
Alexander  Hamilton^  ed.  Dodge,  p,  112. 

If  we  compare  Hamilton  with  the  other 
writers  of  that  period  when  every  distin- 
guished man  did  more  or  less  political 
writing,  and  when  there  was  no  other 
native  literature,  it  is  a  simple  matter  to 
fix  his  position.  He  was  easily  first.  Not 
only  have  his  writings  alone  survived  for 
the  general  reader  out  of  the  wilderness 
of  essays  and  pamphlets  of  the  last  cen- 
tury on  similar  subjects,  but  the  'feder- 
alist" has  become  a  text-book  in  America 
and  an  authority  in  Europe.  Hamilton, 
in  this  capacity,  will,  however,  bear  a 
severer  test,  — that  of  abstract  merit.  His 
writings  deal  exclusively  with  the  great 
questions  of  that  day,  and  have  lost  their 
living  interest.  Yet  as  specimens  of  polit- 
ical literature,  as  disquisitions  on  con- 
stitutions and  the  art  of  government,  and 
as  masterpieces  of  reasoning,  they  are  not 
only  the  best  produced  here,  but  they  will 
take  high  rank  among  the  best  efforts  of 
other  countries.  One  quality  which  raised 
Hamilton  in  this  regard  beyond  his  con- 
temporaries on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic 
was  his  freedom  from  the  didactic  tone 
which  so  mars  the  writings  of  the  latter 
half  of  the  last  century.  His  style  was 
simple,  nervous,  and  modern  in  feeling, 
and  anyone  who  has  tried  to  condense  one 
of  his  arguments  will  appreciate  the  state- 
ment that  the  thought  is  compressed  to  the 
last  point  consistent  with  clearness.  Yet 
forcible  and  convincing  as  all  Hamilton's 
essays  are,  pure  as  is  the  style,  and  vigor- 
ous and  rapid  as  is  the  flow  of  thought, 
they  are  hard  reading.  Admiring  them 
as  models  in  their  way  and  as  great  intel- 
lectual efforts,  one  is  forced  to  confess 
them  dry  to  the  last  degree. — Lodge, 
Henry  Cabot,  1884,  Studies  in  History, 
p.  168. 

The  writings  of  Hamilton,  like  those  of 
nearly  all  the  politicians  whose  names  are 
here  under  consideration,  had  no  real 
literary  motive.  They  were  produced  in 
the  course  of  the  life  of  a  statesman,  and 
all,  whether  written  with  greater  or  less 
care,  were  designed  to  further  the  ends  of 
statecraft  or  of  political  management. 
.  .  .  His  rank  as  an  author  depends 
finally  upon  his  contributions  to  **The 
Federalist" — a  weighty  and  potent  book. 


which,  however,  like  Adam  Smith's 
Wealth  of  Nations,"  scarcely  belongs 
within  the  border  line  of  true  literature. — 
Richardson,  Charles  F.,  ISSl,  American 
Liter ature,lQ07-lSS5,  vol.  I,  pp.  201,  203. 

In  the  exposition  of  his  views  touching 
the  several  vast  fields  of  thought  here 
brought  under  consideration, — constitu- 
tional law,  municipal  law,  the  long  line 
of  colonial  charters,  colonial  laws  and 
precedents,  international  polity  as  affect- 
ing the  chief  nations  of  Christendom,  jus- 
tice in  the  abstract  and  justice  in  the  con- 
crete, human  rights  both  natural  and  con- 
ventional, the  physical  and  metaphysical 
conditions  underlying  the  great  conflict 
then  impending, — it  must  be  confessed, 
that  this  beardless  philosopher,  this  states- 
man not  yet  out  of  school,  this  military 
strategist  scarcely  rid  of  his  roundabout, 
exhibits  a  range  and  precision  of  knowl- 
edge, a  ripeness  of  judgment,  a  serenity, 
a  justice,  a  massiveness  both  of  thought 
and  of  style,  which  would  perhaps  make 
incredible  the  theory  of  his  authorship  of 
these  pamphlets,  were  not  this  theory 
confirmed  by  his  undoubted  exhibition  in 
other  ways,  at  about  the  same  period  of 
his  life,  of  the  same  astonishing  qualities : 
as  in  his  "Remarks  on  the  Quebec  Bill," 
published  in  1775 ;  in  his  letters  under  the 
signature  of  *'Publius,"  published  in 
1778 ;  in  his  essays  over  the  signature  of 
"The  Continentalist,"  published  in  1781 ; 
above  all,  in  his  personal  letter  to  James 
Duane  written  in  1780,  and  containing  a 
powerful  statement  of  the  defects  of  the 
articles  of  confederation,  and  an  almost 
miraculous  forecast  of  the  very  incidents 
and  sequences  of  the  process  by  which, 
some  seven  or  eight  years  afterward,  the 
articles  of  confederation  were  actually 
developed  into  the  constitution  of  the 
United  States.— Tyler,  Moses  Coit,1897, 
The  Literary  History  of  the  American 
Revolution,  1763-1783,  vol.  i,  p.  390. 

From  his  time  to  the  present,  in  peace 
and  war,  notwithstanding  temporary  em- 
barrassments and  occasional  panics,  the 
finances  of  the  government  have  been 
sound,  and  its  obligations  accepted  wher- 
ever offered.  In  the  long  line  of  honest 
and  able  secretaries  who  have  administered 
the  treasury,  Hamilton  stands  as  the  first 
and  greatest  financier. — Oilman,  Daniel 
C,  1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Lit- 
erature, ed.  Warner,  vol.  xii,  p.  6895. 


469 


Charlotte  Lennox 

1720-1804 

Born  (Charlotte  Ramsay),  in  New  York,  1720.  To  England,  1735(?).  Being  un- 
provided for  at  her  father's  death,  went  on  the  stage  for  a  short  time.  Married  to — 
Lennox,  1748(  ?).  Friendship  with  Dr.  Johnson  and  Richardson.  Edited  ''The  Ladies' 
Museum,''  1760-61.  Play,  "The  Sister"  (dramatized  from  her  novel  "Henrietta"), 
produced  at  Covent  Garden,  18  Feb.  1769;  "Old  City  Manners"  (adapted  from  Jon- 
son,  Chapman  and  Mars  ton's  "Eastward  Hoe!"),  Drury  Lane,  9  Nov.  1775.  Ill  health 
and  distress  in  later  years.  Pension  from  Royal  Literary  Fund,  1803.  Died,  in  London, 
4  Jan.  1804.  Works:  "Poems  on  Several  Occasions,"  (anon.)  1747;  "The  Life  of 
Harriot  Stuart"  (anon.)  1751  (1750);  "The  Female  Quixote"  (anon.),  1752;  "Shake- 
spear  Illustrated"  (3  vols., anon.),  1753-54;  "Philander"  (anon.),  1758;  "Henrietta" 
(anon.),  1758;  "Sophia"  1762;  "The  Sisters,"  1769;  "Old  City  Manners,"  1775; 
"Euphemia,"  1790;  "Memoirs  of  Henry  Lennox,"  1804.  She  translated:  "Memoirs 
of  the  Countess  of  Berci,"1756;  "Memoirs  of  the  Duke  of  Sully,"  1756;  "Memoirs 
for  the  History  of  Madame  de  Maintenon,"  1757;  Brumoy's  "Greek  Theatre"  (with 
Johnson  and  others),  1759 ;  the  Duchess  de  la  Valliere's  "Meditations,"  1774. — 
Sharp,  R.  Farquh arson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  167. 


PERSONAL 

A  poetess  and  deplorable  actress. — 
Walpole,  Horace,  1748,  To  George  Mon- 
tagu, Sept.  3;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham, 
vol.  II,  p.  126. 

He  (Dr.  Johnson)  gave  us  an  account  of 
Mrs.  Lennox.  Her  "Female  Quixote"  is 
very  justly  admired  here.  But  Mrs.  Thrale 
says  that  though  her  books  are  generally 
approved,  nobody  likes  her.  I  find  she, 
among  others,  waited  on  Dr.  Johnson  upon 
her  commencing  writing,  and  he  told  us 
that  at  her  request  he  carried  her  to 
Richardson.  "Poor  Charlotte  Lennox!" 
continued  he.  "When  we  came  to  the 
house  she  desired  me  to  leave  her;  'for,' 
says  she,  'I  am  under  great  restraint  in 
your  presence ;  but  if  you  leave  me  alone 
with  Richardson,  I'll  give  you  a  very  good 
account  of  him;'  however,  I  fear  poor 
Charlotte  was  disappointed,  for  she  gave 
me  no  account  at  all."— D'Arblay,  Mme. 
(Fanny  Burney),  1778,  Diary,  Aug.  26. 

Mrs.  Lenox,  a  lady  now  well  known  in 
the  literary  world,  had  written  a  novel 
intitled,  "The  Life  of  Harriot  Stuart," 
which  in  the  spring  of  1751,  was  ready 
for  publication.  One  evening  at  the  club, 
Johnson  proposed  to  us  the  celebrating 
the  birth  of  Mrs.  Lenox's  first  literary 
child,  as  he  called  her  book,  by  a  whole 
night  spent  in  festivity.  Upon  his  men- 
tioning it  to  me,  I  told  him  I  had  never 
sat  up  a  whole  night  in  my  life ;  but  he 
continuing  to  press  me,  and  saying,  that  I 
should  find  great  delight  in  it,  I,  as  did  all 
the  rest  of  our  company,  consented.  The 
place  appointed  was  the  Devil  tavern,  and 


there,  about  the  hour  of  eight,  Mrs. 
Lenox  and  her  husband,  and  a  lady  of  her 
acquaintance,  now  living,  as  also  the  club, 
and  friends  to  the  number  of  near  twenty, 
assembled.  Our  supper  was  elegant,  and 
Johnson  had  directed  that  a  magnificent 
hot  apple-pie  should  make  a  part  of  it,  and 
this  he  would  have  stuck  with  bay-leaves, 
because,  forsooth,  Mrs.  Lenox  was  an 
authoress,  and  had  written  verses;  and 
further,  he  had  prepared  for  her  a  crown 
of  laurel,  with  which,  but  not  till  he  had 
invoked  the  muses  by  some  ceremonies  of 
his  own  invention,  he  encircled  her  brows. 
The  night  passed,  as  must  be  imagined,  in 
pleasant  conversation,  and  harmless  mirth, 
intermingled  at  different  periods  with  the 
refreshments  of  coffee  and  tea.  About 
five  Johnson's  face  shone  with  meridian 
splendour,  though  his  drink  had  been  only 
lemonade ;  but  the  far  greater  part  of  us 
had  deserted  the  colours  of  Bacchus,  and 
were  with  difficulty,  rallied  to  partake  of 
a  second  refreshment  of  coffee,  which  was 
scarcely  ended  when  the  day  began  to 
dawn.  This  phenomenon  began  to  put  us 
in  mind  of  our  reckoning ;  but  the  waiters 
were  all  so  overcome  with  sleep,  that  it  was 
two  hours  before  we  could  get  a  bill,  and 
it  was  not  till  near  eight  that  the  creaking 
of  the  street-door  gave  the  signal  for  our 
departure. — Hawkins,  Sir  John,  1787, 
Life  of  Samuel  Johnson,  p.  285. 

GENERAL 

On  the  evening  of  Saturday,  May  15,  he 
was  in  fine  spirits  at  our  Essex  Head  Club. 
He  told  us,  "I  dined  yesterday  at  Mrs. 
Garrick's  with  Mrs.  Carter,  Miss  Hannah 


470 


LENNOX— PALEY 


More,  and  Miss  Fanny  Burney.  Three  such 
women  are  not  to  be  found :  I  know  not 
where  I  could  find  a  fourth,  except  Mrs. 
Lennox,  who  is  superiour  to  them  all." — 
Johnson,  Samuel,  1784,  Life  by  Boswell, 
ed.  Hill,  vol.  IV,  p.  317. 

But  her  (Dorothy  Osborne's)  favourite 
books  were  those  ponderous  French 
Romances  which  modern  readers  know 
chiefly  from  the  pleasant  satire  of  Char- 
lotte Lennox. — Macaulay,  Thomas  Bab- 
INGTON,  1838,  Sir  William  Temple,  Edin- 
burgh Review,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays. 

A  very  ingenious,  deserving,  and  not 
very  fortunate  woman,  who  wrote  the 
clever  novel  of  the  ''Female  Quixote, "  and 
a  somewhat  silly  book  about  Shakespeare, 
to  which  Johnson,  a  great  friend  of  her's, 
was  suspected  to  have  contributed.  .  .  . 
Though  with  too  much  sentiment,  it 
[''Sister"]  is  both  amusing  and  interest- 
ing ;  and  the  Strawberry-hill  critics  who 
abused  it,  and  afterwards  pronounced 
Burgoyne's  "Heiress"  "the  finest  comedy 
in  the  English  language,"  might  have 
had  the  justice  to  discover  that  three  of 
the  characters  of  the  fashionable  General 
were  stolen  from  this  very  "Sister"  of 
poor  Mrs.  Lennox. — Forster,  John,  1848- 
54,  The  Life  and  Times  of  Oliver  Gold- 
smith, vol.  II,  pp.  145,  146. 

It  ["Female  Quixote"]  certainly  is  a 
very  amusing  book.  .  .  .  The  story 
is  rather  wire-drawn,  but  rather  full  of 


humor.— Minto,  William,  1894,  The  Lit- 
erature of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed.  Knight, 
pp.  117,  118. 

The  "Female  Quixote,"  published  in 
1752,  and  perpetuated  by  Mrs.  Barbauld, 
is  precious  for  preserving  to  the  world  the 
best  impression  we  have  of  what  the  old, 
old  romances  of  the  Calprenede  and 
Scudery  school  really  were ;  sparing  us  an 
effort  which  even  I  am  incapable  of— that 
is,  wading  through  the  black  volumes  like 
those  beloved  of  the  old  nurse  in  the 
Wortley  family,  and  even  of  Lady  Mary 
herself  and  her  contemporaries.  It  is  an 
agreeable  and  ingenious  satire  upon  the 
old  romances,  and  I  really  think  it  is 
written  in  a  modern  spirit,  and  that  Ara- 
bella, the  heroine,  has  more  good  stuff  in 
her  than  other  imaginary  ladies  of  the 
time  who  have  been  more  praised.  She 
is  supposed  to  have  been  brought  up  in 
the  country  and  secluded  from  all  society, 
but  allowed  to  amuse  herself  in  an  old 
library  furnished  with  the  works  of  these 
voluminous  authors.  Of  course  she  im- 
bibes their  views  of  life,  and  when  she 
comes  out  into  the  world,  possessed  of 
beauty  and  fortune,  it  is  with  a  pronounced 
ignorance  of  every  circumstance  of  real 
life  and  manners.  She  fancies  every  man 
who  speaks  to  her  to  be  secretly  in  love 
with  her,  and  is  in  constant  apprehension 
of  being  forcibly  carried  off. — Hale, 
Susan,  1898,  Men  and  Manners  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  45. 


William  Paley 

1743-1805 

Born,  at  Peterborough,  July  1743.  Educated  at  Giggleswick  Grammar  School  (of 
which  his  father  was  head-master).  To  Christ's  Coll.,  Camb.,  as  Sizar,  Oct.  1759; 
Scholar  and  Exhibitioner,  Dec.  1759:  B.  A.,  1763;  M.  A.,  1766.  Schoolmaster  at 
Greenwich,  1763-66.  Ordained  Deacon,  1766;  Priest,  21  Dec.  1767.  Fellow  of 
Christ's  Coll.,  Camb.,  June  1766.  Prselector,  1767-69;  Hebrew  Lecturer,  1768-70; 
Tutor,  March  1771.  Preacher  at  Whitehall,  1771-76.  Rector  of  Musgrave,  Cumber- 
land, May  1775  to  1777.  Married  (i)  Jane  Hewitt,  6  June  1776.  Vicar  of  Dalston, 
Cumberland,  1776-93.  Vicar  of  Appleby,  1777  to  Aug.  1782.  Prebendary  of  Carlisle, 
1780  to  Jan.  1795.  Archdeacon  and  Rector  of  Great  Salkeld,  Aug.  1782  to  May  1805. 
Chancellor  of  the  Diocese,  1785  to  Jan.  1795.  Wife  died,  May  1791.  Vicar  of 
Aldingham,  May  1792  to  March  1795 ;  Vicar  of  Stanwix,  1793  to  March  1795.  Preb- 
endary of  St.  Pancras,  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  Aug.  1794.  Sub-dean  of  Lincoln,  Jan. 
1795.  D.  D.  Camb.,  1795.  Rector  of  Bishop- Wearmouth,  March  1795.  Resided 
there  till  his  death.  Married  (ii),  Miss  Dobinson,  14  Dec.  1795.  Died,  at  Lincoln, 
25  May  1805.  Buried  in  Carlisle  Cathedral.  Works:  "A  Defence  of  the  'Considera- 
tions on  the  propriety  of  requiring  a  subscription  to  Articles  of  faith'  "  (anon.)  1774; 
"Caution  recommended  in  the  use  ...  of  Scripture  Language,"  1777;  "Advice 
addressed  to  the  Young  Clergy  of  the  Diocese  of  Carlisle,"  1781;  "A  Distinction  of 


UHIVFJ 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


471 


Orders  in  the  Church  defended,"  1782;  Principles  of  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy," 
1785;  *'The young  Christian  instructed, "  1790;  ''Horae  Paulinse,"  17130  (2ndedn.  same 
j^ear) ;  ''The  Use  and  propriety  of  local  and  occasional  preaching,"  1790;  "Reasons  for 
Contentment,"  1792;  ''View  of  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,"  1794  (2nd  edn.  same 
year) ;  "Dangers  incidental  to  the  Clerical  Character,"  1795;  "A Sermon  preached  at 
the  Assizes  at  Durham,"  1795;  "A  Short  Memoir  of  the  Life  of  Edward  Law.,  D.  D. 
1800;  "Natural  Theology,"  1802.  Posthumous :  "Sermons  on  Several  Subjects," 
1808;  "Sermons  and  Tracts,"  1808;  "Sermons  on  Various  Subjects,"  (2  vols.),  1825. 
Collected  Works  in  8  vols.,  1805-08;  in  5  vols,  1819;  etc.,  etc.  Life:  by  G.  W. 
Meadley,  2nd  edn.,  1810.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English 
Authors,  p.  220. 


PERSONAL 

His  delivery  was  fluent,  his  language 
strong  and  perspicuous,  though  mixed 
sometimes  with  provincial,  but  expressive 
words  and  phrases,  which,  however,  were 
purposely  used  as  uncommon,  and  likely 
to  be  remembered.  His  general  manner, 
also,  was  strikingly  impressive;  and  he 
treated  everything  with  such  force  and 
animation,  that  the  driest  topics  became 
interesting.  By  all  these  means,  he  secured 
not  only  the  attendance  of  his  pupils 
without  the  aid  of  punishments,  but 
also  their  admiration  whilst  he  lectured, 
and  their  regret  when  he  had  done.  .  .  . 
In  person.  Dr.  Paley  was  above  the  com- 
mon size,  and  rather  inclined  to  corpulence 
in  his  latter  years.  The  expression  of  his 
countenance  is  well  delineated  in  Mr. 
Romney's  exquisite  portrait  of  him,  taken 
after  he  was  appointed  archdeacon  of 
Carlisle.  Dr.  Paley  is  understood  to  have 
left  a  very  competent  fortune  amongst  his 
family :  for  though  he  had  never  levied  the 
utmost  value  of  his  preferments,  and  had 
always  lived  in  a  style  suitable  to  his 
station,  he  had  been  through  life,  to  use 
his  own  phrase,  an  economist  upon  a  plan. — 
Meadley,  George  Wilson,  1809,  Memoirs 
of  William  Paley,  pp.  75,  225. 

A  man  singularly  without  guile,  and  yet 
often  misunderstood  or  misrepresented ;  a 
man  who  was  thought  to  have  no  learning, 
because  he  had  no  pedantry,  and  who  was 
too  little  of  a  quack  to  be  reckoned  a  phi- 
losopher ;  who  would  have  been  infallibly 
praised  as  a  useful  writer  on  theory  of 
government,  if  he  had  been  more  visionary, 
and  would  have  been  esteemed  a  deeper 
divine,  if  he  had  not  been  always  so  in- 
telligible.—Blunt,  J.  J.,  1828,  Works 
and  Character  of  Paley,  Quarterly  Review, 
vol.  38,  p.  335. 

The  greatest  divine  of  the  period  is  Dr. 
William  Paley,  a  man  of  remarkable  vigour 
and  clearness  of  intellect,  and  originality 


of  character.  His  acquirements  as  a 
scholar  and  churchman  were  grafted  on  a 
homely,  shrewd,  and  benevolent  nature, 
which  no  circumstances  could  materially 
alter.  There  was  no  doubt  of  obscurity 
either  about  the  man  or  his  works ;  he 
stands  out  in  bold  relief  among  his  brother 
divines,  like  a  sturdy  oak  on  a  lawn  or 
parterre — a  little  hard  and  cross-grained, 
but  sound,  fresh,  and  massive— dwarfing 
his  neighbours  with  his  w^eight  and  bulk, 
and  his  intrinsic  excellence.— Chambers, 
Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of  English  Lit- 
erature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

Paley  was  above  the  average  height,  and 
in  later  life  stout.  He  was  curiously 
clumsy,  made  grotesque  gesticulations, 
and  talked,  as  Meadley  and  Best  agree, 
with  broad  north-country  accent.  His  son 
only  admits  "a  want  of  refinement." 
His  voice  was  weak,  though  deep ;  and  he 
overcame  the  awkward  effect  of  his  pulpit 
appearances  by  his  downright  sincerity. 
His  son  apologises  for  his  abrupt  conclu- 
sions by  saying  that  he  stopped  when  he 
had  no  more  to  say.  ...  He  was 
given  to  brooding  over  his  books,  often 
writing  and  teaching  his  sons  at  the 
same  time,  and  turning  every  odd  mo- 
ment to  account.  ...  He  was  the 
incarnation  of  strong  common-sense,  full 
of  genial  good  humour,  and  always  dis- 
posed to  take  life  pleasantly.  As  a 
lawyer,  the  profession  for  which  he  thought 
himself  suited,  he  would  probably  have 
rivalled  the  youger  Law,  who  became 
Lord  Ellenborough.  He  had  no  romance, 
poetic  sensibility,  or  enthusiasm ;  but  was 
thoroughly  genial  and  manly.  He  was  a 
very  affectionate  father  and  husband,  and 
fond,  like  Sydney  Smith,  of  gaining  knowl- 
edge from  every  one  who  would  talk  to  him. 
He  only  met  one  person  in  his  life  from 
whom  he  could  extract  nothing. — Ste- 
phen, Leslie,  1895,  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  vol.  XLiii,  pp.  104,  105. 


472 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


PRINCIPLES  OF  MORAL  AND 
POLITICAL  PHILOSOPHY 

1785 

Paley,  who  had  not  read  a  great  deal,  had 
certainly  read  Puffendorf:  he  has  bor- 
rowed from  him  several  minor  illustra- 
tions. .  .  .  Their  minds  were  in  some 
respects  alike;  both  phlegmatic,  honest, 
and  sincere,  without  warmth  or  fancy ;  yet 
there  seems  a  more  thorough  good-nature 
and  kindliness  of  heart  in  our  countryman. 
.  .  .  They  do  not,  indeed,  resemble 
each  other  in  their  modes  of  writing :  one 
was  very  laborious,  the  other  very  indo- 
lent ;  one  sometimes  misses  his  mark  by 
circuity,  the  other  by  precipitance.— Hal- 
lam,  Henry,  1837-39,  Introduction  to 
the  Literature  of  Europe,  pt.  iv,  cL  iv, 
par,  49. 

The  work  of  Dr.  Paley  embraces  the 
Principles  of  Political  as  well  as  Moral 
Philosophy ;  but,  able  and  judicious  as  in 
many  respects  that  portion  of  the  book  is, 
the  space  allotted  to  it,  being  little  more 
than  one-third  of  two  moderate-sized  and 
widely-printed  octavo  volumes,  shows  how 
far  it  must  be  from  explaining  the  whole 
even  of  the  principles  of  the  science. 
Of  Political  Economy  it  has  almost  nothing ; 
it  only  gives  the  principles  of  government 
in  their  most  general  form ;  it  makes  no 
application  of  them  to  any  constitution  but 
that  of  England ;  it  derives  from  the  con- 
stitution of  no  other  country  any  illustra- 
tion of  them ;  and  it  may  justly  be  regarded 
rather  as  an  illustration  of  the  doctrines 
of  Moral  Philosophy,  and  an  appendix  to 
the  main  body  of  the  work,  than  as  a 
treatise  on  Political  Science. — Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1840-44,  Political  Philoso- 
phy, Introduction,  pt.  i. 

Of  what  value,  let  me  ask,  is  Paley's 
*'Moral  Philosophy"  ?  What  is  its  imagined 
use  ?  Is  it  that  in  substance  it  reveals  any 
new  duties,  or  banishes  as  false  any  old 
ones?  No;  but  because  the  known  and 
admitted  duties — duties  recognized  in  e2;er?/ 
system  of  ethics — are  here  placed  (suc- 
cessfully or  not)  upon  new  foundations,  or 
brought  into  relation  with  new  principles 
not  previously  perceived  to  be  in  any  rela- 
tion whatever.  This,  in  fact,  is  the  very- 
meaning  of  a  theory  or  contemplation, 
when  A,  B,  C,  old  and  undisputed  facts, 
have  their  relations  to  each  other  de- 
veloped. It  is  not,  therefore,  for  any 
practical  benefit  in  action,  so  much  as  for 


the  satisfaction  of  the  understanding, 
when  reflecting  on  a  man's  own  actions, 
the  wish  to  see  what  his  conscience  or  his 
heart  prompts  reconciled  to  general  laws 
of  thinking — this  is  the  particular  service 
performed  by  Paley 's  "Moral  Philosophy." 
It  does  not  so  much  profess  to  tell  what 
you  are  to  do,  as  the  why  and  the  where- 
fore ;  and,  in  particular,  to  show  how  one 
rule  of  action  may  be  reconciled  to  some 
other  rule  of  equal  authority,  but  which, 
apparently,  is  in  hostility  to  the  first. 
Such  then,  is  the  utmost  and  highest  aim 
of  the  Paleyian  or  the  Ciceronian  ethics, 
as  they  exist. — De  Quince y,  Thomas,  1853, 
Literary  Reminiscences,  ch.  xxiii. 

Paley  is  a  hard-headed  North-country- 
man, whose  chief  mental  sustenance  has 
been  a  severe  course  of  Cambridge  mathe- 
matics. He  is  throughout  a  systematiser, 
not  an  original  thinker ;  and  his  system 
begins  by  expelling  as  far  as  possible 
everything  that  is  not  as  solid  and  tangible 
as  a  proposition  in  Euclid.  Moreover,  his 
ethical  treatise  is,  in  fact,  intended  for 
educational  purposes.  In  such  works, 
clearness  and  order  are  the  cardinal  virtues, 
and  originality,  if  not  a  vice,  is  of  equivocal 
advantage.  Paley  primarily  is  a  condenser 
and  a  compiler;  though  he  modestly 
enough  claims  to  be  ''more  than  a  mere 
compiler."  He  gives  a  lucid  summary  of 
the  most  generally  accepted  system ;  and 
if  there  is  any  gleam  of  originality  in  his 
writing,  it  is,  for  the  most  part,  such  as 
occasionally  results  from  a  rearrangement 
of  old  materials.  .  .  .  Paley,  with  his 
undeniable  merits  as  a  reasoner,  was  not 
the  man  to  desert  the  paths  into  which  he 
had  been  guided.  He  has  simply  given  a 
compact  statement  of  what  may  be  called 
the  orthodox  theory. — Stephen,  Leslie, 
1876,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  Ii,  p.  121. 

It  has  been,  I  think,  the  fortune  of  this 
work  to  be  of  late  years  very  unduly  de- 
preciated, partly  because,  in  consequence 
of  the  singular  charm  and  lucidity  of  its 
style,  it  has  been  so  widely  read,  studied, 
and  criticised  that  all  its  weak  points  have 
been  fully  disclosed,  and  partly  also 
because  the  particular  type  of  the  utili- 
tarian theory  of  ethics  which  it  teaches 
has  been  generally  abandoned.  It  is,  how- 
ever, both  in  form  and  substance,  one  of 
the  masterpieces  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  the  author  was  much  too  shrewd 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


473 


a  man  not  to  know  that  the  doctrines 
which  he  taught  were  not  likely  under 
George  III.  to  lead  a  clergyman  to  the 
bench. — Lecky,  William  Edward  Hart- 
pole,  1887,  A  History  of  England  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  v,  ch.  xix,  p.  171. 

HOR^  PAULINA 

1790 

He  proceeds  with  infinite  acuteness  and 
ingenuity  to  produce  most  striking  in- 
stances of  undesigned  coincidences  in  the 
documents  in  question.  Many  of  his  senti- 
ments and  expressions  are  eminently 
happy.— Green,  Thomas,  1810,  Diary 
of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 

He  is  singularly  ingenious  in  hitting  on 
a  casual  argument  where  a  common  mind 
would  have  overlooked  it.  He  makes  his 
deduction  just  as  far  as  that  instance  bears 
him  out,  and  no  farther;  and,  on  proper 
occasions,  he  presses  his  reasonings  with 
convincing  force. — Orme,  William,  1824, 
Bibliotheca  Biblica. 

Paley's ''Horse  Paulinge''  is  perhaps  the 
most  original  and  ingenious  of  his  pro- 
ductions which  may  be  called  strictly  pro- 
fessional ;  but  his  "Moral  Philosophy"  and 
''Natural  Theology"  will  probably  make 
his  name  longer  known  to  posterity. — 
DiBDiN,  Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The 
Library  Companion,  p.  88,  note. 

It  would  not  be  in  the  power  of  the  most 
suspicious  lawyer,  at  the  Old  Bailey,  to 
subject  two  witnesses  to  stricter  cross- 
examination  than  that  by  which  Paley  has 
tried  the  testimony  of  St.  Paul  and  St. 
Luke.  This  is  the  light  in  which  the 
"Horse  Paulinse"  is  to  be  viewed:  it  is  a 
close,  and  rigorous,  and  searching  series 
of  questions,  addressed  to  two  men  de- 
ponents to  certain  facts,  and  addressed, 
too,  by  a  most  acute  advocate,  in  open 
court,  before  an  intelligent  tribunal. — 
Blunt,  J.  J.,  1828,  Works  and  Charac- 
ter of  Paley,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  38, 
p.  317. 

The  "Horae  Paulinge"  is  remarkably 
adapted  for  the  profitable  exercise  of  the 
minds  of  law-students.  It  is  pronounced 
by  one  of  the  highest  authorities  upon 
such  matters.  Dr.  Whately,  to  be  "an  in- 
comparable specimen  of  reasoning," — and 
of  that  kind  of  reasoning,  moreover,  with 
which  lawyers  are  peculiarly  conversant, 
and  in  which  they  do  and  ought  to  excel. 
Independently  of  the  pre-eminent  value 


and  importance  of  such  an  undertaking,  in 
a  religious  point  of  view,  such  an  interest- 
ing and  masterly  exhibition  of  logical 
acuteness  ought  to  be  familiar  to  all 
capable  of  appreciating  and  profiting  by  it. 
— Warren,  Samuel,  1835-45,  Popular 
and  Practical  Introduction  to  Law  Studies, 
pp.  224,  225. 

EVIDENCES  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

1793 

Mr.  Paley' s  book  has  been  universally 
well  received,  and  the  first  edition  is 
already  gone.  As  he  wrote  and  published 
it  at  my  desire,  I  have  just  given  him  a 
prebend  of  St.  Paul's  as  a  mark  of  my  ap- 
probation and  gratitude.  It  has  given  me 
much  pleasure  to  find  that  this  book  has 
been  much  read  and  approved  at  Cam- 
bridge, where  I  think  it  will  do  essential 
service.— Porteus,  Beilby,  1793,  Letter 
to  Hannah  More,  Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts, 
vol.  I,  p.  424. 

It  is  almost  superfluous  to  name  a  work 
so  universally  known  as  Dr.  Paley 's  "View 
of  the  Evidences  of  Christianity,"  which  is 
probably,  without  exception,  the  most  clear 
and  satisfactory  statement  of  the  historical 
proofs  of  the  Christian  religion  ever  ex- 
hibited in  any  age  or  country. — Hall, 
Robert,  1800,  Modern  Infidelity  Con- 
sidered with  Respect  to  its  Influence  on 
Society,  Preface. 

We  regard  Dr.  Paley' s  writings  on  the 
"Evidences  of  Christianity"  as  of  so 
signally  decisive  a  character,  that  we 
could  be  content  to  let  them  stand  as  the 
essence  and  the  close  of  the  great  argu- 
ment on  the  part  of  its  believers;  and 
should  feel  no  despondency  or  chagrin  if 
we  could  be  prophetically  certified  that 
such  an  efficient  Christian  reasoner  would 
never  henceforward  arise.  We  should 
consider  the  grand  fortress  of  proof  as 
now  raised  and  finished — the  intellectual 
capitol  of  that  empire  which  is  destined  to 
leave  the  widest  boundaries  attained  by  the 
Roman  very  far  behind.  ...  It  is 
impossible  to  hear,  with  the  slightest 
degree  of  respect  or  patience  the  expres- 
sions of  doubt  or  anxiety  about  the  truth 
of  Christianity,  from  any  one  who  can  de- 
lay a  week  to  obtain  the  celebrated  "View 
of  its  Evidences, "  or  fail  to  read  it  through 
again  and  again.  It  is  of  no  use  to  say 
what  would  be  our  opinion  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  state  of  his  mind,  if  after 


474 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


this  he  remained  still  undecided. — Foster, 
John,  1809,  Paley  as  a  Theologian,  Critical 
Essays,  ed.  Ryland,  vol.  i,  pp.  236,  238. 

I  am  glad  you  can  speak  so  respectfully 
of  Paley's  Evidences  as  you  do  in  your 
Preface.  I  have  a  sneaking  regard  for 
him,  as  a  good,  tough  North  of  England 
man,  not  spoiled  by  his  cleverness  as  a 
lawyer.  But  I  have  been  fighting  against 
him  all  my  days ;  I  cannot  help  thinking 
he  has  done  much  to  demoralise  Cam- 
bridge, and  to  raise  up  a  set  of  divines  who 
turn  out  a  bag  infidel  on  Sundays  to  run  him 
down,  fixing  exactly  where  he  shall  run,  and 
being  exceedingly  provoked  if  he  finds  any 
holes  and  corners  which  they  do  not  happen 
to  know  of.  I  do  not  mean  that  Paley 
was  at  all  like  these  disciples ;  but  I  have 
a  spite  against  him  for  their  sakes. — 
Maurice,  Frederick  Denison,  1863,  To 
Rev.  Charles  Kingsley,  Aug.  11 ;  Life,  ed. 
Maurice,  vol.  ii,  p,  450. 

Paley  was  an  able  writer  on  the  proofs 
of  Christianity,  yet  bases  his  ethical  system 
on  the  skeptical,  materialistic  view  of 
obligation.  He  found  in  his  spiritual 
philosophy,  no  higher  inspiration,  no 
weightier  law  for  the  duties  of  ordinary 
life,  than  came  to  Hume  in  absolute  un- 
belief, generalizing  a  transient  law  of 
action,  from  the  unsubstantial  fleeting 
facts  afloat  about  him, — ^the  gains  and 
losses  that  fall  to  us  under  them.  The 
belief  and  unbelief  of  England  often  strike 
hands  on  this  question  of  morals,  intimate 
as  it  is  to  daily  life  and  character.— Bas- 
COM,  John,  1874,  Philosophy  of  English 
Literature,  p.  309. 

The  task  is  so  judiciously  performed  that 
it  would  probably  be  difficult  to  get  a  more 
effective  statement  of  the  external  evi- 
dences of  Christianity  than  Paley  has  here 
presented.  The  general  position,  however, 
that  the  action  of  the  first  preachers  of 
Christianity  was  due  "solely"  to  their  be- 
lief in  the  occurrence  of  certain  miraculous 
events  is  on  the  same  level  as  the  view  that 
*'the  proper  business  of  a  revelation"  is 
to  certify  future  rewards  and  punishments. 
It  betrays  a  defective  analysis  of  the  re- 
ligious consciousness.  For  the  rest,  his 
idea  of  revelation  depends  upon  the  same 
mechanical  conception  of  the  relation  of 
God  to  the  world  which  dominates  his 
* '  Natural  Theology  '  and  he  seeks  to  prove 
the  divine  origin  of  Christianity  by  isolat- 
ing it  from  the  general  history  of  mankind. 


whereas  later  writers  find  their  chief  argu- 
ment in  the  continuity  of  the  process  of 
revelation. — Seth,  Andrew,  1885,  Ency- 
clopoedia  Britannica,  Ninth  ed.,  vol.  xviii, 
p.  186. 

All  his  works,  the  most  famous  and  char- 
acteristic of  which  is  his  ''Evidences," 
exhibit  a  peculiar  hard-headedness  of 
thought  and  the  utmost  lucidity  of  expres- 
sion.— Saintsbury,  George,  1886,  Speci- 
mens of  English  Prose  Style,  p.  244. 

The  evidences  of  the  truth  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion,  and  the  proofs  of  the  Being  of 
a  God  had  never  been  presented  in  a  form 
that  seemed  to  bring  them  so  nearly  within 
the  grasp  of  the  ordinary  human  under- 
standing. Yet  after  100  years  Paley' s 
work  on  the  subject  seems  to  have  many 
defects.  ■  In  particular  the  Argument  from 
Design  is,  as  he  gave  it,  founded  too  nar- 
rowly on  the  analogies  of  physical  mechan- 
ism. The  very  facts  of  physiology,  so 
carefully  and  minutely  described  (such 
as  the  phenomena  of  seeing  and  hear- 
ing), and  the  facts  of  biology  as  to 
the  growth  of  life  in  the  world,  are 
all  translated  into  terms  of  mechanical 
adaptation  and  compared  to  the  watch 
or  the  windlass.  He  bore  the  stamp  of 
his  time.  It  is  fairer  to  point  to  such  de- 
fects in  philosophical  argument  than  to 
treat  Paley's  reasoning  as  discredited 
throughout  by  an  arriere-pensee.  No 
doubt  like  most  men  he  did  not  refuse  ad- 
vancement, and  he  may  even  have  courted 
it.  But  the  social  optimism  which  made 
him  think  that  the  labourers  of  England 
had  nearly  every  reason  in  1791  to  be 
contented  with  their  condition  is  of  a  piece 
with  the  metaphysical  optimism  which 
made  him  regard  the  organisation  of  living 
beings  as  nearly  perfect.  It  seems  also 
true  that  his  theology,  which  gave  char- 
acter to  to  his  utilitarianism,  qualified  his 
optimism.  The  world  is  a  place  of  proba- 
tion, and  therefore  is  not  perfect.  Chris- 
tianity would  make  men  perfectly  happy ; 
but  it  has  not  been  universally  accepted. 
Paley  is  theologian  first  and  philosopher 
afterwards. — Bonar,  J.,  1895,  English 
Prose,  ed.  Craik,  vol.  iv,  p.  498. 

NATURAL  THEOLOGY 
1803 

As  a  collection  of  striking  facts  and 
powerful  arguments  for  the  existence  of 
a  wise  and  beneficient  Creator,  this  pub- 
lication is  certainly  entitled  to  a  very 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


475 


favourable  reception.  .  .  .  Dr.Paley's 
chief  excellence  c(Hisists  in  the  judicious 
disposition  of  his  forces,  and  the  skill 
and  confidence  with  which  he  has  extended 
his  array  to  every  point  which  atheism 
has  affected  to  menace.  .  .  .  The  lan- 
guage of  this  book  is  by  no  means  remark- 
able for  dignity  or  elegance.  Perspicuity 
and  conciseness,  seem  to  have  been  the  only 
accomplishments  of  style  which  the  author 
was  ambitious  of  acquiring ;  and  to  these 
his  praise  must  be  confined.  There  is  a 
great  carelessness  of  composition  through- 
out the  whole  volume,  and  a  colloquial 
homeliness  of  diction,  upon  some  occasions, 
that  does  not  seem  altogether  suitable 
either  to  the  gravity  of  the  subject,  or  the 
dignity  of  the  writer. — Jeffrey,  Francis 
Lord,  1803,  Natural  Theology,  Edinburgh 
Review,  vol.  I,  pp.  304,  305. 

It  may  be  affirmed  that  a  more  im- 
portant and  generally  useful  work  has 
scarcely  at  any  time  been  published  than 
the Natural  Theology.  "—Joyce,  Jere- 
miah, 1804,  A  Full  and  Complete  Analy- 
sis of  Dr.  Paley's  Natural  Theology,  p.  iii. 

His  Natural  Theology"  will  open  the 
heart,  that  it  may  understand,  or  at  least 
receive,  the  Scriptures,  if  anything  can. 
It  is  philosophy  in  its  highest  and  noblest 
sense;  scientific,  without  the  jargon  of 
science;  profound,  but  so  clear  that  its 
depth  is  disguised. — Blunt,  J.  J.,  1828, 
Works  and  Character  of  Paley,  Quarterly 
Review,  vol.  38,  p.  312. 

His  Natural  Theology"  is  the  won- 
derful work  of  a  man  who,  after  sixty, 
had  studied  anatomy  in  order  to  write  it ; 
and  it  could  only  have  been  surpassed  by 
one  who,  to  great  originality  of  concep- 
tion and  clearness  of  exposition,  added 
the  advantage  of  a  high  place  in  the  first 
class  of  physiologists. — Mackintosh,  Sir 
James,  1830,  Dissertations  on  the  Progress 
of  Ethical  Philosophy. 

Paley 's  "Theology"  has  been  to  me  a 
treasure  of  instruction  and  delight:  the 
concluding  chapter  of  the  Goodness  of 
God  is  invaluable,  especially  where  he 
speaks  of  the  alleviations  afforded  to  those 
who  suffer  under  the  most  painful  diseases, 
and  the  compensation  of  delight  which  re- 
sults from  the  first  interval  of  ease.  My 
imperfect  recollection  injures  the  sub- 
ject ;  but  on  lately  reading  his  life  by  his 
son,  his  faith  and  patience  appeared  more 
exalted  when  I  found  that  this  testimony 


to  the  Divine  goodness,  in  affording  sup- 
port, was  written  in  the  few  intervals  of 
ease  afforded  during  a  dreadful  disorder, 
which  proved  fatal  not  long  after. — • 
Grant,  Anne,  1832,  Letters,  Sept.  19; 
Memoir  and  Correspondence,  ed.  Grant,  vol. 
Ill,  p.  213. 

His  ''Natural  Theology"  is  the  best 
work  on  the  sublimest  subject  of  human 
contemplation — the  wisdom  of  God  in  the 
works  of  nature — that  exists  in  our 
language. — Alison,  Sir  Archibald,  1853- 
69,  History  of  Europe,  1815-52,  vol.  I,  ch.  v. 

I  do  not  think  I  hardly  ever  admired  a 
book  more  than  Paley's  ''Natural  Theol- 
ogy." I  could  almost  formerly  have  said 
it  by  heart.— Darwin,  Charles,  1859, 
To  John  Lubbock,  Nov.  15 ;  Life  and  Letters, 
ed.  Darwin,  vol.  ii,  p.  15. 

So  wonderful  for  its  beauty,  for  its  skil- 
ful statement,  for  its  common  sense,  so 
valuable  as  a  logical  basis  for  the  Christian 
faith,  that  the  world  will  not  willingly  let 
it  die.— Welsh,  Alfred  H.,  1883,  Devel- 
opment of  English  Literature  and  Lan- 
guage, vol.  II,  p.  184. 

GENERAL 
I  have  enclosed  a  little  work  of  that 
great  and  good  man  Archdeacon  Paley; 
it  is  entitled  "Motives  of  Contentment," 
addressed  to  the  poorer  part  of  our  fellow- 
men.  The  twelfth  page  I  particularly  ad- 
mire, and  the  twentieth.  The  reasoning 
has  been  of  some  service  to  me,  who  am  of 
the  race  of  the  Grumbletonians. — Cole- 
ridge, Samuel  Taylor,  1793,  To  Mrs. 
Evans,  Feb.  5 ;  Letters,  ed.  Coleridge,  vol.  i, 
p.  47. 

The  name  of  Dr.  Paley,  though  scarcely 
to  be  reckoned  among  those  of  the  great 
theologians  and  philosophers  of  England, 
is  probably  associated  with  as  large  and  an 
enviable  a  portion  of  public  approbation, 
as  that  of  any  living  ecclesiastic.  With 
less  learning  and  less  originality  than  some 
of  his  distinguished  predecessors,  it  would 
be  difficult,  perhaps,  to  point  out  his 
superior  in  soundness  of  judgment,  or  in 
vigilant  and  comprehensive  sagacity.  .  .  . 
Almost  all  the  writings  of  Dr.  Paley  relate 
to  the  highest  and  most  important  ques- 
tions upon  which  human  reason  can  be 
exercised,  and  appear  to  have  been  com- 
posed with  suitable  caution  and  delibera- 
tion. They  are  elaborate,  rather  than  in- 
genious ;  and  seem  to  have  been  diligently 


476 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


meditated,  and  carefully  arranged,  rather 
than  to  have  been  conceived  in  any  fervour 
of  imagination,  or  poured  forth  in  any  con- 
viction of  their  infallibility.  The  utmost 
pains  are  taken,  therefore,  to  render  every- 
thing intelligible  and  precise;  and  more 
anxiety  is  shown  that  nothing  necessary 
shall  be  omitted,  than  that  all  superfluity 
should  be  excluded.  All  cavil  is  prevented 
by  a  jealous  strictness  of  expression ;  and 
a  few  homely  illustrations  are  commonly 
sufficient  to  expose  those  illusions,  by 
which  a  false  philosophy  is  supported  in 
so  many  of  her  unsubstantial  specula- 
tions.—Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1803, 
Natural  Theology,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol. 
I,  pp.  287,  288. 

No  reader  of  Dr.  Paley's  former  works 
will  open  his  Sermons  with  any  expectation 
of  what  we  usually  call  eloquence.  .  .  . 
In  speaking  of  the  effect  which  we  have 
felt  in  reading  parts  of  these  Sermons, 
from  the  cool  and  somewhat  austere  man- 
ner in  which  the  most  interesting  subjects 
are  presented,  we  have  described  some- 
thing different  from  the  usual  course  of 
our  experience :  from  our  manner  of  ac- 
counting for  it,  we  shall  not  be  misunder- 
stood to  approve,  in  general,  of  so  cold  a 
manner  of  exhibiting  the  subjects  of  su- 
preme consequence ;  for  popular  addresses 
we  condemn  it  totally.  .  .  .  It  would 
be  ridiculous  in  us  to  affect  to  recommend 
a  volume  written  by  Dr.  Paley.  It  will 
be  extensively  read ;  its  readers  will  re- 
ceive many  useful  and  striking  thoughts ; 
and  we  earnestly  wish  they  may  study  the 
New  Testament  enough  to  be  saved  from 
any  injurious  impression  of  what  we  can- 
not allow  ourselves  to  regard  as  unimpor- 
tant errors. — Foster,  John,  1809,  Paley 
as  a  Theologian,  Critical  Essays,  ed.  Ry- 
land,  vol.  i,  pp.  241,  243,  251. 

Paley' s  writings  have  done  more  for  the 
moral  improvement  of  mankind  than  per- 
haps the  writings  of  any  other  man  that 
ever  existed.  The  doctrines  laid  down 
and  established  by  this  wise  and  able  writer 
may  be  considered  as  the  principia  of 
moral  physiology !— Windham,  William, 
1810,  Speech,  Feb.  9. 

To  prove  the  existence  of  God,  as  Paley 
has  attempted  to  do,  is  like  lighting  a 
lantern  to  seek  for  the  sun.  If  you  look 
hard  by  your  lantern,  you  may  miss  your 
search.— Carlyle,  Thomas,  1826,  Note 
Books,  Life  by  Froude,  vol.  i,  p.  306. 


This  excellent  writer,  who  after  Clarke 
and  Butler,  ought  to  be  ranked  among  the 
brightest  ornaments  of  the  English  Church 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  is,  in  the  his- 
tory of  philosophy,  naturally  placed  after 
Tucker,  to  whom  with  praiseworthy  liber- 
ality, he  owns  his  extensive  obligations. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  he  owed  his 
system  to  Hume,  a  thinker  too  refined, 
and  a  writer  perhaps  too  elegant,  to  have 
naturally  attracted  him.  .  .  .  The 
natural  frame  of  Paley's  understanding 
fitted  it  more  for  business  and  the  world 
than  for  philosophy ;  and  he  accordingly 
enjoyed  with  considerable  relish  the  few 
opportunities  which  the  latter  part  of  his 
life  afforded  of  taking  a  part  in  the  affairs 
of  his  county  as  a  magistrate.  .  .  . 
His  style  is  as  near  perfection  in  its  kind 
as  any  in  our  language.  Perhaps  no  words 
were  ever  more  expressive  and  illustra- 
tive than  those  in  which  he  represents  the 
art  of  life  to  be  that  of  rightly  ''setting  our 
habits."— Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  1830, 
Dissertation  on  the  Progress  of  Ethical 
Philosophy. 

There  is  no  name  in  the  English  Church, 
perhaps,  that  should  stand  higher  than  his ; 
there  are  few  in  the  vast  circles  of  Eng- 
lish literature  whose  just  fame  shall  be 
more  extensively  or  permanently  recorded. 
—Barnes,  Albert,  1838-55,  Address 
Delivered  before  the  Society  of  Inquiry  in 
Amherst  College,  Aug.  21 ;  Essays  and 
Reviews,  vol.  ii,  p.  217. 

Nothing  can  drop  from  the  pen  of  such 
a  writer,  so  remarkable  for  his  clearness 
and  excellent  sense,  that  can  be  without 
its  importance,  particularly  where  the 
subject  has  any  immediate  connection 
with  the  business  of  human  life.  .  .  . 
Johnson  and  Paley,  Locke  and  Butler, 
immediately  occur  as  the  great  masters 
of  moral,  metaphysical,  and  religious  in- 
struction,^— Locke  the  votary  of  truth; 
and  Paley,  the  very  genius  of  good  sense. 
—  Smyth,  William,  1839,  Lectures  on 
Modern  History,  Lectures  xxiv,  xxix. 

His  mind  was  essentially  English  and 
English  in  its  best  mood.  He  was  not  re- 
markable for  his  learning,  though  far  from 
being  ill-informed;  but  the  bent  of  his 
mind  was  not  toward  scholarship.  He  was 
eminently  practical  in  his  ideas;  his 
thoughts,  descending  from  the  clouds,  ever 
turned  to  some  object  of  actual  importance 
in  real  life.    His  mind  was  not  of  the  most 


/ 


WILLIAM  PALEY  477 


elevated  cast;  and  accordingly  he  made 
utility  the  great  object  of  life  and  measure 
of  actions.  He  will  never  be  a  favourite, 
accordingl3%  with  that*  handful  of  men  who 
nevertheless  alone  do  great  things  in  the 
world,  who  aim  at  the  noble  and  generous 
in  all  things,  and  let  the  useful  take  care 
of  itself.  But,  while  his  disposition  pre- 
cluded him  from  rising  to  the  highest  rank 
in  literature,  which  never  is  to  be  attained 
but  by  the  influence  of  lofty  feelings, 
whithin  his  limits,  and  in  a  lower  sphere, 
he  was  very  admirable  and  eminently  use- 
ful.— Alison,  Sir  Archibald,  1853-59, 
History  of  Europe,  1815-1852,  vol.  I,  ch.  v. 

All  the  theological  works  of  all  the 
numerous  bishops  whom  he  (Pitt)  made 
and  translated  are  not,  when  put  together, 
worth  fifty  pages  of  the ''Horse  Paulinae," 
of  the  ''Natural  Theology,"  or  of  the 
"View  of  the  Evidences  of  Christianity." 
But  on  Paley  the  all-powerful  minister 
never  bestowed  the  smallest  benefice. — 
Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1859, 
William  Pitt,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays. 

No  Englishman  will  refuse  to  join  with 
Coleridge  in  "the  admiration"  he  ex- 
presses "for  the  head  and  heart"  of  Paley, 
"the  incomparable  grace,  propriety,  and 
persuasive  facility  of  his  writings."  But 
Paley  had  unfortunately  dedicated  his 
powers  to  a  factitious  thesis ;  his  demon- 
stration, however  perfect,  is  in  unreal 
matter.— Pattison,  Mark,  1860,  Reli- 
gious Thought  in  England,  Essays,  ed. 
Nettelship,  vol.  ii,  p.  50. 

His  intellect  was  clear  and  steady.  He 
is  a  shining  example  of  the  form  of 
practical  good  sense  characteristic  of 
Englishmen.  He  did  not  hunt  after  para- 
doxes and  subtleties,  nor  did  he  throw 
himself  with  eagerness  into  original  in- 
vestigations. He  liked  to  walk  on  sure 
ground,  and  made  abundant  use  of  the 
labours  of  others.  .  .  .  His  writings 
contain  little  or  nothing  to  satisfy  the 
emotions ;  occasionally  we  cross  a  pleasant 
vein  of  irony  or  sarcasm,  and  we  are  con- 
stantly entertained  with  homely  facts,  but 
high-flown  sentiment  is  totally  wanting. 
.  .  .  Although  Paley's  language  is  not 
studiously  varied,  he  never  seems  to  be 
in  want  of  words,  and  the  combinations 
are  often  agreeably  fresh.  His  preference 
is  for  homely  words;  but  he  does  not 
scruple  to  use  the  most  technical  terms. 


and  now  and  then  even  quotes  Latin,  trust- 
ing to  make  himself  intelligible  to  the 
ordinary  capacity  by  the  power  of  his 
homely  illustrations.  .  .  .  The  chief 
thing  worth  noticing  about  Paley's 
sentences  is  that  they  are  not  constructed 
upon  a  few  favourite  forms,  or  with  any 
leaning  to  a  favourite  rhythm.  His  is  not 
a  "formed"  style;  he  is  studious  to  ex- 
press himself  in  simple  language,  without 
regard  to  measure  of  fluent  melody.  It 
might  be  expected  that,  having  no  mis- 
leading desire  for  euphonious  combina- 
tions, he  would  adopt  the  best  arrangement 
for  emphasis.  But  it  is  not  so ;  he  had 
not  much  natural  turn  for  point,  and  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  aware  of  the  ad- 
vantage of  calling  special  attention  to  a 
word  by  its  position.— Minto,  William, 
1872-80,  Manual  of  English  Prose  Liter- 
ature, pp.  489,  490,  491. 

No  works  of  a  theological  or  philosoph- 
ical nature  have  been  so  extensively  popu- 
lar among  the  educated  classes  of  England 
as  those  of  Paley.  His  perspicacity  of 
intellect  and  simplicity  of  style  are  almost 
unrivalled.  Though  plain  and  homely,  and 
often  inelegant,  he  had  such  vigour  and 
discrimination,  and  such  a  happy  vein  of 
illustration,  that  he  is  always  read  with 
pleasure  and  instruction.  No  reader  is 
ever  at  a  loss  for  his  meaning,  or  finds  him 
too  difficult  for  comprehension.  He  had 
the  rare  art  for  popularising  the  most 
recondite  knowledge,  and  blending  the 
business  of  life  with  philosophy.  The 
principles  inculcated  in  some  of  his  works 
have  been  disputed,  particularly  his 
doctrine  of  expediency  as  a  rule  of  morals, 
which  has  been  considered  as  trenching  on 
the  authority  of  revealed  religion,  and  also 
lowering  the  standard  of  public  duty. 
The  system  of  Paley  certainly  would  not 
tend  to  foster  the  great  and  heroic  virtues. 
—Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopoedia 
of  English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

Men  received  preferment  neither  from 
their  abilities  nor  from  their  deserts,  but 
through  the  interest  of  their  friends. 
Paley  was  incomparably  the  ablest  of  living 
divines.  But  no  one  ever  dreamed  of 
offering  him  a  bishopric.  "Paley  is  a 
great  man,"  said  George  HI.,  "will  never 
be  a  bishop — will  never  be  a  bishop." — 
Walpole,  Spencer,  1878,  A  History  of 
England  from  the  Conclusion  of  the  Great 
War  in  1815,  vol.  i,  p.  173. 


478 


WILLIAM  PALEY 


The  crystal  clearness  and  matchless 
grace  of  Paley's  periods,  which  were  the 
envy  of  Coleridge,  continue  to  attract 
readers,  in  spite  of  his  antiquated  science 
and  dangerous  philosophy. — Mathews, 
William,  1881,  Literary  Style,  p.  7. 

Paley's  works,  whether  judiciously  or 
not  we  need  not  pause  to  inquire,  are  still 
text-books  at  the  universities,  but  the 
scepticism  against  which  he  sets  his  forces 
in  array  was  not  of  the  kind  to  which  we 
are  now  accustomed,  which  takes  much  of 
the  force  from  his  defence.  They  are  still 
however  eminently  readable  in  a  merely 
literary  point  of  view,  and  extracts  might 
be  made,  in  which  the  reader  would  find 
much  happiness  of  expression  and  force  of 
illustration,  without  any  of  the  disadvan- 
tages of  antiquated  polemics. — Oliphant, 
Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History 
of  England,  XVIII  and  XIX  Centuries, 
vol.  III,  p.  306. 

The  face  of  the  world  has  changed  so 
greatly  since  Paley's  day  that  we  are  apt 
to  do  less  than  justice  to  his  undoubted 
merits.  He  is  nowhere  original,  and  no- 
where profound,  but  he  justly  claims  to  be 

something  more  than  a  mere  compiler." 
His  strong  reasoning  power,  his  faculty  of 
clear  arrangement  and  forcible  statement, 
place  him  in  the  first  rank  of  expositors 
and  advocates.  He  masses  his  arguments, 
it  has  been  said,  with  a  general's  eye. 
His  style  is  perfectly  perspicuous,  and  its 

strong  home-touch"  compensates  for 
what  is  lacking  in  elasticity  and  grace. 
Paley's  avoidance  of  ultimate  speculative 
questions  commended  him  to  his  own 
generation,  and  enabled  him  to  give  full 
scope  to  the  shrewd  practical  understand- 
ing in  which  his  strength  lay.— Seth, 
Andrew,  1885,  Encydopcedia  Britannica, 
Ninth  edition,  vol.  xviii,  p.  186. 

Paley  may  very  well  be  taken  as  charac- 
teristic of  the  theological  style  of  the  forty 
years  preceding,  and  between  Paley's 
literary  form  and  the  sapless  legal  style 
of  Clarke,  in  the  age  of  Anne,  there  is  so 
little  difference  that  we  are  tempted  to 
regard  these  two  as  typical  of  their  respec- 
tive groups.  If,  then,  we  can  say  that  in 
the  generation  of  Swift  leading  theologians 
wrote  like  Clarke,  and  in  the  age  of  Burke 
like  Paley,  we  are  almost  justified  by  that 
very  circumstance  in  conjecturing  that  the 
contributions  of  eighteenth-century  divin- 
ity to  literature  are  so  small  that  they  are 


hardly  worth  considering.— GossE,  Ed- 
mund, 1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury Literature,  p,  396. 

Paley  is  the  most  prominent  instance 
among  modern  writers  of  a  man  who  para- 
graphed on  the  theory  of  emphasis.  His 
mechanical  devices  for  securing  promi- 
nence were  numerous — different  kinds  of 
type,  numerals,  etc.  But  the  man  that 
takes  up  only  mechanical  means  for  secur- 
ing emphasis,  usually  perishes  by  the  same 
means:  he  loses  in  proportion  what  he 
gains  in  emphasis.  Paley  is  a  shining 
illustration  of  this  fact.— Lewis,  Edwin 
Herbert,  1894,  The  History  of  the  English 
Paragraph,  p.  125. 

Nobody  has  surpassed  Paley  as  a  writer 
of  text-books.  He  is  an  unrivalled  ex- 
positor of  plain  arguments,  though  he 
neither  showed  nor  claimed  much  original- 
ity.—Stephen,  Leslie,  1895,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  XLin,  p.  105. 

He  was  not,  like  Butler,  an  original 
thinker,  but  he  was  possessed  of  remark- 
able tact  and  common  sense,  and  for 
lucidity  of  style  is  almost  unrivalled.  .  .  . 
An  examination  of  Paley  will  show  that  he 
anticipates  the  hypothesis  of  evolution  and 
the  theory  of  indefinite,  fortuitous  varia- 
tion, and  shapes  his  argument  accordingly. 
In  his  theological  opinions  Paley  may  be 
called  a  latitudinarian,  although  in  his 
whole  cast  of  thought  he  was  at  a  wide 
remove  from  the  school  bearing  that  name. 
— Fisher,  George  Park,  1896,  History 
of  Christian  Doctrine,  pp.  388,  389. 

English  theology  in  the  later  eighteenth 
century  had,  in  fact,  ceased  to  be  specula- 
tive at  all ;  and  its  philosophic  impotence 
is  peculiarly  evident  in  the  pages  of  its 
most  luminous  and  persuasive  exponent, 
Paley.  Nowhere  are  the  virtues  and  the 
vices  of  the  mechanical  modes  of  thought 
more  easy  to  study  than  in  the  work  of 
this  accomplished  senior  wrangler,  who 
made  theology  as  transparently  coherent 
as  a  proposition  of  Euclid,  and  as  devoid 
of  all  appeal  to  the  deeper  instincts  of 
man.— Herford,  C.  H.,  1897,  The  Age 
of  Wordsworth,  p.  28. 

As  an  apologist  and  expositor,  Paley  has 
been  accused  of  a  too  business-like  and 
profit-and-loss  view  of  religion ;  but  those 
who  call  him  interested  perhaps  use  an 
unfair  presumption,  and  his  popularity 
has  no  doubt  suffered  from  his  having 
served  for  generations  as  a  class-textbook 


PALEY—ANSTEY 


479 


in  the  University  of  Cambridge.  As  a 
philosopher  in  tilings  divine  and  human, 
he  has  a  little  too  much  of  the  merely- 
forensic  competence  of  the  advocate  about 
him.  But  this  same  competence  extends 
(it  may  not  be  in  the  most  interesting 
manner)  to  his  work  as  literature.  Paley 
gets  the  full  value  out  of  the  plain  style, 
for  purposes  to  which  it  is  far  better 


adapted  than  anything  more  imaginative 
could  possibly  be.  His  arguments,  if  far 
lower  and  less  noble,  are  much  more  easily 
intelligible  than  Butler's ;  his  style  is  per- 
fectly clear;  he  sees  his  point  and  his 
method  distinctly,  and  seldom  or  never 
fails  to  prove  the  one  to  the  best  of  the 
other.— Saintsbury,  George,  1898,  A 
Short  History  of  English  Literature,  p.  633. 


Christopher  Anstey 

1724-1805. 

Christopher  Anstey,  poet,  was  son  of  the  Rev.  Christopher  Anstey,  rector  of 
Brinkley,  Cambridgeshire,  where  he  was  born  in  1724-5.  He  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  King's  College,  Cambridge.  He  was  originally  designed  for  the  church,  but 
his  degrees  being  withheld  from  him,  he  retired  into  privacy  ''upon  a  competent 
fortune."  He  was  rusticated  from  the  university.  .  .  .  He  entered  the  army,  and 
having  married  a  daughter  of  Cabert  of  Allbury  Hall,  Herts,  he  obtained  a  seat  in 
parliament  for  Hertford  by  his  father-in-law's  influence.  One  of  the  most  glaring  of 
current  literary  blunders  is  the  common  statement  that  the  ''New  Bath  Guide,"  of 
Christopher  Anstey  was  in  a  great  measure  built  on  Smollett's  novel  of  "Humphrey 
Clinker."  The  facts  are  that  the  "New  Bath  Guide"  was  published  in  1766,  whilst  "Hum- 
phrey Clinker"  was  not  written  until  1770,  and  was  first  published  in  1771.  .  .  .  The 
"Election  Ball, in  Poetical  Letters  from  Mr.  Inkle  at  Bath  to  his  wife  at  Gloucester," 
sustained  the  reputation  won  by  the  "Guide."  It  seems  to  us  even  more  brilliant  in 
its  wit,  and  finely  touched  as  verse.  Other  productions  in  verse  and  prose  have  long 
passed  into  oblivion.  The  poetical  works  were  collected  in  1808  (2  vols)  by  the  au- 
thor's son  John,  himself  author  of  "The  Pleader's  Guide,"  in  the  same  vein  with  the 
"New  Bath  Guide."  He  died  on  3d  August,  1805.— Grosart,  A.  B.,  1875,  Encyclo- 
pcedia  Britannica,  Ninth  edition^  vol.  II,  p.  83. 

Mr.  Anstey  was  often  with  me,  and  you 
will  believe  he  was  very  droll  and  enter- 
taining ;  but  what  recommends  him  more, 
is  his  great  attention  to  his  family.  He 
has  eight  children.  He  instructs  his  boys 
in  the  Greek  and  Latin,  so  that  they  are 
fitted  for  the  upper  forms  of  Eton  School, 
where  their  education  is  finished.  He 
has  a  house  in  the  Crescent,  at  which  he 
resides  the  greatest  part  of  the  year.  Mrs. 
Anstey  is  a  very  sensible,  amiable  woman, 
and  does  not  deal  in  the  gossip  of  the 
place.  —  Montagu,  Elizabeth,  1779, 
Letter  to  Mrs.  Robinson,  June  IS;  A.  Lady 
of  the  Last  Century,  ed.  Doran,  p.  249. 

THE  NEW  BATH  GUIDE 
1766 

Have  you  read  the  "New Bath  Guide?" 
It  is  the  only  thing  in  fashion,  and  is  a 
new  and  original  kind  of  humour. — Gray, 
Thomas,  1766,  Letter  to  Thomas  Wharton, 
Aug.  26,  Works ;  ed.  Gosse,  vol.  iii,  p.  245. 

It  is  a  set  of  letters  in  verse,  in  all  kind 
of  verses,  describing  the  life  at  Bath,  and 
incidentally  everything  else ;  but  so  much 


PERSONAL 
M.  S. 

Christopheri  Anstey,  Arm. 
Alumni  Etonensis, 
Et  Collegii  Regalis  apud  Cantabri- 
gienses  olim  Socii, 
Poet^, 

Literis  elegantioribus  adprime  ornati, 
Et  inter  principes  Poetarum, 
Qui  in  eodem  genere  floruerunt, 
Sedem  eximian  tenentis. 
Ille  annum  circiter 

MDCGLXX. 

Rus  suuM  in  agro  Cantabrigiensi 

MUTAVIT  BaTHONIA, 

quem  locum  ei  prater  omne  dudum 
arrisisse 

Testis  est,  celeberrimum  illud  Poema, 
titulo  inde  ducto  insignitum  : 

IbI  DEINCEPS  sex  ET  TRIGINTA  ANNOS 
COMMORATUS, 

Obiit  a.  D.  MDCCCV. 
Et  ^tatis  su^ 
octogesimo  primo. 
— Inscription  on  Cenotaph,  Westminster 
Abbey. 


480 


CHRISTOPHER  ANSTEY 


wit,  so  much  humour,  fun,  and  poetry, 
so  much  originality,  never  met  together 
before.  Then  the  man  has  a  better  ear 
than  Dryden  or  Handel.  Apropos  to 
Dryden,  he  has  burlesqued  his  St.  Cecilia, 
that  you  will  never  read  it  again  without 
laughing.  There  is  a  description  of  a 
milliner's  box  in  all  the  terms  of  land- 
scape, painted  lawns  and  chequered  shades, 
a  Moravian  ode,  and  a  Methodist  ditty, 
that  are  incomparable,  and  the  best  names 
that  ever  were  composed.  —  Walpole, 
Horace,  1766,  To  George  Montagu,  June  20 ; 
Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  iv,  p.  504. 

The  very  ingenious  scheme  of  describ- 
ing the  various  effects  produced  upon 
different  members  of  the  same  family  by 
the  same  objects,  was  not  original,  though 
it  has  been  supposed  to  be  so.  Anstey 
the  facetious  author  of  the  "New  Bath 
Guide,"  has  employed  it  six  or  seven  years 
before  ''Humphrey  Clinker"  appeared. 
But  Anstey's  diverting  satire  was  but  a 
light  sketch  compared  to  the  finish  and 
elaborate  manner  in  which  Smollett  has, 
in  the  first  place,  identified  his  characters, 
and  then  fitted  them  with  language,  sen- 
timents, and  powers  of  observation,  in 
exact  correspondence  with  their  talents, 
temper,  condition,  and  disposition. — 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1821,  Tobias  Smollett. 

Is  not  the  fashion  as  well  as  faction 
of  the  time  thus  reflected  to  us  vividly? 
Now,  all  excepting  Christopher  Anstey 
are  forgotten,  of  these  admired  ones ;  nor 
is  it  likely  that  even  Anstey  would  have 
been  noticed  with  anything  but  a  sneer, 
if,  besides  being  a  scholar  and  a  wit,  he 
had  not  also  been  a  member  of  parliament. 
JBeyond  the  benches  of  the  Houses,  too,  or 
the  gossip  of  St.  James's,  this  affluence 
reached.  It  was  social  rank  that  had 
helped  Anstey,  for  this  poem  of  the  "New 
Bath  Guide,"  to  no  less  a  sum  than  two 
hundred  pounds;  it  was  because  Gold- 
smith had  no  other  rank  than  as  a  man  of 
letters,  depressed  and  at  that  time  very 
slowly  rising,  that  his  "Traveller"  had 
obtained  for  him  only  twenty  guineas. — ■ 
Forster,  John,  1848-54,  The  Life  and 
Times  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  vol.  ii,  p.  25. 

The  versification  of  this  is  remarkably 
graceful,  and  the  spirit  of  good-humoured 
raillery  is  admirably  kept  up.  The  simi- 
larity of  the  metre  and  the  subject  of 
Moore's  "Fudge  Family  in  Paris,"  sug- 
gests a  comparison  which  may  be  worked 


out  not  at  all  unfavorable  to  Anstey. — 
Creasy,  Sir  Edward,  1850-75,  Memoirs 
of  Eminent  Etonians,  p.  550. 

Perhaps  the  best  description  of  Bath  in 
its  heyday  of  fashion  and  popularity  a 
century  ago,  is  to  be  found  in  the  verse 
of  Anstey,  burlesque  although  it  be. 
"The  New  Bath  Guide,"  written  in  a 
light  and  tripping  manner,  well  adapted 
to  the  subject  and  little  previously  known, 
had  an  immense  vogue  in  its  day ;  a  vogue 
all  the  greater  that  some  of  the  characters 
were  supposed  to  be  real,  and  the  poign- 
ancy of  personal  satire  was  added  to 
general  pleasantry.  It  is  so  far  forgotten 
by  the  general  reader,  that  the  extracts 
upon  which  I  may  venture  will  probably 
be  as  good  as  new.  I  do  not  apologize 
for  a  few  omissions  rendered  necessary 
by  the  better  manners  of  our  times. — 
MiTFORD,  Mary  Russell,  1851,  Recollec- 
tions of  a  Literary  Life,  p.  328. 

"The  New  Bath  Guide"  does  not  rise 
or  aspire  to  rise  above  a  rattling  vivacity, 
and  has  been  far  surpassed  in  brilliancy 
by  later  productions  in  the  same  style; 
but  it  is  entitled  to  be  remembered  as  the 
earliest  successful  attempt  of  its  class. — 
Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Compendious 
History  of  English  Literature  and  of  the 
English  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  307. 

GENERAL 

Since  the  first  edition  of  the  "Bath 
Guide,"  never  was  a  duller  goose  than 
Anstey !— Walpole,  Horace,  1786,  To 
the  Countess  of  Ossory,  Sept.  28 ;  Letters, 
ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix,  p.  68. 

His  other  works  hardly  required  the 
investigation  of  their  date.  In  the  decline 
of  life  he  meditated  a  collection  of  his 
letters  and  poems ;  but  letters  recovered 
from  the  repositories  of  dead  friends  are 
but  melancholy  readings;  and,  probably 
overcome  by  the  sensations  which  they 
excited,  he  desisted  from  his  collection. 
—Campbell,  Thomas,  1819,  Specimens 
of  the  British  Poets. 

A  painter  and  a  poet  were,  perhaps, 
never  more  similar  to  each  other  in  their 
talents  than  the  contemporaries  Bunbury 
and  Anstey.  There  is  in  both  an  admira- 
ble power  of  seizing  the  ludicrous  and 
the  grotesque  in  their  descriptions  of 
persons  and  incidents  in  familiar  life ;  and 
this  accompanied  by  an  elegance  which 
might  have  seemed  scarcely  compatible 
with  that  power.    There  is  in  both  an 


ANSTEY— MURPHY 


481 


absence  of  any  extraordinary  elevation  or 
vigour ;  which  we  do  not  regret,  because 
we  can  hardly  conceive  but  that  they 
would  be  less  pleasing  if  they  were  in 
any  respect  different  from  what  they  are. 
Each  possesses  a  perfect  facility  and  com- 
mand over  his  own  peculiar  manner,  which 
has  secured  him  from  having  any  success- 
ful imitator.  Yet  as  they  were  both 
employed  in  representing  the  fortuitous 
and  transient  follies,  which  the  face  of 
society  had  put  on  in  their  own  day,  rather 
than  in  portraying  the  broader  and  more 
permanent  distinctions  of  character  and 
manners,  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
they  can  be  much  relished  out  of  their 
own  country,  and  whether  even  there,  the 
effect  must  not  be  weakened  as  fatuity 
and  absurdity  shall  discover  new  methods 
of  fastening  ridicule  upon  themselves. 


They  border  more  nearly  on  farce  than 
comedy.  They  have  neither  of  them  any 
thing  of  fancy,  that  power  which  can  give 
a  new  and  higher  interest  to  the  laughable 
itself,  by  mingling  it  with  the  marvellous, 
and  which  has  placed  Aristophanes  so  far 
above  all  his  followers.  ...  On  the  whole, 
he  has  the  rare  merit  of  having  discovered 
a  mode  of  entertaining  his  readers,  which 
belongs  exclusively  to  himself. — Gary, 
Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45,  Ldves  of 
English  Poets,  pp.  188,  190. 

Anstey  never  repeated  the  success  of 
the  *'New  Bath  Guide."  His  reputation 
as  a  rhymester  and  humorist  attracted  at- 
tention to  his  subsequent  performances, 
but  they  have  neither  the  freshness  nor 
the  vivacity  of  his  first  effort. — Dobson, 
Austin,  1885,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  ii,  p.  39. 


Arthnr  Murphy 

1730-1805. 

Born  in  county  Roscommon,  Ireland ;  educated  at  St.  Omer's  college  (1740-47), 
and  spent  two  years  in  Cork  in  business.  He  then  went  to  London  and  entered  upon 
his  career  as  literary  man,  dramatist,  and  actor.  From  1752  to  1754  he  published  a 
periodical  called  ''The  Gray's  Inn  Journal,''  and  afterwards  a  political  Journal  "The 
Test,"  both  unsuccessful.  As  an  actor  he  appeared  at  Covent  Garden  and  Drury 
Lane  Theatres,  but  did  not  meet  with  much  favor.  He  now  adopted  the  study  of  law 
and  began  practice  in  1757,  but  once  more  with  little  success.  He  had  already  pub- 
lished a  farce  "The  Apprentice,"  which  had  some  popularity,  and  now  occupied  him- 
self entirely  in  writing  farces  and  comedies.  In  this  he  gained  some  wealth  and  a 
high  reputation  as  a  dramatist.  Among  the  most  successful  of  his  pieces  were,  "The 
Upholsterer;"  "The  Way  to  Keep  Him;"  "All  in  the  Wrong;"  and  "Know  your  Own 
Mind."  In  1792  he  published  an  essay  on  Dr.  Johnson,  and  soon  after  a  translation 
of  Tacitus:  his  life  of  Garrick  was  printed  in  1801.  A  few  years  before  his  death  a 
pension  of  £200  and  the  office  of  commissioner  of  bankrupts  were  bestowed  on  him  by 
the  English  government.— Peck,  Harry  Thurston,  ed.,  1898,  The  International  Cy- 
clopcedia,  vol.  x,  p.  202. 


PERSONAL 

As  one  with  various  disappointments  sad, 
Whom  dulness,  only,  kept  from  being  mad, 
Apart  from  all  the  rest  great  Murphy  came — 
Common  to  fools  and  wits,  the  rage  of  fame. 
What  tho'  the  sons  of  nonsense  hail  him  sire, 
Auditor,  author,  manager  and  squire ! 
His  restless  soul's  ambition  stops  not  there ; 
To  make  his  triumphs  perfect,  dub  him 
Player. 

In  person  tall,  a  figure  form'd  to  please, 
If  symmetry  could  charm,  deprived  of  ease ; 
When  motionless  he  stands,  we  all  approve ; 
What  pity  'tis  the  Thing  was  made  to  move ! 

Still  in  extremes,  he  knows  no  happy  mean, 
Or  raving  mad,  or  stupidly  serene. 
In  cold-wrought  scenes  the  lifeless  actor 

31  c 


In  passion,  tears  the  passion  into  rags. 
Can  none  remember?  Yes— I  know  all  must — 
When  in  the  Moor  he  ground  his  teeth  to  dust, 
When  o'er  the  stage  he  folly's  standard  bore. 
Whilst  Common-Sense  stood  trembling  at 
the  door. 

— Churchill,  Charles,  1761,  The  Rosciad, 

A  manner  so  studied,  so  vacant  a  face, 
These  features  the  mind  of  our  Murphy  dis= 
grace, 

A  mind  unaffected,  soft,  artless,  and  true, 
A  mind  which,  though  ductile,  has  dignity 
too. 

Where  virtues  ill-sorted  are  huddled  in  heaps, 
Humanity  triumphs,  and  piety  sleeps ; 
A  mind  in  which  mirth  may  with  merit 
reside. 

And  Learning  turns  Frolic,  with  Humor,  his 

guide. 


482 


ARTHUR  MURPHY 


Whilst  wit,  follies,  faults,  its  fertility  prove, 
Till  the  faults  you  grow  fond  of,  the  follies 
you  love, 

And  corrupted  at  length  by  the  sweet  con- 
versation, 

You  swear  there's  no  honesty  left  in  the 
nation. 

— Piozzi,  Hester  Lynch,  1773?  The 
Streatham  Portraits,  Autobiography ,  ed. 
Hayward,  p.  254. 

Though  apparently  formed  to  captivate 
the  sex,  having  every  advantage  which  a 
fine  face,  a  tall  and  graceful  person,  and 
dignified  gentlemanly  manners  could  give, 
Arthur  Murphy  was  never  induced  to 
enter  the  marriage-state.  Politely  de- 
clining a  romantic  proposal  made  to  him 
in  early  life,  by  the  brother  of  a  lady  he 
had  never  seen,  there  is  no  record  of  any 
second  negotiation.  With  some  faults  of 
temper,  which  probably  proved  the  source 
of  all  his  disappointments,  he  seems  to 
have  possessed  a  warm  affectionate  heart 
and  a  generous  unselfish  spirit.  His  at- 
tachments were  cordial  and  steady,  and 
totally  free  from  any  sordid  consideration 
respecting  money;  his  liberality  did  not 
render  him  unjust ;  he  died  poor,  but  de- 
void of  debt ;  and,  though  he  might  have 
repented  many  acts  of  imprudence,  there 
was  no  transaction  of  his  life  of  which  he 
had  cause  to  be  ashamed.  Nor  was  the 
lustre  of  Murphy^s  talents  obscured  by 
folly  of  any  kind ;  he  put  forth  no  absurd 
pretentions — displayed  no  over- weening 
vanity ;  securing  in  society  the  respect  of 
his  associates,  and  making  a  distinguished 
figure  without  any  ambition  to  shine. — 
Dunham,  S.  Astley,  1838,  ed..  Eminent 
Literary  and  Scientific  Men  of  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland,  vol.  ni,  p.  339. 

I  knew  Murphy  long  and  intimately ;  1 
was  introduced  to  him  by  the  Piozzis  at 
Streatham.  On  the  first  night  of  any  of 
his  plays,  if  the  slightest  symptoms  of 
disapprobation  were  shown  by  the  audi- 
ence, Murphy  always  left  the  house,  and 
took  a  walk  in  Covent-Garden  Market: 
then,  after  having  composed  himself,  he 
would  return  to  the  theatre.— Rogers, 
Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of  Table  Talk, 
ed.  Dyce,  p.  106. 

GENERAL 

The  attempt  to  naturalize  the  works  of 
Tacitus  has  been  justly  considered,  by  the 
best  scholars,  as  an  achievement  of  great 
difficulty ;  and  if  Mr.  Murphy  has  not  alto- 
gether succeeded  in  preserving  the  style 


and  manner  of  his  author,  which,  terse 
and  condensed  as  they  are,  are  scarcely 
susceptible  of  transfusion,  he  has,  how- 
ever, presented  the  English  reader  with 
a  faithful  though  a  rather  paraphrastic 
interpretation  of  a  most  useful  and  mas- 
terly historian,  at  the  same  time  supplying 
many  of  the  chasms  which  time  had  effected 
in  the  original.— Drake,  Nathan,  1810, 
Essays  Illustrative  of  the  Rambler,  Adven- 
turer and  Idler,  vol.  n,  p.  251. 

Murphy's  plays  of  *'A11  in  the  Wrong" 
and  "Know  Your  Own  Mind,"  are  admira- 
bly written;  with  sense,  spirit,  and  con- 
ception of  character,  but  without  any 
great  effect  of  the  humourous,  or  that 
truth  of  feeling  which  distinguishes  the 
boundary  between  the  absurdities  of 
natural  character  and  the  gratuitous 
fictions  of  the  poet's  pen.  The  heroes  of 
these  two  plays,  Millamour  and  Sir  Ben- 
jamin Constant,  are  too  ridiculous  in  their 
caprices  to  be  tolerated,  except  in  farce ; 
and  yet  their  follies  are  so  flimsy,  so 
motiveless,  and  fine-spun,  as  not  to  be  in- 
telligible, or  to  have  any  effect  in  their 
only  proper  sphere.  Both  his  principle 
pieces  are  said  to  have  suffered  by  their 
similarity,  first,  to  Colman's  "Jealous 
Wife,"  and  next  to  the  "School  for  Scan- 
dal," though  in  both  cases  he  had  the 
undoubted  priority.  It  is  hard  that  the 
fate  of  plagiarism  should  attend  upon  orig- 
inality ;  yet  it  is  clear  that  the  elements 
of  the  "School  for  Scandal"  are  not  spar- 
ingly scattered  in  Murphy's  comedy  of 
"Know  Your  Own  Mind,  "which  appeared 
before  the  latter  play,  only  to  be  eclipsed 
by  it. — Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lec- 
tures on  the  English  Comic  Writers,  Lec- 
ture viii. 

Had  the  reputation  of  Murphy  rested 
solely  upon  his  tragic  writings,  he  would 
have  had  little  title  to  lasting  fame.  Not- 
withstanding his  admiration  for  Shaks- 
peare,  and  his  capability  of  appreciating 
all  the  beauties  of  that  exquisite  genius, 
he  made  no  attempt  to  pursue  the  same 
bold  track,  contenting  himself  with  the 
turgid,  pompous  declamation  which  were 
the  characteristics  of  the  serious  drama 
of  his  time.  ...  No  man  ever  did 
more  for  the  cause  of  morality,  in  com- 
posing for  the  theatre,  than  the  writer 
now  under  review ;  there  is  not  a  simple 
passage  in  any  one  of  his  plays  that  can 
justly  give  offence  to  the  most  fastidious 


MURPHY— PARK 


483 


reader ;  his  wit  is  of  a  chaste  and  refined 
description,  and  he  delighted  in  display- 
ing the  female  character  in  its  most  charm- 
ing point  of  view.  During  his  public 
career  he  had  to  contend  against  prejudices 
occasioned  by  the  strong  part  which  he 
took  in  politics,  and  against  the  attack  of 
hosts  of  newspaper  writers,  who  envied 
him  his  talents,  and  hated  him  for  his 
success ;  but  though  he  did  not  disdain  to 
defend  himself  when  thus  assailed,  the 
hostilities  which  ensued  led  to  nothing 
more  than  a  petty  kind  of  warfare,  not 
worthy  of  a  chronicle. — Dunham,  S. 
AsTLEY,  1838,  ed..  Eminent  Literary  and 
Scientific  Men  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland^ 
vol.  Ill,  pp.  328,  336. 

The  translation  [Tacitus]  wants  the  com- 
pression of  the  original,  and  is  too  para- 
phrastic. The  English  language  would 
not  well  admit  of  the  brevity  of  Tacitus 


without  rendering  the  narration  abrupt 
and  obscure.  The  translation  is  dis- 
tinguished for  elegance  and  strength  and 
dignity,  and  gives  the  sense  of  the  original 
with  fidelity.— Kent,  James,  1840-53,  A 
Course  of  English  Reading,  ed.  Oakley. 

The  comedies  of  Murphy  have  not  in  all 
cases  lost  the  spirit  of  the  originals  from 
which  he  took  them.  Several  of  them 
were  acted  early  in  the  present  century. 
His  tragedies  are  among  the  worst  that 
have  obtained  any  reputation.  ''Zeno- 
bia,"  however,  was  played  as  late  as  1815, 
and  the  ''Grecian  Daughter"  many  years 
later.  Totally  devoid  of  invention,  Mur- 
phy invariably  took  his  plots  from  previous 
writers.  He  showed,  however,  facility 
and  skill  in  adapting  them  to  English 
tastes. — Knight,  Joseph,  1894,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography^  vol,  xxxix, 
p,  336. 


Mungo  Park 

1771-1806? 

Traveler ,  born  at  Fowlshiels,  Scotland,  Sept.  10,  1771 ;  studied  surgery  at  Edin- 
burgh, and  was  1792-93  assistant  surgeon  in  India.  Under  the  auspices  of  the  African 
Association,  London,  he  was  the  pioneer  in  the  modern  exploration  of  Africa.  He 
journeyed  up  the  Gambia  (1795),  suffering  extreme  hardships,  and  being  a  prisoner 
for  some  time  in  the  hands  of  a  Moorish  king.  Escaping  on  July  1,  1796,  he  reached 
the  upper  Niger,  the  great  object  of  his  search,  at  Segu,  and  followed  the  river  toward 
Timbuctoo  as  far  as  Silla,  where  he  was  compelled  to  turn  back.  After  seven  months' 
illness  and  great  hardships  he  reached  the  mouth  of  the  Gambia,  having  been  nineteen 
months  in  the  interior.  This  journey  was  described  in  his  book,  ''Travels  in  the  In- 
terior of  Africa. "  The  British  Government  sent  him  (1805)  to  descend  the  Niger 
from  the  upper  river,  and  trace  its  entire  course.  Most  of  his  party  died  of  fever, 
and  before  the  Niger  was  reached  only  five  white  men  were  left  out  of  forty-four.  The 
party  set  sail  down  the  river,  at  first  in  two  canoes,  but  soon  built  a  little  schooner, 
with  which  they  descended  the  Niger  some  1,500  miles,  where  they  were  treacherously 
attacked  by  a  large  party  of  natives,  and  Park  and  all  his  company  perished  in  the 
attempt  to  escape  by  swimming.  The  journals  he  sent  home  and  information  collected 
by  Clapperton  and  Lander  have  given  all  the  facts  that  are  known  of  his  last  expedition. 
— Adams,  Cyrus  C.,  rev.,  1897,  Johnson's  Universal  Cyclopcedia,  vol.  vi,  p.  448. 


PERSONAL 

It  grieves  me  to  the  heart  to  write  any- 
thing that  may  give  you  uneasiness ;  but 
such  is  the  will  of  Him  who  doeth  all  things 
well!  Your  brother  Alexander,  my  dear 
friend,  is  no  more !  He  died  of  the  fever 
at  Sansanding,  on  the  morning  of  the  28th 
of  October ;  for  particulars  I  must  refer 
you  to  your  father.  I  am  afraid  that,  im- 
pressed with  a  woman's  fears  and  the 
anj^ieties  of  a  wife,  you  may  be  led  to 
consider  my  situation  as  a  great  deal 
worse  than  it  really  is.    It  is  true,  my 


dear  friends,  Mr.  Anderson  and  George 
Scott,  have  both  bid  adieu  to  the  things 
of  this  world;  and  the  greater  part  of 
the  soldiers  have  died  on  the  march  during 
the  rainy  season ;  but  you  may  believe  me, 
I  am  in  good  health.  The  rains  are  com- 
pletely over,  and  the  healthy  season  has 
commenced,  so  that  there  is  no  danger  of 
sickness ;  and  I  have  still  a  sufficient  force 
to  protect  me  from  any  insult  in  sailing 
down  the  river,  to  sea.  ...  I  think 
it  not  unlikely  but  I  shall  be  in  England 
before  you  receive  this. — You  may  be  sure 


484 


MUNGO  PARK 


that  I  feel  happy  at  turning  my  face  to- 
wards home.  We  this  morning  have  done 
with  all  intercourse  with  the  natives ;  and 
the  sails  are  now  hoisting  for  our  depar- 
ture for  the  coast.— Park,  Mungo,  1805, 
Letter  to  Mrs.  Park  from  Sansanding, 
Nov.  19. 

It  might  have  been  expected,  that  a 
person  who  had  been  so  much  accustomed 
to  literary  and  scientific  society,  and  who 
had  lately  been  in  some  degree  admitted 
into  the  fashionable  circles  of  the  me- 
tropolis, in  which  he  had  become  an  object 
of  much  interest  and  attention,  would  have 
felt  great  repugnance  to  the  solitude  and 
obscurity  of  a  small  market  town.  But 
this  does  not  appear  to  have  been  the  case. 
General  society,  for  which  indeed  he  was 
not  particularly  suited,  was  not  much  to 
his  taste ;  and  during  every  period  of  his 
life,  he  always  looked  forward  to  a  state  of 
complete  retirement  and  seclusion  in  the 
country,  as  the  object  and  end  of  all  his 
labours.  He  had  great  enjoyment  how- 
ever in  his  own  domestic  circle,  and  in 
the  society  of  select  friends.  .  .  . 
In  his  person  he  was  tall,  being  about 
six  feet  high,  and  perfectly  well  propor- 
tioned. His  countenance  and  whole  ap- 
pearance were  highly  interesting ;  and  his 
frame  active  and  robust,  fitted  for  great 
exertions  and  the  endurance  of  great  hard- 
ships. His  constitution  had  suffered  con- 
siderably from  the  effects  of  his  first 
journey  into  Africa,  but  seems  after- 
wards to  have  been  restored  to  its  original 
vigour,  of  which  his  last  expedition 
afforded  the  most  ample  proofs.  Park's 
family  consisted  of  three  sons  and  one 
daughter,  all  of  whom,  together  with 
Mrs.  Park,  their  mother,  are  now  living. 
He  also  left  a  mother,  four  brothers  (of 
whom  one  is  lately  dead), and  three  sisters. 
— Whishaw,  John,  1815,  The  Journal  of 
a  Mission  to  the  Interior  of  Africa  in  the 
Year  1805,  by  Mungo  Park,  to  which  is 
Prefixed  an  Account  of  His  Life,  pp.  32,84. 

His  character  will  be  best  understood 
by  a  careful  examination  of  his  life ;  but 
it  may  be  useful  to  remark,  in  conclusion, 
that,  although  his  natural  prudence  seems 
partly  to  have  forsaken  him  during  his 
second  journey,  few  men  have  possessed 
in  a  higher  degree  the  virtues  of  a 
traveller — ^intrepidity,  enthusiasm,  perse- 
verance, veracity,  prudence ;  his  manners, 
likewise,  though  somewhat  too  stiff  and 


reserved,  must  upon  the  whole  have  been 
agreeable,  since  he  was  able  both  in  civi- 
lized and  savage  countries  to  gain  and 
preserve  many  friends. — St.  John,  James 
Augustus,  1832,  The  Lives  of  Celebrated 
Travellers^  vol.  ni,  p.  65. 

During  this  autumn  Scott  formed  the 
personal  acquaintance  of  Mungo  Park,  the 
celebrated  victim  of  African  discovery. 
On  his  return  from  his  first  expedition. 
Park  endeavoured  to  establish  himself  as 
a  medical  practitioner  in  the  town  of 
Hawick,  but  the  drudgeries  of  that  calling 
in  such  a  district  soon  exhausted  his  ardent 
temper,  and  he  was  now  living  in  seclu- 
sion in  his  native  cottage  at  Fowlsheils  on 
the  Yarrow,  nearly  opposite  Newark 
Castle.  .  .  .  His  thoughts  had  al- 
ways continued  to  be  haunted  with  Africa. 
He  told  Scott,  that  whenever  he  awoke 
suddenly  in  the  night,  owing  to  a  nervous 
disorder  with  which  he  was  troubled,  he 
fancied  himself  still  a  prisoner  in  the  tent 
of  Ali ;  but  when  the  poet  expressed  some 
surprise  that  he  should  design  again  to 
revisit  those  scenes,  he  answered,  he  would 
rather  brave  Africa  and  all  its  horrors, 
than  wear  out  his  life  in  long  and  toil- 
some rides  over  the  hills  of  Scotland,  for 
which  remuneration  was  hardly  enough  to 
keep  soul  and  body  together.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  autumn,  when  about  to 
quit  his  country  for  the  last  time.  Park  paid 
Scott  a  farewell  visit  and  slept  at  Ashestiel. 
Next  morning  his  host  accompanied  him 
homewards  over  the  wild  chain  of  hills 
between  the  Tweed  and  the  Yarrow.  Park 
talked  much  of  his  new  scheme,  and  men- 
tioned his  determination  to  tell  his  family 
that  he  had  some  business  for  a  day  or 
two  in  Edinburgh,  and  send  them  his  bless- 
ing from  thence,  without  returning  to 
take  leave.  He  had  married  not  long  be- 
fore a  pretty  and  amiable  woman ;  and 
when  they  reached  the  Williamhope  ridge,  , 
*'the  autumnal  mist  floating  heavily  and 
slowly  down  the  valley  of  the  Yarrow," 
presented  to  Scott's  imagination  * 'a  strik- 
ing emblem  of  the  troubled  and  un- 
certain prospect  which  his  undertaking 
afforded."  He  remained,  however,  un- 
shaken, and  at  length  they  reached  the 
spot  at  which  they  had  agreed  to  separate. 
A  small  ditch  divided  the  moor  from  the 
road,  and,  in  going  over  it.  Park's  horse 
stumbled,  and  nearly  fell.  '*I  am  afraid, 
Mungo,"  said  the  Sheriff,  ''that  is  a  bad 


MUNGO  PARK 


485 


omen."  To  which  he  answered,  smiling, 
^'Freits  (omens)  follow  those  who  look  to 
them."— LocKH ART,  John  Gibson,  1836, 
Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  ch.  xiii. 

What  Ledyard  wanted  to  complete  his 
character,  the  famous  Mungo  Park  emi- 
nently possessed.  He  had  not  so  large  a 
grasp  of  mind  as  Ledyard,  but  he  was  in  no 
need  of  it.  He  had  quite  enough  for  his 
purpose,  and  not  any  of  a  doubtful  sort  to 
distract  it.  But  who  needs  to  be  told 
what  a  thorough  man  for  his  purpose  he 
was,  what  sufferings  he  went  through  with 
the  simplest  and  most  touching  courage, 
what  successes  he  achieved,  and  what  a 
provoking,  mortal  mischance  befell  him 
after  all  ?  It  was  not  so  mortifying  a  one 
as  Bruce's,  who  broke  his  neck  down  his 
own  staircase ;  but  it  was  sadder  by  a 
great  deal,  so  far  from  home  and  on  the 
threshold  of  the  greatest  of  his  adventures. 
— Hunt,  Leigh,  1849,  A  Book  for  a  Cor- 
ner, p.  176. 

TRAVELS 

But  the  essential  merit  of  this  book, 
and  that  which  has  conferred  a  lasting 
distinction  on  the  name  of  its  author, 
consists  in  the  authentic  and  important 
information  which  it  contains.  Consid- 
ered in  this  point  of  view,  it  must  un- 
questionably be  regarded  as  the  greatest 
accession  to  the  general  stock  of  geo- 
graphical knowledge,  which  was  ever  yet 
made  by  any  single  traveller.  The  claim 
of  Park  to  this  distinction  will  be  apparent 
from  a  short  view  of  his  principal  dis- 
coveries.— Whishaw,  John,  1815,  The 
Journal  of  a  Mission  to  the  Interior  of 
Africa  in  the  Year  1805,  by  Mungo  Park, 
to  which  is  Prefixed  an  Account  of  his  Life, 
p.  16. 

It  is  difficult  for  imagination  to  conceive 
a  project  of  a  more  commanding,  or,  to  a 
daring  and  contemplative  spirit,  a  more 
attractive  aspect,  than  that  which  Park 
returned  to  Africa,  resolved  to  execute, 
or  perish  in  the  attempt.  It  was  perfectly 
new,  and  it  was  vast  to  sublimity.  It 
combined,  in  a  singular  manner,  a  definite- 
ness  of  principle  with  a  boundlessness  of 
scope.  Nothing  could  be  more  precise 
than  the  law  of  its  execution,  to  follow 
with  undeviating  fidelity  the  course — in- 
deed, to  go  with  the  stream — of  a  noble 
river,  the  directions  of  which  had  been 
perfectly  ascertained,  to  a  great  distance, 
by  the  traveller  himself;  but  then,  no 


man  could  tell  him  whither  this  river  was 
to  carry  him,  in  what  wilderness  of  lakes 
or  sands  it  might  desert  him,  or  into  what 
ocean  it  might,  with  the  pride  of  accumu- 
lated waters,  bear  him  down.  On  any 
hypothesis,  immensity  of  scene  was  be- 
fore him. — Foster,  John,  1815,  Mungo 
Park,  Critical  Essays,  ed.  Ryland,  vol, 
II,  p.  289. 

We  now  lay  aside  this  interesting  vol- 
ume ;  and  bid  a  mournful  farewell  to  that 
amiable  and  illustrious  man,  whose  last 
sufferings  and  exploits  it  is  destined  to 
record; — sufferings,  borne  with  an  un- 
affected cheerfulness  of  magnanimity, 
which  must  both  exalt  and  endear  him  to 
all  who  are  capable  of  being  touched  with 
what  is  generous  and  noble  in  character, — 
and  exploits  performed  with  a  mildness 
and  modesty,  and  ardour  with  which  they 
were  conjoined.  In  Mungo  Park,  we  are 
not  afraid  to  say,  that  the  world  has  lost 
a  great  man, — and  one  who  was  as  well 
qualified,  as  he  was  undoubtedly  inclined, 
to  have  been  one  of  its  greatest  bene- 
factors. The  account  which  is  here  given 
of  him,  is  in  the  highest  degree  interest- 
ing,— not  merely  to  those  who  care  about 
Africa,  but  to  all  who  take  delight  in  the 
spectacle  of  unbounded  courage  and  heroic 
ardour,  unalloyed  with  any  taint  of  feroc- 
ity, selfishness,  or  bigotry. — Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1815,  Park's  Last  Journey 
and  Life,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  24, 
p.  490. 

Park, — a  man  of  the  most  peculiar  and 
splendid  qualifications.  His  journey  was 
unquestionably  the  most  important  ever 
performed  by  a  European. — Murray, 
Hugh,  1817,  Historical  Account  of  Discov- 
eries and  Travels  in  Africa. 

Few  books  of  travels  have  acquired  so 
speedy  and  extensive  a  reputation  as  this 
of  Park's.  It  was  sought  for  with  an 
eagerness  which  might  have  done  credit 
to  a  novel;  and  the  reader — whilst  his 
imagination  was  exalted  by  the  remote- 
ness, the  eminent  perils,  and  strange 
scenes  of  the  journey— could  not  help 
feeling  something  like  affection  for  a  per- 
son so  kindly,  so  resolute,  and  yet  so  un- 
assuming. It  still  continues  one  of  the 
most  popular  works  of  its  class,  and  the 
qualities,  both  of  its  subject  and  manner, 
v;ell  deserve  this  pre-eminence.  In  pursu- 
ing it  we  follow  the  traveller  with  a 
keen  anxiety;  we  participate  in  all  his 


486 


MUNGO  PARK 


toils  and  dangers,  and  hairbreadth  escapes, 
portrayed  with  a  brief  and  touching  sim- 
plicity, which  at  once  awakens  our  sympa- 
thies by  its  indubitable  air  of  truth ;  we 
are  instructed  and  entertained  by  his 
delineation  of  those  vast  countries  and 
the  rude  tribes  which  people  them;  we 
admire  his  modest  though  unshaken  forti- 
tude ;  we  love  the  honesty  and  benevolent 
candour  everywhere  displayed  by  him. 
Many  travellers  have  possessed  more  learn- 
ing, more  philosophy,  and  greater  intel- 
lectual endowments;  but  none  has  ever 
known  better  the  secret  of  concentrating 
our  attention  and  calling  forth  our  esteem. 
It  required  not  only  extraordinary  strength 
of  mind  to  accomplish  this  undertaking ; 
no  common  powers  of  fancy  and  judg- 
ment were  also  requisite  to  describe  it  so 
agreeably. — Carlyle,  Thomas,  1820-23, 
Edinburgh  Eneydopcediay  Montaigne  and 
other  Essays,  p.  234. 

Park  was  the  first  of  the  devoted  band 
who  returned  to  tell  what  he  had  seen, 
and  his  narrative  was  received  with  ex- 
treme eagerness.  To  this  day,  though 
many  have  gone,  and  some  have  returned 
like  him,  to  give  us  knowledge,  and  then 
gone  back  to  perish,  Park's  name  is  the 
most  tenderly  spoken,  and  every  fragment 
of  his  experience,  and  of  information 
about  him,  is  still  caught  up  with  a  stronger 
interest  than  any  of  his  successors  have 
ever  commanded. — Martineau,  Harriet, 
1851,  History  of  England,  A.  D.,  1800- 
1815,  p.  536. 

Thus  perished  Mungo  Park,  in  the  thirty- 
fifth  year  of  his  age ;  a  man  whose  natural 
enthusiasm,  scientific  acquirements,  un- 
daunted intrepidity,  patience  of  suffering, 
and  inflexible  perseverance — in  short, 
every  quality  requisite  for  a  traveller  in 
the  path  he  adopted,  have  never  been  sur- 
passed, and  who,  had  he  survived,  would 
no  doubt  have  reaped  those  laurels,  which 
more  fortunate  successors  in  the  same 
career  have  won.  To  these  qualities  in  his 
public  character,  it  is  pleasing  to  be  able 
to  add  those  of  amiable  simplicity  of  man- 
ners, constancy  of  affection,  and  sterling 
integrity  in  private  life. — Cleveland, 
Charles  D.,  1853,  English  Literature  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  p.  70. 

The  style  is  simple  and  manly,  and  re- 
plete with  a  fine  moral  feeling. — Cham- 
bers, Robert,  1876,  Cyclopaedia  of  Eng- 
lish Literaturey  ed.  Carruthers. 


The  journal  of  Mungo  Park  lacks  the 
diffuseness  and  the  infiated  style  which  is 
so  objectional  a  feature  in  Bruce's  narra- 
tive. It  is  simple,  straightforward,  and 
possesses  all  the  qualities  of  truthful  his- 
tory. It  was  at  once  received  with  favor, 
and  still  ranks  among  our  most  valuable 
narratives  of  travel  in  Africa. — Baldwin, 
James,  1883,  English  Literature  and  Lit- 
erary Criticism,  Prose,  p.  129. 

In  lecturing  and  writing  on  the  question 
of  the  innateness  of  conscience,  or  the 
moral  sense  in  man,  I  have  found  no  testi- 
mony as  to  the  moral  condition  of  the 
lower  Sutrata  of  humanity  more  explicit, 
instructive,  and  evidential  than  that  given 
in  the  records  of  Mungo  Park's  Travels 
in  Africa, "  which  I  have  not  seen  for  more 
than  sixty  years,  but  which  in  my  childhood 
I  read  with  delight  and  wonder. — Peabody, 
A.  P.,  1888,  Books  That  Have  Helped  Me, 
p.  43. 

Although  Park  was  not  spared  to  solve 
the  problem  which  he  had  set  himself,  his 
discoveries  and  his  observations  enabled 
others  to  finish  what  he  had  begun ;  he  was 
the  first  European  in  modern  times  to 
strike  the  Niger  river,  and  he  drew  a  cor- 
rect inference  when  he  convinced  himself 
that  the  Niger  ''could  flow  nowhere  but 
into  the  sea."  In  his  travels  he  proved 
himself  an  explorer  of  untiring  persever- 
ance and  inflexible  resolution.  His  heroic 
efforts  served  to  stimulate  the  enthusiasm 
of  travellers  who  during  the  next  twenty 
years  followed  in  his  footsteps,  and  they 
roused  a  keen  public  interest  in  African 
discovery  and  development.  After  James 
Bruce,  who,  like  himself,  was  a  Scotsman, 
he  was  the  second  great  African  traveller 
of  British  origin.  The  unaffected  style 
and  simple  narration  made  use  of  by  Park 
in  the  "Travels"  increased  the  popularity 
of  what  would  have  been  in  any  case  a 
much-read  book.  The  accuracy  of  the 
general  narrative  has  never  been  im- 
pugned ;  but,  owing  to  an  unfortunate  mis- 
take in  reckoning  thirty-one  days  in  April, 
the  observations  of  longitude  and  latitude 
are  not  to  be  depended  upon.  The  work  was 
translated  into  both  French  and  German 
the  year  after  publication,  and  subsequently 
into  most  European  languages;  it  has 
passed  through  a  great  number  of  editions, 
the  quarto  edition  of  1799  being  the  best. 
— Carr,  William,  1895,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  XLiii,  p.  221. 


487 


Henry  Kirke  White 

1785-1806 

Poet;  born  at  Nottingham,  England,  Mar.  21,  1785;  was  the  son  of  a  butcher; 
was  apprenticed  to  a  stocking-weaver,  and  afterwards  to  an  attorney,  in  whose  office 
he  found  time  to  study  the  classics  and  several  modern  languages,  as  well  as  English 
literature,  drawing,  and  music ;  began  to  write  verses  for  magazines  in  his  fifteenth 
year ;  gained  several  prizes  offered  by  publishers  of  periodicals ;  printed  a  volume, 
Clifton  Grove,  a  Sketch  in  Verse,  with  other  Poems,"  (1803),  which  won  for  him  the 
high  regard  of  Southey  and  other  men  of  letters,  by  whom  he  was  encouraged  to  study 
for  the  ministry;  obtained  a  sizarship  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  1804;  was 
for  two  years  at  the  head  of  his  class,  and  became  a  tutor  in  mathematics,  but 
destroyed  his  health  by  excessive  study,  and  died  of  consumption  at  Cambridge,  Oct. 
19,  1806.  His  papers  were  placed  in  the  hands  of  Southey,  who  published  his  Re- 
mains, etc.,  with  an  Account  of  his  Life"  (2  vols.,  1807;  vol.  III.,  1822),  which 
obtained  for  him  a  permanent  place  in  English  literature. — Beers,  Henry  A.,  rev., 
1897,  JohnsorCs  Universal  Cyclopcedia,  voL  viii,  p.  744. 


PERSONAL 

The  books  which  I  now  read  with  atten- 
tion, are  Blackstone,  Knox's  ''Essays," 
Plutarch,  Chesterfield's  ''Letters,"  four 
large  volumes,  Virgil,  Homer  and  Cicero, 
and  several  others.  ...  I  have  finished 
Rollin's  "Ancient  History, "Blair's  "Lec- 
tures," Smith's  "Wealth  of  Nations," 
Hume's  "England"  and  "British  Nepos" 
lately.  .  .  .  With  a  little  drudgery, 
I  read  Italian — Have  got  some  good  Italian 
works,  as  "Pastor  Fido,"  etc.  I  taught 
myself,  and  have  got  a  grammar. — White, 
Henry  Kirke,  1800,  Letters  to  his  Brother 
Neville,  June  26;  Remains,  ed.  Southey, 
vol.  I,  pp.  66,  67. 

It  is  not  possible  to  conceive  a  human 
being  more  amiable  in  all  the  relations  of 
life.  He  was  the  confidential  friend  and 
adviser  of  every  member  of  his  family; 
this  he  instinctively  became;  and  the 
thorough  good  sense  of  his  advice  is  not 
less  remarkable,  than  the  affection  with 
which  it  is  always  communicated.  To  his 
mother  he  is  as  earnest  in  beseeching  her 
to  be  careful  of  her  health,as  he  is  in  labour- 
ing to  convince  her  that  his  own  complaints 
were  abating ;  his  letters  to  her  are  always 
of  hopes,  of  consolation,  and  of  love.  To 
Neville  he  writes  with  the  most  brotherly 
intimacy,  still,  however,  in  that  occasional 
tone  of  advice  which  it  was  his  nature  to 
assume,  not  from  any  arrogance  of  super- 
iority, but  from  earnestness  of  pure  affec- 
tion. To  his  younger  brother  he  addresses 
himself  like  the  tenderest  and  wisest 
parent ;  and  to  two  sisters,  then  too  young 
for  any  other  communication,  he  writes  to 
direct  their  studies,  to  enquire  into  their 
progress,  to  encourage  and  to  improve 


them.— Southey,  Robert,  1807,  The  Re- 
mains of  Henry  Kirke  White,  with  an 
Account  of  his  Life,  vol.  i,  p.  54. 

I  have  been  very  much  interested  lately 
with  the  "Remains"  of  H.  K.  White, 
which,  however,  left  a  very  melancholy 
impression  on  my  mind.  Was  there  no 
patron  for  such  a  man  but  Simeon  and 
Wilberforce,  who,  with  the  best  intentions 
in  the  world,  seem  to  have  encouraged  his 
killing  himself  by  religious  enthusiasm? 
I  am  afraid  that  sort  of  people  do  not 
recollect  that  enthusiasm,  like  other  potent 
draughts,  should  be  tempered  to  the 
strength  of  the  patient.  A  dram  which 
hardly  warms  the  veins  of  a  rough-nerved 
Scotchman  will  drive  to  frenzy  a  more 
sensitive  system.  I  wish  Simeon  and  Levi 
would  confine  their  operations  to  hard- 
headed  Cantabs,  and  make  no  excursions 
to  Nottingham  for  crimping  young  poets. 
—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1808,  To  Southey, 
Feb.  26 ;  Familiar  Letters,  vol.  I,  p.  96. 
Unhappy  White !  while  life  was  in  its  spring, 
And  thy  yoimg  muse  just  w^aved.  her  joyous 
wing, 

The  spoiler  came ;  and  all  thy  promise  fair 
Has  sought  the  grave,  to  sleep  forever  there. 
Oh !  what  a  noble  heart  was  here  undone. 
When  Science's  self  destroyed  her  favorite 
son! 

Yes,  she  too  much  indulged  thy  fond  pursuit, 
She  sowed  the  seeds,  but  death  has  reaped 
the  fruit. 

'Twas  thine  own  Grenius  gave  the  final  blow, 
And  helped  to  plant  the  wound  that  laid 
thee  low. 

—Byron,  Lord,  1809,  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers. 

Butcher-basket-born  Kirke  White ! — 
Beddoes,  Thomas  Lovell,  1824,  Letters, 


488 


HENRY  KIRKE  WHITE 


That  most  gifted  youth,  Henry  Kirke 
White,  whose  sincere  and  ardent  piety  was 
equaled  only  by  his  genius,  his  learning, 
and  his  uncommon  ardor  in  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge. —  Cleveland,  Charles  D., 
1853,  English  Literature  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  p.  70. 

GENERAL 
Hail!  gifted  youth,  whose  passion -breathing 
lay 

Portrays  a  mind  attun'd  to  noblest  themes. 
— Owen,  Arthur,  1803,  Sonnet  to  H.  K. 
White  on  his  Poems  Lately  Published. 

He  seldom  discovered  any  sportiveness 
of  imagination,  though  he  would  very  ably 
and  pleasantly  rally  any  one  of  his  friends 
for  any  little  peculiarity ;  his  conversation 
was  always  sober  and  to  the  purpose.  That 
which  is  the  most  remarkable  in  him,  is 
his  uniform  good  sense,  a  faculty  perhaps 
less  common  than  genius.  There  never 
existed  a  more  dutiful  son,  a  more  affec- 
tionate brother,  a  warmer  friend,  nor  a 
devouter  Christian.  Of  his  powers  of 
mind  it  is  superfluous  to  speak ;  they  were 
acknowledged  wherever  they  were  known. 
It  would  be  idle  too  to  say  what  hopes  were 
entertained  for  him,  and  what  he  might 
have  accomplished  in  literature.  — 
Southey,  Robert,  1807,  The  Remains  of 
Henry  Kirke  White,  with  an  Account  of 
His  Life,  p,  59. 

There  are,  I  think,  among  these  Re- 
mains,"  a  few  of  the  most  exquisite  pieces 
in  the  whole  body  of  English  poetry.  Con- 
joined with  an  easy  and  flowing  fancy,  they 
possess  the  charm  of  a  peculiar  moral  deli- 
cacy, often  conveyed  in  a  happy  and  inim- 
itable simplicity  of  language. — Brydges, 
Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1809,  Censura  Lit- 
eraria,  vol.  ix,  p.  393. 

Setting  aside  his  bigotry,  he  surely 
ranks  next  to  Chatterton.  It  is  astonish- 
ing how  little  he  was  known ;  and  at  Cam- 
bridge no  one  thought  or  heard  of  such  a 
man  till  his  death  rendered  all  notice  use- 
less. For  my  own  part,  I  should  have  been 
most  proud  of  such  an  acquaintance :  his 
very  prejudices  were  respectable. — By- 
ron, Lord,  1811,  Letter  to  Mr.  Dallas, 
Aug.  27. 

To  Chatterton  .  .  .  he  is  not  to  be 
compared.  Chatterton  has  the  force  of  a 
young  poetical  Titan,  who  threatens  to  take 
Parnassus  by  storm.  White  is  a  boy 
differing  from  others  more  in  aptitude  to 
follow  than  in  ability  to  lead.    The  one  is 


complete  in  every  limb,  active,  self-con- 
fident, and  restless  from  his  own  energy. 
The  other,  gentle,  docile,  and  animated, 
rather  than  vigorous.  He  began,  as  most 
youthful  writers  have  begun,  by  copying 
those  whom  he  saw  to*  be -the  objects  of 
popular  applause  in  his  own  day.  He  has 
little  distinct  character  of  his  own.  We 
may  trace  him  by  turns  to  Goldsmith, 
Chatterton,  and  Coleridge. — Cary,  Henry 
Francis,  1821-24-45,  Lives  of  English 
Poets,  -p.  418. 

His  talents  were  unusually  precocious, 
and  their  variety  was  as  astonishing  as 
their  extent.  Besides  the  Poetical  pieces 
in  this  volume,  and  his  scholastic  attain- 
ments, his  ability  was  manifested  in  various 
other  ways.  His  style  was  remarkable  for 
its  clearness  and  elegance,  and  his  cor- 
respondence and  prose  pieces  show  ex- 
tensive information.  To  great  genius 
and  capacity,  he  united  the  rarest  and 
more  important  gifts  of  a  sound  judgment 
and  common  sense.  .  .  .  Kirke  White's 
poetry  is  popular  because  it  describes  feel- 
ings, passions,  and  associations,  which  all 
have  felt,  and  with  which  all  can  sympa- 
thize. It  is  by  no  means  rich  in  metaphor, 
nor  does  it  evince  great  powers  of  imagina- 
tion; but  it  is  pathetic,  plaintive,  and 
agreeable;  and  emanating  directly  from 
his  own  heart,  it  appeals  irresistibly  to  that 
of  his  reader.— Nicolas,  Sir  Harris, 
1837,  The  Poetical  Works  of  Henry  Kirke 
White,  Memoir. 

Few  writers  of  verses  have  been  more 
overrated  than  Henry  Kirke  White,  and  it 
is  a  shame,  that  while  there  has  never  ap- 
peared in  this  country  a  single  edition  of 
the  poetical  writings  of  Landor,  Kenyon, 
Milnes,  Miss  Barrett,  and  others  of  similar 
merit,  there  have  been  more  impressions 
of  White  than  there  have  been  of  Milton, 
or  Pope,  or  Coleridge.  ...  He  was 
scarcely  equal  to  the  Davidsons  of  New 
York,  and  it  would  be  almost  as  absurd  to 
compare  him  with  Keats  or  Chatterton  as 
to  compare  Robert  Montgomery  with  Mil- 
ton. I  doubt  whether  if  he  had  lived  to 
the  maturest  age,  he  would  have  produced 
any  thing  in  poetry  above  elegant  medioc- 
rity.—Gris  wold,  RuFUS  W.,  1844,  The 
Poets  and  Poetry  of  England  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  p.  214. 

Kirke  White's  promises  were  endorsed 
by  the  respectable  name  of  Mr.  Southey, 
but  surely  with  no  authority  from  Apollo. 


HENRY  KIRKE  WHITE 


489 


They  have  the  merit  of  a  traditional  piety, 
which,  to  our  mind,  if  uttered  at  all,  had 
been  less  objectionable  in  the  retired  closet 
of  a  diary,  and  in  the  sober  raiment  of 
prose.  They  do  not  clutch  hold  of  the 
memory  with  the  drowning  pertinacity  of 
Watts ;  neither  have  they  the  interest  of 
his  occasional  simple,  lucky  beauty. — 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  1845,  Edgar 
Allan  Poey  Graham's  Magazine,  Feb. 

The  torch  of  his  inspiration  was  cer- 
tainly kindled  at  the  inner  shrine; 
but  it  was  darkly  destined  that  his  fair 
dawn  was  to  have  no  meridian,  and  with  a 
heart  full  of  youthful  promise  and  of  lofty 
aspirations — devoted  to  the  noblest  and 
purest  objects  of  humanity — he  died  while 
his  feet  were  yet  on  the  threshold  of  man- 
hood. Three,  at  least,  of  the  great  mag- 
nates of  literature  lamented  his  fate,  and 
were  loud  in  his  praises.  On  examining 
his  posthumous  papers,  Coleridge  and 
Southey  alike  expressed  their  astonish- 
ment at  so  much  genius  united  to  so  much 
industry ;  and  Byron,  in  a  truculent  satire, 
wherein  almost  nobody  was  spared,  truth- 
stricken,  suspended  the  lash,  to  scatter 
flowers  liberally  on  his  early  grave. — 
Mom,  David  Macbeth,  1850-51,  Sketches 
of  the  Poetical  Literature  of  the  Past  Half 
Century. 

In  coming  to  the  consideration  of  his 
works  and  genius,  it  is  extremely  difficult, 
so  to  speak,  to  insulate  ourselves  from  all 
considerations  connected  with  his  lovely 
character,  his  brief  laborious  life,  and  his 
premature  end.  That  he  was  a  man  of 
high  talents,  of  powers  of  fancy  and  elo- 
quence of  a  rare  order,  as  well  as  indomit- 
able energy,  and  great  assimilative  and 
acquisife  capacity,  must  be  conceded  by 
all.  But  there  are  not  a  few  who  deny  him 
the  possession  of  original  genius,  and  who 
even  in  the  uniform  good  taste  and  good 
sense  which  he  discovered  at  so  early  an 
age  find  an  argument  in  favour  of  their 
hypothesis. — Gilfillan,  George,  1856, 
ed.,  The  Poetical  Works  of  Henry  Kirke 
White  and  James  Grahame,  p.  xix. 

A  protege  of  Simeon,  who  fell  a  victim 
to  over  study,  whose  memory  Byron  em- 
balmed in  some  beautiful  lines,  whose 
death  Southey  deemed  a  loss  to  our  litera- 
ture— hymns,  sonnets,  and  lyric  pieces, 
written  l3ef  ore  he  had  reached  his  twentieth 
year,  all  distinguished  by  plaintive  tender- 
ness and  pleasing  fancy,  though  without 


the  certain  indications  of  great  genius 
which  we  have  in  the  equally  early  writings 
of  Cowley  or  of  Chatterton. — Angus, 
Joseph,  1865,  The  Handbook  of  English 
Literature,  p.  269. 

He  wrote  a  number  of  sonnets,  nearly 
all  of  which  were  composed  while  he  was 
a  hopeless  consumptive.  With  one  or  two 
exceptions,  they  are  pitched  in  a  plaintive 
minor  key ;  and  although  they  are  too  uni- 
formly sad  to  be  thoroughly  enjoyable, 
they  are  so  gracefully  poetic,  and  there  is 
so  little  of  selfish  or  morbid  repining  in 
them,  that  their  soft  murmurs  awaken 
pleasant  emotions,  even  while  they  touch 
our  sympathies  and  sufl^use  our  eyes  with 
tender  sorrow. — Deshler,  Charles  D., 
1879,  Afternoons  With  the  Poets,  p.  233. 

The  lad,  in  every  way  lacking  pith  and 
substance,  and  ripening  prematurely  in 
a  heated  atmosphere,  drooped  and  died. 
— DowDEN,  Edward,  1880,  Southey  (Eng- 
lish Men  of  Letters),  p.  124. 

His  splendid  poem,  the  ''Star  of  Bethle- 
hem,'' is  destined  to  live  in  the  memories 
and  hearts  of  all  lovers  of  sacred  song. — 
Saunders,  Frederick,  1885,  Evenings 
with  the  Sacred  Poets,  p.  388. 

Both  withdrew  from  a  profession  that 
was  distasteful  to  them;  both  loved  un- 
happily— the  lady  being,  curiously  enough, 
in  each  case  named  Fanny;  both  had  the 
foreknowledge  of  their  approaching  death, 
and  both  suffered  in  consequence  from  a 
penetrating  melancholy,  amounting  at 
times  to  a  refined  despair,  the  outcome  of 
baffled  hopes  and  thwarted  ambition.  Both 
died  young.  The  trumpeter  of  their  fame 
had  his  clarion  already  at  his  lips,  but 
hurrying  death  stopped  their  ears,  so  that 
they  did  not  hear  the  blast.  It  would 
seem  as  if  their  lives  and  memories  had 
been  handed  on  together,  as  if  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  one  is  not  complete  without  a 
knowledge  of  the  other.  Keats  seems  to 
have  taken  up  the  thread  of  Kirke  White's 
inspiration,  or  to  have  woven  it  into  the 
fabric  of  his  own  genius ;  he  seems  uncon- 
sciously to  have  become  the  sequel,  the 
completion,  the  consummation  of  White. 
He  did  not  so  much  eclipse,  as  pass  into, 
comprehend,  and,  as  it  were  re-issue  him. 
Much  of  Keats's  verse  seems  an  echo,  a 
remembrance  of  Henry's,  but  a  remem- 
brance that  is  given  with  a  more  satisfying 
expression,  a  more  artistic  utterance.  .  .  . 
White,  like  Keats,  is  peculiarly  the  child 


490 


HENRY  KIRKE  WHITE 


of  this  century,  though  he  died  on  its  very 
threshold.  There  is  in  both  cases  the 
same  self-destroying  heart — and  brain- 
consuming  ' '  passion  for  the  unattainable. ' ' 
Henry  possessed  the  genuine  fin-de-siecle 
temperament,  without  being  in  any  sense 
a  sickly,  sentimental,  self-absorbed  nine- 
teenth century  poseur.  Like  Tasso,  he 
battled  with  his  agony.  His  pain  struck 
music  from  him;  and  until  death  seized 
him,  his  brave,  high-minded  courage  en- 
abled him  to  conceal  the  "torture  of  his 
despair."  Nearly  a  hundred  years  have 
passed  since  he  died,  and  while  the  name 
of  Keats  is  upon  many  lips,  the  world  only 
occasionally  hears  of  Henry.  But  his 
genius  cannot  perish,  and  from  time  to 
time  there  will  be  breathed  upon  the  air 
an  echo  of  what  he  himself  calls  his  * 'faint, 
neglected  song/'— Law,  Alice,  1894, 
A  Forerunner  of  Keats,  Westminster  Re- 
view, vol.  142,  p.  291. 

Any  one  who  will  now  study  Kirke 
White's  poems  in  themselves,  as  litera- 
ture, without  prejudice,  must  inevitably 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  they  are 
worthless,  and  disfigured  by  every  fault 
that  can  be  laid  to  the  charge  of  poetry. 
They  are  not  even  promising.  They  are 
tedious,  grotesque,  inharmonious,  dull. 
And  yet  they  have  a  place  in  the  Aldine 
edition  of  British  poets. — Benson,  Ar- 
thur Christopher,  1896,  Essays,  p.  180. 

He  was  a  poetaster,  and  nothing  more. 
The  "genius"  attributed  to  him  in  Byron's 
well-known  and  noble  though  rather 
rhetorical  lines  may  be  discovered  on  an 
average  in  about  half  a  dozen  poets  during 
any  two  or  three  years  of  any  tolerable 
poetic  period.  His  best  things  are  imita- 
tions of  Cowper  in  his  sacred  mood,  such 
as  the  familiar  "Star  of  Bethlehem,"  and 
even  these  are  generally  spoilt  by  some 
feebleness  or  false  note.  At  his  worst  he 
is  not  far  from  Delia  Crusca. — Saints- 
bury,  George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nine- 
teenth Century  Literature,  p.  108. 

"Oft  in  Sorrow,  Oft  in  Woe."— Kirke 
White's  marching  song  of  the  Christian 
Life  has  no  such  lilting  tune  attached  to 
it'  as  "Onward  Christian  Soldiers,"  but 
being  older  it  has  probably  helped  more 
souls  than  its  recent  rival. — Stead,  W. 
T.,  1897,  Hymns  that  Have  Helped,  p.  169. 

Few  men  have  owed  more  in  the  way  of 
reputation  to  their  misfortunes  than  Kirke 
White.    His  continual  struggles  against 


adverse  circumstances  in  the  pursuit  of 
knowledge,  together  with  the  amiability 
of  his  disposition  and  the  piety  of  his  life, 
secured  for  him  many  friends,  who,  in 
their  admiration  for  his  character,  dis- 
covered evidence  of  Genius  in  his  verse 
which  those  uninfluenced  by  his  personality 
are  unable  to  detect.  It  would  of  course 
be  absurd  to  look  for  maturity  in  the  work 
of  a  youth  of  twenty  years,  but  Genius 
could  scarcely  have  written  as  much  as 
this  youth  wrote  without  betraying  itself, 
however  crudely,  in  some  thought  or 
phrase  of  obvious  originality  or  latent 
power.  Kirk  White's  poems  display  no 
such  evidence  as  we  expect  to  find  in  the 
work  of  Genius,  however  young.  He 
lacked  originality  and  imagination;  and 
while  unable  to  invent  new  forms  of 
beauty,  showed  no  freshness  in  his  views 
of  old  forms  of  truth.  He  had  ambition, 
but  he  had  nothing  to  say,  nor  was  there 
anything  felicitous  in  his  manner  of  say- 
ing nothing.  Among  the  "Fragments," 
gathered  from  the  backs  of  old  mathe- 
matical papers,  there  are  one  or  two  which 
are  calculated  to  excite  expectation,  but 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  he  would  ever 
have  justified  the  claims  made  on  his  be- 
half even  if  Time  had  dealt  more  gently 
with  him.  ...  Of  Kirk  White's  shorter 
poems  his  lines  "To  Love"  have  been  per- 
haps most  frequently  quoted,  though  they 
can  scarcely  be  said  to  rise  above  the  level 
of  valentine  verse. — Miles,  Alfred  H., 
1897,  The  Poets  and  the  Poetry  of  the 
Century;  Sacred,  Moral  and  Religious 
Verse,  pp.  81,  83. 

Southey's  charitable  judgment,  which 
Byron  echoed,  has  not  stood  the  test  of 
time.  White's  verse  shows  every  mark  of 
immaturity.  In  thought  and  expression 
it  lacks  vigour  and  originality.  A  promise 
of  weirdness  in  an  early  and  prophetic 
lyric,  "A  Dance  of  Consumptives"  (from 
an  unfinished  "Eccentric  Drama")  was  not 
fulfilled  in  his  later  compositions.  The 
metrical  dexterity  which  is  shown  in  the 
addition  to  Waller's  "Go,  lovely  Rose,"  is 
not  beyond  a  mediocre  capacity.  Such 
popularity  as  White's  work  has  enjoyed  is 
to  be  attributed  to  the  pathetic  brevity  of 
his  career  and  to  the  fervour  of  the  evan- 
gelical piety  which  inspired  the  greater 
part  of  his  writings  in  both  verse  and 
prose.— Lee,  Sidney,  1900,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  LXI,  p.  50. 


491 


Elizabeth  Carter 

1717-1806 

Elizabeth  Carter  (1717-1806),  a  celebrated  lady  scholar,  and  translator  of  the  work 
of  Epictetus,  was  the  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Carter  of  Deal  in  Kent,  and  was  born 
in  that  town,  December  16,  1717.  .  .  .  Miss  Carter  learned  Greek  and  Latin 
from  her  father,  and  was  specially  proficient  in  Greek,  so  that  Dr.  Johnson  said  con- 
cerning a  celebrated  scholar,  that  he ''understood  Greek  better  than  any  one  whom  he 
had  ever  known  except  Elizabeth  Carter. She  learned  also  Hebrew,  French,  German, 
Italian,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  and  lastly  some  Arabic.  She  studied  astronomy,  ancient 
geography,  and  ancient  and  modern  history.  In  1734  some  of  her  verses  appeared  in 
the  "Gentleman's  Magazine"  under  the  signature  ''Eliza,"  Carr  the  editor  being  a 
friend  of  her  father.  In  1738  she  published  a  small  collection  of  poems,  and  next  year 
she  translated  from  the  French  an  attack  on  Pope's  "Essay  on  Man"  by  M.  Crousaz. 
In  1739  appeared  her  translation  from  the  Italian  of  Algarotti's  "Newtonianismo  per 
leDame,"  calling  it  "Sir  Isaac  Newton's  Philosophy  explained  for  the  use  of  the 
Ladies,  in  Six  Dialogues  on  Light  and  Colors."  Her  translation  of  Epictetus  was 
undertaken  in  1749  to  please  her  friends  Dr.  Seeker  (afterwards  archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury) and  Miss  Talbot,  to  whom  the  translation  was  sent,  sheet  by  sheet,  as  it  was 
done.  This  work  was  published  by  guinea  subscription  in  1758.  In  1763  Miss  Carter 
printed  a  second  collection  of  poems.  .  .  .  Miss  Carter  never  married,  and  lived 
to  the  age  of  eighty-nine.  She  died  in  Clarges  street,  Piccadilly,  1806 ;  and  her  nephew 
the  Rev.  Montagu  Pennington,  published  her  "Memoirs"  in  1808. — Baynes,  Thomas 
Spencer,  ed.y  1877,  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  Ninth  edition,  vol.  v,  p,  124. 


PERSONAL 

For  the  most  part  of  the  time  we  are 
entirely  alone.  .  .  .  Our  friend,  you 
know,  has  talents  which  must  distinguish 
her  in  the  largest  circles ;  but  there  it  is 
impossible  for  one  fully  to  discover  either 
the  beauties  of  her  character  or  the  extent 
and  variety  of  her  understanding,  which 
always  improves  on  a  more  accurate  ex- 
amination and  on  a  nearer  view.  .  .  . 
The  charm  is  inexpressibly  heightened 
when  it  is  complicated  with  the  affections 
of  the  heart.— Montagu,  Elizabeth, 
1764,  Letter  to  Mrs.  Vesey,  A  Lady  of  the 
Last  Century,  ed.  Dor  an,  p.  136. 

Mrs.  Carter  has  in  her  person  a  great 
deal  of  what  the  gentlemen  mean  when 
they  say  such  a  one  is  a  "poetical  lady;" 
however,  independently  of  her  great  tal- 
ents and  learning,  I  like  her  much ;  she  has 
affability,  kindness,  and  goodness;  and 
I  honour  her  heart  even  more  than  her 
talents.— More,  Hannah,  1775,  Letter 
to  One  of  Her  Sister's,  Memoirs,  ed.  Roberts, 
vol.  I,  p.  39. 

This  ardent  thirst  after  knowledge  was 
at  length  crowned  with  complete  success, 
and  her  acquirements  became,  even  very 
early  in  life,  such  as  are  rarely  met  with. 
What  she  once  gained,  she  never  afterwards 
lost,  an  effect,  indeed,  to  be  expected  from 
the  intense  application  by  which  she 
acquired  her  learning,  and  which  is  often 


by  no  means  the  case  with  those,  the  quick- 
ness of  whose  faculties  renders  labour 
almost  useless. — Pennington,  Montagu, 
1808,  Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Carter. 

Though  history  and  classical  learning 
were,  in  profane  literature,  the  favourite 
studies  of  Mrs.  Carter,  the  sciences  were 
not  neglected ;  she  had  paid  some  attention 
to  mathematics,  and  in  astronomy  and 
ancient  geography  she  had  made  no  com- 
mon progress.  What  she  studied,  how- 
ever, with  still  superior  ardour  and  delight, 
and  with  an  effect  on  her  manners  and  con- 
duct of  the  most  indelible  kind,  was  re- 
ligion. Her  piety,  indeed,  was  the  most 
decided  feature  of  her  character,  and  its 
intensity  continued  undiminished  to  the 
last  moment  of  her  life.  Nothwithstand- 
ing  these  various,  laborious,  and  important 
pursuits,  she  found  leisure  for  amusements, 
and  for  the  display  of  a  cheerful  and  even 
gay  disposition.  Of  dancing  she  was  par- 
ticularly fond,  and  entered,  indeed,  with 
singular  naivete  and  vivacity  into  all  the 
innocent  diversions  of  youth  and  high 
spirits.  What  enabled  her  to  partake  of 
so  much  relaxation  was  the  habit  which  she 
had  acquired  of  rising  every  morning  be- 
tween four  and  five  o'clock,  a  practice  that 
was  continued,  to  a  certain  extent,  even 
in  very  advanced  life,  for  at  no  time,  if  in 
health,  was  she  known  to  lie  later  than 
seven.— Drake,  Nathan,  1810,  Essays, 


492 


ELIZABETH  CARTER 


Elustrative  of  the  Rambler,  Adventurer  and 
Idler,  vol.  ii,  p.  74. 

Miss  Fanshawe  says,  in  one  of  her  letters 
to  me,  written  soon  after  the  death  of  this 
venerated  person,  that  she  appears  to  her 
to  have  been  half  an  angel  and  half  a  sage ; 
differing  from  most  of  her  sex,  in  having 
laid  down  a  plan  in  the  outset  of  life  to 
which  she  adhered  steadily  to  the  end; 
writing  Greek  in  the  face  of  the  world  with- 
out compunction,  never  losing  a  friend,  and 
never  making  an  enemy. — Grant,  Anne, 
1830,  Letters,  Nov.  13 ;  Mew,oir  and  Cor- 
respondence, ed.  Grant,  vol.  iii,  p.  165. 

We  were  startled  at  reading  somewhere 
the  other  day  that,  in  her  youth,  she  had 
not  only  the  wisdom  of  a  Pallas,  but  the 
look  of  a  Hebe.  Healthy  no  doubt  she 
was,  and  possessed  of  a  fine  constitution. 
She  was  probably  also  handsome;  but 
Hebe  and  a  hook  nose  are  in  our  minds  im- 
possible associations.  —  Hunt,  Leigh, 
1847,  British  Poetesses;  Men,  Women  and 
Books,  vol.  II,  jp.  119. 

Her  regular  rule  was,  when  in  health, 
to  read  two  chapters  in  the  Bible  before 
breakfast ;  a  sermon,  some  Hebrew,  Greek, 
and  Latin,  and  after  breakfast  something 
in  every  language  with  which  she  was  ac- 
quainted ;  thus  never  allowing  herself  to 
forget  what  she  had  once  attained.  These 
occupations  were  of  course  varied  accord- 
ing to  circumstances,  and  when  she  took 
exercise  before  breakfast  her  course  of 
reading  was  necessarily  deferred  till  later 
in  the  day.  Her  constitution  must  have 
been  strong  to  have  enabled  her  to  take 
the  very  long  walks  to  which  she  accus- 
tomed herself;  but  she  suffered  greatly 
from  headaches,  not  improbably  arising 
from  her  over-exertion  of  body  and  mind 
in  early  youth,  and  the  not  allowing  her- 
self sufficient  repose  to  recruit  her  over- 
worked strength.  At  one  time  of  her  life 
she  was  wont  to  sit  up  very  late,  and  as  she 
soon  became  drowsy,  and  would  sleep 
soundly  in  her  chair,  many  were  the  ex- 
pedients she  adopted  to  keep  herself 
awake,  such  as  pouring  cold  water  down 
her  dress,  tying  a  wet  bandage  round  her 
head,  &c.  She  was  a  great  snuff-taker, 
though  she  endeavoured  to  break  herself 
of  the  habit  to  please  her  father.  She 
suffered  so  much,  however,  in  the  attempt, 
that  he  kindly  withdrew  his  prohibition. 
— Hale,  Sarah  Josepha,  1852,  Woman's 
Record,  p.  244. 


Genial,  happy,  old  lady!  We  believe 
her  when  she  declared  that  she  had  never 
regretted  not  having  looked  for  interest 
in  married  life.  We  love  her  sapient  say- 
ings, and  gentle,  holy  memory.  We  rever- 
ence her  as  the  very  pattern  of  a  high- 
minded,  active,  and  more  than  contented 
Old  Maid.— Thomson,  Katherine  (Grace 
Wharton),  1861,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Carter 
and  Miss  Talbot,  Celebrated  Friendships, 
vol.  II,  p.  170. 

After  the  third  edition  of  her  poems, 
Mistress  Carter  wrote  no  more  for  the 
press ;  but  she  appears  to  have  taken  much 
delight  in  the  productions  of  contemporary 
genius,  and  it  is  interesting  to  find  that 
she  lived  to  welcome  and  applaud  "The 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel. "  How  amazed 
would  she  and  many  others  of  her  time 
have  been  to  behold  the  slight  esteem  in 
which  it  is  the  present  fashion  to  hold 
that  glorious  *'Lay!"  And  perchance, 
modest  as  she  was,  it  would  also  have 
surprised  not  a  little  the  translator  of 
**Epictetus,^'  and  the  greatest  female 
scholar  of  her  period,  could  she  know  that 
her  very  name,  as  well  as  the  records  of 
her  triumphs,  is  almost  unknown  to  a 
generation  which  has  scarce  patience  for 
its  own  pedants,  and  cares  less  than  nothing 
for  the  pedants  of  former  days. — Wal- 
FORD,  L.  B.,  1891,  A  Learned  Lady; 
Elizabeth  Carter,  Blackwood^s  Magazine, 
vol.  149,  p,  519. 

She  was  more  remarkable  for  her  lin- 
guistic acquirements  than  for  original 
work,  and  is  said  to  have  known  not  only 
Greek  and  Latin,  but  Hebrew,  French, 
Italian,  Spanish  and  German  as  well. 
With  all  these  accomplishments  she  re- 
tained to  the  last  a  fund  of  delightful 
modesty  and  good  sense,  and  bore  with 
dignified  equanimity  the  unpleasant  noto- 
riety that  her  learning  sometimes  brought 
her. — Thomson,  Clara  Linklater,  1900, 
Samuel  Richardson,  A  Biographical  and 
Critical  Study,  p.  113. 

GENERAL 

The  judgments  of  this  most  excellent 
woman  appears  to  have  been  at  once  origi- 
nal, candid  and  sound.  They  are  expressed 
in  language  perspicuous,  strong,  and 
elegant ;  and  are  the  result  of  a  mind  act- 
ing on  the  most  mature  deliberation,  and 
enlightened  by  the  nicest  powers  of  dis- 
tinction.   ...    A  mind  more  clear. 


ELIZABETH  CARTER 


493 


more  extensive,  and  better  regulated  than 
Mrs.  Carter's  does  not  occur  in  the  annals 
of  genius  and  learning. — Brydges,  Sir 
Samuel  Egerton,  1808,  Censura  Liter- 
aridy  vol.  viii,  p.  197. 

The  poetry  of  Mrs.  Carter  is  such  as 
might  have  been  expected  from  the  ele- 
gance of  her  classical  learning,  and  the 
purity  of  her  moral  principles.  Her 
language  is  clear  and  correct,  her  versi- 
fication sweet  and  harmonious,  while  the 
sentiment  is  always  dignified,  or  devo- 
tional, and  even  sometimes  sublime.  Of 
splendid  imagination,  of  the  creative 
powers  which  form  the  character  of  a 
first-rate  poet,  she  has  exhibited  few 
proofs ;  yet  are  her  productions  far  beyond 
mediocrity,  and,  though  not  breathing  the 
fire  and  energy  of  exalted  genius,  will  be 
ever  highly  valued  by  those  to  whom  the 
union  of  taste,  piety,  and  erudition,  is 
dear.— Drake,  Nathan,  1810,  Essay 
Illustrative  of  the  Rambler y  Adventurer , 
and  Idler,  vol.  ii,  p.  86. 

I  have  the  headache  myself,  caught  per- 
haps by  reading  Mrs.  Carter's  letters, 
which  tell  of  nothing  else. — Piozzi,  Hes- 
ter Lynch,  1817,  To  Sir  James  Fellowes, 
June  26 ;  Autobiography ,  Letters  and  Lit- 
erary Remains,  ed.  Hayward,  p.  389. 

This  lady's  poetical  writings  display  but 
little  imagination,  and  have  none  of  those 
strong  thoughts  and  sublime  ideas  which 
betoken  lofty  genius :  but  her  verses  ex- 
hibit great  classical  purity,  and  are  re- 
markable for  an  unusual  sweetness  of 
versification.  They  embody,  too,  a  cheer- 
ful serenity  very  highly  calculated  to  im- 
prove the  reader's  mind;  for  although 
Miss  Carter  translated  Epictetus,  she  by 
no  means  followed  his  philosophy. —Row- 
ton,  Frederic,  1848,  The  Female  Poets 
of  Great  Britain,  p.  178. 

Her  literary  fame  was  chiefly  founded 
upon  her  translation  of  Epictetus,  and  this 
one  work  sufficed,  as  it  well  may  do,  for  a 
lifetime.  For  of  all  her  other  literary 
efforts, — her  translations  from  the  French, 
and  the  Italian, — her  contributions  as 
Eliza"  to  The  Gentleman's  Magazine, — 
her  odes  and  elegies,  the  fame  thereof 
has  long  since  been  entombed  with  her 
bones.  —  Thomson,  Katherine  (Grace 
Wharton),  1848,  The  Literary  Circles  of 
the  Last  Century,  Eraser's  Magazine,  vol. 
37,  p.  76. 


The  character  of  her  poetry  is  such  as 
might  have  been  expected  from  the  ele- 
gance of  her  classical  learning,  the  purity 
of  her  moral  principles,  and  her  consistent 
piety.  While,  to  high  imagination,  or  to 
great  creative  power,  she  can  lay  no  claim, 
her  language  is  clear  and  correct,  her 
versification  sweet  and  harmonious,  and 
her  sentiments  all  that  the  moralist  or  the 
Christian  could  wish— pure,  dignified,  de- 
votional, and  sometimes  rising  to  the  sub- 
lime.—Cleveland,  Charles  D.,  1853, 
English  Literature  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
lury,  p.  59. 

Her  sound  and  comprehensive  mind, 
highly  cultured  as  it  was,  could  produce 
nothing  contemptible :  but  it  wanted  that 
essential  qualification  of  the  true  poet, 
active  originality,  the  power  of  conceiving, 
and  of  shaping  new  conceptions. — Wil- 
liams, Jane,  1861,  The  Literary  Women 
of  England,  p.  215. 

Although  superseded  by  later  workers 
in  the  same  field,  Elizabeth  Carter  still 
holds  an  honourable  place  beside  the 
Daciers,  the  Sarah  Fieldings,  and  other 
women  scholars,  and  will  ever  remain  in 
our  memories  as  the  English  translator 
of  Epictetus. — Edwards,  M.  Betham- 
1880,  Six  Life  Studies  of  Famous  Women, 
p.  225. 

Mrs.  Carter  was  more  celebrated  for 
the  solidity  of  her  learning  than  for  any 
brilliant  intellectual  qualities;  and  it  is  as 
a  Greek  scholar  and  translator  of  Epictetus 
that  she  is  now  best  remembered.  She 
used  to  relate  with  pleasure  that  Dr.  John- 
son had  said,  speaking  of  some  celebrated 
scholar,  that  *'he  understood  Greek  better 
than  any  one  he  had  ever  known,  except 
Elizabeth  Carter."  Her  poems  have  ceased 
to  be  read  and  are  not  of  very  high  order, 
the  ''Dialogue  between  the  Body  and  the 
Mind"  being  perhaps  the  most  successful. 
Her  letters  display  considerable  vigour  of 
thought,  and  now  and  then  a  transient  flash 
of  humour.  Though  by  no  means  a  woman 
of  the  world,  she  possessed  a  large  amount 
of  good  sense,  and,  though  more  learned 
than  her  fellows,  was  a  thoroughly  sociable 
and  amiable  woman.  —  Barker,  G.  F. 
Russell,  1887,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  ix,  p.  196. 

One  of  the  most  accomplished  women  of 
the  century. — Abbey,  Charles  J..  1887, 
The  English  Church  and  Its  Bishops, 1700- 
1800,  vol.  II,  p.  49. 


494 


CAR  TER—HORSLEY 


She  belongs  in  spirit  as  well  as  in  time  much  to  her  learning  as  to  her  purely 

to  the  last  century.    Among  women  she  literary    achievements.  —  Lounsbury, 

is  perhaps  its  greatest  scholar.    Her  dis-  Thomas  R.,  1891,  Studies  in  Chaucer,  vol. 

tinction  in  her  own  age  was  due  full  as  iii,  p.  262. 


Samuel  Horsley 

1733-1806 

A  learned  and  eloquent  prelate  of  the  Church  of  England ;  born  in  London,  1733 ;  died 
at  Brighton,  Oct.  4,  1806.  His  father  was  a  minister,  and  personally  supervised  his 
education  till  he  entered  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  graduated  LL.B.  in 
1758.  His  first  charge  in  the  ministry  was  Newington  in  Surrey.  In  1767  he  was 
elected  to  the  Royal  Society,  and  was  secretary  of  that  body  from  1773  to  1784,  when 
he  resigned  his  membership,  on  account  of  difficulties  with  the  president.  He  was  an 
able  classical  scholar  and  mathematician,  published  works  in  both  departments,  and 
edited  Works  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,"  in  5  vols.,  1779-85.  His  ministerial  career  was 
a  brilliant  one.  After  filling  other  positions,  he  was  appointed  in  1781  archdeacon  of 
St.  Alban's.  Whilst  holding  his  position,  he  entered  (1783)  upon  his  famous  contro- 
versy with  Dr.  Priestley.  His  "Letters"  on  this  subject  are  full  of  learning  and 
keen  argument.  In  clear  and  solid  reasoning  he  was  more  than  a  match  for  his  op- 
ponent; and  Gibbon  describes  his  achievements  by  saying  that  *'his  spear  pierced  the 
Socinian's  shield."  The  dispute  was  carried  on  with  great  heat,  and  not  a  little  acri- 
mony on  both  sides.  For  his  services  in  stopping  the  tide  of  Socinianism,  he  was  re- 
warded by  Thurlowwith  a  prebend's  stall  in  Gloucester,  and  with  the  see  of  St.  David's, 
in  1788.  In  Parliament,  Bishop  Horsley  was  an  energetic  supporter  of  Mr.  Pitt.  In 
1793  he  was  translated  to  the  see  of  Rochester,  and  rewarded  with  the  deanery  of 
Westminster  for  the  famous  sermon  preached  there  on  the  anniversary  of  the  execution 
of  Charles  I.,  and  a  few  days  after  Louis  XVI.  was  guillotined.  In  1802  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  see  of  St.  Asaph.  Bishop  Horsley  was  a  man  of  overbearing  temper,  but 
a  keen  reasoner,  sound  scholar,  and  eloquent  orator.  His  sermons  are  among  the  very 
best  specimens  of  English  pulpit  eloquence.  Among  his  works  not  already  referred  to 
may  be  mentioned  a  Commentary  on  Hosea"  (1801,  2d  ed.  1804),  the  posthumous 
work  on  the"Psalms  translated  from  the  Hebrew,"  etc.  (1815,  2  vols,  4th  ed. ,  1845), 
Biblical  Criticism  of  Fourteen  Historical  Books  of  the  Old  Testament,"  etc.  (1820, 
4  vols.  2d  ed.  1844,  2  vols.),  a  collected  edition  of  Horsley 's  Theological  Works" 
(London,  1830,  9  vols.),  and  his  "Sermons,"  complete  in  1  vol.  (London,  1839). — 
Shafp-Herzog,  eds.,  1883,  Encyclopoedia  of  Religious  Knowledge, .  vol.  ii,  p.  1023. 


PERSONAL 
No  man  of  the  age,  perhaps,  possessed 
more  of  what  is  generally  understood  by 
the  term  of  recondite  learning,  or  was  more 
profoundly  versed  in  classical  chronology. 
He  was  extremely  eloquent,  and  his  voice 
was  deep  and  full-toned ;  his  enunciation 
also  was  distinct,  and  his  delivery  in  all 
respects  commanding  and  highly  impres- 
sive. His  manner  was  rather  dictatorial, 
but  he  was,  nevertheless,  an  argumentative 
speaker,  equally  clear  and  strong.  His 
mind  grasped  all  the  learning  of  the 
ancient  and  modern  world,  and  his  heart 
was  as  warm  and  generous  towards  all 
whom  he  had  the  ability  to  serve,  as  his 
head  was  capable  of  advocating  their 
cause.  His  charity  to  the  distressed  was 
even  more  than  prudent ;  he  often  wanted 
himself  when  he  gave  away ;  and  in  money 


affairs  no  one  was  more  careless  than  the 
bishop,  and  no  one  so  easily  imposed  upon. 
Though  he  was  irascible,  passionate,  and 
easily  moved  to  anger,  yet  he  had  a  very 
large  amount  of  human  kindness ;  he  was 
a  devoted  father  and  husband,  and  always 
bent  both  his  mind  and  body  to  partake  of 
the  amusements  of  children,  of  whom  he 
was  particularly  fond. — Daniell,  J.  W., 
1874,  Bishop  Horsley,  Good  Words,  vol, 
15,  p.  827. 

Horsley  is  described  as  somewhat  irrit- 
able in  temperament  and  dictatorial  in 
manner ;  apart  from  polemics  he  was  not- 
ably generous,  and  so  charitable  as  to  be 
easily  imposed  upon.  His  intellectual 
force  was  great,  and  his  learning  admi- 
rably digested.  As  a  speaker  and  preacher 
his  deep-toned  and  flexible  voice  gave  dire 
effect  to  his  strong  argumentative  powers. 


SAMUEL  HORSLEY 


495 


— Gordon,  Alexander,  1891,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  xxvii,  y.  385. 

SERMONS 

His  sermons  are  fine  specimens  of  com- 
manding eloquence,  and  contain  many  deep 
and  original  views  of  Scripture  facts  and 
prophecies.— Williams,  Edward,  1800, 
The  Christian  Preacher. 

In  the  evening  I  read  two  of  Bishop 
Horsley's  sermons  upon  the  Forty-fifth 
Psalm.  There  are  four,  but  I  had  already 
read  the  two  previous  ones.  They  have  a 
very  high  reputation  in  this  country,  and 
are  undoubtedly  discourses  of  great  learn- 
ing and  ingenuity.  But  they  are  dogmat- 
ical and  bigoted ;  and  their  object  is  to 
inculcate  doctrines  so  odious  that  I  could 
not  believe  them  if  I  would.  Here  are  four 
sermons  to  explain  one  psalm,  and,  if  the 
Bishop's  exposition  is  correct,  the  psalm 
has  been  waiting  three  thousand  years  to 
be  made  at  last  intelligible  by  him.-  - 
Adams,  John  Quincy,  1817,  Journal, 
April  12 ;  Memoirs,  ed.  C.  F,  Adams,  vol. 
Ill,  p.  498. 

Confining  our  view  to  Horsley  in  his 
literary  character,  I  must  say  that  he  is 
far  beyond  the  reach  of  Dr.  Parr's  hostil- 
ity. As  a  polematic  and  a  champion  of 
his  own  Church,  he  was  above  the  competi- 
tion of  any  contemporary  divine.  As  a 
theologian,  he  reconciled  the  nearly  con- 
tradictory merits  of  novelty  and  originality 
with  well-meditated  orthodoxy ;  and  I  may 
venture  to  assert  that  his  "Sermons"  pro- 
duced a  greater  impression  than  any  Eng- 
lish book  of  pure  divinity  for  the  last  cen- 
tury. In  saying  this,  I  do  not  speak  of  the 
sale ;  what  that  might  be  I  know  not ;  I 
speak  of  the  strength  of  the  impression 
diffused  through  the  upper  circles,  as  ap- 
parent in  the  reverential  terms  which, 
after  the  appearance  of  that  work,  univer- 
sally marked  the  sense  of  cultivated  men 
in  speaking  of  Bishop  Horsley — even  of 
those  who  had  previously  viewed  him  with 
some  dislike  in  his  character  of  contro- 
versialist.—De  QuiNCEY,  Thomas,  1831- 
57,  Dr.  Samuel  Parr,  Collected  Writings, 
ed.  Masson,  vol.  v,  p.  32. 

Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow,  being  detained 
by  a  thunderstorm  at  a  country  inn,  and 
asking  the  hostess  whether  she  had  any 
books  in  the  house,  is  said  to  have  tossed 
aside  the  Bible  she  brought  him,  and  to 
have  sworn  at  Horsley's  ''Sermons," — 


which  last,  however,  to  cure  idleness  by 
short  distraction,  his  lordship  began  to 
read,  and  was  so  enthralled  by  the  unknown 
divine  that  he  read  on,  long  after  the  rain 
was  over,  and  carried  it  with  him  to  the 
carriage  steps — whence  he  threw  the  book 
back  to  the  hostess,  wishing  he  might  be 
— something  unpleasant — if  he  didn't 
make  that  fellow  a  bishop ;  and  he  was  as 
good  as  his  word.— Jacox,  Francis,  1872, 
Enthralling  Books,  Aspects  of  Authorship, 
p.  338. 

GENERAL 

It  is  most  sincerely  regretted  by  me, 
that  the  dispositions  of  Bishop  Horsley 
should  have  been  warped  either  by  pride, 
ambition,  or  selfishness,  to  such  an  exces- 
sive obliquity  as  displays  itself  throughout 
his  writings.  The  native  vigour  of  his 
faculties,  his  various  knowledge,  his  ele- 
gant and  nervous  style,  and  his  ingenuity  of 
invention  might  have  been  happily  em- 
ployed to  the  advancement  of  science,  and 
to  the  'Confirmation  and  recommendation  of 
the  Christianity  of  the  Scriptures. — 
Wakefield,  Gilbert,  1792,  Memoirs 
Written  by  Himself. 

It  is  not  a  little  extraordinary  that 
Bishop  Horsley,  the  apologist  of  tyranny, 
the  patron  of  passive  obedience,  should 
affect  to  admire  the  British  constitution, 
whose  freedom  was  attained  by  a  palpable 
violation  of  the  principles  for  which  he 
contends.  .  .  .  Whatever  bears  the 
semblance  of  ''reasoning,"  in  Bishop 
Horsley's  discourse,  will  be  found,  I  trust, 
to  have  received  a  satisfactory  answer ; 
but  to  animadvert  with  a  becoming  sever- 
ity on  the  temper  it  displays,  is  a  less  easy 
task.  To  render  him  the  justice  he 
deserves  in  that  respect  would  demand  all 
the  fierceness  of  his  character.  .  .  . 
It  is  time  to  turn  from  this  disgusting 
picture  of  sanctimonious  hypocrisy  and 
priestly  insolence,  to  address  a  word  to  the 
reader  on  the  following  pamphlet.  The 
political  sentiments  of  Dr.  Horsley  are  in 
truth  of  too  little  consequence  in  them- 
selves to  engage  a  moment's  curiosity,  and 
deserve  attention  only  as  they  indicate  the 
spirit  of  the  times.— Hall,  Robert,  1793, 
An  Apology  for  the  Freedom  of  the  Press, 
Preface. 

In  my  opinion,  the  controversy  so  ably 
maintained  by  this  learned  Prelate  against 
the  Heresiarch  Priestle.y,  is  his  peculiar 
praise.    Bishop  Horsley  reminds  me  of  the 


496 


HORSLEY— SMITH 


celebrated  Divine,  Charles  Leslie.  He  has 
often  the  same  strength,  the  same  acute- 
ness,  and  sometimes  the  same  coarseness 
of  manner.  But  the  argument  is  cogent, 
and  the  arms  are  irresistible.  In  theo- 
logical controversy,  Charles  Leslie  and 
Bishop  Horsley  always  appear  to  me, 
' '  iEacidse  similes,  Vulcaniaque  arma  capes- 
sunt.'' — Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797, 
The  Pursuits  of  Liter aturCy  Eighth  ed., 
p.  412. 

Much  original,  deep,  devout,  and  evan- 
gelical matter,  with  much  that  is  bold, 
hazardous,  speculative,  and  rash.  Bishop 
Horsley' s  powers  of  mind  were  of  a  high 
order;  and  his  sermons  and  his  other 
works  will  render  assistance  to  the  student 
chiefly  in  the  way  of  criticism.  He  had 
the  integrity  and  candour  to  speak  de- 
cidedly against  the  ignorance  of  many  who 
opposed  what  they  called  Calvinistic  views. 
— ■  BiCKERSTETH,  Edward,  1844,  The 
Christian  Student. 

Horsley  was  a  man  of  a  masculine  mind, 
great  learning,  and  quick  intelligence. 
He  was  also  master  of  a  clear  style  and 
much  power  of  logical  argumentation. 
His  attack  upon  Priestley  was  a  very 
damaging  one.— Perry,  George  G.,  1864, 
The  History  of  the  Church  of  England^  vol. 
Ill,  p.  434. 

Horsley  had  an  arrogance  and  dogma- 
tism even  fiercer  than  Warburton's,  with- 
out anything  like  Warburton's  genius  for 
style.  His  sermons  procured  him  respect 
from  many  that  disapproved  of  his  violence 
as  a  polemic;  they  are  distinguished  by 
breadth  of  view  and  clear  racy  expression. 
— xMiNTO,  William,  1872-80,  Manual  of 
English  Prose  Literature,  p.  469. 

As  a  critic  and  scholar,  he  had  few 
equals ;  and  his  disquisitions  on  the  proph- 
ets Isaiah  and  Hosea,  his  translation  of 
the  Psalms,  and  his  ''Biblical  Criticisms" 
(in  four  volumes),  justly  entitled  him  to 
the  honour  of  the  mitre.  His ' '  Sermons, ' ' 
in  three  volumes,  are  about  the  best  in  the 
language:  clear,  nervous,  and  profound. 


he  entered  undauntedly  upon  the  most 
difficult  subjects,  and  dispelled,  by  re- 
search and  argument,  the  doubt  that  hung 
over  several  passages  of  Scripture. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of 
English  Literature,  ed.Carruthers. 

In  Horsley  we  may  find  an  example  of 
what  religious  writing  became  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  century,  earnest  and  con- 
scientious, rich  in  scholarship  and  robust 
in  thought,  but  moving  rather  with  judicial 
formality  and  dignified  reverence  than  by 
any  instinct  of  enthusiastic  piety. — Craik, 
Henry,  1895,  ed.,  English  Prose,  Intro- 
duction, vol.  IV,  p.  6. 

As  a  master  of  English  prose  Samuel 
Horsley  had  few  equals  in  his  own  day. 
The  reputation  he  gained  among  his  con- 
temporaries and  their  immediate  succes- 
sors was  quite  out  of  proportion  to  the  bulk 
of  his  writings,  but  not  at  all  out  of  pro- 
portion to  their  merits.  He  was  in  fact 
regarded  in  the  early  part  of  thenineteenth 
century  as,  in  point  of  abilities  and  at- 
tainments, far  above  all  other  writers  and 
speakers  on  the  side  of  the  Church.  Men 
of  the  most  widely  differing  sentiments 
agree  in  this.  ...  He  writes  in  a 
remarkably  pure,  luminous,  and  dignified 
style ;  his  matter  is  weighty,  his  argumen- 
tative power  convincing,  his  learning  pro- 
found, and  his  satire,  though  always  kept 
within  the  bounds  of  decency  and  courtesy, 
most  cutting.  There  is  a  robustness  and 
manliness  about  his  tone  of  mind  which  is 
reflected  in  his  style ;  he  takes  a  lofty  line, 
which  some  might  think  supercilious,  but 
it  is  certainly  justified  by  his  merits ;  it  is 
that  of  a  judge  summing  up,  not  that  of  an 
advocate  pleading  his  cause.  His  senti- 
ments are  always  those  of  the  marked  high 
churchman,  and  in  many  points  he  antici- 
pates the  men  of  the  Oxford  movement. 
His  sermons  are  the  finest  specimens  of 
pulpit  eloquence  which  the  age  produced, 
and  they  are  still  unrivalled  in  their  way. 
— Overton,  J.  H.,  1895,  English  Prose, 
ed.  Craik,  vol.  iv,  pp.  447,  448. 


Charlotte  Smith 

1749-1806 

Poet  and  novelist,  was  born  at  London,  May  4,  1749.  Married  Benjamin  Smith, 
Feb.  23,  1765.  Published  "Elegiac  Sonnets  and  other  Essays,"  1784;  second  edition 
same  year,  and  a  fifth  edition  1789.  Translated  ''Manon  Lescaut,"  1785,  and  wrote 
the  "Romance  of  Real  Life,"  1786.  Her  first  novel,  "Emmeline,"  published  1788; 
"TheOld  Manor  House,"  1793.    Other  works  by  Charlotte  Smithare:  1.  "Ethelinde, 


CHARLOTTE  SMITH 


49? 


or  the  Recluse  of  the  Lake/'  5  vols.  1790 ;  2nd  edit.  1814.  2.  '*The  Banished  Man/' 
4  vols.  1794.  3.  "Montalbert,"  1795.  4.  ^'Marchmont."  5.  Rural  Walks." 
6.  ''Rambles  Farther,"  1796.  7.  "Minor  Morals  interspersed  with  Sketches,"  2 
vols.  1798;  other  editions,  1799,  1800,  1816,  1825.  8.  "The  Young  Philosopher," 
anovel,  1798.  9.  "The Solitary  Wanderer,"  1799.  10.  "Beachy  Head,"  a  poem, 
1807.— MouLTON,  Charles  Wells,  1902. 


PERSONAL 

But  every  one,  whether  of  sad  or  gay 
temperament,  must  regret  that  the  tone 
of  melancholy  which  pervades  Mrs.  Smith's 
compositions  was  derived  too  surely  from 
the  circumstances  and  feelings  of  the 
amiable  authoress.  We  are  indeed,  in- 
formed by  Mrs.  Dorset  that  the  natural 
temper  of  her  sister  was  lively  and  playful ; 
but  it  must  be  considered  that  the  works  on 
which  she  was  obliged,  often  reluctantly, 
to  labour,  were  seldom  undertaken  from 
free  choice.  Nothing  saddens  the  heart 
so  much  as  that  sort  of  literary  labour 
which  depends  upon  the  imagination,  when 
it  is  undertaken  unwillingly,  and  from  a 
sense  of  compulsion.  The  galley-slave 
may  sing  when  he  is  unchained,  but  it 
would  be  uncommon  equanimity  which 
could  induce  him  to  do  so  when  he  is 
actually  bound  to  his  oar.  If  there  is  a 
mental  drudgery  which  lowers  the  spirits 
and  lacerates  the  nerves,  like  the  toil 
of  the  slave,  it  is  that  which  is  exacted 
by  literary  composition  when  the  heart 
is  not  in  unison  with  the  work  upon 
which  the  head  is  employed.  Add  to  the 
unhappy  author's  task,  sickness,  sorrow, 
or  the  pressure  of  unfavourable  circum- 
stances, and  the  labour  of  the  bondsman 
becomes  light  in  comparison. — Scott,  Sir 
Walter,  1823?  Charlotte  Smith,  Mis- 
eellanies. 

SONNETS 

I  did  not  see  Charlotte  Smith's  "Son- 
nets" until  after  I  had  published  my  own ; 
but  when  I  met  with  them  they  filled  me 
with  delight,  and  to  this  day  I  equally  ad- 
mire them. — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Eger- 
ton,  1834,  Autobiography,  vol.  I,  p.  63. 

I  will,  however,  first  prelude  my  ex- 
amples from  her  by  two  sonnets  from  an 
earlier  writer,  Charlotte  Smith,  whose 
productions  in  this  stanza  are  not  only 
numerous,  but  of  such  elegance  and  merit 
as  to  command  the  homage  of  all  who  are 
interested  in  the  history  of  its  growth  and 
development. —  Deshler,  Charles  D., 
1879,  Afternoons  With  the  Poets,  p,  253. 

The  unmitigable  woe  with  which  Mrs. 
Smith's  poems  are  filled,  together  with 

32  c 


their  factitious  and  second-hand  phrase- 
ology,  renders  them  unpalatable  to  a 
generation  so  much  healthier  than  that  in 
which  they  were  produced ;  yet  we  must 
respect  the  opinion  of  so  admirable  a  critic 
as  Wordsworth,  who  described  her  as  a  "a 
lady  to  whom  English  verse  is  under 
greater  obligations  than  are  likely  to  be 
either  acknowledged  or  remembered." 
"She  wrote  little,"  he  continues,  "and 
that  little  unambitiously,  but  with  true 
feeling  for  rural  Nature,  at  a  time  when 
Nature  was  not  much  regarded  by  English 
Poets;  for  in  point  of  time  her  earlier 
writings  preceded,  I  believe,  those  of 
Cowper  and  Burns."  Her  Sonnets,  about 
which  some  of  their  old  sweetness  still 
lingers,  like  the  perfume  of  dried  flowers, 
have  been  repeatedly  praised  by  Dyce. — 
Main,  David  M.,  1879,  ed.,  A  Treasury 
of  English  Sonnets,  p.  358. 

When  Bowles  first  published  his  sonnets 
he  was  accused  of  having  imitated  those 
of  Charlotte  Smith.  In  what  high  estima- 
tion this  lady's  work  was  still  held  nearly 
thirty  years  after  her  death,  may  be 
gathered  from  the  fact  that  the  late  Rev. 
Alexander  Dyce  included  no  fewer  than 
nine  of  her  sonnets  in  his  Selection,  whereas 
he  only  gives  one  by  Keats,  and  entirely 
omits  those  of  Shelley  and  Byron. — Wad- 
dington,  Samuel,  1882,  English  Sonnets 
by  Poets  of  the  Past,  p.  229. 

GENERAL 

A  lady  to  whom  English  verse  is  under 
greater  obligations  than  are  likely  to  be 
either  acknowledged  or  remembered.  She 
wrote  little,  and  that  little  unambitiously, 
but  with  true  feeling  for  rural  Nature,  at  a 
time  when  Nature  was  not  much  regarded 
by  English  Poets ;  for  in  point  of  time  her 
earlier  writings  preceded,  I  believe,  those 
of  Cowper  and  Burns. —  Wordsworth, 
William,  1833,  St.  Bees'  Heads,  note. 

Some  of  her  novels  will  last,  and  her 
sonnets  with  them,  each  perhaps  aided  by 
the  other.  There  is  nothing  great  in  her ; 
but  she  is  natural  and  touching,  and  has 
hit,  in  the  music  of  her  sorrows,  upon  some 
of  those  chords,  which  have  been  awakened 


498 


SMITH— FOX 


equally,  though  not  so  well,  in  all  human 
bosoms. — Hunt,  Leigh,  1847,  British 
Poetesses,  Men,  Women  and  Books,  vol.  ii, 
p.  119. 

Did  you  ever  read  any  of  Charlotte 
Smith's  novels?  Except  that  they  want 
cheerfulness,  nothing  can  exceed  the 
beauty  of  the  style.  Whenever  Erskine 
had  a  great  speech  to  make  he  used  to 
read  her  works,  that  he  might  catch  their 
grace  of  composition. — Mitford,  Mary 
Russell,  1854,  To  Mrs.  Jennings,  Nov. 
29 ;  Life,  ed.  U Estrange,  vol.  ii,  /?.  358. 

Her  poetical  compositions  are  distin- 
guished by  an  easy  grace.  A  sweet 
melancholy,  never  morbid  though  settled, 
but  chastened  by  a  hopeful  piety,  sheds  a 
touching  charm  over  her  verses.  She  had 
a  keen  perception  of  natural  beauty,  and 
her  descriptions  of  rural  scenery  or  culti- 
vated gardens  are  ever  true  and  full  of 
sentiment.  Some  of  her  sonnets  are 
among  the  best  of  the  second  class  in  our 
language,  and  a  volume  of  them,  we  are 
told,  ''passed  through  eleven  editions, 
besides  being  translated  into  French  and 
Italian. "  We  have  given  a  longer  sketch 
of  this  interesting  lady  than  of  some 
others,  because  her  writings,  though 
marked  with  elegance,  judgment  and 
natural  beauty,  have  fallen  into  such  un- 
deserved neglect,  that  they  are  rarely 
found  except  in  libraries  of  collectors. — 
Bethune,  George  Washington,  1848, 
The  British  Female  Poets. 

Few  women  have  ever  possessed  greater 
advantages  of  capacity  and  ability,  of 


acquirement  and  influence.  Her  faculties 
were  of  no  common  kind.  Her  mind  had 
naturally  great  scope,  comprising  the  high 
imaginative  power  of  an  inborn  poet,  with 
the  accuracy  of  detail  and  sound  common 
sense  which  constitute  the  woman  of 
business  and  worldly  wisdom.  To  her  be- 
longed also  that  attribute  of  noble  natures, 
pervading  sincerity;  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  her  every-day  existence  being 
the  opinions  and  sentiments  of  her  prose 
and  poetry.  There  is  that  charm  in  her 
poetry  which  belongs  only  to  genius.  The 
tone  is  too  monotonous,  the  spirit  too 
querulous;  it  wants  the  exulting  and 
exalting  notes  of  the  caroller  who  soars 
to  the  skies  and  dwells  blissfully  in  the 
turf,  yet  it  has  a  sort  of  ravishment  like 
the  nightingale's  strains,  ever  pleasing 
though  plaintive. — Williams,  Jane,  1861, 
The  Literary  W omen  of  England,  p.  224. 

She  was  among  the  most  prolific  novel- 
ists of  her  time,  but  only  one  work,  ''The 
Old  Manor  House, ' '  enjoyed  more  than  a 
passing  reputation,  or  has  any  claim  to 
particular  mention  here.  The  chief  merit 
of  Charlotte  Smith's  novels  lies  in  their 
descriptions  of  scenery,  an  element  only 
just  entering  into  the  work  of  the  novelist. 
— Tuckerman,  Baynard,  1882,  A  History 
of  English  Prose  Fiction,  p,  257. 

As  a  novelist  she  shows  skill  in  portray- 
ing character,  but  the  deficiencies  of  the 
plots  render  her  novels  tedious.  Her 
English  style  is  good.— Lee,  Elizabeth, 
1898,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  Liii,  p.  29. 


Charles  James  Fox 

1749-1806 

Third  son  of  the  first  Lord  Holland,  was  born  in  London,  24th  January  1749,  and 
educated  at  Eton  and  Hertford  College,  Oxford,  spending  his  vacations  in  the  gayest 
circles  of  the  French  capital.  Even  as  a  schoolboy  he  led  an  irregular  life,  but  was 
distinguished  for  ability ;  at  nineteen  his  father  had  him  brought  into  parliament  as 
member  for  Midhurst.  Soon  after  he  attained  his  majority  he  came  forward  as  a  sup- 
porter of  Lord  North,  and  was  made  a  lord  of  Admirality.  In  1772  he  resigned,  but  next 
year  was  named  a  commissioner  of  the  Treasury.  Dismissed  from  that  post  in  1775 
after  another  quarrel  with  Lord  North,  he  passed  over  to  the  ranks  of  the  opposition, 
and  during  the  American  war  was  the  most  formidable  opponent  of  the  coercive  meas- 
ures of  government.  After  the  downfall  of  North  (1782),  Fox  was  one  of  the  secre- 
taries of  State  till  the  death  of  the  Marquis  of  Piockingham.  In  1783  the  North  and 
Fox  coalition  was  formed,  and  Fox  resumed  his  former  office ;  but  the  rejection  of  his 
India  Bill  by  the  House  of  Lords  led  to  the  resignation  of  his  government.  Now  Pitt 
came  into  power,  and  the  long  contest  between  him  and  Fox  began.  The  sudden  illness 
of  the  king  in  1788  and  the  need  for  a  regency  recalled  Fox  from  a  visit  to  Gibbon  at 
Lausanne  and  to  Italy.    The  regency,  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  and  the  French 


LIBhArfY 

OF  THfe 

UNIVERSITY  of  ILLINOIS. 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


499 


Revolution  gave  ample  scope  to  the  talents  and  energies  of  Fox,  who  employed  his 
influence  to  modify,  if  not  to  counteract,  the  policy  of  his  great  rival.  He  was  a 
strenuous  opponent  of  the  war  with  France,  and  an  advocate  of  non-intervention. 
After  Pitt's  death  in  January  1806,  Fox,  recalled  to  office,  set  on  foot  negotiations 
for  a  peace  with  France.  He  was  on  the  point  of  introducing  a  bill  for  the  abolition 
of  the  slave-trade,  when  he  died  at  Chiswick,  13th  September  1806.  He  was  buried, 
near  Pitt,  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Fox  was  a  hard  liver,  addicted  to  gambling  and 
drinking;  his  bearing  towards  his  opponents  was  generous.  Burke  called  him  *'the 
greatest  debater  the  world  ever  saw." — Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's 
Biographical  bidionary,  p.  375. 


PERSONAL 

I  believe  there  never  was  a  person  yet 
created  who  had  the  faculty  of  reason- 
ing like  him.  His  judgments  are  never 
wrong;  his  decision  is  formed  quicker 
than  any  man's  I  ever  conversed  with; 
and  he  never  seems  to  mistake  but  in  his 
own  affairs. — Carlisle,  Earl  of,  1772? 
Letter  to  George  Selwyn,  George  Selwyn  and 
His  Contemporaries,  vol.  ill,  p.  23. 

Fox  is  a  most  extraordinary  man ;  here 
is  a  man  .  .  .  who  has  divided  the 
Kingdom  with  Caesar;  so  that  it  was  a 
doubt  whether  the  nation  should  be  ruled 
by  the  sceptre  of  George  the  Third,  or  the 
tongue. of  Fox.— Johnson,  Samuel,  1784, 
Life  by  Boswell,  ed.  Hill,  vol,  iv,  p.  337. 

I  beg  you  would  assure  him  that  my  ex- 
pressions of  esteem  for  him  are  not  mere 
professions.  I  really  think  him  a  great 
man,  and  I  should  not  think  so,  if  I  did 
not  believe  he  was  at  bottom,  and  would 
prove  himself,  a  good  one. — Franklin, 
Benjamin,  1783,  Letter  to  David  Hartley, 
Works,  ed.  Sparks,  vol.  x,  p.  i. 

Mr.  Fox  is  in  a  very  bad  state  of  health. 
His  rapid  journeys  to  England,  on  the 
news  of  the  king's  illness,  have  brought 
on  him  a  violent  complaint  in  the  bowels, 
which  will,  it  is  imagined,  prove  mortal. 
However,  if  it  should,  it  will  vindicate  his 
character  from  the  general  report  that  he 
has  no  bowels,  as  has  been  most  strenu- 
ously asserted  by  his  creditors. — Mon- 
tagu, Elizabeth,  1788,  Letter,  Dec.;  A 
Lady  of  the  Last  Century,  p.  346. 

I  have  eat,  and  drank,  and  conversed, 
and  sat  up  all  night  with  Fox  in  England ; 
but  it  never  has  happened,  perhaps  it  never 
can  happen  again,  that  I  should  enjoy  him, 
as  I  did  that  day,  alone,  from  ten  in  the 
morning  till  ten  at  night.  We  had  little 
politics;  though  he  gave  me  in  a  few 
words  such  a  character  of  Pitt  as  one 
great  man  should  give  of  another  his  rival ; 
much  of  books,  from  my  own,  on  which  he 


flattered  me  very  pleasantly,  to  Homer  and 
the  'Arabian  Nights;  much  about  the 
country,  my  garden,  (which  he  understands 
far  better  than  I  do) ;  and,  upon  the  whole, 
I  think  he  envies  me,  and  would  do  so 
were  he  minister.— Gibbon,  Edward,  1788, 
Correspondence,  Oct.  4,  p.  331. 

He,  too,  is  fall'n,  who  Britain's  loss  supplied, 
With  him  our  fast- reviving  hopes  have  died ; 
Not  one  great  people  only  raise  his  urn, 
All  Europe's  far-extending  regions  mourn. 
"These  feelings  wide,  let  sense  and  truth 
undue, 

To  give  the  palm  where  Justice  points  it's 
due:" 

Yet  let  not  canker' d  Calumny  assail, 
Or  round  our  statesmen  wind  her  gloomy 
veil. 

Fox!  o'er  whose  corse  a  mourning  world 

must  weep. 
Whose  dear  remains  in  honor 'd  marble  sleep ; 
For  whom,  at  last,  e'en  hostile  nations  groan, 
While  friends  and  foes  alike  his  talents  own  ; 
Fox  shall  in  Britain's  future  annals  shine. 
Nor  e'en  to  Pitt  the  patriot's  palm  resign; 
Which  envy,  wearing  Candor's  sacred  mask, 
For  Pitt,  and  Pitt  alone,  has  dared  to  ask. 
— Byron,  Lord,  1806,  On  the  Death  of 
Mr.  Fox. 

Mr.  Fox,  though  not  an  adept  in  the  use  of 
political  wiles,  was  very  unlikely  to  be  the 
dupe  of  them.  He  was  conversant  in  the 
ways  of  man,  as  well  as  in  the  contents 
of  books.  He  was  acquainted  with  the 
peculiar  language  of  states,  their  peculiar 
forms,  and  the  grounds  and  effects  of  their 
peculiar  usages.  From  his  earliest  youth 
he  had  investigated  the  science  of  politics 
on  the  greater  and  smaller  scale ;  he  had 
studied  it  in  the  records  of  history,  both 
popular  and  rare, — in  the  conferences  of 
ambassadors, — in  the  archives  of  royal  cab- 
inets,— in  the  minuter  detail  of  memoirs 
— and  in  collected  or  straggling  anecdotes 
of  the  wrangles,  intrigues,  and  cabals, 
which,  springing  up  in  the  secret  recesses 
of  courts,  shed  their  baneful  influence  on 
the   determination  of  sovereigns,  the 


500 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


fortune  of  favourites  and  the  tranquility 
of  kingdoms. — Parr,  Samuel,  1807,  Char- 
acter of  Charles  James  Fox,  Works y  vol. 
IV,  p.  40. 

Genius  and  taste,  and  talent  gone, 

Forever  tombed  beneath  the  stone, 

Where — taming  thought  to  human  pride — 

The  mighty  chiefs  sleep  side  by  side. 

Drop  upon  Fox's  grave  the  tear, 

'Twill  trickle  to  his  rival's  bier. 

O'er  Pitt's  the  mournful  requiem  sound, 

And  Fox's  shall  the  notes  rebound. 

The  solemn  echo  seems  to  cry, — 

"Here  let  their  discord  with  them  die. 

Speak  not  for  those  a  separate  doom 

Whom  fate  made  brothers  in  the  tomb ; 

But  search  the  land  of  living  men, 

Where  wilt  thou  find  their  like  again?" 

— Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1808,  Marmion, 
Canto  /.,  Introduction. 

I  have  never  seen  Mr.  Fox  more  per- 
fectly happy  than  when  we  were  quite 
alone.  Pie  was  so  utterly  divested  of  a 
wish  to  shine,  or  of  any  appetite  for  flat- 
tery, that  he  in  no  manner  required,  what 
is  called,  company,  to  enliven  or  animate 
him.  A  lover  of  nature,  and  consequently 
an  enemy  to  art,  he  held,  I  think,  above 
every  quality,  sincerity,  and  unaffected- 
ness ;  and,  being  also  of  a  character  singu- 
larly domestic  and  amiable,  he  found  in 
his  little  circle  all  he  wished  and  wanted. 
To  his  other  attainments  he  had  added 
very  considerable  knowledge  in  Botany ; 
and  without  making  it  a  primary  object, 
enjoyed  every  pursuit  connected  with  agri- 
culture, in  a  high  degree. — Trotter,  John 
Bernard,  1812,  Memoirs  of  the  Latter 
Years  of  Charles  James  Fox,  p.  35. 

In  London  mixed  society  Pox  conversed 
little ;  but  at  his  own  house  in  the  country, 
with  his  intimate  friends,  he  would  talk 
on  forever,  with  all  the  openness  and 
simplicity  of  a  child:  he  has  continued 
talking  to  me  for  half-an-hour  after  he  had 
taken  up  his  bed-room  candle. — I  have 
seen  it  somewhere  stated  that  Pox  liked  to 
talk  about  great  people :  nothing  can  be 
more  untrue;  he  hardly  ever  alluded  to 
them. — Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollec- 
tions of  Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  p.  74. 

Nature  bestowed  on  Mr.  Pox  the  quali- 
ties which  are  certain  to  command  distinc- 
tion in  popular  assemblies.  He  possessed 
in  the  highest  degree  the  temperament  of 
the  orator,  which,  equal  to  the  poet's  in 
the  intensity  of  feeling,  is  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  poet's  in  the  direction  to 


which  its  instincts  impel  it.  .  .  .  Mr. 
Pox  might  have  spent  the  night  in  a  gam- 
ing-house, hurried  off  to  Newmarket  at 
daybreak,  returned  just  in  time  to  open  a 
debate  in  the  House  of  Commons — but  who 
shall  say  that  during  those  hours  he  had 
found  no  intervals  in  which  his  reason  was 
arranging  a  course  of  argument,  and  his 
memory  suggesting  the  appropriate  witti- 
cism or  the  felicitous  allusion?  .  .  . 
Those,  indeed,  notably  err,  who,  judging 
only  by  the  desultory  social  habits  and 
dissipated  tastes  of  Mr.  Fox,  conclude  that 
his  faculties  attained  their  strength  with- 
out the  necessary  toil  of  resolute  exertion. 
— Lytton,  Edward  Bulwer  Lord,  1855- 
68,  Pitt  and  Fox,  Miscellaneous  Prose 
Works,  vol.  I,  pp.  224,  225. 

There  is  one  man,  Charles  Pox,  happy 
from  his  cradle,  who  learned  everything 
without  study,  whom  his  father  trained  in 
prodigality  and  recklessness,  whom,  from 
the  age  of  twenty-one,  the  public  voice 
proclaimed  as  the  first  in  eloquence  and 
the  leader  of  a  great  party,  liberal, 
humane,  sociable,  faithful  to  these  gener- 
ous expectations,  whose  very  enemies 
pardoned  his  faults,  whom  his  friends 
adored,  whom  labour  never  wearied,  whom 
rivals  never  embittered,  whom  power  did 
not  spoil ;  a  lover  of  converse,  of  litera- 
ture, of  pleasure,  who  has  left  the  impress 
of  his  rich  genius  in  the  persuasive 
abundance,  in  the  fine  character,  the 
clearness  and  continuous  ease  of  his 
speeches. — Taine,  H.  A.,  1871,  History 
of  English  Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun,  vol. 
II,  bk.  iii,  ch.  iii,  p.  80. 

It  was  an  end  which  would  better  have 
become  a  serious  Christian.  But  it  is  not 
for  us  to  pass  sentence  on  a  man  so  be- 
nevolent in  his  dispositions  and  designs. 
We  may  rather  be  surprised  at  his  possess- 
ing so  much  virtue,  not  having  the  gift 
of  faith.  We  may  hope  that  his  good 
deeds,  his  gratitude  to  all  who  had  ever 
served  him,  his  constant  uneasiness  till  he 
had  repaid  their  kindness,  his  uniform 
longing  for  peace,  and  his  general  philan- 
thropy, have  been  taken  into  account  by 
the  Merciful  Judge  who  makes  allowances 
for  all.  ' '  Perhaps  no  human  being, ' '  said 
Gibbon,  ''was  evermore  perfectly  exempt 
from  the  taint  of  malevolence,  vanity,  of 
falsehood." — Earle,  John  Charles,  1871, 
English  Premiers,  vol.  I,  p.  332. 

Our  first  great  statesman  of  the  modern 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


501 


school.  ...  He  was  not  a  political 
adventurer,  but  a  knight-errant  roaming 
about  in  search  of  a  tilt,  or,  still  better, 
of  a  melee;  and  not  much  caring  whether 
his  foes  were  robbers  or  true  men,  if  only 
there  were  enough  of  them.  He  was  one 
who,  in  a  venal  age,  looked  to  something 
besides  the  main  chance;  who,  when  he 
had  set  his  mind  or  his  fancy  on  an  enter- 
prise, never  counted  the  odds  that  he 
faced,  or  the  hundreds  a  year  that  he  for- 
feited. But  with  all  these  generous  gifts, 
his  education  and  his  circumstances  almost 
proved  too  much  for  him ;  and  it  was  the 
instinct  of  moral  self-preservation  which 
drove  him  to  detach  himself  from  his  early 
surroundings,  and  find  safety  in  uncom- 
promising hostility  to  that  evil  system 
which  had  come  so  near  to  spoiling  him. 
"Are  wills  so  weak?  Then  let  not  mine  wait 
long. 

Hast  thou  so  rare  a  poison?  Let  me  be 
Keener  to  slay  thee,  lest  thou  poison  me." 

Such  is  the  temper  in  which,  fortunately 
for  mankind,  rare  and  noble  natures  have 
often  revolted  against  that  world  whose 
blighting  influence  they  had  begun  to  feel ; 
and  such  was  the  mood  of  Charles  Fox 
when,  sick  of  a  prison-house  whose  secrets 
had  so  early  been  familiar  to  him,  he  dis- 
solved his  partnership  with  Sandwich  and 
Wedderburn,  and  united  himself  to  Burke 
and  Chatham  and  Savile  in  their  crusade 
against  the  tyranny  which  was  trampling 
out  English  liberty  in  the  colonies,  and  the 
corruption  which  was  undermining  it  at 
home. — Trevelyan,  George  Otto,  1880, 
The  Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox, 
pp.  1,  452. 

While  there  is  so  much  to  admire  and 
love  in  the  character  of  Fox  .  .  . 
there  is  no  man  of  his  own  or  perhaps  of 
any  age  who  presented  in  himself  more  to 
be  accepted  and  at  the  same  time  more  to 
be  avoided  as  an  example.  His  habits  of 
life  would  have  ruined  him  before  he 
had  matured  if  he  had  not  contracted  them 
innocently,  and  if  they  had  not  been  after- 
w^ard  controlled  to  some  extent  by  intel- 
lectual endowments  of  the  very  highest 
order.  Happily  the  number  of  parents 
who  train  children  as  Fox  was  trained  is 
very  limited,  and  unhappily  the  number 
born  with  such  marvelous  endowments  is 
still  more  limited.  He  is  therefore  to  be 
contemplated  rather  as  a  phenomenon  than 
model,  reminding  one  of  the  Pyramid  of 
Cheops,  so  imposing  in  its  dimensions,  so 


unique  in  all  its  proportions,  but  fitly  built 
in  a  wilderness,  and  not  a  model  upon 
which  a  school  of  architecture  can  ever 
be  founded.— Bigelow,  John,  1881,  The 
Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox,  Har- 
per's Magazine,  vol.  62,  p.  433. 

The  early  days  of  Fox  were  his  worst 
days.  Indeed,  in  the  opening  years  of  his 
life  it  is  not  so  easy  to  discover  the  great 
liberal  of  the  future.  Yet  like  all  the 
rest  of  Fox's  career  his  early  life  was 
typical.  He  inherited  the  doctrines  of 
his  father,  who  was,  perhaps,  as  bad  an 
example  as  could  be  found  of  all  the  polit- 
ical vices  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England.  Offices  and  blunders  were  the 
creed  of  the  first  Lord  Holland ;  and  his 
son,  making  himself  master  of  these  and 
backed  by  bought  majorities,  astonished 
the  House  of  Commons  by  his  brilliant, 
youthful  rhetoric,  attacking  what  was 
right  with  the  same  success  which  he  won 
in  later  years  when  he  denounced  what 
was  wrong.  It  was  the  way  of  the  world 
into  which  Charles  Fox  was  born,  and  he 
took  up  all  the  ways  of  that  world  with 
equal  extravagance  and  success. — Lodge, 
Henry  Cabot,  1881,  The  Early  Days  of 
Fox,  The  International  Review,  vol.  10, 
p.  281. 

That  a  man  of  whom  all  this  can  be  truly 
said  should  have  taken  a  high  and  honour- 
able place  in  English  history,  and  should 
have  won  for  himself  the  perennial  love 
and  loyalty  of  some  of  the  best  English- 
men of  his  time,  is  not  a  little  surprising, 
for  a  life  such  as  I  have  described  would 
with  most  men  have  destroyed  every  fibre 
of  intellectual  energy  and  of  moral  worth. 
But  in  truth  there  are  some  characters 
which  nature  has  so  happily  compounded 
that  even  vice  is  unable  wholly  to  degrade 
them,  and  there  is  a  charm  of  manner  and 
of  temper  which  sometimes  accompanies 
the  excesses  of  a  strong  animal  nature  that 
wins  more  popularity  in  the  world  than 
the  purest  and  the  most  self-denying 
virtue.  Of  this  truth  Fox  was  an  eminent 
example.  With  a  herculean  frame,  with 
iron  nerves,  with  that  happy  vividness  and 
buoyancy  of  temperament  that  can  ever 
throw  itself  passionately  into  the  pursuits 
and  the  impressions  of  the  hour,  and  can 
then  cast  them  aside  without  an  effort,  he 
combined  one  of  the  sweetest  of  human 
tempers,  one  of  the  warmest  of  human 
hearts.    Nothing  in  his  career  is  more 


502 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


remarkable  than  the  spell  which  he  cast 
over  men  who  in  character  and  principles 
were  as  unlike  as  possible  to  himself. 
— Lecky,  William  Edward  Hartpole, 
1882,  A  History  of  England  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  vol.  iii,  eh.  xiii,  p.  507. 

In  the  duel  between  Fox  (who  was  a  very 
stout  man)  and  Adam,  so  soon  as  the 
ground  had  been  measured,  Fitzgerald 
(second  of  the  former)  said,  *'You  must 
stand  sideways,  Mr.  Fox,  as  much  as  you 
can."  ''Why  so?"  asked  the  statesman; 
''I  am  as  thick  one  way  as  the  other." 
—Truman,  Ben  C,  1884,  The  Field  of 
Honor,  p.  554. 

''Carlo Khan."  "A  Hercules."  "The 
Last  of  the  Romans."  "The  Man  of  the 
People."  "Niger."  "The  Young  Cub."— 
Frey,  Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobriquets  and 
Nicknames,  p.  407. 

As  a  young  man  Fox  was  strongly 
built ;  his  frame  was  large,  and  he  had  a 
handsome  face,  bright  eyes,  high  colour, 
and  black  hair.  He  soon  became  very 
stout,  and  his  enemies  considered  that  in 
manhood  his  swarthy  countenance  had  a 
"saturnine"  aspect,  but  his  smile  was 
always  pleasant.  From  childhood  he  was 
courted  for  his  gaiety,  originality,  and 
genius.  He  was  perfectly  good-natured, 
eager,  warm-hearted,  and  unselfish.  With 
great  natural  abilities,  a  singular  quick- 
ness of  apprehension,  and  a  retentive 
memory,  he  combined  the  habit  of  doing 
all  things  with  his  might.  He  was,  as  he 
said,  a  "very  painstaking  man,"  and  even 
when  secretary  of  state  wrote  copies  for 
a  writing-master  to  improve  his  hand- 
writing. He  delighted  in  literature  and 
art,  his  critical  faculty  was  acute,  and  his 
taste  cultivated.  Poetry  was  to  him ' '  the 
best  thing  after  all,"  and  he  declared 
that  he  loved  "all  the  poets." — Hunt, 
William,  1889,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  XX,  p.  95. 

Indeed  we  can  only  account  for  his  great 
successes  as  an  orator,  his  amazing  repute, 
and  his  exceptional  popularity,  when  we 
sum  up  a  half  score  of  contributory  causes, 
which  lie  outside  of  the  cold  print  of  the 
Parliamentary  record;  among  these,  we 
count — his  Holland  wealth  and  training, 
his  environments  of  rank  and  luxury,  his 
picturesque  bearing,  his  bonhomie,  his 
scorn  of  the  rank  he  held,  his  accessibility 
to  all,  his  outspoken,  democratic  sym- 
pathies, that  warmed  him  into  outbursts 


of  generous  passion,  his  fearlessness,  his 
bearding  of  the  king,  his  earnestness  when- 
ever afoot,  his  very  shortcomings  too,  and 
the  crowding  disabilities  that  grew  out  of 
his  trust— his  simplicities— his  lack  of 
forethought,  his  want  of  moneyed  pru- 
dence, his  free-handedness,  his  little,  un- 
failing, every-day  kindnesses— these  all 
backed  his  speeches  and  put  a  tender 
under- tone,  and  a  glow,  and  a  drawing 
power  in  them,  which  we  look  for  vainly 
in  the  rhetoric  or  the  argumentation. — 
Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1895,  English 
Lands  Letters  and  Kings,  Queen  Anne  and 
The  Georges,  p.  191. 

It  was  surely  in  an  evil  hour  for  himself 
that  Burke  became  connected  with  Charles 
Fox.  Charles  Fox  had  fine  impulses, 
though  love  of  his  own  country  was  not 
one  of  them.  It  is  not  less  certain  that 
he  was  a  most  powerful  debater,  if  in  the 
reports  of  his  speeches  little  of  the  fire 
is  left.  His  social  charms  were  also 
evidently  great,  and  won  him  ardent 
friends.  But  his  character  had  been 
formed  at  the  gambling  table,  and  Napo- 
leon w^as  right  in  saying  that  he  would 
never,  if  he  could  help  it,  employ  a  gam- 
bler. The  recklessness  of  the  gambling 
table  was  brought  by  Fox  into  the  arena 
of  public  life.  .  .  .  Fox,  indolent, 
and  ostentatiously  ignorant  of  economy 
and  finance,  while  he  aspired  to  the 
government  of  a  great  commercial  coun- 
try, would,  of  course,  welcome  the  in- 
dustry and  knowledge  of  Burke;  while 
Burke  would  be  drawn  to  Fox  by  Fox's 
lovable  qualities,  perhaps  by  his  high  con- 
nections, perhaps  by  the  very  dissimilarity 
of  their  character  and  gifts.  Fox's  vio- 
lence in  his  opposition  to  North,  which 
went  almost  to  the  length  of  treason,  had 
the  eff'ect,  as  a  good  observer  remarked,  of 
confirming  the  obstinacy  of  the  Govern- 
ment and  prolonging  the  American  war. 
Burke,  as  Fox's  associate,  must  in  some 
measure  share  the  blame. — Smith,  Gold- 
win,  1896,  Burke,  Cornhill  Magazine, 
vol.  74,  pp.  22,  23. 

SPEECHES 
Vehement  in  his  elocution,  ardent  in 
his  language,  prompt  in  his  invention 
of  arguments,  adroit  in  its  use,  com- 
prehensive in  his  view  of  the  given  sub- 
ject, and  equal  to  his  political  rival  in 
the  power  of  agitating  the  passions ;  but 
offending  continually  by  the  tautology  of 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


503 


his  diction  and  the  repetition  of  his  argu- 
ments. He  feels  this  himself  so  much,  as 
to  think  it  necessary  to  vindicate  it  in 
private.  And  he  so  feels  also  his  own  in- 
feriority in  the  selection  of  appropriate 
terms,  that  he  says,  ''although  he  himself 
is  never  in  want  of  words,  Mr.  Pitt  is 
never  without  the  best  words  possible." — 
Abbot,  Charles  (Lord  Colchester),  1795, 
Diary  and  Correspondence,  vol.  I,  p.  23. 

Paramount  as  he  is  in  ability  and  in 
political  eloquence  beyond  any  man.— 
Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The  Pur- 
suits of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  252. 

Fox  is  the  most  illustrious  model  of  a 
Parliamentary  Leader,  on  the  side  of 
liberty,  that  this  country  has  produced. 
This  character  is  the  appropriate  glory  of 
England,  and  Fox  is  the  proper  example 
of  this  character.  .  .  .  Fox,  as  an 
orator,  appeared  to  come  immediately 
from  the  forming  hand  of  nature.  He 
spoke  well,  because  he  felt  strongly  and 
earnestly.  His  oratory  was  impetuous  as 
the  current  of  the  river  Rhone ;  nothing 
could  arrest  its  course.  His  voice  would 
insensibly  rise  to  too  high  a  key;  he 
would  run  himself  out  of  breath.  Every- 
thing showed  how  little  artifice  there  was 
in  his  eloquence.  Though  on  all  great 
occasions  he  was  throughout  energetic, 
yet  it  was  by  sudden  flashes  and  emana- 
tions that  he  electrified  the  heart,  and 
shot  through  the  blood  of  his  hearer.  I 
have  seen  his  countenance  lighted  up  with 
more  than  mortal  ardour  and  goodness ;  I 
have  been  present  when  his  voice  has  be- 
come suffocated  with  the  sudden  bursting 
forth  of  a  torrent  of  tears. — Godwin, 
William,  1806,  Morning  Chronicle,  Wil- 
liam Godwin,  ed.  Paul,  vol.  ii,  pp.  153,  156. 

For  ourselves,  we  think  we  never  heard 
any  man  who  dismissed  us  from  the  argu- 
ment on  a  debated  topic  with  such  a  feel- 
ing of  satisfied  and  final  conviction,  or  such 
a  competence  to  tell  why  we  were  con- 
vinced. There  was,  in  the  view  in  which 
subjects  were  placed  by  him,  something 
like  the  daylight,  that  simple  clearness 
which  makes  things  conspicuous  and  does 
not  make  them  glare,  which  adds  no  colour 
or  form,  but  purely  makes  visible  in  per- 
fection the  real  colour  and  form  of  all 
things  round ;  a  kind  of  light  less  amusing 
than  that  of  magnificent  lusters  or  a 
thousand  coloured  lamps,  and  less  fascinat- 
ing and  romantic  than  that  of  the  moon. 


but  which  is  immeasurably  preferred  when 
we  are  bent  on  sober  business,  and  not  at 
leisure,  or  not  in  the  disposition  to  wander 
delighted  among  beautiful  shadows  and 
delusions.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  Fox 
possessed  in  a  high  degree  wit  and  fancy ; 
but  superlative  intellect  was  the  grand  dis- 
tinction of  his  eloquence ;  the  pure  force 
of  sense,  of  plain,  downright  sense  was 
so  great,  that  it  would  have  given  a  char- 
acter of  sublimity  to  his  eloquence,  even 
if  it  had  never  once  been  aided  by  a  happy 
image  or  a  brilliant  explosion.  The 
grandeur  of  plain  sense  would  not  have 
been  deemed  an  absurd  phrase,  by  any  man 
who  had  heard  one  of  Fox's  best  speeches. 
— Foster,  John,  1808,  Personal  Virtue 
in  its  Relation  to  Political  Eminence,  Crit- 
ical Essays,  ed.  Ryland,  vol.  i,  p.  158. 

Pitt  I  never  heard :  Fox  but  once,  and 
then  he  struck  me  as  a  debater,  which  to 
me  seems  as  different  from  an  orator  as 
an  improvisatore,  or  a  versifier,  from  a 
poet. — Byron,  Lord,  1813,  Journal,  Life 
by  Moore. 

This  extraordinary  person,  then,  in 
rising  generally  to  speak,  had  evidently 
no  more  premeditated  the  particular  lan- 
guage he  should  employ,  nor  frequently 
the  illustrations  and  images  by  which  he 
should  discuss  and  enforce  his  subject,  than 
he  had  contemplated  the  hour  he  was  to 
die ;  and  his  exalted  merit  as  a  debater  in 
Parliament  did  not,  therefore,  consist  in 
the  length,  variety,  or  roundness  of  his 
periods;  but  in  the  truth  and  vigour  of 
his  conceptions ;  in  the  depth  and  extent 
of  his  information ;  in  the  retentive  powers 
of  his  memory,  which  enabled  him  to  keep 
in  constant  view,  not  only  all  he  had 
formerly  read  and  reflected  on,  but  every- 
thing said  at  the  moment,  and  even  at 
other  times,  by  the  various  persons  whose 
arguments  he  was  to  answer;  in  the 
faculty  of  spreading  out  his  matter  so 
clearly  to  the  grasp  of  his  own  mind,  as  to 
render  it  impossible  he  should  ever  fail  in 
the  utmost  clearness  and  distinctness  to 
others;  in  the  exuberant  fertility  of  his 
invention,  which  spontaneously  brought 
forth  his  ideas  at  the  moment,  in  every 
possible  shape  by  which  the  understanding 
might  sit  in  the  most  accurate  judgment 
upon  them ;  whilst,  instead  of  seeking 
afterwards  to  enforce  them  by  cold,  pre- 
meditated illustrations,  or  by  episodes, 
which,  however  beautiful,  only  distract 


504 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


attention,  he  was  accustomed  to  repass 
his  subject,  not  methodically ^  but  in  the 
most  unforeseen  and  fascinating  review, 
enlightening  every  part  of  it,  and  binding 
even  his  adversaries  in  a  kind  of  spell  for 
the  moment  of  involuntary  assent.  .  .  . 
He  possessed,  above  all  men  I  ever  knew, 
the  most  gentle  and  yet  the  most  ardent 
spirit — a  rare  and  happy  combination! 
He  had  nourished  in  his  mind  all  the  manly 
and  generous  sentiments,  which  are  the 
true  supports  of  the  social  world ;  he  was 
trembling  alive  to  every  kind  of  private 
wrong  or  suffering ;  and  from  the  habitual 
and  fervent  contemplation  of  the  just 
principles  of  government,  he  had  the  most 
bitter  and  unextinguishable  contempt  for 
the  low  arts  of  political  intrigue,  and  an 
indignant  abhorrence  of  every  species  of 
tyranny,  oppression,  and  injustice. — Er- 
SKiNE,  Lord,  1815,  Fox's  Speeches^  Letter 
to  the  Editor,  vol.  i. 

Fox  was  heedless  of  method ;  having  the 
complete  command  of  good  words,  he  never 
sought  for  better ;  if  those  which  occurred 
expressed  his  meaning  clearly  and  forcibly, 
he  paid  little  attention  to  their  arrange- 
ment or  harmony.  This  detracts  from  the 
merit  of  his  speeches  when  they  are  read ; 
but,  when  they  were  delivered,  it  perhaps 
added  to  their  effect,  as  it  tended  greatly  to 
make  the  hearers  believe  that  he  was  above 
art,  and  spoke  from  conviction.  .  .  .  The 
moment  of  his  grandeur  was,  when  he  had 
stated  the  argument  of  his  adversary,  with 
much  greater  strength  than  his  adversary 
had  done,  and  with  greater  than  his  hearers 
thought  possible,  he  seized  it  with  the 
strength  of  a  giant,  and  tore  and  trampled 
it  to  destruction. — Butler,  Charles, 
1822,  Reminiscences y  vol,  I,  pp.  158,  160. 

We  of  1858,  that  can  only  read  him, 
hearing  Fox  described  as  forcible,  are 
disposed  to  recollect  Shakspere's  Mr. 
Feeble  amongst  Falstaff's  recruits,  who 
also  is  described  as  forcible — viz.  as  the 
''most  forcible  Feeble.'^  And,  perhaps, 
a  better  description  could  not  be  de- 
vised for  Fox  himself:  so  feeble  was  he 
in  matter,  so  forcible  in  manner;  so 
powerful  for  instant  effect,  so  impotent 
for  posterity.  In  the  Pythian  fury  of  his 
gestures,  in  his  screaming  voice  (for  Fox's 
voice  was  shrill  as  a  woman's),  in  his 
directness  of  purpose.  Fox  would  now  re- 
mind you  of  some  demon  steam-engine  on 
a  railroad,  some  Fire-king  or  Salmoneus, 


that  had  counterfeited  Jove's  thunderr 
bolts, — hissing,  bubbling,  snorting,  fum- 
ing. Demonias  gas,  you  think,  gas  from 
Acheron,  must  feed  that  dreadful  system 
of  convulsions. — De  Quince y,  Thomas, 
1858,  Sehlossefs  Literary  History,  Works, 
ed.  Masson,  vol.  xi,  p.  35. 

While  Fox,  in  the  simplicity  and  the 
vehemence  of  his  reasoning,  might  bear 
comparison  with  Demosthenes,  his  speeches 
as  a  whole  show  more  distinctly  perhaps 
than  those  of  any  other  speaker  the  differ- 
ence between  Greek  and  British  oratory. 
A  speech  of  Demosthenes  resembles  a 
beautiful  Greek  temple ;  it  is  composed  of 
reasoning,  of  elegant  diction,  of  appeals 
to  the  patriotism  and  public  spirit  of  his 
hearers,  all  of  the  same  pure  material. 
We  admire  the  purity,  and  harmony,  the 
unity  and  grace  of  the  structure.  A 
speech  of  Fox  resembles  rather  a  cathedral 
of  Gothic  architecture.  The  strength  of 
the  buttresses,  the  grandeur  of  the  arches, 
the  painted  glass,  the  fretted  aisle,  these 
multiplied  and  fanciful  ornaments,  fill  the 
mind  with  admiration  and  delight.  .  .  . 
Pitt  used  to  say  that,  when  he  thought 
that  he  had  himself  done  better  than  usual, 
he  found  Fox,  in  reply,  surpass  his  ordi- 
nary vigour,  and  exceed  the  best  of  his 
former  efforts.  Wilberforce  is  reported 
to  have  declared  himself  always  convinced 
for  the  moment  by  Pitt  or  by  Fox,  and  in- 
clined to  give  the  palm  to  that  one  of  these 
two  orators  who  had  last  spoken. — Rus- 
sell, Earl,  1866,  The  Life  and  Times  of 
Charles  James  Fox,  vol.  iii,  pp.  388,  389. 

Though  a  statesman  of  the  first  order, 
yet  it  was  oratory  which  gave  to  Fox  an 
indisputable  preeminence  among  his  con- 
temporaries.' He  was  born  with  the 
oratorical  temperament;  from  youth  up- 
wards, his  ambition  was  to  become  a  great 
speaker.  He  was  endowed  with  an  under- 
standing of  exceeding  quickness,  with  an 
imagination  of  great  brilliancy,  with  feel- 
ing of  great  mobility  and  tenderness;  he 
had  read  much  in  the  ancient  and  modern 
languages;  a  retentive  memory  enabled 
him  to  utilize  his  vast  stores  of  informa- 
tion and  illustrations,  while  his  logical 
disposition  led  him  to  marshal  in  faultless 
symmetry  and  imposing  array  all  the  argu- 
ments he  adduced  to  prove  a  case  or  enforce 
a  proposition.  His  constant  appeal  was 
to  the  intellect,  and  his  aim  was  to  convince 
by  reasoning.    He  was  as  practical  as 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


505 


Demosthenes.  He  had  none  of  Cicero's 
besetting  anxiety  to  demonstrate,  when 
pleading  a  cause  or  advocating  a  policy, 
that  he  was  an  unrivalled  master  of  fine 
language.  No  contemporary  orator  was 
his  parallel.  Chatham  was  a  greater 
adept  in  dramatic  effects.  Burke  was  far 
more  ornate  and  profound.  William  Pitt 
poured  forth  sentences  infinitely  superior 
in  finish  and  melody.  Lord  North  was 
more  uniformly  witty ;  Charles  Townshend 
and  Sheridan  were  more  uniformly  bril- 
liant. None,  however,  among  the  elder 
or  younger  generation  of  speakers  suc- 
ceeded in  making  an  audience  feel,  as  Fox 
did,  that  they  were  listening  to  arguments 
which  could  not  be  refuted,  and  to  common 
sense  it  was  hardly  possible  to  gainsay. — 
Rae,  William  Fraser,  1873,  Wilkes, 
Sheridan,  Fox ;  The  Opposition  under 
George  the  III,  p.  420. 

Fox  was  a  great  speaker,  and,  in  the 
words  of  Burke,  the  greatest  debater  the 
world  ever  saw.  Not  place  or  power,  but 
reputation  as  an  orator,  was  the  object  of 
his  ambition,  as  he  declares  in  one  of  his 
earliest  letters  to  an  intimate  friend  and 
relation.  He  inspired  affection  rather 
than  admiration.  In  his  worst  days  an 
observer  said  of  his  party,  There  are  only 
forty  of  them,  but  every  one  of  them  is 
ready  to  be  hanged  for  Fox."  In  his 
earliest  days.  Lord  Mansfield  being  asked 
who  that  young  man  was  whom  he  saw  in 
Westminster  Hall,  answered,  *'That  is  the 
son  of  old  Harry  Fox,  with  twice  his  parts 
and  half  his  sagacity."  .  .  .  The 
errors  of  Fox — his  coalition  with  Lord 
North,  and  his  India  Bill — were  grave ;  but 
the  warmth  of  his  feelings  and  his  passion- 
ate love  of  liberty  should  obtain  for  his 
memory  indemnity  for  these  or  even 
greater  faults.  His  affectionate  temper, 
combined  with  his  love  of  liberty,  won  him 
the  attachment  of  devoted  friends.  His 
memory  ought  to  be  consecrated  in  the 
heart  of  every  lover  of  freedom  through- 
out the  globe. — Russell,  John  Earl, 
1874,  Recollections  and  Suggestions,  1813- 
1873,  pp.  219,  220. 

Fox  delivered  his  speeches  without  pre- 
vious preparation,  and  their  power  lay  not 
in  rhetorical  adornments,  but  in  the  vigour 
of  the  speaker's  thoughts,  the  extent  of 
his  knowledge,  the  quickness  with  which 
he  grasped  the  significance  of  each  point 
in  debate,  the  clearness  of  his  conceptions, 


and  the  remarkable  plainness  with  which 
he  laid  them  before  his  audience.  Even 
in  his  longest  speeches  he  never  strayed 
from  the  matter  in  hand ;  he  never  rose 
above  the  level  of  his  hearers'  understand- 
ing, was  never  obscure,  and  never  bored 
the  house.  Every  position  that  he  took 
up  he  defended  with  a  large  number  of 
shrewd  arguments,  plainly  stated  and  well 
ordered.  The  training  in  elocution  that 
he  had  received  at  Eton  and  his  practice 
as  an  amateur  actor  gave  him  confidence 
and  ease,  while  the  accuracy  and  readiness 
of  his  memory  supplied  him  with  a  store 
of  quotations,  and  rendered  him  never  at 
loss  for  a  word.  At  the  same  time  he  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  particularly  fluent 
until  he  became  warmed  with  his  subject ; 
then  he  spoke  with  a  stormy  eloquence 
which  carried  his  hearers  with  him.  His 
voice  was  naturally  poor,  and  though  he 
generally  modulated  it  skilfully,  he  was 
apt  when  excited  to  speak  with  shrillness. 
His  action  was  ungraceful.  His  attempts 
at  pathos  generally  failed ;  he  was  prone 
to  invective,  and  is  said  to  have  been  the 
wittiest  speaker  of  his  time.  Although 
some  of  his  speeches  introducing  subjects 
to  the  house  are  magnificent,  he  especially 
excelled  in  reply ;  for  great  as  he  was  as  an 
orator,  he  was  certainly  greater  in  debate. 
— Hunt,  William,  1889,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  XX,  p.  96. 

Pre-eminently  does  he  stand  out  as  the 
first  English  statesman  of  ministerial  rank 
who  appreciated  the  power  of  the  Plat- 
form, and  who  systematically  used  it. 
Whether  or  not  it  was  that  he  liked  it  for 
the  qualities  which  rendered  him  so  much 
more  fascinating  to  some  men  than  the 
House  of  Commons,  its  freedom,  its  en- 
thusiasm, its  applause,  certain  it  is  that 
he  was  constantly  addressing  public  meet- 
ings, so  constantly,  indeed,  as  to  earn  for 
himself  the  name  of  *'The  man  of  the 
people." — Jephson,  Henry,  1891,  The 
Platform,  Its  Rise  and  Progress,  voL  I, 
p.  224. 

It  may  be  said  once  for  all  that  Fox  was 
the  most  transcendant  of  all  debaters,  the 
most  genial  of  all  associates,  the  most  be- 
loved of  all  friends.  He  was  moreover, 
after  Burke,  the  most  lettered  politician 
in  a  generation  that  aflfected  literature. 
.  .  .  It  has  been  said  that  his  private 
life  was  conspicuously  disorderedc  And 
yet  even  \vhen  it  was  blamable  it  was 


506 


CHARLES  JAMES  FOX 


lovable,  and  it  mellowed  into  an  exquisite 
evening.  Whether  we  see  him  plunged 
in  Theocritus  after  a  bout  at  faro  which 
has  left  him  penniless;  or  cheerfully 
watching  the  baliffs  remove  his  last  stick 
of  furniture ;  or  drinking  with  the  jockey 
of  Norfolk ;  or  choosing  wild  waistcoats  at 
Paris ;  or  building  with  his  own  hands  his 
little  greenhouse  at  St.  Anne's  ;or  saunter- 
ing down  its  cool  glades  with  a  book  and  a 
friend ;  or  prone  without  either  under  a 
tree  in  the  long  summer  afternoons;  or 
watching  the  contests  of  Newmarket  with 
the  rapt  frenzy  of  a  boy;  or  chatting 
before  the  races  with  Windham  on  the 
horses  of  the  ancients  and  the  precise 
meaning  of  argutum  caput;  or  correspond- 
ing with  Gilbert  Wakefield  about  innumer- 
able other  niceties  of  classical  reading; 
or,  when  crippled  and  aged,  playing  trap- 
ball  with  the  children  and  with  more  than 
a  child's  keenness;  or  speechless  of 
generous  tears  in  the  House  of  Commons 
when  quivering  under  the  harsh  severance 
of  Burke ;  or  placid  on  his  deathbed  reas- 
suring his  wife  and  nephew; — he  stills 
exercises  over  us  something  of  the  un- 
bounded fascination  which  he  wielded  over 
his  contemporaries.  —  Rosebery,  Lord, 
1891,  Pitt  (Twelve  English  Statesmen), 
pp.  28,  32. 

HISTORY 

The  goodness  of  his  heart,  and  the 
grandeur  of  his  mind — the  just  medium  of 
his  opinions  between  the  crown  and  de- 
mocracy, and  his  warm  love  of  true  and 
rational  liberty,  are,  however,  indelibly 
recorded  in  a  work,  which  perhaps  came 
out  too  soon  after  his  death  to  be  justly 
appreciated ;  and  as  it  promoted  the  views 
of  none  of  the  parties  of  the  day,  it  is 
rather  to  be  considered  a  classic,  whose 
wholesome  tendency  and  purity  of  princi- 
ple, will  benefit  posterity,  than  amend 
the  present  generation. — Trotter,  John 
Bernard,  1812,  Memoirs  of  the  Latter 
Year  of  Charles  James  Fox,  p.  41. 

The  superiority  of  Mr.  Fox  to  Sir  James 
as  an  orator  is  hardly  more  clear  than  the 
superiority  of  Sir  James  to  Mr.  Fox  as  an 
historian.  Mr.  Fox  with  a  pen  in  his 
hand,  and  Sir  James  on  his  legs  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  were,  we  think,  each 
out  of  his  proper  element.  They  were  men, 
it  is  true,  of  far  too  much  judgment  and 
ability  to  fail  scandalously  in  any  under- 
taking to  which  they  brought  the  whole 


power  of  their  minds.  The  ''History  of 
James  II."  will  always  keep  its  place  in  our 
libraries  as  a  valuable  book;  and  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  succeeded  in  winning 
and  maintaining  a  high  place  among  the 
parliamentary  speakers  of  his  time.  Yet 
we  could  never  read  a  page  of  Mr.  Fox's 
writing,  we  could  never  listen  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  to  the  speaking  of  Sir 
James,  without  feeling  that  there  was  a 
constant  effort,  a  tug  up  hill.  Nature,  cr 
habit  which  had  become  nature,  asserted 
its  rights.  Mr.  Fox  wrote  debates.  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  spoke  essays.  .  .  . 
While  Mr.  Fox  winnowed  and  sifted  his 
phraseology  with  a  care,  which  seems 
hardly  consistent  with  the  simplicity  and 
elevation  of  his  mind,  and  of  which  the 
effect  really  was  to  debase  and  enfeeble  his 
style,  he  was  little  on  his  guard  against 
those  more  serious  improprieties  of  manner 
into  which  a  great  orator,  who  undertakes 
to  write  history  is  in  danger  of  falling. 
There  is  about  the  whole  book  a  vehement, 
contentious,  replying  manner.  Almost 
every  argument  is  put  in  the  form  of  an 
interrogation,  an  ejaculation,  or  a  sar- 
casm. The  writer  seems  to  be  addressing 
himself  to  some  imaginary  audience;  to 
be  tearing  in  pieces  a  defence  of  the 
Stuarts  which  has  just  been  pronounced 
by  an  imaginary  Tory.  —  Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1834,  Mackintosh's 
History  of  the  Revolution  in  England  in 
1688,  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

It  was  also  during  the  early  progress  of 
printing  the  first  volume  of  these  (Typo- 
graphical) Antiquities,  at  Mr.  Savage's,  in 
Bedf  ordbury,  Co  vent  Garden,  that  I  used  to 
see  the  sheets  of  Mr.  Fox's  ''Historical 
Work"  hanging  up  in  every  direction 
through  the  dwelling-house  and  adjacent 
yard.  It  will  be  supposed  that  five  thou- 
sand copies  of  a  quarto  volume,  with  five 
hundred  more  upon  a  larger  paper,  and  yet 
another  two  hundred  and  fifty  of  an  ele- 
phantine size,  were  not  likely  to  be  carried 
through  the  press  where  the  premises  were 
small,  without  seeming  to  suffocate  every 
passage  and  corridor  of  the  building.  .  .  . 
It  was  doubtless  the  boldest  experiment 
ever  made  with  a  large  paper  speculation : 
but  it  succeeded.  In  due  course,  what 
at  first  came  forth  as  a  rapid  and  overboil- 
ing torrent,  at  a  high  price  subsided  into 
a  quiet  channel,  and  became  obtainable  on 
very  moderate  terms.    Yet,  considering 


FOX— PITT 


507 


the  extraordinary  number  of  copies 
printed,  I  do  not  consider  this  book  of  the 
commonest  possible  occurrence.  As  the 
work  of  an  Author  whose  name  can  never 
perish,  it  must  necessarily  form  ''part  and 
parcel"  of  every  well  ordered  library. 
Why  is  it  not  dressed  in  "rank  and  file" 
with  the  octavo  HUMES,  ROBERTSONS, 
and  GIBBONS?— DiBDiN,  Thomas  Frog- 
NALL,  1836,  Reminiscences  of  a  Literary 
Life,  vol.  I,  pp.  276,  277,  note. 

Has  been  greatly  undervalued;  but  it 
will  be  properly  estimated  in  future  times. 
— Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  p.  97. 

His  History  as  he  has  left  it,  is  simply 
a  disquisition  on  English  politics,  from  the 
time  of  Henry  VH.  to  the  death  of  Charles 
II.,  together  with  a  narrative  of  the  reign 
of  James  II.  until  the  death  of  Monmouth. 
Here  he  paused,  probably  from  the  con- 
stant interruption  of  business,  indolence, 
or  pleasure.  He  evidently  wanted  suf- 
ficient steadiness  to  produce  any  laborious 
work,  and  the  whole  result  of  his  inquiries 
is  this  imperfect  fragment.  The  History 
has  good  sense,  a  clear  manner,  and  an 
evident  sincerity  and  honesty  of  execu- 
tion ;  but  it  is  wholly  wanting  in  imagina- 
tion, interest,  and  grace.  Fox's  style  is 
that  of  a  debater,  plain,  pointed,  and  in- 
harmonious. His  language  does  not  flow 
easily,  and  wants  the  delicate  graces  of 
the  fine  writer.  His  narrative  is  some- 
times interesting,  on  account  of  its  clear- 
ness, but  something  more  than  simplicity 
is  needed,  to  keep  up  for  a  long  period  the 
attention  of  the  reader.  And  Fox  must 
be  remembered  rather  as  one  who  desired 
to  become  an  historian,  than  as  having 
given  any  proofs  of  historical  power. — 
Lawrence,  Eugene,  1855,  Lives  of  the 
British  Historians,  vol.  ii,  p.  365. 

Incomparably  the  most  important  book 
relating  to  the  art  of  government  which 
appeared  during  his  lifetime  was  the 
"Wealth  of  Nations, "  but  Fox  once  owned 
that  he  had  never  read  it,  and  the  history 


which  was  his  own  serious  composition 
added  nothing  to  his  reputation. — Lecky, 
William  Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A 
History  of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  Ill,  ch.  xiii,  p.  508. 

GENERAL 

We  are  no  admirers  of  Mr.  Fox's  poetry. 
His  Vers  de  Societe  appears  to  us  flat  and 
insipid.  To  write  verses  was  the  only 
thing  which  Mr.  Fox  ever  attempted  to  do, 
without  doing  it  well.  In  that  single  in- 
stance he  seems  to  have  mistaken  his 
talent.— Smith,  Sydney,  1809,  Characters 
of  Fox,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  14,  p.  355. 

Some  specimens  of  his  own  verses  have 
been  circulated  in  private,  and  printed 
in  collections.  They  were  occasional,  and 
on  trifling  subjects,  but  sufficient  to  prove 
the  exquisite  correctness  of  his  ear  and 
judgment,  the  delicacy  of  his  feelings,  and 
his  great  familarity  with  the  best  models 
of  composition.— Lodge,  Edmund,  1821- 
34,  Portraits  of  Illustrious  Personages  of 
Great  Britain,  vol.  viii,  p.  201. 

Charles  Fox's  "Fragment  of  History" 
falls  far  short  of  the  expectations  which 
that  distinguished  statesman's  genius  had 
raised  regarding  it.  Probably  the  failure 
arose  from  the  difference  between  the  pro- 
cesses of  speaking  and  of  writing:  yet 
Burke  equally  excelled  in  both ! — Pitt  has 
given  no  specimens,  by  which  we  may  be 
led  to  believe  that  he  could  have  been  pre- 
eminent as  an  author.  The  matter  of  all 
his  speeches  is  now  dead:  the  spirit 
evaporated  with  the  tones  of  his  voice. 
We  can  cite  no  general  wisdom, — nothing 
applicable  beyond  the  occasion.  Without 
this  there  may  be  talent ;  without  a  power 
of  generalisation  there  cannot  be  genius. 
— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834, 
Autobiography,  vol.  I,  p.  320. 

Fox,  so  pre-eminent  as  a  debater,  ap- 
pears with  small  distinction  in  his  author- 
ship.— Croker,  John  Wilson,  1842,  Cor- 
respondence Between  Mr.  Pitt  and  the  Duke 
of  Rutland,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  70, 
p.  289. 


William  Pitt 

1759-1806 

William  Pitt  generally  called  the  Younger  Pitt,  the  second  son  of  the  earl  of  Chat- 
ham, born  May  28  1759.  In  1780  he  entered  into  public  life,  and  took  his  seat  in  the 
House  of  Commons  as  member  for  Appleby.  The  opposition  against  the  party  in  power, 
the  cabinet  of  Lord  North,  consisted  of  two  factions — one  led  by  Rockingham  and 


508 


WILLIAM  PITT 


Fox,  and  the  other  by  Lord  Shelburne.  Pitt  joined  the  latter  which  mostly  consisted 
of  old  friends  of  his  father,  and  his  speeches  made  such  an  impression  that  Lord  Shel- 
burne, when  he  became  first  lord  of  the  treasury  in  July  1782,  offered  him  a  place  in 
the  cabinet  as  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  Lord  North  although  at  one  time  driven 
from  power  by  Rockingham  and  Fox,  now  formed  a  coalition  with  them  against  the 
cabinet  of  Lord  Shelburne,  and  in  1783  Lord  Shelburne  had  to  give  in  his  resignation, 
and  Pitt  with  him.  But  in  the  very  next  session,  when  Fox  brought  in  his  bill  for 
transferring  the  government  of  India  from  the  E.  L  Co.  to  Parliament — that  is  to  say, 
to  the  ministry — the  coalition  was  defeated  and  the  cabinet  compelled  to  retire.  Pitt 
was  called  upon  to  form  the  new  cabinet,  and  after  dissolving  Parliament  and  gaining  a 
majority  at  the  general  election  of  1784,  he  established  himself  firmly  in  the  most  pow- 
erful position  which  a  subject  can  occupy  in  England,  and  he  maintained  himself  in  this 
position  without  interruption  for  14  years.  The  principal  feature  of  his  administration 
is  his  war  with  France,  but  no  English  historian  has  yet  been  able  to  give  sufficient 
reason  for  this  war  which  England  began  in  1793  and  continued  to  1815.  It  seems  to  have 
been  a  whim,  a  chimera  of  the  minister;  he  would  imitate  his  great  father  in  this  point 
too.  But  his  war  administration  was  weak  and  confused,  and  when  losses  and  disasters 
followed,  the  chimera  grew  into  a  mania.  In  1801  he  retired  from  office.  In  Feb.  he 
resigned,  and  in  May  the  Peace  of  Amiens  was  concluded.  In  1804,  however,  he  was 
recalled,  and  the  war  was  renewed.  But  the  surrender  of  the  Austrian  army  at  Ulm, 
the  battle  of  Austerlitz,  the  Peace  of  Presburg  filled  the  haughty  but  impotent  minister 
with  such  chagrin  that  he  died  from  disappointment,  Jan.  23,  1806. — Barnard  and 
GuYOT,  1885,  Johnson's  New  General  Cyclopaedia,  vol.  ii,  p,  1079. 


PERSONAL 
THIS  MONUMENT 
IS  ERECTED  BY  PARLIAMENT  TO 
WILLIAM  PITT, 
SON  OF  WILLIAM,  EARL  OF  CHATHAM, 

IN  TESTIMONY  OF  GRATITUDE 
FOR  THE  EMINENT  PUBLIC  SERVICES 
AND  OF  REGRET  FOR  THE  IRREP- 
ARABLE LOSS 
OF  THAT  GREAT  AND  DISINTERESTED 

MINISTER. 
HE  DIED  ON  JANUARY  23,  1806,  IN  THE 
47th  year  of  his  AGE. 

—Inscription  on  Monument,  Westmin- 
ster Abbey. 

Pitt  .  .  .  was  merely  a  statesman, 
he  was  formed  to  seize  occasions  to  possess 
himself  of  power,  and  to  act  with  consum- 
mate craft  upon  every  occurrence  that 
arose.  He  belonged  to  ancient  Carthage 
— he  belonged  to  modern  Italy — but  there 
is  nothing  in  him  that  expressly  belongs 
to  England.— Godwin,  William,  1806, 
Morning  Chronicle,  William  Godwin,  ed. 
Paul,  vol.  II,  p.  157. 

Mr.  Pitt,  had  received  regular  and  sys- 
tematic instruction  in  the  principles  of 
the  Christian  religion,  in  the  doctrine  and 
discipline  of  the  Church  of  England,  and 
in  every  branch  of  general  ecclesiastical 
history.  His  knowledge  on  these  subjects 
was  accurate  and  extensive.  He  was 
completely  armed  against  all  sceptical 
assaults,  as  well  against  all  fanatical  illu- 
sion; and  in  truth  he  was  not  merely  a 


faithful  and  dutiful,  but  a  learned  member 
of  our  Established  Church.— Wellesley, 
Lord,  1836,  Letter,  Nov. 

Plain  in  feature,  but  with  clear,  grey, 
watchful  eyes — with  high  and  massive 
forehead,  in  which  what  phrenologists  call 
the  perceptive  organs  were  already  promi- 
nently marked — with  lips  which  when  in 
repose  were  expressive  much  of  reserve, 
more  of  pertinacity  and  resolve,  but  in 
movement  were  singularly  flexible  to  the 
impulse  of  the  manlier  passions,  giving  a 
noble  earnestness  to  declamation  and  a 
lofty  disdain  to  sarcasm — this  young  man 
sate  amongst  the  Rockingham  Whigs,  a  so- 
journer in  their  camp,  not  a  recuit  to  their 
standard.  He  had,  indeed,  offered  himself 
to  their  chief,  but  that  provident  com- 
mander had  already  measured  for  his  uni- 
form some  man  of  his  own  inches,  and  did 
not  think  it  worth  while  to  secure  the 
thews  of  a  giant  at  the  price  of  wasting  a 
livery  and  disappointing  a  dwarf. — Lyt- 
TON,  Edward  Bulwer  Lord,  1855-68, 
Pitt  and  Fox,  Miscellaneous  Prose  Works, 
vol.  I,  p.  229. 

The  impression  left  by  the  great  Minis- 
ter on  all  who  knew  him  was  indeed  on 
several  points,  of  no  common  kind.  It  is 
the  more  striking,  since,  in  many  cases, 
we  find  it  come  forth  incidentally.  **Pitt, 
the  most  forgiving  and  easy-tempered  of 
men,''— so  says  Lord  Malmesbury  while 


WILLIAM  PITT 


509 


treating  of  another  subject.  'Titt  is  the 
most  upright  political  character  I  every 
knew  or  heard  of," — so  writes  Wilber- 
force  to  Bankes.  The  observation  of  Rose 
upon  another  feature  of  his  character 
is  no  less  weighty :-  -  '  With  respect  to  Mr. 
Pitt,  I  can  say  with  the  sincerest  truth, 
that  in  an  intercourse  almost  uninterrupted 
during  more  than  twenty  years  I  never  saw 
him  once  out  of  temper,  nor  did  ever  one 
unpleasant  sentence  pass  between  us.'^ — 
Stanhope,  Philip  Henry  Earl,  1861-62, 
Life  of  the  Right  Honourable  William  Pitty 
vol.  IV,  p.  403. 

In  all  descriptions  of  Pitt's  appearance 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  a  certain  aloof- 
ness fills  an  odd  space;  he  is  '*a  thing 
apart,"  different  somehow  from  other 
members.  Fox  was  the  exact  opposite,  — 
he  was ' '  a  good  fellow ;' '  he  rolled  into  the 
House,  fat,  good-humored,  and  popular. 
Pitt  was  spare,  dignified,  and  reserved; 
when  he  entered  the  House,  he  walked  to 
the  place  of  the  Premier  without  looking 
to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  and  he  sat  at 
the  same  place.  He  was  ready  to  discuss 
important  business  with  all  proper  per- 
sons, upon  all  necessary  occasions ;  but  he 
was  not  ready  to  discuss  business  unneces- 
sarily with  any  one,  nor  did  he  discuss 
anything  but  business  with  any  save  a  very 
few  intimate  friends,  with  whom  his  re- 
serve at  once  vanished,  and  his  wit  and 
humor  at  once  expanded,  and  his  genuine 
interest  in  all  really  great  subjects  was  at 
once  displayed.  — Bagehot,  Walter,  1861 , 
William  Pitt,  Works,  ed.  Morgan,  vol.  iii, 
p.  163. 

His  was  one  of  those  minds  which  dawns 
at  rare  intervals  upon  the  world,  yet  with 
the  exception  of  his  lofty  intellect,  and  his 
splendid  sense  of  independence,  which 
commanded  the  homage  of  all,  he  possessed 
few  of  the  qualities  which  Englishmen  ad- 
mire in  their  rulers,  and  many  of  the 
faults  which  they  detest.  He  was  in- 
tensely proud,  and,  save  in  the  presence 
of  his  family,  where  he  was  warmly 
loved,  stiff,  cold,  and  ungenial.  When  he 
appeared  in  public,  even  when  he  was 
cheered  and  feted,  his  harsh  features 
seldom  relaxed  their  haughty,  repellent 
expression.  Kings  bowed  and  smiled,  but 
Pitt,  the  commoner,  the  son  of  a  newly- 
created  peer,  took  scant  pains  not  to  show 
that  he  held  such  homage  in  contempt. 
His  conduct  was  irreproachable.    .    .  . 


He  seemed  never  to  forget  that  he  was  so 
rigidly  virtuous,  so  highly  honourable,  so 
pure  and  disinterested,  and  endowed  with 
such  splendid  talents ;  from  the  lofty  pedes- 
tal of  his  superiority  he  never  descended, 
he  always  spoke  and  acted  as  if  the  world 
were  at  his  feet,  and  he  the  only  man  who 
should  stand  upright.  He  wanted  humil- 
ity, toleration,  charity ;  had  he  possessed 
these  great  virtues,  he  would  have  been 
one  of  the  noblest  characters  in  history. 
As  it  was,  his  circle  of  friends  was  small, 
though  intensely  devoted,  whilst  that  of 
his  enemies  was  both  numerous  and  power- 
ful. His  austerity  alienated  the  sym- 
pathies of  what  is  called  society.  .  .  , 
On  the  bead-roll  of  English  Ministers, 
there  have  been  men  more  popular,  more 
kindly,  more  generous,  but  none  more  able, 
more  straightforward,  or  more  worthy  of 
the  high  position  he  held,  than  the  great, 
the  disinterested,  the  austere  William 
Pitt.  —  EwALD,  Alexander  Charles, 
1877,  Ministers  and  Maxims,  Temple  Bar, 
vol.  51,  pp.  229,  230. 

Pitt,  however,  will  always  be  measured 
and  weighed  by  Englishmen  according  to 
two  different  modes  of  reckoning.  Inter- 
preted by  his  personal  character,  by  the 
pureness,  the  loftiness,the  public  spirit  and 
disinterestedness  of  his  life,  he  stands  on 
a  higher  pedestal  than  ever  his  genius  for 
organization  and  administration  has  raised 
for  him.  To  have  been  the  least  self- 
seeking  politician  that  had  wielded  su- 
preme power  up  to  his  own  times — to  have 
established  and  handed  down  a  grand 
tradition  of  republican  honour  and  simplic- 
ity in  English  statesmanship — is  in  itself 
a  nobler  triumph  than  the  praise  of  his 
followers,  or  the  success  of  his  intrigues, 
or  the  votes  of  parliament,  or  the  monu- 
ment in  Westminster  Abbey. — Sergeant, 
Lewis,  1882,  William  Pitt  (English  Polit- 
ical Leaders),  p.  192. 

His  friendship,  although  like  all  worthy 
friendship,  not  lavishly  given,  was  singu- 
larly warm  and  was  enthusiastically  re- 
turned. Nothing  in  history  is  more 
credible  and  interesting  than  his  affection- 
ate and  lifelong  intimacy  with  Wilber- 
force,  so  widely  differing  from  him  in  his 
views  of  life.  Hardened  politicians  such 
as  Rose  and  Farnborough  were  softened 
by  their  intercourse  with  him,  and  cher- 
ished his  memory  to  the  end  of  their  lives 
with  something  of  religious  adoration. 


510 


WILLIAM  PITT 


This  indeed  was  the  posthumous  feeling 
which  he  seems  to  have  inspired  more  than 
any  person  in  history.  Even  Sidmouth, 
who  had  loved  him  little  during  the  last 
lustre  of  his  life,  shared  this,  and  boasted 
that  he  had  destroyed  every  letter  of  Pitt's 
which  could  cause  the  slightest  detriment 
to  Pitt's  reputation.  Canning,  Pitt  loved 
as  a  son.  There  is  nothing  more  human 
in  Pitt's  life  than  the  account  of  his 
alfectionate  solicitude  and  absorption  at 
Canning's  marriage.  Canning's  love  for 
Pitt  was  something  combined  of  the  senti- 
ments of  a  son,  a  friend,  and  a  disciple. 
—  RosEBERY,  Lord,  1891,  Pitt  {Twelve 
English  Statesmen),  p.  264. 

He  had  the  genius  of  command,  and  was 
one  of  the  greatest  Parliamentary  leaders 
England  has  ever  seen ;  but  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned if  his  public  efficiency  would  not 
have  been  enhanced,  had  he  possessed  some 
of  that  ''subordinate"  experience  he  so 
haughtily  repudiated,  and  had  his  long  pub- 
lic life  been  more  tempered  by  some  of  the 
teachings  of  Opposition.  He  came  to  re- 
gard rule  and  office  almost  as  his  right. 
.  .  .  The  life  of  this  great  statesman 
must  be  judged  after  taking  into  account, 
not  only  his  actions  and  his  motives,  but 
also  the  times  in  which  he  lived,  with  all 
their  diftculties  and  all  their  emergencies. 
In  his  review  his  ''personal  purity,  disin- 
terestedness, integrity,  and  love  of  coun- 
try' '  stand  out  conspicuous.  His  aims,  his 
gifts,  and  his  powers  were  great,  and 
William  Pitt  must  forever  be  regarded  as 
a  very  noble  figure  in  the  public  life  of 
England. — Gibson,  Edward,  1898  (Lord 
Ashbourne),  Pitt;  Some  Chapters  of  his 
Life  and  Times,  pp.  364,  368. 

SPEECHES 

In  his  luminous  and  comprehensive 
speeches  in  Parliament  Pitt  has  explained 
his  motives  and  unfolded  his  views,  his  ob- 
jects, and  his  designs. — Gifford,  John, 
1809,  History  of  the  Political  Life  of  Pitt. 

Before  Mr.  Pitt  had  a  seat  in  parliament, 
he  had  been  a  constant  attendant  in  the 
gallery  of  the  house  of  commons,  and  near 
the  throne  in  the  house  of  lords,  upon 
every  important  debate ;  and  whenever  he 
heard  a  speech  of  any  merit  on  the  side 
opposite  to  his  own  opinions,  he  accus- 
tomed himself  to  consider,  as  it  proceeded, 
in  what  manner  it  might  be  answered ;  and 
when  the  speaker  accorded  with  his  own 
sentiments,  he  then  observed  his  mode  of 


arranging  and  enforcing  his  ideas,  and 
considered  whether  any  improvement  could 
have  been  made,  or  whether  any  argument 
had  been  omitted.  To  this  habit,  and  to 
the  practice  already  mentioned  of  reading 
Greek  and  Latin  into  English,  joined  to  his 
wonderful  natural  endowments,  may  be 
attributed  that  talent  for  reply,  and  that 
command  of  language,  for  which  he  was 
from  the  first  so  highly  distinguished.  At 
whatever  length  he  spoke,  he  avoided  re- 
petition and  it  was  early  and  justly  observed 
of  him,  that  "he  .  never  failed  to  put  the 
best  viTord  in  the  best  place." — Tomline, 
George,  1821,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  the 
Right  Honourable  William  Pitt,  vol.  i, 
p.  31. 

Mackintosh  said  that  Pitt's  speeches  are 
miserably  reported.  He  was  himself  pres- 
ent at  the  speech  on  the  Slave  Trade  in 
'92  (which  Mr.  Fox  declared  was  the  finest 
he  had  ever  heard),  and  the  report,  he 
says,  gives  no  idea  whatever  of  its  merits. 
— Moore,  Thomas,  1823,  Diary,  Memoirs, 
ed.  Russell,  vol.  iv,  p.  76. 

Pitt,  tall  and  slender,  had  an  air  at  once 
melancholy  and  sarcastic.  His  delivery 
was  cold,  his  intonation  monotonous,  his 
action  scarcely  perceptible.  At  the  same 
time,  the  lucidness  and  the  fluency  of  his 
thoughts,  the  logic  of  his  arguments,  sud- 
denly irradiated  with  flashes  of  eloquence, 
rendered  his  talent  something  above  the 
ordinary  line.  ...  Ill  dressed,  with- 
out pleasure,  without  passion,  greedy  of 
power,  he  despised  honours,  and  would  not 
be  any  thing  more  than  William  Pitt. — 
Chateaubriand,  Franqois  Rene  Vicomte, 
1837,  Sketches  of  English  Literature,  vol. 
II,  pp.  277,  278. 

His  declamation  was  admirable,  min- 
gling with  and  clothing  the  argument,  as  to 
be  good  for  any  thing  declamation  always 
must ;  and  no  more  separable  from  the  rea- 
soning than  the  heat  is  from  the  metal  in  a 
stream  of  lava.  Yet,  with  all  this  excel- 
lence, the  last  effect  of  the  highest  elo- 
quence was  for  the  most  part  wanting ;  we 
seldom  forgot  the  speaker,  or  lost  the 
artist  in  the  work. — Brougham,  Henry 
Lord,  1839-43,  Statesmen  who  Flourished 
in  the  Time  of  George  III. 

The  almost  unanimous  judgment  of  those 
who  were  in  the  habit  of  listening  to  that 
remarkable  race  of  men,  placed  Pitt,  as  a 
speaker,  above  Burke,  above  Windham, 
above  Sheridan,  and  not  below  Fox.  His 


PITT— REEVE 


511 


declamation  was  copious,  polished,  and 
splendid.  In  power  of  sarcasm  he  was 
probably  not  surpassed  by  any  speaker, 
ancient  or  modern;  and  of  this  formid- 
able weapon  he  made  merciless  use.  In 
two  parts  of  the  oratorical  art  which  are 
of  the  highest  value  to  a  minister  of  state 
he  was  singularly  expert.  No  man  knew 
better  how  to  be  luminous  or  how  to  be 
obscure.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babing- 
TON,  1859,  William  Pitt,  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica;  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays. 

The  early  speeches  of  Pitt  were  master- 
pieces. Eloquence  was  his  heritage,  and 
the  House  of  Commons  the  predestined 
theatre  for  its  display.  The  lucidity  of 
his  exposition,  the  vigour  of  his  declama- 
tion, the  sting  of  his  sarcasm,  the  regular 
flow  and  careful  finish  of  his  sentences, 
were  as  notable  and  striking  when  he  first 
entered  Parliament  as  they  were  after  he 
had  become  its  acknowledged  ornament. 
His  oratory  had  neither  spring  nor  autumn. 
His  mind  never  seemed  to  have  been  youth- 
ful. No  one  knew  him  as  a  mediocre 
speaker ;  it  was  difficult  to  believe  that  he 
ever  had  been  a  boy. — Rae,  William 
Fraser,  1873,  Wilkes,  Sheridan,  Fox; 
The  Opposition  Under  George  the  Third, 
p.  423. 

All  his  classicism  was  but  a  weapon  to 
smite  with,  or  from  which  to  forge  the 
links  of  those  shining  parentheses  by  which 
he  strangled  an  opponent.  Nothing  be- 
yond or  below  the  cool,  considerate  hu- 
manities of  the  cultured,  self-poised 
gentleman  (unless  we  except  some  rare 
outbreak  of  petulance)  belongs  to  this 
great  orator,  who  could  thrust  one 
through  with  a  rapier  held  by  the  best 
rules  of  fence ;  and  who  never  did  or  could 
say  a  word  so  warm  as  to  touch  a  friend 
or  make  an  enemy  forget  his  courtliness. 


— Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1895,  English 
Lands  Letters  and  Kings,  Queen  Anne 
and  the  Georges,  p.  194. 

GENERAL 

Of  the  letters  thus  printed  in  the  course 
of  the  present  summer,  we  have  had  the 
honour  to  receive  a  copy,  and  we  feel  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that— written  though 
many  of  them  were,  in  the  very  height  of 
the  session,  or  the  utmost  hurry  of  busi- 
ness— they  appear  to  us  models  in  that 
kind  of  composition.  We  can  scarcely 
praise  them  more  highly  than  by  saying 
that  they  rival  Lord  Bolingbroke's  cele- 
brated diplomatic  correspondence,  of 
which,  as  we  know  from  other  sources,  Mr. 
Pitt  was  a  warm  admirer.  They  never 
strain  at  any  of  those  rhetorical  ornaments, 
which,  when  real  business  is  concerned, 
become  only  obstructions,  but  are  endowed 
with  a  natural  grace  and  dignity— a  happ^ 
choice  of  words,  and  a  constant  clearness 
of  thought.  Although  scarce  ever  divided 
into  paragraphs,  they  display  neither  con- 
fusion, nor  yet  abrupt  transition  of  sub- 
jects, but  flow  on,  as  it  were,  in  an  even 
and  continuous  stream. — Croker,  John 
Wilson,  1842,  Correspondence  Between 
Mr.  Pitt  and  the  Duke  of  Rutland,  Quar- 
terly Review,  vol.  70,  p.  291. 

If  it  is  impossible  now  to  read  his  private 
letters,  written  in  the  darkest  hours  of 
his  official  adversities,  without  a  throbbing 
of  the  heart  at  the  calm  fortitude  and  in- 
domitable hopefulness  of  their  tone,  it 
may  be  easily  conceived  how  overpowering 
was  the  influence  of  these  qualities  over 
the  minds  of  the  small  men,  and  the  super- 
ficial men,  and  the  congenial  men,  and  the 
affectionate  idolators,  by  whom  he  was 
surrounded.— Martineau,  Harriet,  1851, 
History  of  England,  A.  D.  1800-1815, 
p.  32. 


Clara  Keeve 

1729-1807 

Born  at  Ipswich,  the  daughter  of  the  rector  of  Freston,  translated  Barclay's 
*'Argenis"  (1772),  and  wrote  ''The  Champion  of  Virtue,  a  Gothic  Story"  (1777),  re- 
named ''The  Old  English  Baron,"  which  was  avowedly  an  imitation  of  Walpole's  "Castle 
of  Otranto."  She  wrote  four  other  novels  and  "The  Progress  of  Romance"  (1785). 
— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  782. 

GENERAL  probability?   It  is  so  probable,  that  any 

Have  you  seen  "The  Old  Baron,"  a  trial  for  murder  at  the  Old  Bailey  would 

Gothic  story,  professedly  written  in  imita-  make  a  more  interesting  story.  Mrs, 

tion  of  Otranto,  but  reduced  to  reason  and  Barbauld's  "Fragment"  was  excellent. 


512 


REEVE— HOME 


This  is  a  caput  mortuum. — Walpole,  Hor- 
ace, 1778,  To  Rev.  William  Mason,  April 
8 ;  Letters  J  ed.  Cunninghaitiy  vol.  vii,  p.  51. 

The  yet  unsated  pleasure  which  I  had 
received  from  repeated  perusals  of  the 
English  Baron,"  excited  an  affectionate 
regard  for  its  author,  and  solicitude  for 
her  fame.— Anna,  Seward,  1786,  The 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  vol.  56,  pt.  i,  p.  16. 

This  romance  ["The  Old  English  Baron"] 
is  announced  as  an  attempt  to  unite 
the  most  attractive  and  interesting  cir- 
cumstances of  the  ancient  romance,  with 
the  incidents  and  feelings  of  real  life. 
The  latter,  however,  are  sometimes  too 
accurately  represented,  and  the  most  im- 
portant and  heroic  characters  in  the  work 
exhibit  a  natural  anxiety  about  settle- 
ments, stocking  of  farms,  and  household 
furniture,  which  ill  assimilates  with  the 
gigantic  and  awful  features  of  the  ro- 
mance.— DuNLOP,  John,  1814-45,  The 
History  of  Fiction,  p.  414. 

The  various  novels  of  Clara  Reeve  are 
all  marked  by  excellent  good  sense,  pure 
morality,  and  a  competent  command  of 
those  qualities  which  constitute  a  good 
romance.  They  were,  generally  speaking, 
favourably  received  at  the  time,  but  none 
of  them  took  the  same  strong  possession 
of  the  public  mind  as  ''The  Old  English 
Baron, ' '  upon  which  the  fame  of  the  author 
may  be  considered  as  now  exclusively 
rested.  .  .  .  In  no  part  of  ''The  Old 
English  Baron,"  or  of  any  other  of  her 
works,  does  Miss  Reeve  show  the  posses- 
sion of  a  rich  or  powerful  imagination. 
Her  dialogue  is  sensible,  easy,  and  agree- 
able, but  neither  marked  by  high  flights 
of  fancy,  nor  strong  bursts  of  passion.  Her 
apparition  is  an  ordinary  fiction,  of  which 
popular  superstition  used  to  furnish  a 
thousand  instances,  when  nights  were  long, 
and  a  family,assembled  around  a  Christmas 


log,  had  little  better  to  do  than  to  listen 
to  such  tales.  Miss  Reeve  has  been  very 
felicitously  cautious  in  showing  us  no  more 
of  Lord  Lover  s  ghost  than  she  needs  must 
— he  is  a  silent  apparition,  palpable  to  the 
sight  only,  and  never  brought  forward  into 
such  broad  daylight  as  might  have  dis- 
solved our  reverence.  And  so  far,  we  re- 
peat, the  authoress  has  used  her  own 
power  to  the  utmost  advantage,  and  gained 
her  point  by  not  attempting  to  step  beyond 
it.  But  we  cannot  allow  that  the  rule 
which,  in  her  own  case,  has  been  well  and 
wisely  adopted,  ought  to  circumscribe  a 
bolder  and  a  more  imaginative  writer. — 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1821,  Clara  Reeve. 

That  the  "Old  English  Baron"  was  only 
seventy  years  ago  esteemed  by  critics  an 
excellent  work  of  fiction,  and  became  very 
popular,  are  facts  that  most  forcibly  de- 
clare the  advance  made  during  the  last  two 
generations  in  education  and  general  intel- 
ligence.— Jeaffreson,  John  Cord y,  1858, 
Novels  and  Novelists,  vol.  I,  p.  214. 

As  inWalpole's  book  [in  the  "Champion 
of  Virtue"],  there  are  a  murder  and  a 
usurpation,  a  rightful  heir  defrauded  of 
his  inheritance  and  reared  as  a  peasant. 
There  are  a  haunted  chamber,  unearthly 
midnight  groans,  a  ghost  in  armor,  and  a 
secret  closet  with  its  skeleton.  The  tale 
is  infinitely  tiresome,  and  is  full  of  that 
edifying  morality,  fine  sentiment  and 
stilted  dialogue — that  "old  perfumed, 
powdered  D'Arblay  conversation,"  as 
Thackeray  called  it — which  abound  in 
"Evelina,"  "Thaddeus  of  Warsaw,"  and 
almost  all  the  fiction  of  the  last  quarter 
of  the  last  century.  Still  it  was  a  little 
unkind  in  Walpole  to  pronounce  his  dis- 
ciple's performance  tedious  and  insipid,  as 
he  did.— Beers,  Henry  A.,  1898,  A  His- 
tory of  English  Romanticism  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  p.  243. 


John  Home 

1722-1808 

Born,  at  Leith,  22  Sept.  1722.  Educated  at  Leith  Grammar  School,  and  at  Edin- 
burgh Univ.  Licensed  Probationer  of  Presbyterian  Church,  4  April  1745.  Enlisted 
as  Volunteer  during  Rebellion  of  1745-46.  Minister  of  Athelstaneford,  11  Feb.  1747. 
Tragedy  "Agis"  refused  by  Garrick,  1747.  Tragedy  "Douglas"  refused  by  Garrick, 
1755 ;  performed  in  Edinburgh,  14  Dec.  1756 ;  produced  at  Covent  Garden,  14  March 
1757.  Pension  of  £100  from  Princess  of  Wales,  1857.  Returned  to  Scotland.  In- 
dicted by  Presbytery ;  resigned  ministry,  7  June,  1757.  Tutor  to  Prince  of  Wales, 
1757.    Sec.  to  Lord  Bute,  1757.    "Agis"  produced  by  Garrick  at  Drury  Lane,  21 


JOHN  HOME 


513 


Feb.  1758.  ''The  Siege  of  Aquileia"  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  21  Feb.  1760.  Pension 
of  £300  from  George  111.,  1760.  Conservator  to  Scots  Privileges  at  Campvere,  Holland 
(sinecure),  1763-70.  ''The  Fatal  Discovery"  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  23  Feb.  1769. 
Married  Mary  Home,  1770.  "Alonzo"  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  27  Jan.  1773.  To 
Bath  with  Hume,  April  1776;  to  Edinburgh  with  him,  July  1776.  "Alfred,"  produced, 
at  Drury  Lane,  21  Jan.  1778.  Enlisted  in  South  Fusiliers,  1778.  Died,  at  Murchiston, 
5 Sept.  1808.  Works:  "Douglas"  (anon.),  1757;  "Agis"  (anon.),  1758;  "The  Siege 
of  Aquileia"  (anon.),  1760;  "Dramatick  Works,"  1760;  "The  Fatal  Discovery" 
(anon.),  1769;  "Alonzo"  (anon.),  1773;  "Alfred"  (anon.),  1778;  "The  History  of 
the  Rebellion  in  .  .  .  1745  "  1802.  Collected  Works:  ed.  by  H.  Mackenzie  (3 
vols.),  1822.  Life:  by  H.  Mackenzie,  1822.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A 
Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  185. 

the  old  and  invariable  custom  of  his  family. 
David  carried  the  discussion  so  far  that  on 
his  death-bed  he  added  a  codicil  to  his 
will,  written  with  his  own  hand,  to  this 
effect:  "I  leave  to  my  friend  Mr.  John 
Home,  of  Kilduff,  ten  dozen  of  my  old 
claret  at  his  choice ;  and  one  other  bottle 
of  that  other  liquor  called  port.  I  also 
leave  him  six  dozen  of  port,  provided  that 
he  attests,  under  his  hand,  signed  John 
Hume,  that  he  has  himself  alone  finished 
that  bottle  at  a  sitting.  By  this  conces- 
sion he  will  at  once  terminate  the  only 
difference  that  ever  arose  between  us  con- 
cerning temporal  matters. "  It  is  to  be  in- 
ferred that  this  is  a  joke  which  got  into  the 
head'of  one  Scotchman  without  a  surgical 
operation.  — •  Hutton,  Laurence,  1891, 
Literary  Landmarks  of  Edinburgh,  p.  26. 


PERSONAL 

John  Honie  was  an  admirable  companion, 
and  most  acceptable  to  all  strangers  who 
were  not  offended  with  the  levities  of  a 
young  clergyman,  for  he  was  very  hand- 
some and  had  a  fine  person,  about  5  feet 
lOJ  inches,  and  an  agreeable,  catching 
address ;  he  had  not  much  wit,  and  still  less 
humor,  but  he  had  so  much  sprightliness 
and  vivacity,  and  such  an  expression  of 
benevolence  in  his  manner,  and  such  an 
unceasing  flattery,  of  those  he  liked  (and 
he  never  kept  company  with  anybody 
else),  —the  kind  commendations  of  a  lover, 
not  the  adulation  of  a  sycophant, — that 
he  was  truly  irresistible,  and  his  entry  to  a 
company  was  like  opening  a  window  and 
letting  the  sun  into  a  dark  room. — Car- 
LYLS,  Alexander,  1746-48-1860,  Auto- 
biography, p,  181. 

His  temper  was  of  that  warm  susceptible 
kind  which  is  caught  with  the  heroic  and 
the  tender,  and  which  is  more  fitted  to  de- 
light in  the  world  of  sentiment  than  to 
succeed  in  the  bustle  of  ordinary  life. 
This  is  a  disposition  of  mind  well  suited  to 
the  poetical  character,  and,  accordingly, 
all  his  earliest  companions  agree  that  Mr. 
Home  was  from  his  childhood  delighted 
with  the  lofty  and  heroic  ideas  which  em- 
body themselves  in  the  description  or  nar- 
rative of  poetry.  .  .  .  Mr.  Home's 
favourite  amusement  was  angling. — Mac- 
kenzie, Henry,  1812-22,  Account  of  the 
Life  of  Mr.  John  Home,  Home's  Works, 
vol.  I,  pp.  6,  31. 

It  is  said  that  the  only  approaches  to  a 
disagreement  in  the  long  and  intimate 
friendship  existing  between  these  "two 
Humes"  were  regarding  the  relative 
merits  of  claret  and  port,  and  in  relation 
to  the  spelling  of  their  name,  the  philoso- 
pher in  early  life  having  adopted  the  or- 
thograhy  indicated  by  the  pronunciation, 
the  poet  and  preacher  always  clinging  to 

33C 


Now  he  became  part  of  Edinburgh 
society.  A  welcome  addition  he  proved, 
with  his  hearty  laugh,  his  unfailing  good- 
humour  ;  and  he  was  happy  once  more  in 
the  company  of  his  old  friends  Hume  and 
Blair,  Ferguson  and  Robertson.  He  and 
Hume  enjoyed  a  banter,  and  a  favourite 
subject  was  their  names,  which  were  pro- 
nounced alike,  and  had  been  spelt  the  same 
till  the  historian  changed  his  paternal  sur- 
name of  "Home  to  Hume".  .  .  .  Home's 
exuberant  praise  of  everybody  and  every- 
thing was  not  empty  flattery,  but  sheer 
good-heartedness ;  and  evenhis  vanity  over 
his  achievements  was  likeable. — Graham, 
Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish  Men  of  Let- 
ters in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  73. 

DOUGLAS 

1754 

On  Wednesday,  February  the  2d,  1757, 
the  Presbytery  of  Glasgow  came  to  the 
following  resolution.  They  having  seen  a 
printed  paper,  intituled,  "An  admonition 
and  exhortation  of  the  reverend  Presby- 
tery of  Edinburgh;"  which,  among  other 


514 


JOHN  HOME 


evils''  prevailing, observing  the  following 

melancholy"  but  notorious"  facts: 
that  one  who  is  a  minister  of  the  church 
of  Scotland  did ''himself"  write  and  com- 
pose a ' ' stage-play, ' '  intituled,  "The  trag- 
edy of  Douglas"  and  got  it  to  be  acted  at 
the  theatre  of  Edinburgh;  and  that  he 
with  several  other  ministers  of  the  church 
were  present;  and  ''some"  of  them 
"oftener  than  once,"  at  the  acting  of  the 
said  play  before  a  numerous  audience. 
The  presbytery  being  "deeply  affected" 
with  this  new  and  strange  appearance,  do 
publish  these  sentiments,  &c. — Resolu- 
tion BY  THE  Presbytery  of  Glasgow, 
1757,  DisraeWs  Curiosities  of  Literature. 

With  great  pleasure  I  have  more  than 
once  perused  your  tragedy.  It  is  interest- 
ing, affecting,  pathetic.^  The  story  is 
simple  and  natural ;  but  what  chiefly  de- 
lights me,  is  to  find  the  language  so  pure, 
correct,  and  moderate.  For  God's  sake, 
read  Shakespeare,  but  get  Racine  and 
Sophocles  by  heart.  It  is  reserved  to  you, 
and  you  alone,  to  redeem  our  stage  from 
the  reproach  of  barbarism. — Hume,  David, 
1756,  Letter  to  John  Home. 

I  can  now^  give  you  the  satisfaction 
of  hearing  that  the  play,  though  not 
near  so  well  acted,  in  Covent  Garden  as 
in  this  place,  is  likely  to  be  very  suc- 
cessful. Its  great  intrinsic  merit  breaks 
through  all  obstacles.  When  it  shall  be 
printed  (which  shall  be  soon)  I  am  per- 
suaded it  will  be  esteemed  the  best,  and 
by  French  critics  the  only  tragedy  of  our 
language. — Hume,  David,  1757,  Letter  to 
Adam  Smith. 

The  extraordinary  merits  of  this  per- 
formance, which  is  now  become  to  Scotch- 
men a  subject  of  national  pride. — Stew- 
art, DuGALD,  1796-1801,  Account  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  William  Robertson. 

The  "Douglas"  of  Home  is  not  recom- 
mended by  his  species  of  merit.  In  diction 
and  character  it  does  not  rise  above  other 
productions  of  the  period.  But  the  in- 
terest turns  upon  a  passion  which  finds  a 
response  in  every  bosom;  for  those  who 
are  too  old  for  love,  and  too  young  for 
ambition,  are  all  alike  awake  to  the  warmth 
and  purity  of  maternal  and  filial  affection. 
The  scene  of  the  recognition  of  Douglas's 
birth  possesses  a  power  over  the  affec- 
tions, which  when  supported  by  adequate 
representation,  is  scarce  equalled  in  the 
circle  of  Drama.    It  is  remarkable  that 


the  ingenious  author  was  so  partial  to  this 
theatrical  situation,  as  to  introduce  it  in 
several  of  his  other  tragedies. — Scott, 
Sir  Walter,  1814-23,  The  Drama. 

I  think  nobody  can  bestow  too  much 
praise  on  "Douglas."  There  has  been  no 
English  tragedy  worthy  of  the  name  since 
it  appeared.— Wilson,  John,  1822,  Noc- 
tes  Ambrosiance,  April. 

His  great  dramatic  essay  was  a  grievous 
offence  against  the  laws  of  his  church,  to 
the  practical  duties  of  which  he  had 
again  surrendered  himself.  Had  it  not 
been  that  Sarah  Ward  was  willing  to  help 
author  and  friends,  even  the  reading  of 
"Douglas"  would  never  have  come  off. 
Sarah  lent  her  sitting  room  in  the  Canon- 
gate,  to  Home ;  and  Digges  was  present 
and  silent,  for  once,  with  Mrs.  Ward,  to 
enact  audience.  The  characters  were 
thus  cast;  and  a  fine  group  of  intellectual 
persons,  sitting  as  they  could  best  catch 
the  light,  in  an  obscure  room  of  the  Can- 
nongate,  cannot  well  be  imagined.  Lord 
Randolph  (or  Barnard,  according  to  the 
original  cast)  was  read  by  Robertson; 
Glenalvon,  by  the  greater  historian,  David 
Hume;  Old  Nerval,  by  the  famous  Dr. 
Caryle,  the  minister  of  Musselburgh ;  and 
Douglas,  by  Home,  in  right  of  authorship. 
Lady  Randolph  was  allotted  to  Professor 
Ferguson;  and  the  part  of  Anna  was 
read  by  Dr.  Blair,  the  minister  of  the  High 
Church,  and  author  of  the  once  popular 
sermons !  But  the  Presbyteries  of  Edin- 
burgh and  Glasgow  speedily  denounced 
author,  play,  dramatists,  and  dramas 
generally,  as  instruments  and  children  of 
Satan;  and  excommunicated,  not  only 
Home,  but  actors  and  audiences,  and  all 
abettors  and  approvers !  The  triumph  of 
the  play  compensated  for  every  thing. 
The  nation  confirmed  the  sentiment  of  the 
critic  in  the  pit,  whose  voice  was  heard  in 
the  ovation  of  the  first  night,  exultingly 
exclaiming,  "Weel,  lads,  what  do  ye  think 
o'  Wully  Shakspeare,  noo?"— Doran, 
John,  1863,  Annals  of  the  English  Stage, 
vol  I,  p.  414. 

The  indisputable  merits  of  the  play  can- 
not blind  us  to  the  fact  that  "Douglas" 
is  the  child  of  "Merope."— Ward,  A.W., 
1878,  Drama,  Encyclopcedia  Britannica, 
Ninth  edition,  vol.  vii. 

All  the  dramatic  capital  of  "Douglas" 
is  exhausted  in  telling  a  sentimental  tale ; 
for  characters  there  are  none.    There  is. 


JOHN  HOME 


515 


it  is  true,  some  poetry  in  the  piece ;  but 
it  is  poetry  of  a  weak  type,  pretty,  but  not 
beautiful,  mildly  interesting,  but  not  rous- 
ing with  new  and  great  thoughts. — Wal- 
ker, Hugh,  1893,  Three  Centuries  of  Scot- 
tish Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  111. 

A  sort  of  affection,  mingled  with  con- 
tempt, and  connected  with  the  universally 
known  "My  name  is  Norval,"  keeps  in 
twilight  rather  than  utter  darkness  the 
once  famous  "Douglas"  of  Home.  But  it 
is  pretty  certain  that  most  audiences,  and 
almost  all  modern  readers,  would  be 
affected  by  it  with  the  same  sort  of  fou  rire 
as  that  which  Thackeray,  by  a  slight 
anachronism,  ascribes  to  General  Lambert 
and  Mr.  George  Warrington  at  an  early 
performance  of  the  play. — Saintsbury, 
George,  1898,  A  Short  History  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  p.  637. 

"Douglas"  was  successful — though  it 
only  ran  a  usual  nine  nights  at  first.  On 
the  third  night  the  Duke  of  Cumberland 
handed  twenty  guineas  to  the  elated 
author,  his  pride  not  objecting  to  take 
what  an  author  out-at-elbows  would 
blush  now  to  have  offered.  Society  found 
a  charm  about  the  play  which  struck  a 
finer  note  than  the  turgid  dramas  which 
were  fashionable  at  that  time ;  there  were 
true  touches  of  nature,  a  chord  of  human 
tragedy,  a  vein  of  poetry,  which,  though 
the  play  does  not  appeal  strongly  to  us 
to-day,  made  it,  by  contrast  with  the 
bombast  and  fustian  then  in  vogue,  deserv- 
ing of  the  honour  it  won.  The  fastidious 
Mr.  Gray  wrote  to  his  friend  Horace  Wal- 
pole  that  the  author  of ' '  Douglas' '  * '  seems 
to  have  retrieved  the  true  language  of  the 
stage,  which  has  been  lost  for  a  hundred 
years,  and  there  is  one  scene  (between 
Lady  Randolph  and  the  stranger)  so 
masterly  that  it  strikes  one  blind  to  all 
its  defects."  It  was  played  with  success 
in  Ireland;  and  Thomas  Sheridan,  the 
manager,  munificiently  sent  from  Dublin  a 
gold  medal — worth  £10 — as  a  mark  of  ad- 
miration of  the  author.  This  Dr.  Johnson 
stigmatised  in  his  sweeping  way  not  merely 
as  a  piece  of  impudence,  but  as  an  act  of 
folly  in  rewarding  a  play  "without  ten 
good  lines."  English  praise  was  high, 
but  the  enthusiasm  of  Scotsmen  was  bound- 
less. The  drama  was  proclaimed  "the 
first  of  English  tragedies" — though  really 
and  chronologically  it  was  only  the  first 
of  Scottish  tragedies.    The  delighted 


dramatist  absorbed  the  flattery  and  be- 
lieved it  all.  He  had  not  that  modest  self- 
estimate  shown  by  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson, 
who,  when  he  was  informed  that  young 
Mr.  Pott,  the  poet,  had  pronounced 
"Irene"  "the  finest  tragedy  of  modern 
days,"  growled  out,  "If  Pott  says  so, 
Pott  lies." — Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901, 
Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  p.  67. 

The  literary  merits  are  not  so  apparent 
to  modern  readers  as  they  were  to  his 
contemporaries,  but  which  had  its  own 
literary  importance  as  a  precursor  of  the 
romantic  revival  which  was  ere  long  to 
make  itself  more  distinctly  felt.  .  .  . 
The  excellence,  as  literature,  of  Home's 
tragedy  has  not  been  accepted  by  poster- 
ity ;  and  its  importance  as  an  instrument 
in  affecting  thought  may  well  be  doubted. 
— Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Century' 
of  Scottish  History,  vol.  I,  pp.  438,  442. 

GENERAL 
Let  them  with  Home,  the  very  prince  of 
verse, 

Make  something  like  a  tragedy  in  Erse . 
—Churchill,  Charles,  1764,  The  Journey. 

Mr.  Home,  author  of  the  tragedy  of 
"Douglas,"  is  also  to  be  numbered  in  the 
list  of  Scotish  song  writers ;  but  it  must 
be  confessed  that  '"'The  Banks  of  the  Dee" 
has  lost  much  of  its  popularity,  though 
surely  nothing  of  its  merit,  since  the 
"valiant  Jemmy"  failed  to  "quell  the 
proud  rebels."  That  Jemmy's  ghost  now 
wanders  on  those  banks,  instead  of  his 
person,  might  be  no  improper  or  unpathetic 
subject  for  a  second  part. —  Ritson, 
Joseph,  1794-1869,  An  Historical  Essay 
on  Scotish  Song,  p.  70. 

Home's  other  tragedies  are  all  very  in- 
different,— most  of  them,  quite  bad.  Mr. 
Mackenzie  should  not  have  disturbed  their 
slumbers. — Wilson,  John,  1822,  Nodes 
Ambrosiance,  April. 

The  work  of  Home  was  not  entirely  such 
as  might  have  been  expected  from  one 
who  was  not  only  an  actor  in  the  scene,  but 
the  author  of  a  tragedy  like  "Douglas," 
elegant  enough  to  have  pleased  on  the 
French  stage,  and  yet  affecting  enough  to 
succeed  on  ours.  The  "History  of  the 
Rebellion"  was  a  work  which  had  been 
meditated  so  long,  that  it  was  delivered  to 
the  world  too  late, — when  the  writer  was 
no  longer  what  he  once  was.  But  I  recom- 
mend it  to  your  perusal,  because  it  has  all 


516 


HOME—HURD 


the  marks  of  authenticity;  possesses,  I 
think,  more  merit  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed ;  treats  of  a  very  remarkable  event 
in  our  history;  and  is, after  all, entertain- 
ing, and  not  long. — Smyth,  William,  1839, 
Lectures  on  Modern  History,  Lec.  xxviii. 

So  much  of  the  flavour  of  Home's  work 
has  evaporated  that  the  reader  of  the 
present  day  almost  inevitably  asks  what  is 
the  secret  of  the  extraordinary  popularity 
he  enjoyed  in  his  own  time.  As  far  as 
Scotland  is  concerned,  the  explanation 
might  be  supposed  to  lie,  and  no  doubt  did 
in  part  lie,  in  the  feeling  of  patriotism. 
Home  was  the  representative  Scot  of 
literature,  and  the  honour  of  his  country 
was  bound  up  with  his.  But  he  was 
scarcely  less  warmly  received  in  England ; 
and  a  Scot  living  in  England  under  the 
Bute  administration  was  not  the  person  to 
arouse  a  prejudice  in  favour  of  himself. 
The  explanation  of  the  popularity  must 
therefore  be  sought  within  Home's  writ- 
ings, and  not  in  external  circumstances. 
It  was  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  his 
dramas  appeal  to  sentiment ;  and  thus,  in 
an  age  when  the  appeal  to  reason  had  been 
somewhat  overdone,  they  caught  the  fancy 
of  the  multitude.  So  long  as  the  love  of 
melodrama  survives,  and  it  is  perennial, 
work  such  as  Home's  is  sure  of  a  tempo- 
rary popularity.  .  .  .  Home  was  a  man 
who  could  harp  with  success  upon  one 
string;  but  he  could  do  nothing  more. 
However  foreign  it  might  be  to  his  plot, 
he  must  either  enlist  the  spirit  of  senti- 
ment or  fail.    To  the  true  heroic  he  could 


not  rise.  He  had  glimmerings  of  it  in  his 
soul,  his  heart  warmed  to  it,  but  he  could 
not  express  it.  Now  that  the  glitter  of 
novelty  is  gone,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  a 
niggard  nature  had  denied  him  the  wreath 
of  the  vates  sacer.  Johnson,  whose  scorn- 
ful disbelief  in  Home  is  well  known, 
though  he  expressed  his  opinion  in  ex- 
aggerated language,  was  essentially  right. 
But  a  literary  reputation  is  rarely  achieved 
without  some  more  or  less  real  foundation ; 
and  Home's  power  was  real  within  the 
limits  of  sentiment.  He  was  master  of 
a  kind  of  pathos  cognate  to,  yet  different 
from,  that  of  '  *  East  Lynne. ' '  He  could  at 
least  make  a  martial  figure  stalk  with  a 
gallant  bearing  across  the  stage,  and  he 
could  fill  his  mouth  with  sounding  phrases. 
It  ought  in  justice  to  be  added  that  he 
has  occasional  lines  of  a  high  order. — 
Walker,  Hugh,  1893,  Three  Centuries 
of  Scottish  Literature,  vol.  ii,  pp.  109,  113. 

No  mortal  now  can  go  over  any  of 
Home's  laborious  tragedies  except  Doug- 
las ;"  and  one  may  apply  to  them  the  ver- 
dict which  the  Marquis  of  Wellesley  passed 
on  Dr.  Johnson's  Latin  verses — ''All  of 
them  are  bad,  but  some  of  them  are  worse 
than  others."  We  need  not,  however, 
superciliously  laugh  at  Home's  defunct 
tragedies,  for  they  admirably  suited  the 
taste  of  the  age.  All  dramatists  gave  the 
same  sort  of  produce  for  the  stage,  and 
society,  strange  to  say,  admired  it. — • 
Graham,  Henry  Grey,  1901,  Scottish 
Men  of  Letters  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  69. 


Richard  Hurd 

1720-1808 

Prelate  and  writer,  named  the  *' Beauty  of  Holiness"  on  account  of  his  comeliness 
and  piety,  was  born  at  Congreve,  Staffordshire,  January  13,  1720,  and  became  a  fellow 
of  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  in  1742.  In  1750  he  became  a  Whitehall  preacher, 
in  1774  Bishop  of  Lichfield  and  Coventry,  and  in  1781  of  Worcester.  He  died  May 
28,  1808.  Among  his  works  are  ''Commentary  on  Horace's  Ars  Poetica"  (1749) ; 
"Dissertations  on  Poetry"  (1755-57) ;  "Dialogues  on  Sincerity,  &c."  (1759),  his  most 
popular  book;  "Letters  on  Chivalry  and  Romance"  (1762);  "Dialogues  on  Foreign 
Travel"  (1764);  and  "An  Introduction  to  the  Prophecies"  (1722).  See  Hurd's 
Works  (8  vols.  1811)  and  "Memoir"  by  Kilvert  (I860).— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds., 
1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  514. 


PERSONAL 

He  is  grown  pure  and  plump,  just  of  the 
proper  breadth  for  a  celebrated  town- 
preacher. — Gray,  Thomas,  1765,  To  Rev. 
William  Mason ;  Letters,  ed.  Gosse,  vol.  ni, 
p.  224. 


Of  Dr.  Hurd,  Bishop  of  Worcester, 
Johnson  said  to  a  friend,  "Hurd,  Sir,  is 
one  of  a  set  of  men  who  account  for  every 
thing  systematically ;  for  instance,  it  has 
been  a  fashion  to  wear  scarlet  breeches ; 
these  men  would  tell  you,  that  according 


RICHARD  HURD 


517 


to  causes  and  effects,  no  other  wear  could 
at  that  time  have  been  chosen.''  He, 
however,  said  of  him  at  another  time  to 
the  same  gentleman,  **Hurd,  Sir,  is  a  man 
whose  acquaintance  is  a  valuable  acquisi- 
tion."—Johnson,  Samuel,  1783,  Life  by 
Boswelly  ed.  Hill,  vol.  IV,  p.  219. 

His  appearance  and  air  are  dignified, 
placid,  grave,  and  mild,  but  cold  and  rather 
distancing.  He  is  extremely  well-bred 
nevertheless.  .  .  .  Piety  and  goodness 
are  so  marked  on  his  countenance,  which 
is  truly  a  fine  one,  that  he  has  been  named, 
and  very  justly, ' '  The  Beauty  of  Holiness. ' ' 
Indeed,  in  face,  manner,  demeanour,  and 
conversation,  he  seems  precisely  what  a 
bishop  should  be,  and  what  would  make  a 
looker-on,  were  he  not  a  Bishop,  and  a  see 
vacant,  call  out, — take  Dr.  Hurd!  that  is 
the  man! — D'Arblay,  Madame  (Fanny 
Burney),  1786-7,  Diary,  Dec.  23,  Jan.  2. 

Hurd  had  acquired  a  great  name  by 
several  works  of  slender  merit,  was  a 
gentle  plausible  man,  affecting  a  singular 
decorum  that  endeared  him  highly  to 
devout  old  ladies. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1797,  Journal  of  the  Reign  of  King  George 
the  Third. 

Let  me  be  allowed  to  boast  that,  from 
the  commencement  of  my  typographic  life 
to  the  day  of  his  death,  I  had  the  honour 
of  uninterruptedly  enjoying  his  Lordship's 
patronage.  ...  I  had  often  the 
satisfaction  of  attending  this  good  prelate 
officially,  when  he  was  only  Mr.  Hurd,  in 
the  business  of  his  various  learned  works ; 
and  uniformly  experienced  the  same  grati- 
fying affability,  which  was  not  lessened  by 
the  progressive  dignities  to  which  he  was 
advanced.  After  Dr.  Hurd  became  a 
Bishop,  I  have  frequently  been  honoured 
with  an  invitation  to  his  hospitable  din- 
ners, with  a  very  small  but  select  party  of 
his  Lordship's  friends,  when  the  culinary 
feast,  neatly  elegant  as  it  always  was, 
formed  the  least  part  of  the  treat.  The 
rich  stores  of  a  capacious  and  highly- 
cultivated  mind  were  opened  with  the  ut- 
most placidity  of  manner,  and  were  a 
never-failing  source  of  instruction  and 
delight. — Nichols,  John,  1812,  Literary 
Anecdotes,  vol.  vi,  p.  600. 

Hurd  was  a  man  of  strict  integrity,  and 
very  kind  to  those  of  whom  he  approved ; 
but  he  was  distant  and  lofty,  and  not  at 
all  admired  by  those  who  did  not  estimate 
him  in  a  literary  capacity.    Indeed  he  paid 


no  attention  to  them ;  for  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  Warburton  he  made  use  of  a 
common  phrase  of  his,  '*I  am  here  per- 
fectly quiet,  for  I  have  delightfully  bad 
T-oads  about  me." — Cradock,  Joseph, 
1826-28,  Memoirs. 

In  person.  Bishop  Hurd  was  below  the 
middle  size,  of  slight  make,  but  well  pro- 
portioned, his  features  not  marked,  but 
regular  and  pleasing,  and  his  whole  aspect 
intelligent,  thoughtful,  and  in  later  life 
venerable.  This  idea  is  fully  conveyed  in 
the  portraits  of  him  extant,  by  Gains- 
borough and  others.  Although  he  reached 
so  advanced  an  age,  his  health  seems  never 
to  have  been  good ;  and,  notwithstanding 
his  temperate  and  abstemious  mode  of 
living,  we  find  in  his  letters  frequent  com- 
plaints of  his  suffering  from  attacks  of 
gout,  dizziness,  and  lowness  of  spirits,  as 
well  as  of  languor  and  indolence  arising 
from  these  causes.  .  .  .  His  moral 
character  was  distinguished  by  undeviating 
integrity,  and  exact  propriety,  arising 
horn  principle,  rather  than  from  sentiment. 
It  was  said  of  him  by  an  unfriendly  judge, 
that  he  was ''a  cold,  correct,  gentleman," 
each  word  being  intended  as  emphatic; 
and,  with  due  allowance  for  the  quarter 
from  whence  it  came,  this  judgment  seems 
not  destitute  of  truth.  Another  jocularly 
called  him  "an  old  maid  in  breeches,"  a 
sarcasm  which,  though  it  attributes  to 
him,  perhaps  not  unjustly,  some  share  of 
primness  and  precision,  bears  testimony 
to  the  scrupulous  correctness  of  his  char- 
acter. This  constitution  of  mind,  whilst 
it  rendered  him  less  generally  amiable, 
exempted  him  from  many  of  the  tempta- 
tions to  which  warmer  tempers  are  ex- 
posed. ...  As  a  Preacher,  his  manner 
was  calm,  dignified,  and  impressive.  His 
discourses,  though  not  marked  by  force 
and  energy,  had  yet  a  mild  persuasiveness, 
and  a  tone  of  gentle  insinuation,  which, 
joined  to  frequent  originality  of  thought, 
and  constant  exactness  of  methud,  pecul- 
iarly recommended  him  to  his  cultivated 
and  refined  audience  at  Lincoln's  Inn. — ■ 
KiLVERT,  Francis,  1860,  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  the  Right  Rev.  Rich- 
ard Hurd,  pp.  194,  197,  201. 

Hurd  was  a  man  who,  having  many 
qualities  that  obtain  respect,  and  none  that 
attach  regard,  has  been  more  hardly 
treated  by  the  biographers  than  he  de- 
served to  be.   That  he  provoked  a  peculiar 


518 


RICHARD  HURD 


animosity  among  his  contemporaries  may 
well  be  understood.  For  if  men  ill 
brooked  the  domineering  arrogance  of 
Warburton,  they  were  little  likely  to 
tolerate  the  irritable  superciliousness  of 
War  burton's  toady.  The  "terse,  neat, 
little,  thin  man,"  as  one  of  his  college 
contemporaries  describes  him,  was  sadly 
deficient  in  the  warmth  and  geniality  which 
the  impetuous  and  choleric  Warburton 
possessed  in  excess.  This  contrast  of 
character  promoted  the  intimacy  which 
sprang  up  between  the  two. — Pattison, 
Mark,  1863-89,  Life  of  Bishop  Warbur- 
toUy  Essays,  ed.  Nettleship,  vol.  ii,  p.  145. 

The  Bishop  of  Worcester,  chiefly  from 
his  connection  with  Warburton,  enjoyed 
high  reputation  in  his  day,  but  he  was 
emphatically  an  over-estimated  man,  and 
though  his  manners  were  courtly  and  dig- 
nified in  the  presence  of  royalty,  they  were 
extremely  cold  and  proud  to  those  whom  he 
considered  his  inferiors.  Some  literary 
claims  indeed  may  fairly  be  allowed  him. 
His  discourses  on  Prophecy"  are  still 
known  and  valued. — Perry,  George  G., 
1864,  The  History  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, vol.  Ill,  p.  445. 

Hurd  is  a  man  for  whom,  though  he  has 
attracted  a  recent  biographer,  animated 
by  the  ordinary  biographer's  enthusiasm, 
it  is  difficult  to  find  a  good  word.  He  was 
a  typical  specimen  of  the  offensive  variety 
of  University  don ;  narrow-minded,  formal, 
peevish,  cold-blooded,  and  intolerably  con- 
ceited. As  Johnson  said  of  Hermes" 
Harris,  he  was ''a  prig,  and  a  bad  prig." 
Even  Warburton,  it  is  said,  could  never 
talk  to  him  freely.  In  his  country  vicar- ' 
age  he  saw  nobody,  kept  his  curate  at 
arm's  length,  and  never  gave  an  entertain- 
ment except  on  one  occasion,  when  War- 
burton, who  was  staying  with  him,  rebelled 
against  the  intolerable  solitude.  As  a 
bishop,  he  never  drove  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
without  his  episcopal  coach  and  his 
servants  in  full  liveries.  His  elevation 
to  the  bench  was  justified  by  his  fame — 
for  which  there  are,  perhaps,  some 
grounds— as  an  elegant  writer  of  Addi- 
sonian English  and  a  good  critic  of  Horace. 
— Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  History  of 
English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
vol.  I,  p.  348. 

GENERAL 
It  is  a  pleasure  to  have  anybody  one 
esteems  agree  with  one's  own  sentiments, 


as  you  do  strongly  with  mine  about  Mr. 
Hurd.  It  is  impossible  not  to  own  that 
he  has  sense  and  great  knowledge — but 
sure  he  is  a  most  disagreeable  writer! 
He  loads  his  thoughts  with  so  many  words, 
and  those  couched  in  so  hard  a  style,  and 
so  void  of  all  veracity,  that  I  have  no 
patience  to  read  him.  In  one  point,  in  the 
"Dialogues"  you  mention,  he  is  perfectly 
ridiculous.  He  takes  infinite  pains  to 
make  the  world  believe,  upon  his  word, 
that  they  are  the  genuine  productions  of 
the  speakers,  and  yet  does  not  give  himself 
the  least  trouble  to  counterfeit  the  style 
of  any  one  of  them. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1760,  To  Rev.  Henry  Zouch,  Feb.  4 ;  Letters, 
ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  iii,  p.  289. 

I  have  now  seen  the  whole  of  the  Let- 
ter on  Chivalry,"  and  am  wonderfully 
taken  with  them.  .  .  .  They  cannot  but 
please  all  persons  of  taste,  greatly.  They 
are  the  petit-piece  to  that  noble  work, 

The  Dialogues."  .  .  .  In  which  there 
is  all  the  correctness  of  Addison's  style, 
and  a  strength  of  reasoning,  under  the 
direction  of  judgment  far  superior. — 
Warburton,  William,  1762-70,  Letters 
from  a  Late  Eminent  Prelate,  Letters,  civ, 
ccxxviii. 

In  this  interval,  I  published  at  London 
my  Natural  History  of  Religion,"  along 
with  some  other  small  pieces :  its  public 
entry  was  rather  obscure,  except  only  that 
Dr.  Hurd  wrote  a  pamphlet  against  it,  with 
all  the  illiberal  petulance,  arrogance,  and 
scurrility,  which  distinguish  the  Warbur- 
tonian  school.  This  pamphlet  gave  me 
some  consolation  for  the  otherwise  in- 
different reception  of  my  performance. — ■ 
Hume,  David,  1776,  My  Own  Life,  p.  21. 

To  grapple  with  the  unwieldy  was  among 
the  frolics  of  Warburton,  whilst  your  Lord- 
ship toiled  in  chasing  the  subtle.  He 
often  darkened  the  subject,  and  you  per- 
plexed it.  He,  by  the  boldness  and  magni- 
tude of  his  conceptions,  overwhelmed  our 
minds  with  astonishment,  and  you,  by  the 
singularity  and  nicety  of  your  quibbles, 
benumbed  them  with  surprize.  In  him, 
we  find  our  intellectual  powers  expanded 
and  invigorated  by  the  full  and  vivid  rep- 
resentation which  he  sometime^  holds  up, 
both  of  common  and  uncommon  objects, 
while  you,  my  Lord,  contrive  to  cramp  and 
to  cripple  them  by  all  the  tedious  formali- 
ties of  minute  and  scrupulous  analysis. 
He  scorned  every  appearance  of  soothing 


RICHARD  HURD 


519 


the  reader  into  attention,  and  you  failed 
in  almost  every  attempt  to  decoy  him  into 
conviction.  He  instructed,  even  where 
he  did  not  persuade,  and  you,  by  your 
petulant  and  contemptuous  gibes,  dis- 
gusted every  man  of  sense,  whom  you 
might  otherwise  have  amused  by  your 
curious  and  showy  conceits. — Parr,  Sam- 
uel, 1789,  Tracts  by  Warburton  and  a 
Warburtoniarij  Dedication. 

The  assassination  of  Jortin  by  Dr.  Hurd, 
now  Bishop  of  Worcester  (see  the  Deli- 
cacy of  Friendship"),  is  a  base  and  malig- 
nant act,  which  cannot  be  erazed  by  time 
or  expiated  by  secret  pennance. — Gibbon, 
Edward,  1793,  Autobiography^  p.  304, 
note. 

Bishop  Hurd,  with  the  hand  of  a  master, 
has  opened  the  general  View  of  the  sub- 
ject of  prophecy,  and  freed  it  from  the 
intricacies  of  speculation,  and  shewn  its 
time,  nature,  end,  and  intent. — Mathias, 
Thomas  James,  1797,  The  Pursuits  of 
Literature^  Eighth  ed.,  p.  204. 

The  most  distinguished  of  our  philo- 
sophical critics.— Drake,  Nathan,  1804, 
Essays  Illustrative  of  the  Tatler^  Spectator, 
and  Guardian,  vol.  n,  p.  145. 

His  Horace,  his  "Dialogues,"  and  three 
volumes  of  ''Sermons,"  with  a ''Life  of 
Bishop  Warburton,"  are  the  principal 
works  he  left  behind  him,  for  as  to  the 
*' Delicacy  of  Friendship,"  it  has  been 
dragged  into  notice  without  his  consent, 
and  in  all  probability  contrary  to  his 
wishes.  His  merit  as  a  writer  has  been 
variously  estimated,  and  literary  men 
have  gone  into  opposite  extremes.  It 
must  be  acknowledged  that  his  veneration 
for  the  author  of  the  "Divine  Legation" 
seduced  him  into  excessive  panegyric,  both 
of  the  work  itself  and  of  the  author,  and 
caused  him  to  depreciate  the  merits  and 
labours  of  all  who  had  the  fortune  to 
differ  in  their  opinions.  With  much  in- 
genuity in  criticism,  there  will  be  discov- 
ered some  unecessary  refinement,  and,  in 
this  instance,  the  character  of  the  two 
prelates  will  descend  to  posterity  as  per- 
fectly congenial. — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel 
Egerton,  1808,  Censura  Liter  aria,  vol. 
VIII,  p.  224. 

Subtle  and  sophistical,  elegant,  but 
never  forcible,  his  heart  was  cold,  though 
his  admiration  was  excessive.  He  wanted 
that  power  of  real  genius,  which  is  capable 


of  being  fired  by  the  contemplation  of  ex- 
cellence, till  it  partakes  of  the  heat  and 
flame  of  its  object.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  wanted  nothing  of  that  malignity  which 
is  incident  to  the  coolest  tempers,  of  that 
cruel  and  anatomical  faculty,  which,  in 
dissecting  the  characters  of  an  antagonist, 
can  lay  bare,  with  professional  indiffer- 
ence, the  quivering  fibres  of  an  agonized 
victim.  For  this  purpose  his  instrument 
was  irony;  and  few  practitioners  have 
ever  adopted  that  or  any  other,  more  un- 
feelingly than  did  the  biographer  of  War- 
burton, even  when  the  ground  of  complaint 
was  almost  imperceptible,  as  in  the  cases 
of  Leland  and  Jortin.— Whitaker,  T.  D., 
1812,  Hurd's  Edition  of  Bishop  Warbur- 
ton's  Works,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  7, 
p.  385. 

Then  Hurd,  the  future  shield,  scarcely 
the  sword  of  Warburton,  made  his  first 
sally;  a  dapper,  subtle,  and  cold-blooded 
champion,  who  could  dexterously  turn 
about  the  polished  weapon  of  irony. — 
Disraeli,  Isaac,  1814,  Warburton,  Quar- 
rels of  Authors. 

This  elegantly-written  and  learned 
volume  ["Prophecies"]  has  long  been 
known  and  duly  appreciated  by  the  public. 
The  subject  is  here  opened  in  the  most 
masterly  and  instructive  manner  by  Bishop 
Hurd. — HoRNE,  Thomas  Hartwell,  1818- 
39,  A  Manual  of  Biblical  Bibliography. 

Never  were  my  humble  expectations 
more  miserably  disappointed  [ed.  Addi- 
son]. It  seemed  to  me  as  a  sad  "potatoe- 
roasting"  performance  from  such  a 
quarter.  —  Dibdin,  Thomas  Frognall, 
1824,  The  Library  Companion,  p.  605, 
note. 

Hurd  has,  perhaps,  the  merit  of  being  the 
first  who  in  this  country  aimed  at  philo- 
sophical criticism :  he  had  great  ingenuity, 
a  good  deal  of  reading,  and  a  facility  in 
applying  it;  but  he  did  not  feel  very 
deeply,  was  somewhat  of  a  coxcom.b,  and 
having  always  before  his  eyes  a  model 
neither  good  in  itself  nor  made  for  him  to 
emulate,  he  assumes  a  dogmatic  arrogance, 
which,  as  it  always  offends  the  reader,  so 
far  the  most  part  stands  in  the  way  of  the 
author's  own  search  for  truth. — Hallam, 
Henry,  1837-39,  Introduction  to  the  Lit- 
erature of  Europe,  pt.  iv,  ch.  v,  par.  26, 
note. 

An  upright  and  scholarly,  but  formal 


520 


HURD—PORSON 


and  censorious  man,  whom  Johnson  called 
a  ''word-picker,"  and  franker  contempo- 
raries ''an  old  maid  in  breeches." — Dob- 
son,  Austin,  1883,  Fielding  (English 
Men  of  Letters),  p.  141,  note. 

Hurd  was  a  cold  and  "correct"  writer, 
no  less  arrogant  than  his  master,  little 
less  learned,  and  if  anything  even  more 
vapid  and  perverted  as  a  would-be  leader 
of  literary  taste ;  in  style  he  seems  a  kind 
of  ice-bound  Addison.— GossE,  Edmund, 
1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Lit- 
erature, p.  281. 

He  is  best  known  to  the  present  genera- 
tion by  his  impertinent  notes  on  Addison's 
* '  Works. ' '  By  reprinting  them,  Mr.  Bohn 
did  much  to  spoil  what  was  otherwise  an 
excellent  edition  of  that  author. — Hill, 
George  Birkbeck,  1891,  BoswelVs  Life 
of  Johnson^  vol.  iv,  p.  219. 


We  must  regard  Hurd  as  a  strong  influ- 
ence. (1)  He  was  a  follower  of  the  War- 
ton  school  of  criticism,  and  spoke  much 
more  boldly  and  decisively  than  Warton 
for  Romantic  tastes.  (2)  Besides  helping 
in  the  general  movement,  he  joined  the 
Wartons  in  dethroning  Pope  by  exalting 
the  imaginative  poets.  (3)  He  came  just 
at  the  time  to  accelerate  the  speed  of  the 
Romantic  movement.  Kurd's  learning 
and  authoritative  position  counted  for 
much ;  and  the  emphasis  with  which  he 
spoke  is  remarkable,  coming  so  early  as 
1762.  The  critical  judgments  on  poetry 
made  by  Matthew  Arnold  are  really  a 
simple  re-statement  of  what  Joseph  War- 
ton  and  Hurd  laid  down  a  hundred  years 
before. — Phelps,  William  Lyon,  1893, 
The  Beginnings  of  the  English  Romantic 
Movement,  p.  115. 


Richard  Person 

1759-1808. 

Born,  at  East  Ruston,  Norfolk,  25  Dec.  1759.  Early  education  at  village  schools, 
and  by  the  curate  of  the  parish.  At  Eton,  Aug.  1774  to  1778.  To  Trin.  Coll.,  Camb., 
Oct.  1778;  Scholar,  1780;  Craven  Scholar,  1781;  B  A.,  1782;  Chancellor's  Prize 
Medal,  1782;  Fellow  of  Trin.  Coll.,  1782;  M.  A.,  1785.  Obliged  to  give  up  Fellow- 
ship, owing  to  his  not  having  taken  holy  orders,  July  1792.  Annuity  purchased  for 
him  by  his  friends.  Settled  in  rooms  in  the  Temple,  1792.  Regius  Prof,  of  Greek, 
Cambridge,  Nov.  1792.  Continued  to  reside  in  London.  Pursued  classical  studies. 
Contrib.  to  "Maty's  Review,"  "Gentleman's  Mag."  "Monthly  Review,"  "Morning 
Chronicle,"  etc.  Married  Mrs.  Lunan,  Nov.  1796;  she  died,  12  April  1797.  Prin- 
cipal Librarian  of  newly-founded  London  Institution,  April  1806.  Died,  in  London, 
25  Sept.  1808.  Buried  in  chapel  of  Trin.  College,  Cambridge.  Works:  "Letters  to 
Mr.  Archdeacon  Travis"  (from  "Gentleman's  Mag."),  1790;  Edition  of  Toup's 
"Emendationes  in  Suidam,"  1790;  Edition  (anon.)  of  ^schylus,  1794;  Editions  of 
Euripides' "Hecuba,"  1797,  "Orestes,"  1798,  "Phoeniss^,"  1799,  and  "Medea," 
1801 ;  Edition  of  Homer's  "Iliad"  and  "Odyssey"  (with  Grenville  and  others),  1800. 
Posthumous'-  "Ricardi  Porsoni  Adversaria,"  ed.  by  J.  H.  Monk  and  C.  J.  Blomfield, 
1812;  "Tracts  and  Miscellaneous  Criticisms,"  ed.  by  T.  Kidd,  1815;  "Aristo- 
phanica,"  ed.  by  P.  P.  Dobree,  1820;  Edition  of  the  "Lexicon  of  Photius,"  ed.  by 
P.  P.  Dobree  (2  vols.),  1822;  "The  Devil's  Walk,"  ed.  by  H.  W.  Montagu  [1830]; 
"Correspondence,"  ed.  by  H.  R.  Luard,  1867.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A 
Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  230. 


PERSONAL 

I  have  been  furnished  with  many  oppor- 
tunities of  observing  Porson,  by  a  near 
inspection.  He  has  been  at  my  house 
several  times,  and  once  for  an  entire 
summer's  day.  Our  intercourse  would 
have  been  frequent,  but  for  three  reasons : 

1.  His  extreme  irregularity,  and  inat- 
tention to  times  and  seasons,  which  did 
not  at  all  comport  with  the  methodical 
arrangement  of  my  time  and  family. 

2.  His  gross  addiction  to  that  lowest 


and  least  excusable  of  all  sensualities,  im- 
moderate drinking.  And,  3.  The  unin- 
teresting insipidity  of  his  society ;  as  it 
is  impossible  to  engage  his  mind  on  any 
topic  of  mutual  inquiry,  to  procure  his 
opinion  on  any  author  of  any  passage  of 
an  author,  or  to  elicit  any  conversation 
of  any  kind  to  compensate  for  the  time 
and  attendance  of  his  company.  And  as 
for  Homer,  Virgil,  and  Horace,  I  never 
could  hear  of  the  least  critical  effort  on 
them  in  his  life.    He  is,  in  general,  devoid 


RICHARD  PORSON 


521 


of  all  human  affections ;  but  such  as  are 
of  the  misanthropic  quality;  nor  do  I 
think  that  any  man  exists  for  whom  his 
propensities  rise  to  the  lowest  pitch  of 
affection  and  esteem. — Wakefield,  Gil- 
bert, 1801?-1813,  Correspondence  with 
a  J.  Fox,  p.  99. 

Two  famous  men  of  a  preceding  gener- 
ation, Porson,  the  Grecian  and  Simeon, 
the  Methodist,  came  within  my  sight,  but 
nothing  more,  while  I  was  at  the  univer- 
sity. They  were  both  remarkable  for 
their  appearance,  and  on  that  account 
their  portraits  are  still,  as  it  were,  before 
me  in  the  mind's  eye.  Porson,  when  I 
saw  him,  was  in  cap  and  gown,  a  thin 
milddle-sized  figure,  with  lank  black 
hair  and  cheeks'  of  the  palest  cast.  He 
walked  at  a  stealthy  pace,  and  seemed  to 
have  a  book  which  he  hugged  parentally 
under  his  arm. — Canning,  Stratford 
(Stratford  de  Redcliffe),  1806-80-88, 
Life,  ed.  Lane-Poole,  vol.  i,  p.  25. 

In  giving  a  relation  of  the  facts  con- 
cerning the  illness  of  Mr.  Porson,  I  can- 
not let  the  opportunity  escape  me,  our 
official  situations  bringing  us  a  good  deal 
together,  of  lamenting  in  common  with 
his  most  intimate  friends,  the  loss  of  so 
pleasing  and  so  valuable  an  acquaintance ; 
for  to  the  most  gigantic  powers  of  learn- 
ing and  criticism  were  united  the  manners 
of  a  gentleman,  and  the  inoffensive  habits 
of  a  child ;  and  I  am  sorry  to  have  occasion 
to  observe,  in  concluding  this  narrative, 
that,  especially  since  the  .  Professor's 
decease,  there  should  be  found  persons, 
who  have  used  no  common  industry  in 
representing  his  failings  in  such  pointed 
terms,  as  totally  to  shade  the  numerous 
good  qualities  which  were  inherent  in  his 
nature ;  so  that  it  cannot  but  be  remarked 
with  pity,  that  those  persons  should  be  de- 
ficient in  one  of  those  excellent  qualities, 
which  he  possessed  in  an  eminent  degree, 
never  speaking  ill  of  any  one. — Savage, 
James,  1808,  The  Librarian,  Dec.  1,  vol. 
I,  p.  281. 

Porson  had  a  very  lofty  mind,  and  was 
tenacious  of  his  proper  dignity.  Where 
he  was  familiar  and  intimate,  he  was  ex- 
ceedingly condescendingand  good-natured. 
He  was  kind  to  children,  and  would  often 
play  with  them,  but  he  was  at  no  pains  to 
conceal  his  partiality,  where  there  were 
several  in  one  family.  In  one  which  he 
often  visited,  there  was  a.  little  girl  of 


whom  he  was  exceedingly  fond ;  he  often 
brought  her  trifling  presents,  wrote  in 
her  books,  and  distinguished  her  on  every 
occasion,  but  she  had  a  brother  to  whom, 
for  no  assignable  reason,  he  never  spoke, 
nor  would  in  any  respect,  notice.  He  was 
also  fond  of  female  society,  and  though 
too  frequently  negligent  of  his  person, 
was  of  the  most  obliging  manners  and  be- 
haviour, and  would  read  a  play,  or  recite, 
or  do  any  thing  that  was  required.  .  .  . 
Much  has  been  said  of  his  irregularities. — 
That  odious  theme  is  left  to  others.  With 
all  his  errors  and  eccentricities  he  who 
wrote  this,  loved  him  much,  bowed  with 
reverence  to  his  talents,  and  admiration  to 
his  learning,  and  acknowledged  with 
gratitude  the  delight  and  benefit  he  re- 
ceived from  his  society  and  conversation. 
Yet  Porson  by  no  means  excelled  in  con- 
versation; he  neither  wrote  nor  spoke 
with  facility.  His  elocution  was  perplexed 
and  embarrassed,  except  where  he  was 
exceedingly  intimate;  but  there  was 
strong  indication  of  intellect  in  his  coun- 
tenance, and  whatever  he  said  was  mani- 
festly founded  on  judgment,  sense,  and 
knowledge.  Composition  was  no  less 
difficult  to  him.  Upon  one  occasion,  he 
undertook  to  write  a  dozen  lines  upon  a 
subject  which  he  had  much  turned  in  his 
mind,  and  with  which  he  was  exceedingly 
familiar.  But  the  number  of  erasures  and 
interlineations  was  so  great  as  to  render 
it  hardly  legible;  yet,  when  completed, 
it  was,  and  is,  a  memorial  of  his  sagacity, 
acuteness,  and  erudition.  ^ — Beloe,  Wil- 
liam, 1817,  The  Sexagenarian,  vol.  1, 
pp.  217,  218. 

I  remember  to  have  seen  Porson  at 
Cambridge,  in  the  hall  of  our  college,  and 
in  private  parties,  but  not  frequently  ;  and 
I  never  can  recollect  him  except  as  drunk 
and  brutal,  and  generally  both  ;  I  mean  in 
an  evening,  for  in  the  hall  he  dined  at 
the  Dean's  table,  and  I  at  the  Vice-master's, 
so  that  I  w^as  not  near  him ;  and  he  then 
and  there  appeared  sober  in  his  demeanour, 
nor  did  I  ever  hear  of  excess  or  outrage 
on  his  part  in  public,— commons,  college, 
or  chapel;  but  I  have  seen  him  in  a 
private  party  of  undergraduates,  many  of 
them  freshmen  and  strangers,  take  up  a 
poker  to  one  of  them,  and  heard  him  use 
language  as  blackguard  as  his  action.  I 
have  seen  Sheridan  drunk,  too,  with  all 
the  world  ;  but  his  intoxication  was  that 


522 


RICHARD  PORSON 


of  Bacchus,  and  Porson^s  that  of  Silenus. 
Of  all  the  disgusting  brutes,  sulky, 
abusive,  and  intolerable,  Porson  was  the 
most  bestial,  as  far  as  the  few  times  that 
I  saw  him  went,  which  were  only  at  Wil- 
liam Bankes's  (the  Nubian  discoverer's) 
rooms.  I  saw  him  once  go  away  in  a  rage, 
because  nobody  knew  the  name  of  the 
''Cobbler  of  Messina,"  insulting  their 
ignorance  with  the  most  vulgar  terms  of 
reprobation.  He  was  tolerated  in  this 
state  amongst  the  young  men  for  his 
talents,  as  the  Turks  think  a  madman  in- 
spired, and  bear  with  him.  He  used  to 
recite,  or  rather  vomit,  pages  of  all  lan- 
guages, and  could  hiccup  Greek  like  a 
Helot ;  and  certainly  Sparta  never  shocked 
her  children  with  a  grosser  exhibition  than 
this  man's  intoxication. — Byron,  Lord, 
1818,  Letter  to  Mr.  Murray,  Feb,  20 ;  Life, 
Letters  and  JournalSy  ed.  Moore,  p.  374. 

The  Fieldings  to  dinner.  Talked  of 
Porson ;  one  of  his  scherzi,  the  translation 
of  "Three  blue  beans  in  a  blue  bladder;" 
T/oet?  Kvayol  Kva/xol  &c.  The  coolness  with 
which  he  received  the  intelligence  (which 
Raine  trembled  to  communicate  to  him) 
of  the  destruction  by  fire  of  his  long 
laboured  ''Photius,"  he  merely  quoted 
"To  each  his  sufferings,  all  are  men," 
adding,  "let  us  speak  no  more  on  the  sub- 
ject," and  the  next  day  patiently  begun 
his  work  all  again. —  Moore,  Thomas, 
1827,  Diary,  Sept.  12;  Memoirs,  Journal 
and  Correspondence,  vol.  v,  p.  203. 

I  was  at  first  greatly  struck  with  the 
acuteness  of  his  understanding  and  his 
multifarious  acquaintance  with  every 
branch  of  polite  literature  and  classical 
attainments.  I  also  found  him  extremely 
modest  and  humble,  and  not  vain-glorious 
of  his  astonishing  erudition  and  capacity. 
I  was  not  less  struck  with  his  memory. 
Taking  tea  one  afternoon  in  his  company 
at  Dockerell's  coffee-house,  I  read  a  pam- 
phlet written  by  Ritson  against  Tom 
Warton.  I  was  pleased  with  the  work, 
and  after  I  had  read  it  I  gave  it  to  Porson, 
who  began  it,  and  I  left  him  perusing  it, 
On  the  ensuing  day  he  drank  tea  with  me, 
with  several  other  friends,  and  the  con- 
versation happened  to  turn  on  Ritson's 
pamphlet.  1  alluded  to  one  particular 
part  about  Shakspeare,  which  had  greatly 
interested  me,  adding,  to  those  who  had 
not  read  it,  "I  wish  I  could  convey  to  you 
a  specific  idea  of  the  remainder."  Porson 


repeated  a  page  and  a  half,  word  for  word. 
I  expressed  my  surprise  and  said,  "I  sup- 
pose you  studied  the  whole  evening  at  the 
coffee-house  and  got  it  by  heart  ?"  " Not 
at  all ;  I  do  assure  you  that  I  only  read  it 
once." — CoxE,  William,  1828?  Life  and 
Posthumous  Works. 

There  is  one  quality  of  the  mind  in 
which  it  may  be  confidently  maintained 
that  Mr.  Porson  had  no  superior— I  mean, 
the  most  pure  and  inflexible  love  of  truth. 
Under  the  influence  of  this  principle,  he 
was  cautious,  and  patient,  and  persever- 
ing in  his  researches;  and  scrupulously 
accurate  in  stating  facts  as  he  found 
them.  All  who  were  intimate  with  him 
bear  witness  to  this  noble  part  of  his 
character,  and  his  works  confirm  the  testi- 
mony of  his  friends. — TuRTON,  Thomas, 
1829,  A  Vindication  of  the  Literary  Char- 
acter of  the  Late  Professor  Porson,  by 
Crito  Cantabrigiensis. 

His  head  was  remarkably  fine ;  an  ex- 
pansive forehead,  over  which  was  smoothlv 
combed  (when  in  dress)  his  shining  brown 
hair.  His  nose  was  Roman,  with  a  keen 
and  penetrating  eye,  shaded  with  long 
lashes.  His  mouth  was  full  of  expression ; 
and  altogether  his  countenance  indicated 
deep  thought.  His  stature  was  nearly 
six  feet. — Gordon,  Pryse  Lockhart, 
1830 ;  Personal  Memoirs,  vol.  i,  p.  288. 

I  was  once  or  twice  in  company  with 
Porson  at  college.  His  gift  was  a  sur- 
prising memory;  he  appeared  to  me  a 
mere  linguist,  without  any  original  powers 
of  mind.  He  was  vain,  petulant,  arrogant, 
overbearing,  rough  and  vulgar.  He  was 
a  great  Greek  scholar ;  but  this  was  a  de- 
partment which  very  few  much  cultivated, 
and  in  which  therefore  he  had  few  com- 
petitors. What  are  the  extraordinary 
productions  which  he  has  left  to  posterity  ? 
Where  is  the  proof  that  he  has  left  of 
energetic  sentiments,  of  deep  sagacity, 
of  powerful  reasoning,  or  of  high  elo- 
quence ?  Admit  that  he  has  shown  acute- 
ness in  verbal  criticism,  and  verbal 
emendation ; — what  is  that  ?  He  was  one 
of  those  men,  whose  eccentricities  excited 
a  false  notice.— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel 
Egerton,  1834,  Autobiography,  vol.  i, 
p.  58. 

I  first  saw  Porson  at  the  sale  of  Toup's 
library  in  1784,  and  was  introduced  to  him 
soon  after.  I  was  on  the  most  intimate 
terms  with  him  for  the  last  twenty  years 


I 


RICHARD  PORSON 


523 


of  his  life.  In  spite  of  all  his  faults  and 
failings,  it  was  impossible  not  to  admire 
his  integrity  and  his  love  of  truth.  .  .  . 
At  one  period  of  his  life  he  was  in  such 
straitened  circumstances,  that  he  would 
go  without  dinner  for  a  couple  of  days. 
However,  when  a  dinner  came  his  way, 
he  would  eat  very  heartily  (mutton  was 
his  favourite  dish),  and  lay  in,  as  he  used 
to  say,  a  stock  of  provisions.  He  has 
subsisted  for  three  weeks  upon  a  guinea. 
— Maltby,  William,  1854,  Porsoniana. 

When  Porson  dined  with  me,  I  used  to 
keep  him  within  bounds ;  but  1  frequently 
met  him  at  various  houses  where  he  got 
completely  drunk.  He  would  not  scruple 
to  return  to  the  dining-room,  after  the 
company  had  left  it,  pour  into  a  tumbler 
the  drops  remaining  in  the  wine-glasses, 
and  drink  off  the  omnium  gatherum.  I 
once  took  him  to  an  evening  party  at  Wil- 
liam Spencer's,  where  he  was  introduced 
to  several  women  of  fashion,  Lady  Crewe, 
&c.,  who  were  very  anxious  to  see  the 
great  Grecian.  How  do  you  suppose  he 
entertained  them?  Chiefly  by  reciting 
an  immense  quantity  of  old  forgotten 
Vauxhall  songs.  He  was  far  from  sober, 
and  at  last  talked  so  oddly,  that  they  all 
retired  from  him,  except  Lady  Crewe, 
who  boldly  kept  her  ground.  I  recollect 
her  saying  to  him,  "Mr.  Porson,  that  joke 
you  have  borrowed  from  Joe  Miller,"  and 
his  rather  angry  reply,  "Madam,  it  is 
not  in  Joe  Miller;  you  will  not  find  it 
either  in  the  preface  or  in  the  body  of 
that  work,  no,  nor  in  the  index."  I 
brought  him  home  as  far  as  Piccadilly, 
where,  I  am  sorry  to  add,  I  left  him  sick 
in  the  middle  of  the  street. — Rogers, 
Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of  Table- Talk, 
ed.  Dyce,  p.  217. 

Great  as  were  Porson's  deviations  from 
the  even  tenour  of  sobriety,  great  as  were 
his  disagreements  with  the  social  habits 
of  the  generality  of  mankind,  great  also 
must  have  been  his  merit,  which,  with 
such  aberrations  and  eccentricities,  se- 
cured him,  not  only  the  praise,  but  the 
regard,  of  all  men  of  learning  and  intellect 
that  had  intercourse  with  him.  Whoever 
knew  Richard  Porson,  felt  that  he  knew 
a  man  of  high  and  noble  mind,  who,  with 
all  his  irregularities,  and  all  his  inclination 
to  sarcasm  and  jest,  had  a  sincere  love  of 
truth  and  honesty,  and  who,  with  an  utter 
contempt  for  pretence  and  presumption, 


was  ever  ready  to  do  justice  to  gen- 
uine worth.  His  life  is  an  example,  and 
an  admonition,  how  much  a  man  may 
injure  himself  by  indulgence  in  one  un- 
happy propensity,  and  how  much  an 
elevated  mind  may  suffer  by  long  associa- 
tion with  those  of  an  inferior  order.  A 
Porson  cannot  day  after  day  descend  to 
the  level  of  a  Hewardine,  without  finding 
it  difficult  at  length  to  recover  his  original 
position  above  it.— Watson,  John  Sleby, 
1861,  The  Life  of  Richard  Porson,  p.  387. 

The  humour  of  Professor  Porson  lay  in 
parodies,  imitations,  and  hoaxes,  ready 
wit  and  repartee ;  in  his  oddities  of  dress 
and  demeanour;  and  his  disregard  for 
certain  decencies  of  society  is  very  deplor- 
able, though  at  the  same  time  mirthful 
in  its  very  extravagances.  ...  He 
had  for  some  time  become  notorious  at 
Cambridge.  His  passion  for  smoking, 
which  was  then  going  out  among  the 
younger  generations,  his  large  and  indis- 
criminate potations,  and  his  occasional 
use  of  the  poker  with  a  very  refractory 
controversialist,  had  caused  his  company 
to  be  shunned  by  all  except  the  few  to 
whom  his  wit  and  scholarship  were  irre- 
sistible. When  the  evening  began  to  grow 
late,  the  Fellows  of  Trinity  used  to  walk 
out  of  the  common  room,  and  leave  Porson 
to  himself,  who  was  sometimes  found 
smoking  by  the  servants  next  morning, 
without  having  apparently  moved  from 
the  spot  where  he  had  been  left  over- 
night. .  .  .  The  most  remarkable 
feature  in  Porson's  love  of  liquor  was, 
that  he  could  drink  anything.  Port  wine, 
indeed,  was  his  favourite  beverage.  But, 
in  default  of  this,  he  would  take  what- 
ever he  could  lay  his  hands  on.  He  was 
known  to  swallow  a  bottle  of  spirits  of 
wine,  an  embrocation,  and  when  nothing 
better  was  forthcoming,  he  would  even 
drench  himself  with  w^ater.  .  .  . 
Porson  was  very  odd  in  his  eating.  At 
breakfast,  he  frequently  ate  bread  and 
cheese ;  and  he  then  took  his  porter  as 
copiously  as  Johnson  took  his  tea. — 
Times,  John,  1866,  English  Eccentrics 
and  Eccentricities,  pp.  150,  154,  155, 

Great  linguists  have  always  been  noted 
for  their  power  both  of  retention  and  re- 
production. Porson  declared  that  he 
could  repeat  Smollett's  "Roderick  Ran- 
dom" from  beginning  to  end,  and  that  he 
would  undertake  to  learn  by  heart  a  copy 


524 


RICHARD  PORSON 


of  the  London  ''Morning  Chronicle"  in  a 
week.  One  day  he  called  upon  a  friend 
who  chanced  to  be  reading  Thucydides, 
and  who  asked  him  the  meaning  of  a 
certain  word.  Porson,  on  hearing  the 
word  did  not  look  at  the  book,  but  at 
once  repeated  the  passage.  His  friend 
asked  how  he  knew  that  the  word  was 
in  the  passage.  "Because,"  replied  the 
great  linguist,  *'the  word  occurs  only 
twice  in  Thucydides ;  once  on  the  right- 
hand  page  in  your  edition,  and  once  on 
the  left.  I  observed  on  which  side  you 
looked,  and  accordingly  knew  to  which 
passage  you  referred." — Mathews,  Wil- 
liam, 1881,  Literary  Style,  p,  158. 

This  human  monument  of  learning  hap- 
pened to  be  travelling  in  the  same 
coach  with  a  coxcomb  who  sought  to 
air  his  pretended  learning  by  quotations 
from  the  ancients.  At  last  old  Porson 
asked:  'Tri'  thee,  sir,  whence  comes  that 
quotation?"  ''From  Sophocles,"  quoth 
the  vain  fellow.  "Be  so  kind  as  to  find  it 
for  me?"  asked  Porson,  producing  a  copy 
of  Sophocles  from  his  pocket.  Then  the 
coxcomb,  not  at  all  abashed,  said  that  he 
meant  not  Sophocles,  but  Euripides. 
Whereupon  Porson  drew  from  another 
pocket  a  copy  of  Euripides  and  challenged 
the  upstart  to  find  the  quotation  in  ques- 
tion. Full  of  confusion,  the  fellow  thrust 
his  head  out  of  the  window  of  the  coach 
and  cried  to  the  driver:  "In  Heaven's 
name,  put  me  down  at  once ;  for  there  is 
an  old  gentleman  in  here  that  hath  the 
Bodleian  Library  in  his  pocket!" — Field, 
Eugene,  1895,  The  Love  Affairs  of  a 
Bibliomaniac,  p.  34. 

The  irony  which  pervades  so  much  of 
Porson 's  writings,  and  the  fierce  satire 
which  he  could  occasionally  wield,  were 
intimately  connected  with  this  love  of 
accuracy  and  candour.  They  were  the 
weapons  which  he  employed  where  he  dis- 
covered the  absence  of  those  qualities. 
He  was  a  man  of  warm  and  keen  feelings, 
a  staunch  friend,  and  also  a  good  hater. 
In  the  course  of  life  he  had  suffered,  or 
believed  himself  to  have  suffered,  some 
wrongs  and  many  slights.  These,  acting 
on  his  sensitive  temperament,  tinged  it 
with  cynicism,  or  even  with  bitterness. 
He  once  described  himself  (in  1807)  as  a 
man  who  had  become  "a  misanthrope  from 
a  morbid  excess  of  sensibility."  In  this, 
however,  he  was  less  than  just  to  himself. 


He  was,  indeed,  easily  estranged,  even 
from  old  acquaintances,  by  words  or  acts 
which  offended  him.  But  his  native  dis- 
position was  most  benevolent.  To  those 
who  consulted  him  on  matters  of  scholar- 
ship he  was  liberal  of  his  aid.  Stephen 
Weston  says  "he  told  you  all  you  wanted 
to  know  in  a  plain  and  direct  manner, 
without  any  attempt  to  display  his  own 
superiority,  but  merely  to  inforn;  you." 
Nor  was  his  liberality  confined  to  the  im- 
parting of  his  knowledgOc  Small  though 
his  means  were,  the  strict  economy  which 
he  practiced  enabled  him  to  spare  some- 
thing for  the  needs  of  others. — Jebb, 
R.  C,  1896,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XLVi,  p.  159. 

GENERAL 

Mr.  Porson  ...  is  a  giant  in 
literature,  a  prodigy  in  intellect,  a  critic 
whose  mighty  achievements  leave  imitation 
panting  at  a  distance  behind  them,  and 
whose  stupendous  powers  strike  down  all 
the  restless  and  aspiring  suggestions  of 
rivalry  into  silent  admiration  and  passive 
awe. — Parr,  Samuel,  1793,  Answer  to 
Combe's  Statement,  Works,  vol.  ill,  p.  518. 

I  consider  Mr.  Porson's  answer  to  Arch- 
deacon Travis  as  the  most  acute  and  ac- 
curate piece  of  criticism  which  has 
appeared  since  the  days  of  Bentley.  His 
strictures  are  founded  in  argument,  en- 
riched with  learning,  and  enlivened  with 
wit;  and  his  adversary  neither  deserves 
nor  finds  any  quarter  at  his  hands.  The 
evidence  of  the  three  heavenly  witnesses 
would  now  be  rejected  in  any  court  of 
justice :  but  prejudice  is  blind,  authority 
is  deaf,  and  our  vulgar  bibles  will  ever  be 
polluted  by  this  spurious  text,  ^'sedet 
ceternumque  sedebit." — Gibbon,  Edward, 
1793,  Autobiograghy,  note. 

Mr.  Professor  Porson's  "Letters  to 
Archdeacon  Travis"  are  conspicuous  for 
their  erudition,  acuteness,  accuracy, 
virulence,  bitterness,  and  invective. — 
Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The  Pur- 
suits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  p.  143. 

Porson. — Removed  alike  from  the 
crowd  and  the  coterie,  I  have  always 
avoided,  with  timid  prudence,  the  bird-cage 
walk  of  literature,  I  have  withholden 
from  Herman  and  some  others,  a  part  of 
what  is  due  to  them ;  and  I  regret  it.  Some- 
times I  have  been  arrogant,  never  have  I 
been  malicious.  Unhappily,  I  was  edu- 
cated in  a  school  of  criticism  where  the 


RICHARD  PORSON 


525 


exercises  were  too  gladitorial.  Looking  at 
my  elders  in  it,  they  appeared  to  me  so 
ugly,  in  part  from  their  contortions,  and 
in  part  from  their  scars,  that  I  suspected 
that  it  must  be  a  dangerous  thing  to 
wield  a  scourge  of  vipers ;  and  I  thought 
it  no  very  creditable  appointment  to  be 
linkboy  or  pander  at  an  ally  leading  down 
to  the  Furies.  Age  and  infirmity  have 
rendered  me  milder  than  I  was.  I  am 
loth  to  fire  off  my  gun  in  the  warren  which 
lies  before  us ;  loth  to  startle  the  snug 
little  creatures,  each  looking  so  comfort- 
able at  the  mouth  of  its  burrow,  or  skip- 
ping about  at  short  distances,  or  frisking 
and  kicking  up  the  sand  along  the  thrift- 
less heath. — Landor,  Walter  Savage, 
1828,  Imaginary  Conversations,  Third 
Series,  Works,  vol,  iv,  p.  49. 

This  Greek  professor,  Porson — whose 
knowledge  of  English  was  so  limited  that 
his  total  cargo  might  have  been  embarked 
on  board  a  walnut-shell  on  the  bosom  of  a 
slop  basin,  and  insured  for  three  half- 
pence— astonishes  me,  that  have  been 
studying  English  for  thirty  years  and 
upwards,  by  the  strange  discoveries  that 
he  announces  in  this  field.  One  and  all,  I 
fear,  are  mares'  nests. — De  Quince y, 
Thomas,  1847-58,  Notes  on  Walter  Sa.vage 
Landor,  Works,  ed.  Masson,  vol.  xi,  p,  421. 

I  read  Person's  ''Letters"  to  Arch- 
deacon Travis,  and  compared  the  collected 
letters  with  the  *  *  Gentleman's  Magazine, ' ' 
in  which  they  originally  appeared.  The 
book  has  a  little  suffered  from  the  awk- 
wardness of  turning  what  were  letters  to 
Sylvanus  Urban  into  letters  to  Archdeacon 
Travis;  but  it  is  a  masterly  work.  A 
comparison  between  it  and  the  Phalaris 
would  be  a  comparison  between  Person's 
mind  and  Bentley's  mind ;  Person's  more 
sure-footed,  more  exact,  more  neat,  Ben- 
tley's far  more  comprehensive  and  inven- 
tive.   While  walking,    I  read  Bishop 
Burgess's  trash  in  answer  to  Porson, 
Home,  and  read  Turton's  defence  of  Porson 
against  Burgess ;  an  impenetrable  dunce, 
to  reason  with  whom  is  like  kicking  a  wool- 
pack.    Was  there  ever  such  an  instance 
of  the  binding  power  of  bigotry  as  the 
fact  that  some  men,  who  were  not  absolute 
fools,  continued,  after  reading  Porson 
and  Turton,  to  believe  in  the  authenticity 
of  the  text  of  the  Three  Witnesses  ? — 
Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1850, 
Journal,  Dec.  25 ;  Life  and  Letters. 


Richard  Porson  was  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  Greek  scholars  and  the  greatest 
verbal  critic  that  any  age  or  country  has 
produced.  He  possessed  every  quality 
which  is  necessary  to  the  information  of 
a  scholar — a  stupendous  memory,  un- 
wearied application,  great  acuteness, 
strong  sound  sense,  and  a  lively  percep- 
tion both  of  the  beautiful  and  the 
ludicrous.  Besides  these  qualifications 
he  enjoyed  the  rare  faculty  of  conjectur- 
ing from  the  imperfect  data  of  corrupt 
readings  the  very  words  of  the  author 
whose  text  he  sought  to  restore ;  in  the 
last  particular  we  know  of  no  one,  with 
the  single  exception  of  Bentley,  who  can 
be  named  in  comparison  with  him,  and  in 
some  points  we  should  not  hesitate  to 
place  Porson  before  the  great  Aristarchus 
of  criticism. — Hawes,  Sid  ay,  1857,  Eng- 
lish Encyclopcedia,  ed.  Knight,  Biography, 
vol.  IV,  /.  940. 

With  the  single  exception  of  Porson, 
not  one  of  the  English  scholars  has  shown 
an  appreciation  of  the  beauties  of  his 
native  language.  —  Buckle,  Henry 
Thomas,  1857,  History  of  Civilization  in 
England,  vol.  i,  p.  587,  note. 

The  delicacy  of  whose  Greek  scholar- 
ship almost  amounted  to  a  sense.  — Ar- 
nold, Thomas,  1862-87,  A  Manual  of 
English  Literature,  p.  276. 

Giant  as  he  was,  Porson  had  but  small 
hands,  that  played  with  words  as  with 
marbles,  and  delighted  in  nothing  so  much 
as  in  good  penmanship.  One  is  astonished 
in  readingthrough  his  edition  of  Euripides, 
to  see  how  he  wrote  note  upon  note,  all 
about  words,  and  less  than  words — syl- 
lables, letters,  accents,  punctuation.  He 
ransacked  Codex  A  and  Codex  B,  Codex 
Cantabrigiensis  and  Codex  Cottonianus, 
to  show  how  this  noun  should  be  in  the 
dative,  not  in  the  accusative ;  how  that 
verb  should  have  the  accent  paroxytone, 
not  perispomenon ;  and  how  by  all  the 
rules  of  prosody  there  should  be  an  iambus, 
not  a  spondee,  in  this  place  or  in  that. 
Nothing  can  be  more  masterly  of  its  kind 
than  the  preface  to  the  ''Hecuba,"  and 
supplement  to  it.  The  lad  who  hears 
enough  of  this  wonderful  dissertation 
from  his  tutors  at  last  turns  wistful  eyes 
towards  it,  expecting  to  find  some  magical 
criticism  on  Greek  tragedy.  Behold  it  is 
a  treatise  on  certain  Greek  metres.  Its 
talk  is  of  csesural  pauses,  penthemimeral 


526 


RICHARD  PORSON 


and  hepthemimeral,  of  isochronous  feet, 
of  enclitics  and  cretic  terminations ;  and 
the  grand  doctrine  it  promulgates  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  cannon  regarding  the  pause 
which,  from  the  discoverer,  has  been 
named  the  Porsonian,that  when  the  iambic 
trimeter,  after  a  word  of  more  than  one 
syllable,  has  the  cretic  termination,  in- 
cluded either  in  one  word  or  two,  then 
the  fifth  foot  must  be  an  iambus !  The 
young  student  throws  down  the  book  thus 
prefaced,  and  wonders  if  this  be  all  that 
giants  of  Porsonian  height  can  see  or  care 
to  speak  about  in  Greek  literature.  Nor 
was  Porson  alone ;  he  had  disciples  even 
worse. — Dallas,  E.  S.,  1866,  The  Gay 
Science,  vol.  i,  p.  17. 

In  some  respects  the  greatest  of  modern 
Greek  scholars.  ...  In  claiming  for  Por- 
son the  very  high  place  he  has  always  occu- 
pied among  Greek  scholars,  it  is  with  those 
who  went  before  him  that  he  must  be  com- 
pared, if  we  would  judge  fairly  of  the  ad- 
vances he  made  in  the  knowledge  of  the 
language.  In  learning  he  was  superior  to 
Valckenaer,  in  accuracy  to  Bentley.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  in  his  day  the  sci- 
ence of  comparative  philology  had  scarcely 
any  existence ;  even  the  comparative  value 
of  MSS.  was  scarcely  considered  in  editing 
an  ancient  author.  With  many  editors 
MSS.  were  treated  as  of  pretty  much  the 
same  value,  whether  they  were  really  from 
the  hand  of  a  trustworthy  scribe,  or  what 
Bentley  calls  ''scrub  manuscripts"  or 
''scoundrel  copies Thus,  if  we  are  to 
find  fault  with  Porson's  way  of  editing, 
it  is  that  he  does  not  make  sufficient 
difference  between  the  MSS.  he  uses,  or 
point  out  the  relative  value  of  the  early 
copies  whether  in  MS.  or  print. — Luard, 
H.  R.,  1885,  Encyclopedia  Britannicay 
Ninth  edition,  vol.  xix,  pp.  537,  540. 

Richard  Porson,  the  profound  scholar, 
linguist,  and  wit,  reared  many  monuments 
of  classic  learning,  which  have  however 
crumbled  away,  leaving  his  name  familiar 
to  us  only  as  a  writer  of  jeux  d'esprit ; 
but  these  are  admirable.  He  was  full  of 
the  sunshine  of  wit ;  and  though  sarcastic 
and  personal,  as  the  nature  of  his  hon- 
mots  compelled,  he  had  no  bitterness  in 
his  reflections,  and  uttered  them  with  a 
good-natured  laugh.— Ballou,  Maturin 
M.,  1886,  Genius  in  Sunshine  and  Shadow, 
p.  277. 

Johnson  had  observed  very  rightly  that 


"the  justness  of  a  happy  restoration 
strikes  at  once,  and  the  moral  precept  may 
be  well  applied  to  criticism,  'quod  dubitas 
en  feceris.'  "  Of  no  emendations  is  this 
more  true  than  of  Porson's.  Unlike  those 
of  such  critics  as  Bentley  and  Wakefield — 
for,  immeasurable  as  was  Bentley's  su- 
periority to  Wakefield  in  point  of  ability 
and  attainments,  in  temper  and  taste  he 
was  as  rash  and  coarse — they  are  seldom 
or  never  superfiuous.  If  they  do  not  suc- 
ceed in  satisfying  us  that  the  word  re- 
stored is  the  exact  word  lost,  they  afford 
us  the  still  higher  satisfaction  of  feeling 
that  nothing  which  could  be  recovered 
could  be  an  improvement  on  what  has 
been  supplied.  .  .  .  Porson's  per- 
ception, indeed,  of  what  stupidity,  care- 
lessness, or  ignorance,  had  disguised  or 
obscured  in  the  text  of  an  ancient  poet, 
resembled  clairvoyance.  And  even  when 
he  failed,  his  fine  and  delicate  sense  of 
the  niceties  of  rhythm,  his  exquisite  taste, 
his  refined  good  sense,  his  sobriety,  his 
tact,  kept  him  at  least  from  going  far 
astray,  and  from  making  himself  and  his 
author  ridiculous,  as  Bentley  habitually 
did. — Collins,  John  Churton,  1895,  The 
Porson  of  Shakspearian  Criticism,  Essays 
and  Studies,  pp.  289,  291. 

He  possessed  in  almost  the  highest  de- 
gree that  power  of  divination,  based  on 
accurate  knowledge,  which  distinguishes* 
the  scholar,  and  it  is,  as  has  been  said, 
nearly  certain  that  he  would  have  been  a 
brilliant  writer  in  English  on  any  subject 
he  chose  to  take  up. — Saintsbury, George, 
1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  406. 

Textual  criticism  was  the  work  to  which 
Porson's  genius  was  mainly  devoted. 
His  success  in  it  was  due  primarily  to  na- 
tive acumen,  aided — in  a  degree  perhaps 
unequalled — by  a  marvellous  memory, 
richly  stored,  accurate,  and  prompt.  His 
emendations  are  found  to  rest  both  on  a 
wide  and  exact  knowledge  of  classical 
Greek,  and  on  a  wonderful  command  of 
passages  which  illustrate  his  point.  He  re- 
lied comparatively  little  on  mere  "divina- 
tion," and  usually  abstained  from  conjec- 
ture where  he  felt  that  the  remedy  must  re- 
main purely  conjectural.  His  lifelong  love 
of  mathematics  has  left  a  clear  impress  on 
his  criticism ;  we  see  it  in  his  precision 
and  in  his  close  reasoning.  Very  many 
of  his  emendations  are  such  as  at  once 


PORSON—AMES 


527 


appear  certain  or  highly  probable.  Bent- 
ley's  cogent  logic  sometimes  (as  in  his 
Horace)  renders  a  textual  change  plaus- 
ible, while  our  instinct  rebels;  Porson, 
as  a  rule,  merely  states  his  correction, 
briefly  gives  his  proofs,  and  convinces. 
His  famous  note  on  the  "Medea,"  vv.  139/., 
where  he  disengages  a  series  of  poetical 
fragments  from  prose  texts,  is  a  striking 
example  of  his  method,  and  has  been  said 
also  to  give  some  idea  of  the  way  in  which 
his  talk  on  such  subjects  used  to  flow. 
Athenseus,  so  rich  in  quotations  from  the 
poets,  afforded  a  field  in  which  Porson  did 
more,  perhaps,  than  all  former  critics  put 
together.  He  definitely  advanced  Greek 
scholarship  in  three  principal  respects: 
(1)  by  remarks  on  countless  points  of 


Greek  idiom  and  usage ;  (2)  by  adding  to 
the  knowledge  of  metre,  and  especially  of 
the  iambic  trimeter ;  (3)  by  emendation 
of  texts.  Then,  as  a  master  of  precise 
and  lucid  phrase,  alike  in  Latin  and  in 
English,  he  supplied  models  of  compact 
and  pointed  criticism.  A  racy  vigour  and 
humour  often  animate  his  treatment  of 
technical  details.  He  could  be  tren- 
chantly severe,  when  he  saw  cause ;  but 
his  habitual  weapon  was  irony,  sometimes 
veiled,  sometimes  frankly  keen,  always 
polished,  and  usually  genial.  Regarding 
the  correctness  of  texts  as  the  most  valu- 
able oflftce  of  the  critic,  he  lamented  that,  in 
popular  estimation,  it  stood  below  liter- 
ary" criticism. — Jebb,  R.C.,1896,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  wZ.XLVi,  p,  162. 


Fisher  Ames 

1758-1808. 

Born  at  Dedham,  Mass.,  April  9,  1758:  died  at  Dedham,  July  4,  1808.  A  noted 
American  orator,  statesman,  and  political  writer.  He  was  graduated  from  Harvard 
College  in  1774,  began  the  practice  of  law  at  Dedham  in  1781,  was  a  member  of  the 
Massachusetts  ratifying  committee  in  1788,  and  was  a  Federal  member  of  Congress 
from  Massachusetts  1789-97.  He  declined  the  presidency  of  Harvard  College  in 
1804.  He  wrote  the  ''Laocoon''  and  other  essays  to  rouse  the  opposition  against 
France. — Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed,,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  49. 


PERSONAL 
The  manly  genius,  ardent  thought, 
The  love  of  truth  and  wit  refined. 
The  eloquence  that  wonders  wrought. 
And  flash 'd  its  light  on  every  mind. 
These  gifts  were  thine,  immortal  Ames! 

Of  motive  pure,  of  life  sublime ; 
Their  loss  our  flowing  sorrow  claims, — 
Their  praise  survives  the  wreck  of  time. 
— Gardiner,  J.  S.  J.,  1808,  Verses  Sung 
in  King's  Chapel,  Boston,  July  6. 

His  spotless  youth  brought  blessings  to 
the  whole  remainder  of  his  life.  It  gave 
him  the  entire  use  of  his  faculties,  and 
all  the  fruit  of  his  literary  education. 
Its  effects  appeared  in  that  fine  edge  of 
moral  feeling  which  he  always  preserved ; 
in  his  strict  and  often  austere  temperance ; 
in  his  love  of  occupation,  that  made 
activity  a  delight ;  in  his  distaste  for  pub- 
lick  diversions,  and  his  preference  of 
simple  pleasures.  Beginning  well,  he  ad- 
vanced with  unremitted  steps  in  the  race 
of  virtue,  and  arriving  at  the  end  of  life 
in  peace  and  honour.  .  .  .  Mr.  Ames 
in  person  a  little  exceeded  the  middle 
height,  was  well  proportioned,  and  remark- 
ably erect.    His  features  were  regular, 


his  aspect  respectable  and  pleasing,  his 
eye  expressive  of  benignity  and  intelli- 
gence. His  head  and  face  are  shown 
with  great  perfection  in  the  engraving 
prefixed  to  his  works.  In  his  manners  he 
was  easy,  aflfable,  cordial,  inviting  con- 
fidence, yet  inspiring  a  respect.  He  had 
that  refined  spirit  of  society,  which  ob- 
serves the  forms  of  a  real,  but  not  studied 
politeness,  and  paid  a  more  delicate  regard 
to  the  propriety  of  conversation  and 
behaviour. — Kirkland,  John  Thornton, 
1809,  Life  of  Fisher  Ames. 

His  writings  sufiiciently  exhibited  him 
as  a  most  cheerful  and  fascinating  friend, 
a  brilliant  political  essayist,  an  eloquent 
and  fearless  orator,  and  a  patriot  without 
reproach  or  suspicion.  ...  In  all 
his  private  relations,  in  his  friendships, 
his  pursuits,  his  successes,  Mr.  Ames  had 
the  good  fortune  which  a  happy  temper, 
sound  judgment,  and  fidelity  are  very  apt 
to  secure.  The  friends  he  had  (and  of 
what  character  they  were  his  letters 
sufficiently  show)  he  ''grappled  to  him 
with  hooks  of  steel."  The  honors  which 
he  Vv'on  abroad  were  made  thrice  dear  by 


528 


FISHER  AMES 


the  sympathy  of  a  chosen  circle  at  home. 
Of  the  law  he  had  a  noble  conception,  yet, 
on  account  of  his  health,  he  seems  to  have 
given  himself  to  the  practice  of  it  as  a 
matter  of  necessity,  and  with  a  divided 
love.  Yet  he  had  no  reason  to  be  dis- 
satisfied with  the  results  of  his  labors. 
His  fortune  was  never  ample,  yet  he  be- 
came independent,  and  when  he  was  no 
longer  compelled  to  labor  for  his  daily 
bread,  his  mind  instinctively  turned  to 
those  broad  and  varied  studies  whence  he 
could  draw  the  most  important  lessons  for 
his  country. — Brown,  S.  G.,  Works 
of  Fisher  Ames,  North  American  Review, 
vol,  80,  p.  233. 

In  person  Mr.  Ames  was  above  middle 
stature  and  well  formed.  His  counte- 
nance was  very  handsome,  and  his  eye 
blue  in  colour,  and  expressive.  His  fea- 
tures were  not  strongly  marked.  His 
forehead  was  neither  high  nor  broad. 
His  mouth  was  beautifully  shaped,  and  was 
one  of  his  finest  features ;  his  hair  was 
black,  and  he  wore  it  short,  and  in  the 
latter  years  of  his  life  unpowdered.  He 
was  exceedingly  erect  in  walking,  and 
when  speaking  he  raised  his  head  slightly. 
It  is  said  that  his  expression  was  usually 
mild  and  complacent  when  in  debate,  and 
if  he  meant  to  be  severe,  it  was  seen  in 
good-natured  sarcasm,  rather  than  in 
acrimonious  words. — Hardwicke,  Henry, 
1896,  History  of  Oratory  and  Orators, 
p.  340. 

SPEECHES 

Fisher  Ames,  among  the  great  men  of 
his  day,  was  the  orator  of  genius  and  elab- 
orate beauty. — Magoon,  E.  L.,  1848, 
Orators  of  the  American  Revolution,  p.  315. 

He  was  decidedly  one  of  the  most 
splendid  rhetoricians  of  the  age.  Two 
of  his  speeches,  in  a  special  manner — that 
on  Jay's  treaty,  and  that  usually  called 
his ''Tomahawk  Speech,"  (because  it  in- 
cluded someresplendent  passages  on  Indian 
massacres) — were  the  most  brilliant  and 
fascinating  specimens  of  eloquence  I  have 
ever  heard ;  yet  have  I  listened  to  some 
of  the  most  celebrated  speakers  in  the 
British  parliament — -among  others,  to 
Wilberforce  and  Mackintosh,  Plunket, 
Brougham  and  Canning ;  and  Dr.  Priestley, 
who  was  familiar  with  the  oratory  of  Pitt 
the  father  and  Pitt  the  son,  and  also  with 
that  of  Burke  and  Fox,  made  to  myself 
the  acknowledgement,  that,  in  his  own 


words,  the  speech  of  Ames,  on  the  British 
Treaty,  was  ''the  most  bewitching  piece 
of  parliamentary  oratory  he  had  ever  list- 
ened to."— Caldwell,  Charles,  1853-55, 
Autobiography. 

Mr.  Ames  possessed  uncommon  vigor 
of  mind;  his  memory  was  stored  with 
literary  treasures ;  his  fancy  was  active, 
furnishing  illustrative  images  that  were 
as  much  to  the  purpose  as  his  logic.  And 
such  was  the  effect  of  his  oratory,  even 
upon  deliberate  bodies,  that  on  one  occa- 
sion Congress  adjourned  on  motion  of 
Ames's  chief  opponent  in  debate,  for  the 
alleged  reason  that  the  members  ought 
not  to  be  called  upon  to  vote  while  under 
the  spell  of  his  extraordinary  eloquence. 
The  speeches  of  Mr.  Ames  that  have  been 
preserved  fully  sustain  his  great  reputa- 
tion, being  vigorous  and  logical  in  state- 
ment, and  adorned  with  the  graces  of  a 
lively  and  learned  style.  His  letters,  also, 
are  fresh  and  charming. —  Under w^ood, 
Francis  H.,1872,  A  Hand-Book  of  English 
Literature,  American  Authors,  p.  34. 

If  Ames  does  not  quite  rival  the 
sublimest  flights  of  Burke,  he  never  is 
carried  by  the  pursuit  of  an  apt  but  offen- 
sive metaphor  to  a  point  that  is  scarcely 
short  of  the  disgusting.  His  perfect 
taste  is  never  at  fault.  In  felicity  of 
illustration,  in  playfulness  of  fancy,  in 
readiness  of  wit,  in  neatness  of  raillery, 
in  delicacy  of  irony,  and  in  keenness  of 
sarcasm,  he  is  not  unworthy  to  be  placed 
in  the  company  of  the  great  Irishman. — 
QuiNCY,  Edmund,  1872,  Fisher  Ames,  The 
Nation,  vol.  14,  p.  76. 

Though  known  to  us  only  as  a  political 
orator  and  newspaper  writer,  was  one  of 
the  most  poetical  minds  of  his  age.  His 
language  avoids  sonorous  and  pretentious 
words,  but  is  rich  in  tropes  and  metaphors, 
which  stimulate  the  attention  and  aid  the 
apprehension  of  the  reader.  The  simple 
words  are  the  result  of  studious  self- 
control;  the  figurative  expression  is  the 
native  temperament  of  the  man.  The 
effect  is  of  power  well  in  the  leash,  and 
more  impressive  for  the  restraint.  .  .  . 
But,  with  all  his  beauty  and  earnestness, 
he  lacked  the  massive  individuality,  the 
overwhelming  torrent  of  feeling,  the 
towering  strength  that  should  be  within 
the  scope  of  the  greatest  statesman. — 
Hawthorne,  Julian  and  Lemmon,  Leon- 
ard, 1891,  American  Literature,  p.  34. 


AMES— PAINE 


529 


Ames,  a  man  of  fine  mind  and  high 
character,  hating  exaggeration  and  rant, 
had  an  oratorical  style  that  was  nervous, 
tastefully  ornate,  and  intense  with  re- 
strained passion. — Bronson,  Walter  C, 
1901,  A  Short  History  of  American  Liter- 
ature, p.  78. 

GENERAL 

The  traditional  reputation  of  Ames 
for  eloquence,  handed  down  by  his 
friends  and  fellow  politicians,  has  not 
expired  in  his  published  writings.  .  .  . 
The  quick  and  forgetive  fancy  of  Ames 
led  to  that  condensation  of  expression 
which  is  the  peculiarity  of  his  writings. 
He  thought  in  figures.  .  .  .  Well 
grounded  in  the  principles  of  conservatism, 
and  with  a  deeply  founded  respect  for 
the  Constitution,  Ames  mingled  with  his 
convictions  the  restless  anticipations  of 
mind  given  to  despondency.  For  a  new 
state,  he  was  something  of  a  croker ;  a 
man  constitutionally  timid.  There  were 
*'the  fears  of  the  brave"  in  his  com- 
position ;  but,  if  he  doubted  of  affairs,  it 
was  with  a  patriotic  motive  and  acute 


philosophic  argument  to  support  him.  .  .  . 
The  letters  of  Ames  are  sharply  written, 
with  point  and  occasional  felicities  of  ex- 
pression, but  they  are  not  elaborate  or 
highly  finished  compositions,  rarely  par- 
taking of  the  essay  character  of  some  of 
Webster's  epistles.— Duyckinck,  Evert 
A.,  AND  George  L.,  1855-65-75,  Cyclo- 
pcedia  of  American  Literature,  ed.  Simons, 
vol  I,  vp.  486,  487. 

In  all  the  writings  of  this  period,  there 
are  none  that  exceed  those  of  Fisher  Ames 
in  vigor  of  thought  and  expression.  He 
was  remarkable  for  the  aptness  of  his 
classical  illusions  and  for  the  frequency 
and  beauty  of  his  comparisons.  These  are 
so  numerous,  indeed,  that  the  reader 
would  weary  of  them  as  needless  ornament, 
were  it  not  for  the  intense  earnestness 
that  everywhere  breathes  through  the 
glowing  periods.  — Hart,  John  S.,  1872, 
A  Manual  of  American  Literature,  p.  85. 

His  literary  style  is  quiet,  and  evidently 
elaborated  with  much  care. — Richard- 
son, Charles  F.,  1887,  American  Liter- 
ature, 1607-1885,  vol,  I,  p.  209. 


Thomas  Paine 

1737-1809 

Born,  at  Thetford,  Norfolk,  29  Jan.  1737.  Educated  at  Thetford  Grammar  School. 
At  sea,  1755-56.  In  London,  working  as  staymaker,  1756-58.  Removed  to  Dover, 
1758;  to  Sandwich,  1759.  Married  (i.)  Mary  Lambert,  17  Sept.  1759.  She  died,  at 
Margate,  1760.  Returned  to  Thetford,  as  Excise  Officer,  July  1761 ;  to  Grantham,  Dec. 
1762 ;  to  Alford,  Aug.  1764.  Dismissed  from  Office,  Aug.  1765 ;  restored,  Feb.  1768 ; 
sent  to  Lewes;  dismissed  again,  April  1774.  Married  (ii.)  Elizabeth  Ollive,  26  March 
1771 ;  separated  from  her,  June  1774.  To  Philadelphia,  Nov.  1774,  with  introduction 
to  Franklin  [  ?].  Contrib.  to  "Pennsylvania  Journal,"  1775-7 6.  Editor  of ' '  Pennsylvania 
Mag.,"  Jan.  1775  to  Aug.  1776.  Took  part  in  American  War  of  Independence.  Sec. 
to  Committee  of  Foreign  Affairs,  April  1777  to  Jan.  1779.  Clerk  to  Pennsylvania 
Assembly,  Nov.  1779  to  Dec.  1780.  M.  A.,  Pennsylvania  Univ.,  4  July  178,0.  Sec.  to 
Col.  Laurens  on  Mission  to  France,  Feb.  to  Aug.,  1781.  Presented  with  estate  of 
New  Rochelle,  1784.  Visit  to  England  in  connection  with  his  invention  of  an  iron 
bridge,  1787-90.  To  Paris,  1790.  French  citizen,  Aug.  1793;  Mem.  of^onvention, 
Sept.T793.  On  Committee  to  form  Republican  Constitution,  Oct.  1793:  Imprisoned 
in  Paris,  Dec.  1793  to  Nov.  1794.  Returned  to  America,  Oct.  1802.  Contrib.  to 
''The  Prospect,"  1804-05.  Died,  in  New  York,  8  July,  1809.  Works:  ''The  Case 
of  the  Officers  of  Excise"  (anon.),  [1772];  "Common  Sense"  (anon.),  1776;  "Large 
Additions  to  Common  Sense"  (anon.),  1776;  "Epistle  to  the  People  called  Quakers," 
1776;  "Dialogue  between  Gen.  Montgomery  and  an  American  Delegate, "  1776;  "The 
American  Crisis"  (13  nos. ;  anon.),  1776-83;  "The  Public  Good,"  1780;  "Letter  ad- 
dressed to  the  Abbe  Raynal,"  1782;  "Thoughts  on  the  Peace,"  1783;  "Letter  to  the 
Earl  of  Shelburne,"  1783;  "Dissertation  on  Government,"  1786;  "Prospects  on  the 
Rubicon"  (anon.),  1787;  (another  edn.,  called:  "Prospects  on  the  War,"  1793); 
"Letter  to  Sir  G.  Staunton,"  1788;  "The  Rights  of  Man"  (2  pts.),  1791-92;  "Ad- 
dress and  Declaration  of  the  Friends  of  Universal  Peace  and  Liberty"  [1791] ;  "Letter 
to  the  Abbe  Sieyes,"  1792;  "Four  Letters  on  Government,"  1792;  "Address  to  the 

34  C 


530 


THOMAS  PAINE 


Republic  of  France''  [1792];  "Letter  addressed  to  the  Addressers/'  1792;  Speech 
in  Convention  on  bringing  Louis  Capet  to  trial,"  1792 ;  *'Lettre  .  ,  .  au  Peuple  frangois" 
[1792];  "Opinion  .  .  .  concernant  le  judgment  de  Louis  XVL,"  1792 ;  "Works," 
1792;  "Miscellaneous  Articles,"  1792;  "Reasons  for  wishing  to  preserve  the  life  of 
Louis  Capet"  [1793] ;  "Prospects  on  the  War  and  Paper  Currency,"  1793;  "Rational 
and  Revealed  Religion"  (anon.),  1794;  "The  Age  of  Reason,"  pt.  i.,  1794;  pt.  ii,  1795; 
pt.  iii.,  1811;  "Letter  to  the  French  Convention,"  1794;  "Dissertations  on  First 
Principles  of  Government,"  1795;  "The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  English  System  of 
Finance,"  1796;  "Letter  to  George  Washington,"  1796;  "Agrarian  Justice  opposed 
to  Agrarian  Law,"  1797;  "Lettre  .  .  .  sur  les  Cultes,"  1797;  "Letter  to  the 
Hon.  T.  Erskine,"  1797;  "Letter  to  Camille  Jourdan,"  1797;  "Atheism  Refuted," 
1798;  "Maritime  Compact,"  1801;  "Letter  to  Samuel  Adams,"  1802;  "Letter  to 
Citizens  of  the  United  States,"  1802;  "Letter  to  the  People  of  England,"  1804;  "To 
the  French  Inhabitants  of  Louisiana,"  1804;  "To  the  Citizens  of  Pennsylvania,"  1805; 
"On  the  Causes  of  Yellow  Fever,"  1805;  "On  Constitutions,  Governments  and 
Charters,"  1805;  "Observations  on  Gunboats,"  1806;  "Letter  to  A.  A.  Dean,"  1806; 
"On  the  Political  and  Military  Affairs  of  Europe,"  1806;  "To  the  People  of  New 
York,"  1807;  "On  Governor  Lewis's  Speech, "  1807;  "On  Mr.  Hale's  Resolutions," 
1807;  "Three  Letters  to  Morgan  Lewis,"  1807;  "On  the  question,  Will  there  be 
War?"  1807;  "Essay  on  Dreams,"  1807.  Posthumous:  "Reply  to  the  Bishop  of 
Llandaff,"  1810;  "The  Origin  of  Freemasonry,"  1811;  "Miscellaneous  Letters  and 
Essays,"  1819;  "Miscellaneous  Poems,"  1819.  Collected  Works:  ed.  by  M.  D.  Con- 
way, 1894.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  219. 

PERSONAL  of  Foreign  Affairs.    The  salary  to  com- 

pear SoUy  The  bearer,  Mr.  Thomas  Paine,    mence  from  this  day,  and  to  be  paid  by  the 


is  very  well  recommended  to  me,  as  an  in- 
genious, worthy  young  man.  He  goes  to 
Pennsylvania  with  a  view  of  settling  there. 
I  request  you  to  give  him  your  best  advice 
and  countenance,  as  he  is  quite  a  stranger 
there.  If  you  can  put  him  in  a  way  of  ob- 
tainin-g  employment  as  a  clerk,  or  assistant 
tutor  in  a  school,  or  assistant  surveyor, 
(of  all  which  I  think  him  very  capable),  so 
that  he  may  procure  a  subsistence  at  least, 
till  he  can  make  acquaintance  and  obtain 
a  knowledge  of  the  country,  you  will  do 
well,  and  much  oblige  your  affectionate 
father. — Franklin,  Benjamin,  1774,  Let- 
ter to  Richard  Bache,  Sept.  30 ;  Works,  ed. 
Sparks,  vol.  viii,  p.  137. 

Philadelphia,  Feb.  10,  1782.— The  sub- 
scribers, taking  into  consideration  the  im- 
portant situation  of  affairs  at  the  present 
moment,  and  the  propriety  and  even  neces- 
sity of  informing  the  people  and  rousing 
them  into  action;  considering  also  the 
abilities  of  Mr.  Thomas  Paine  as  a  writer, 
and  that  he  has  been  of  considerable  utility 
to  the  common  cause  by  several  of  his  pub- 
lications :  They  are  agreed  that  it  will 
be  much  for  the  interest  of  the  United 
States  that  Mr.  Paine  be  engaged  in  their 
service  for  the  purpose  above  mentioned. 
They  are  therefore  agreed  that  Mr.  Paine 
be  offered  a  salary  of  $800  per  annum,  and 
that  the  same  be  paid  him  by  the  Secretary 


Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs  out  of  monies 
to  be  allowed  by  the  Superintendent  of 
Finance  for  secret  services.  The  sub- 
scribers being  of  opinion  that  a  salary 
publicly  and  avowedly  given  for  the  above 
purpose  would  injure  the  effect  of  Mr. 
Paine's  publications,  and  subject  him  to 
injurious  personal  reflections. — Morris, 
Robert,  Livingston,  Robert,  Washing- 
ton, George. 

Dear  Sir,  I  have  learned  since  I  have 
been  at  this  place,  that  you  are  at  Borden- 
town.  Whether  for  the  sake  of  retirement 
or  economy,  I  know  not.  Be  it  for  either, 
for  both,  or  whatever  it  may,  if  you 
will  come  to  this  place,  and  partake  with 
me,  I  shall  be  exceedingly  happy  to  see 
you.  Your  presence  may  remind  Congress 
of  your  past  services  to  this  country ;  and 
if  it  is  in  my  power  to  impress  them,  com- 
mand my  best  services  with  freedom,  as 
they  will  be  rendered  cheerfully  by  one 
who  entertains  a  lively  sense  of  the  im- 
portance of  your  works,  and  who,  with 
much  pleasure,  subscribes  himself.  Your 
sincere  friend. — Washington,  George, 
1783,  Letter  to  Paine  from  Rocky  Hill, 
Sept.  10. 

The  villain  Paine  came  over  to  the  Crown 
and  Anchor ;  but,  finding  that  his  pamphlet 
had  not  set  a  straw  on  fire,  and  that  the 
14th  of  July  was  as  little  in  fashion  as 


THOMAS  PAINE 


531 


the  ancient  gunpowder-plot,  he  dined 
at  another  tavern  with  a  few  quaking  con- 
spirators; and  probably  is  returning  to 
Paris,  where  he  is  engaged  in  a  contro- 
versy with  the  Abbe  Sieyes,  about  the 
"plus  or  minus"  of  the  rebellion. — Wal- 
POLE,  Horace,  1791,  To  the  Miss  Berry s, 
July  26;  Letters,  ed,  Cunningham,  vol. 
IX,  p.  332. 

I  lodge  with  my  friend  Paine — we  break- 
fast, dine,  and  sup  together.  The  more  I 
see  of  his  interior,  the  more  I  like  and  re- 
spect him.  I  cannot  express  how  kind  he 
is  to  me ;  there  is  a  simplicity  of  manner, 
a  goodness  of  heart,  and  a  strength  of  mind 
in  him,  that  I  never  knew  a  man  before 
possess.— Fitzgerald,  Lord  Edward, 
1792,  Letter  to  his  Mother,  Oct.  30 ;  Moore's 
Life  and  Death  of  Lord  Edward  Fitzgerald. 

The  crime  of  ingratitude  I  trust  will 
never  stain  our  national  character.  You 
are  considered  by  all  your  countrymen  as 
one  who  has  not  only  rendered  important 
services  to  them,  but  also  as  one,  who,  on 
a  more  extensive  scale,  has  been  the  friend 
of  human  rights,  and  a  distinguished  and 
able  advocate  in  favor  of  public  liberty. 
To  the  worth  and  welfare  of  Thomas  Paine 
the  American  people  can  never  he  indiffer- 
ent—  Monroe,  James,  1794,  Letter  to 
Thomas  Paine. 

That  infamous  wretch  Tom  Paine"  the 
Democrat,  whom  we  all  execrate,  and 
who  is  now,  with  or  without  a  head  in 
France,  I  hope  in  the  late  fashion  of  that 
country.— Mathias,  ThomAs  James,  1794, 
The  Pursuits  of  Literature,  p.  78. 

I  met  this  interesting  personage  at  the 
lodgings  of  the  son  of  a  late  patriotic 
American  governour  [Trumbull].  .  .  . 
He  was  dressed  in  a  snuff-coloured  coat, 
olive  velvet  vest,  drab  breeches,  coarse 
hose.  His  shoe  buckles  of  the  size  of  a 
half  dollar.  A  bob  tailed  wig  covered 
that  head  which  worked  such  mickle  woe 
to  courts  and  kingSo  If  I  should  attempt 
to  describe  it,  it  would  be  in  the  same  stile 
and  principle  with  which  the  veteran 
soldier  bepraiseth  an  old  standard:  the 
more  tattered,  the  more  glorious.  It  is 
probable  that  this  was  the  same  identical 
wig  under  the  shadow  of  whose  curls  he 
wrote ' '  Common  Sense, ' '  in  America,  many 
years  before.  He  was  a  spare  man,  rather 
under  size ;  subject  to  the  extreme  of  low, 
and  highly  exhilarating  spirits ;  often  sat 
reserved  in  company ;  seldom  mingled  in 


common  chit-chat :  But  when  a  man  of 
sense  and  elocution  was  present,  and  the 
company  numerous,  he  delighted  in  ad- 
vancing the  most  unaccountable,  and  often 
the  most  whimsical  paradoxes ;  which  he 
defended  in  his  own  plausible  manner.  If 
encouraged  by  success,  or  the  applause  of 
the  company,  his  countenance  was  ani- 
mated with  an  expression  of  feature  which, 
on  ordinary  occasions  one  would  look  for 
in  vain,  in  a  man  so  much  celebrated  for 
acutenessof  thought ;  but  if  interrupted  by 
extraneous  observation,  by  the  inattention 
of  his  auditory,  or  in  an  irritable  moment, 
even  by  the  accidental  fall  of  the  poker, 
he  would  retire  into  himself,  and  no  per- 
suasion could  induce  him  to  proceed  upon 
the  most  favourite  topic. — Tyler.Royall, 
1797,  The  Algerine  Captive. 

That  the  said  Elizabeth  Pain  had  ever 
since  lived  separate  from  him  the  said 
Thos.  Pain,  and  never  had  any  issue,  and 
the  said  Thomas  Pain  had  many  years 
quitted  this  kingdom  and  resided  (if  liv- 
ing) in  parts  beyond  the  seas,  but  had  not 
since  been  heard  of  by  the  said  Elizabeth 
Pain,  nor  was  it  known  for  certain  whether 
he  was  living  or  dead. — Paine,  Eliza- 
beth, 1800,  Release  to  Francis  Mitchener, 
Oct.  14. 

I  have  received  your  letter  calling  for 
information  relative  to  the  life  of  Thomas 
Paine.  It  appears  to  me  that  this  is  not 
the  moment  to  publish  the  life  of  that  man 
in  this  country.  His  own  writings  are  his 
best  life,  and  these  are  not  read  at  present. 
The  greater  part  of  readers  in  the  United 
States  will  not  be '  persuaded,  as  long  as 
their  present  feelings  last,  to  consider  him 
in  any  other  light  than  as  a  drunkard  and 
a  deist.  The  writer  of  his  life  who  should 
dwell  on  these  topics,  to  the  exclusion  of 
the  great  and  estimable  traits  of  his  real 
character,  might  indeed  please  the  rabble 
of  the  age,  who  do  not  know  him  ;  the  book 
might  sell,  but  it  would  only  tend  to  render 
the  truth  more  obscure  for  the  future 
biographer  than  it  was  before.  But  if  the 
present  writer  should  give  us  Thomas 
Paine  complete  in  all  his  character,  as  one 
of  the  most  benevolent  and  disinterested 
of  mankind,  endowed  with  the  clearest 
perception,  an  uncommon  share  of 
original  genius,  and  the  greatest  breadth 
of  thought;  if  this  piece  of  biography 
should  analyze  his  literary  labors  and  rank 
him,  as  he  ought  to  be  ranked,  among  the 


532 


THOMAS  PAINE 


brightest  and  most  undeviating  luminaries 
of  the  age  in  which  he  has  lived,  yet  with 
a  mind  assailable  by  flattery,  and  receiving 
through  that  weak  side  a  tincture  of  vanity 
which  he  was  too  proud  to  conceal ;  with  a 
mind,  though  strong  enough  to  bear  him  up 
and  to  rise  elastic  under  the  heaviest  hand 
of  oppression,  yet  unable  to  endure  the 
contempt  of  his  former  friends  and  fellow- 
laborers,  the  rulers  of  the  country  that 
had  received  his  first  and  greatest  services ; 
a  mind  incapable  of  looking  down  with 
serene  compassion,  as  it  ought,  on  the 
rude  scoffs  of  their  imitators,  a  new 
generation  that  knows  him  not;  a  mind 
that  shrinks  from  their  society,  and  un- 
happily seeks  refuge  in  low  company,  or 
looks  for  consolation  in  the  sordid,  solitary 
bottle,  till  it  sinks  at  last  so  far  below  its 
native  elevation  as  to  lose  all  respect  for 
itself  and  to  forfeit  that  of  his  best  friends, 
disposing  these  friends  almost  to  join  with 
his  enemies,  and  wish,  though  from  differ- 
ent motives,  that  he  would  hasten  to  hide 
himself  in  the  grave — if  you  are  disposed 
and  prepared  to  write  his  life  thus  entire, 
to  fill  up  the  picture  to  which  these  hasty 
strokes  of  outline  give  but  a  rude  sketch 
with  great  vacuities,  your  book  may  be  a 
useful  one  for  another  age,  but  it  will  not 
be  relished,  nor  scarcely  tolerated,  in  this. 
.  .  .  You  ask  what  company  he  kept. 
He  always  frequented  the  best,  both  in 
England  and  Prance,  till  he  became  the 
object  of  calumny  in  certain  American 
papers  (echoes  of  the  English  court  papers) 
for  his  adherence  to  what  he  thought  the 
cause  of  liberty  in  France — till  he  con- 
ceived himself  neglected  and  despised  by 
his  former  friends  in  the  United  States. 
From  that  moment  he  gave  himself  very 
much  to  drink,  and,  consequently,  to  com- 
panions less  worthy  of  his  better  days.  It 
is  said  that  he  was  always  a  peevish  in- 
grate.  This  is  possible.  So  was  Law- 
rence Sterne,  so  was  Torquato  Tasso,  so 
was  J.  J.  Rousseau.  But  Thomas  Paine, 
as  a  visiting  acquaintance  and  as  a  literary 
friend,  the  only  points  of  view  from  which 
I  knew  him,  was  one  of  the  most  instruct- 
ive men  I  have  ever  known. — Barlow, 
Joel,  1809,  Letter  to  James  Cheetham,  Life 
and  Letters,  ed.  Todd,  pp,  236,  238. 

Paine  had  no  good  qualities.  Incapable 
of  friendship,  he  was  vain,  envious,  malig- 
nant ;  in  France  cowardly,  and  every  where 
tyrannical.    In  his  private  dealings  he  was 


unjust,  never  thinking  of  paying  for  what 
he  had  contracted,  and  always  cherishing 
deadly  resentments  against  those  who  by 
law  compelled  him  to  do  justice.  To  those 
who  had  been  kind  to  him  he  was  more 
than  ungrateful,  for  to  ingratitude,  as  in 
the  case  of  Mr.  Munroe,  he  added  mean 
and  detestable  fraud.  He  was  guilty  of 
the  worst  species  of  seduction ;  the  aliena- 
tion of  a  wife  and  children  from  a  husband, 
and  a  father.  Filthy  and  drunken,  he  was 
a  compound  of  all  the  vices. — Cheetham, 
James,  1809,  Life  of  Thomas  Paine,  p.  313. 

I  have  lived  a  honest  and  useful  life  to 
mankind ;  my  time  has  been  spent  in  doing 
good;  I  die  in  perfect  composure  and 
resignation  to  the  will  of  my  God. — 
Paine,  Thomas,  1809,  WilL 

Mr.  Paine  in  his  person  was  about  five 
feet  ten  inches  high,  and  rather  athletic ; 
he  was  broad  shouldered,  and  latterly 
stooped  a  little.  His  eye,  of  which  the 
painter  could  not  convey  the  exquisite 
meaning,  was  full,  brilliant,  and  singularly 
piercing;  it  had  in  it  the  ''muse  of  fire.'' 
In  his  dress  and  person  he  was  generally 
very  cleanly,  and  wore  his  hair  cued,  with 
side  curls,  and  powdered,  so  that  he  looked 
altogether  like  a  gentleman  of  the  old 
French  school.  His  manners  were  easy 
and  gracious ;  his  knowledge  was  universal 
and  boundless;  in  private  company  and 
among  his  friends  his  conversation  had 
every  fascination  that  anecdote,  novelty 
and  truth  could  give  it.  In  mixt  com- 
pany and  among  strangers  he  said  little, 
and  was  no  public  speaker. — Rickman, 
Thomas  C,  1819,  The  Life  of  Thomas 
Paine, 

Paine  lies  in  a  little  hole  under  the  grass 
and  weeds  of  an  obscure  farm  in  America. 
There,  however,  he  shall  not  lie,  unnoticed, 
much  longer.  He  belongs  to  England. 
His  fame  is  the  property  of  England ;  and 
if  no  other  people  will  show  that  they  value 
that  fame,  the  people  of  England  will. 
Yes,  amongst  the  pleasures  that  I  promise 
myself,  that  of  seeing  the  name  of  Paine 
honoured  in  every  part  of  England ;  where 
base  corruption  caused  him,  while  alive,  to 
be  burnt  in  effigy. — Cobbett,  William, 
1819,  On  the  Remains  of  Thomas  Paine. 

Paine,  I  regret  to  own  it,  was  a  native 
of  England ;  at  his  outset  a  Quaker,  and  a 
stay-maker  of  Thetford,  in  Norfolk. — 
Stanhope,  Philip  Henry  Earl  (Lord 


THOMAS  PAINE 


533 


Mahon),  1836-54,  History  of  England 
from  the  Peace  of  Utrecht  to  the  Peace  of 
Versailles,  vol.  vi,  p,  93. 

About  this  period,  the  notorious  Tom 
Paine  arrived  at  Nantes,  in  the  Alliance 
frigate,  as  Secretary  of  Colonel  Laurens, 
Minister  Extraordinary  from  Congress; 
and  he  took  up  his  quarters  at  my  boarding- 
place.  He  was  coarse  and  uncouth  in  his 
manners,  loathsome  in  his  appearance,  and 
a  disgusting  egotist;  rejoicing  most  in 
talking  of  himself,  and  reading  the  effu- 
sions of  his  own  mind.  Yet,  I  could  not 
repress  the  deepest  emotions  of  gratitude 
towards  him,  as  the  instrument  of  Provi- 
dence in  accelerating  the  declaration  of 
our  Independence.  ...  On  his  arrival's 
being  announced,  the  Mayor,  and  some  of 
the  most  distinguished  citizens  of  Nantes, 
called  upon  him  to  render  their  homage  of 
respect.  I  often  officiated  as  interpreter, 
although  humbled  and  mortified  at  his 
filthy  appearance,  and  awkward  address. 
Besides,  as  he  has  been  roasted  alive  at 

L'Orient,  for  the  and  well  basted 

with  brimstone,  he  was  absolutely  offen- 
sive, and  perfumed  the  whole  apartment. 
He  was  soon  rid  of  his  respectable  visitors, 
who  left  the  room  with  marks  of  astonish- 
ment and  disgust.  I  took  the  liberty,  on 
his  asking  for  the  loan  of  a  clean  shirt,  of 
speaking  to  him  frankly  of  his  dirty  appear- 
ance and  brimstone  odor ;  and  I  prevailed 
upon  him  to  stew,  for  an  hour,  in  a  hot 
bath.  This,  however,  was  not  done  with- 
out much  entreaty ;  and  I  did  not  succeed, 
until,  receiving  a  file  of  English  news- 
papers, I  promised,  after  he  was  in  the 
bath  he  should  have  the  reading  of  them, 
and  not  before.  He  at  once  consented, 
and  accompanied  me  to  the  bath,  where 
I  instructed  the  keeper,  in  French  (which 
Paine  did  not  understand)  gradually  to  in- 
crease the  heat  of  the  water,  until  "Ze 
Monsieur  serait  bien  bouilliJ^  He  became 
so  much  absorbed  in  his  reading,  that  he 
was  nearly  parboiled  before  leaving  the 
bath,  much  to  his  improvement  and  my 
satisfaction. — Watson,  Elkanah,  1842- 
56,  Men  and  Times  of  the  Revolution,  ed. 
W.  a  Watson,  p.  127. 

Poverty  was  his  mother — Necessity  his 
master.  He  had  more  brains  than  books ; 
more  sense  than  education ;  more  courage 
than  politeness ;  more  strength  than  polish. 
He  had  no  veneration  for  old  mistakes — 
no  admiration  for  ancient  lies.    He  loved 


the  truth  for  the  truth's  sake,  and  for 
man's  sake.  .  .  .  The  result  of  his 
investigations  was  given  to  the  world  in 
the ' '  Age  of  Reason. ' '  From  the  moment 
of  its  publication  he  became  infamous. 
He  was  caluminated  beyond  measure.  To 
slander  him  was  to  secure  the  thanks  of 
the  Church.  All  his  services  were  in- 
stantly forgotten,  disparaged  or  denied. 
He  was  shunned  as  though  he  had  been  a 
pestilence.  Most  of  his  old  friends  for- 
sook him.  He  was  regarded  as  a  moral 
plague,  and  at  the  bare  mention  of  his 
name  the  bloody  hands  of  the  Church  were 
raised  in  horror.  He  was  denounced  as 
the  most  despicable  of  men.  Not  content 
with  following  him  to  his  grave,  they  pur- 
sued him  after  death  with  redoubled  fury, 
and  recounted  with  infinite  gusto  and 
satisfaction  the  supposed  horrors  of  his 
death-bed;  gloried  in  the  fact  that  he 
was  forlorn  and  friendless,  and  gloated 
like  fiends  over  what  they  supposed  to  be 
the  agonizing  remorse  of  his  lonely  death. 
It  is  wonderful  that  all  his  services  were 
thus  forgotten.  It  is  amazing  that  one 
kind  word  did  not  fall  from  some  pulpit ; 
that  some  one  did  not  accord  to  him,  at 
least — honesty.  Strange,  that  in  the 
general  denunciation  some  one  did  not  re- 
member his  labor  for  liberty,  his  devotion 
to  principle,  his  zeal  for  the  rights  of  his 
fellow-men.  .  .  .  He  had  made  it  impossi- 
ble to  write  the  history  of  political  free- 
dom with  his  name  left  out.  He  was  one  of 
the  creators  of  light ;  one  of  the  heralds 
of  the  dawn.  He  hated  tyranny  in  the 
name  of  kings,  and  in  the  name  of  God, 
with  every  drop  of  his  noble  blood.  He 
believed  in  liberty  and  justice,  and  in  the 
sacred  doctrine  of  human  equality.  Under 
these  divine  banners  he  fought  the  battle 
of  his  life.  In  both  worlds  he  offered 
his  blood  for  the  good  of  man.  In  the 
wilderness  of  America,  in  the  French 
Assembly,  in  the  sombre  cell  waiting 
for  death,  he  was  the  same  unflinching, 
unwavering  friend  of  his  race ;  the  same 
undaunted  champion  of  universal  freedom. 
And  for  this  he  has  been  hated ;  for  this 
the  Church  has  violated  even  his  grave. 
— Ingersoll,  Robert  G.,  1874,  The  Gods 
and  Other  Lectures,  pp.  122,  135. 

Poor  Paine !  His  errors  were,  for  the 
most  part,  those  of  his  age ;  and  they  were 
aggravated  by  his  circumstances,  his  de- 
fective education,  and  the  ardor  of  his 


534 


THOMAS  PAINE 


temperament.  But  his  merits,  which  were 
real  and  not  small,  were  peculiarly  his 
own.  He  loved  the  truth  for  its  own 
sake ;  and  he  stood  by  what  he  conceived 
to  be  the  truth  when  all  the  world  around 
him  reviled  it.  .  .  .  It  becomes  us, 
however,  to  deal  charitably  with  the  faults 
of  a  benefactor  who  wrote,  '*The  Crisis" 
and  ''Common  Sense,"  who  conceived  the 
planing-machine  and  the  iron  bridge.  A 
glorious  monument  in  his  honor  swells 
aloft  in  many  of  our  great  towns.  The 
principle  of  his  arch  now  sustains  the 
marvellous  railroad  depots  that  half  abolish 
the  distinction  between  in-doors  and  out. 
— Parton,  James,  1874,  Life  of  Thomas 
Jefferson,  pp.  591,  592. 

A  somewhat  extended  study  of  the 
French  Revolution,  during  the  extraordi- 
nary period  in  which  Paine  was  so  inti- 
mately connected  with  it,  fails  to  show 
anything  to  the  prejudice  of  his  personal 
or  political  character,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  reveals  many  things  eminently 
creditable  to  him.— Washburne,  E.  B., 
1880,  Thomas  Paine  and  the  French  Revo- 
lution, Seribnefs  Monthly,  vol.  20,  p.  111. 

The  bones  of  Thomas  Paine  were  landed 
in  Liverpool  November  21,  1819.  The 
monument  contemplated  by  Cobbett  was 
never  raised.  There  was  much  parliamen- 
tary and  municipal  excitement.  A  Bolton 
town-crier  was  imprisoned  nine  weeks  for 
proclaiming  the  arrival.  In  1836  the  bones 
passed  with  Cobbett's  effects  into  the  hands 
of  a  Receiver  (West).  The  Lord  Chancel- 
lor refusing  to  regard  them  as  an  asset, 
they  were  kept  by  an  old  day-laborer  in 
1844,  when  they  passed  to  B.  Tilley,  13 
Bedford  Square,  London,  a  furniture 
dealer.  In  1849  the  empty  coffin  was  in 
possession  of  J.  Chennell  Guildford.  The 
silver  plate  bore  the  inscription  "Thomas 
Paine,  died  June  8,  1809,  aged  72."  In 
1854,  Rev.  R.  Ainslie  (Unitarian)  told  E. 
Truelovethat  he  owned  "the  skull  and  the 
right  hand  of  Thomas  Paine,"  but  evaded 
subsequent  inquiries.  The  removal  caused 
excitement  in  America.  Of  Paine's  grave- 
stone the  last  fragment  was  preserved 
by  his  friends  of  the  Bayeaux  family,  and 
framed  on  their  wall.  In  November, 
1839,  the  present  marble  monument  at 
New  Rochelle  was  erected. — Conway, 
MoNCURE  Daniel,  1892,  The  Life  of 
Thomas  Paine,  vol.  ii,  p.  427,  note. 

At  eight  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  June 


8,  1809,  Paine  died  quietly  and  at  peace 
in  the  seventy-third  year  of  his  age.  He 
had  expressed  a  wish  to  be  buried  in  the 
Quaker  cemetery,  for  the  Quakers  were 
the  only  Christian  sect  he  held  in  respect ; 
but  the  request  was  denied.  Two  days 
after  his  death  his  body  was  carried  for 
burial  to  his  farm  at  New  Rochelle,  twenty- 
five  miles  away.  The  Bonnevilles,  good 
Willett  Hicks,  and  two  negroes  were  his 
mourners,  and  followed  him  to  the 
journey's  end.  A  stone  was  placed  to 
mark  the  grave ;  and  ten  years  later  Wil- 
liam Cobbett,  once  a  mistaken  vilifier  of 
Paine  and  afterwards  his  eulogist,  had  his 
bones  removed  and  carried  to  England,  in- 
tending to  raise  a  monuent  to  him  in  his 
native  land.  But  the  old  outcry  was  heard 
again.  A  town-crier  was  sent  to  jail  for 
proclaiming  the  arrival  of  the  infidel's 
bones.  Cobbett  relinquished  his  design, 
and  no  one  in  the  world  to-day  knows  the 
resting  place  of  Thomas  Paine.  .  .  . 
Paine  was  a  religious  man.  His  convic- 
tions were  few  and  profound.  So  strong 
was  his  faith  that  it  led  him  into  the  very 
intolerance  he  detested,  and  made  him 
ridicule  where  he  ought  to  have  shown 
respect.  ...  In  private  life  Paine 
was  uncorrupted  by  the  worst  vices  of  his 
generation.  He  was  never  abstemious, 
and  during  the  Reign  of  Terror  he  drank 
to  excess;  but,  if  there  be  any  truth  in 
the  accounts  of  drunkenness  of  his  later 
years,  it  lies  in  the  very  occasional  in- 
dulgence at  a  time  when  gentlemen  slept 
under  the  table  and  awoke  still  gentlemen. 
The  stories  of  his  filthy  habits  are  slander, 
though  towards  the  close  of  his  life,  he 
became  more  careless  of  his  dress,  and 
maybe  did  not  brush  his  coat  after  each 
pinch  of  snuff.  He  was  always  gentle  to 
children  and  to  animals.  In  manner  he  was 
kindly,  and  in  conversation  intelligent; 
but  he  was  intolerant  of  contradiction, 
and  not  disinclined  to  assume  the  god  in  a 
gathering  of  friends.  Like  most  vain 
men,  Paine  had  little  pride.  His  repeated 
requests  for  money  for  his  services  grate 
harshly  enough,  but  their  origin  was  not 
in  meanness.  .  .  .  His  tasks  were  not  all 
done  wisely,  but  they  were  done  bravely. 
Too  often  his  light  was  darkness ;  but  he 
walked  steadfastly^in  its  path,  and  the  goal 
which  he  sought  was  the  happiness  of  his 
fellow-men. — Sedgwick,  Ellery,  1899, 
Thomas  Paine,  pp.  139.  144,  145,  147. 


THOMAS  PAINE 


535 


COMMON  SENSE 

1776 

This  day  was  published,  and  is  now  sell- 
ing by  Robert  Bell,  in  Third  Street,  price 
two  shillings,  Common  Sense,"  addressed 
to  the  inhabitants  of  North  America. — 
Pennsylvania  Journal,  1776,  Jan.  10. 

A  few  more  of  such  flaming  arguments 
as  were  exhibited  at  Falmouth  and  Nor- 
folk, added  to  the  sound  doctrine  and  un- 
answerable reasoning  contained  in  the 
pamphlet ''Common  Sense,"  will  not  leave 
numbers  at  a  loss  to  decide  upon  the  pro- 
propriety  of  separation. — ^Washington, 
George,  1776,  Letter  to  Joseyh  Reed,  Jan. 
31 ;  Writings,  ed.  Ford,  vol.  iii,  p.  396. 

A  pamphlet  that  had  prodigious  effects. 
— Franklin,  Benjamin,  1787,  Letter  to 
M.  de  Veillard. 

Speaking  a  language  which  the  colonists 
had  felt  but  not  thought,  its  popularity, 
terrible  in  its  consequences  to  the  parent 
country,  was  unexampled  in  the  history  of 
the  press.— Cheetham,  James,  1809,  Life 
of  Thomas  Paine,  p.  46. 

A  pamphlet  whose  effect  was  such,  that 
it  is  quite  a  feature  in  this  memorable  con- 
test. You  may  now  read  it,  and  wonder 
how  a  performance  not  marked,  as  you 
may  at  first  sight  suppose,  with  any  par- 
ticular powers  of  eloquence,  could  possibly 
produce  effects  so  striking. — Smyth, 
William,  1839,  Lectures  on  Modern  His- 
tory, Lecture  xxxiii. 

Nor  is  our  England  without  her  mission- 
aries. She  has  her  life-saving  Needham ; 
to  whom  was  solemnly  presented  a  "civic 
sword," — long  since  rusted  into  nothing- 
ness. Her  Paine:  rebellious  Staymaker; 
unkempt;  who  feels  that  he,  a  single 
Needleman,*  did,  by  his  ''Common  Sense" 
Pamphlet,  free  America ; — that  he  can  and 
will  free  all  this  World ;  perhaps  even  the 
other.— Carlyle,  Thomas,  1837,  The 
French  Revolution,  vol.  ii,  cL  iii. 

In  '76  or  '77  I  was  present,  at  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  in  a  social  assembly  of  most 
of  the  prominent  leaders  of  the  State. 
I  recollect  that  the  subject  of  independence 
was  cautiously  introduced  by  an  ardent 
Whig,  and  the  thought  seemed  to  excite 
the  abhorrence  of  the  whole  circle.  A  few 
weeks  after,  Paine's  "Common  Sense" 
appeared,  and  passed  through  the  con- 
tinent like  an  electric  sp^rk.  It  every- 
where flashed  conviction;  and  aroused  a 


determined  spirit,  which  resulted  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  upon  the  4th 
of  July  ensuing.  The  name  of  Paine  was 
precious  to  every  Whig  heart,  and  had  re- 
sounded throughout  Europe. — Watson, 
Elkanah,  1842-56,  Men  and  Times  of  the 
Revolution,  ed.  W.  C.  Watson,  p.  127.  / 

He  was  the  first  to  perceive  the  destiny 
of  the  New  World,  No  other  pamphlet 
ever  accomplished  such  wonderful  results. 
It  was  filled  with  argument,  reason,  per- 
suasion, and  unanswerable  logic.  It 
opened  a  new  world.  It  filled  the  present 
with  hope  and  the  future  with  honor. 
Everywhere  the  people  responded,  and  in 
a  few  months  the  Continental  Congress 
declared  the  colonies  free  and  independent 
States.  A  new  nation  was  born.  It  is 
simple  justice  to  say  that  Paine  did  more 
to  cause  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
than  any  other  man.  Neither  should  it 
be  forgotten  that  his  attacks  upon  Great 
Britain  were  also  attacks  upon  monarchy ; 
and  while  he  convinced  the  people  that  the 
colonies  ought  to  separate  from  the 
mother  country,  he  also  proved  to  them 
that  a  free  government  is  the  best  that 
can  be  instituted  among  men.  In  my 
judgment,  Thomas  Paine  was  the  best  polit- 
ical writer  that  ever  lived. — Ingersoll, 
Robert  G.,  1874,  The  Gods  and  Other  ^ 
Lectures,  p.  124. 

Had  in  him  the  seeds  of  something  like 
genius.  .  .  .  Though  Burke  moves  in  an 
intellectual  sphere  altogether  superior  to 
that  in  which  Paine  was  able  to  rise,  and 
though  the  richness  of  Burke's  speculative 
power  is  as  superior  to  Paine's  meager 
philosophy  as  his  style  is  superior  in  the 
amplitude  of  its  rhetoric,  it  is  not  to  be 
denied  that  Paine's  plain-speaking  is  more 
fitted  to  reach  popular  passions,  and  even 
that  he  has  certain  advantages  in  point  of 
argument.— Stephen,  Leslie,  1876,  His- 
tory of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  261. 

Like  all  his  v;orks,  this  pamphlet  was 
written  in  clear,  racy,  vivid  English,  and 
with  much  power  of  popular  reasoning; 
and,  like  most  of  his  works,  it  was  shallow, 
violent,  and  scurrilous. — Lecky,  William 
Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A  History  of 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol. 
Ill,  p.  489. 

No  other  pamphlet  published  during  the 
Revolution  is  comparable  with  "Common 


536 


THOMAS  PAINE 


Sense"  for  interest  to  the  reader  of  to- 
day, or  for  value  as  an  historical  document. 
Therein  as  in  a  mirror  is  beheld  the  almost 
incredible  England,  against  which  the 
colonies  contended.  And  therein  is  re- 
flected the  moral,  even  religious,  enthusi- 
asm which  raised  the  struggle  above  the 
paltriness  of  a  rebellion  against  taxation 
to  a  great  human  movement, — a  war  for 
an  idea.  The  art  with  which  every 
sentence  is  feathered  for  its  aim  is  con- 
summate.— Conway,  Moncure  Daniel, 
1892,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Paine,  vol,  i, 
p.  66. 

Colonial  resolution  had  been  screwed 
to  the  sticking  point  by  Tom  Paine,  the 
stormy  petrel  of  three  countries,  with  his 
pamphlet  Common  Sense,"  issued  in  the 
nick  of  time,  coarsely  but  forcibly  written 
and  well  spiced  with  rhetoric  about  the 
''royal  brute." — Smith,  Gold  win,  1893, 
The  United  States,  An  Outline  of  Political 
History,  1492-1871,  p.  87. 

THE  AMERICAN  CRISIS 

1776-83 

Under  that  cloud,  by  Washington's  side, 
was  silently  at  work  the  force  that  lifted 
it.  Marching  by  day,  listening  to  the 
consultations  of  Washington  and  his  gen- 
erals, Paine  wrote  by  the  camp  fires ;  the 
winter  storms,  the  Delaware's  waves,  were 
mingled  with  his  ink ;  the  half -naked  sol- 
diers in  their  troubled  sleep  dreaming  of 
their  distant  homes,  the  skulking  deserter 
creeping  off  in  the  dusk,  the  pallid  face  of 
the  heavy  hearted  commander,  made  the 
awful  shadows  beneath  which  was  written 
that  leaflet  which  went  to  the  Philadelphia 
printer  along  with  Washington's  last  fore- 
boding letters  to  his  relatives  in  Virginia. 
It  was  printed  on  December  19th,  and 
many  copies  reached  the  camp  above  Tren- 
ton Falls  on  the  eve  of  that  almost  des- 
perate attack  on  which  Washington  had 
resolved.  .  .  .  America  has  known 
some  utterances  of  the  lips  equivalent  to 
decisive  victories  in  tne  field, — as  some  of 
Patrick  Henry's,  and  the  address  of  Presi- 
dent Lincoln  at  Gettysburg.  But  of  utter- 
ances by  the  pen  none  have  achieved  such 
vast  results  as  Paine's  ''Common  Sense" 
and  his  first  "Crisis."  Before  the  battle 
of  Trenton  the  half-clad,  disheartened 
soldies  of  Washington  were  called  together 
in  groups  to  listen  to  that  thrilling  ex- 
hortation. .  .  .  Not  a  chord  of  faith, 
or  love,  or  hope  was  left  untouched.  The 


very  faults  of  the  composition,  which  the 
dilettanti  have  picked  out,  were  effective 
to  men  who  had  seen  Paine  on  the  march, 
and  knew  these  things  were  written  in 
sleepless  intervals  of  unwearied  labors. 
.  .  .  The  pamphlet  was  never  sur- 
passed for  true  eloquence — that  is,  for  the 
power  that  carries  its  point.  With  skilful 
illustration  of  lofty  principles  by  significant 
details,  all  summed  with  simplicity  and 
sympathy,  three  of  the  most  miserable 
weeks  ever  endured  by  men  were  raised 
into  epical  dignity.  The  wives,  daughters, 
mothers,  sisters,  seemed  stretching  out 
appealing  hands  against  the  mythically 
monstrous  Hessians.  The  great  com- 
mander, previously  pointed  to  as  "a  mind 
that  can  even  flourish  upon  care,"  pres- 
ently saw  his  dispirited  soldiers  beaming 
with  hope,  and  bounding  to  the  onset, — 
their  watchword  :  These  are  the  times  that 
try  men's  souls!  Trenton  was  won,  the 
Hessians  captured,  and  a  New  Year  broke 
for  America  on  the  morrow  of  that  Christ- 
mas Day,  1776. —  Conway,  Moncure 
Daniel,  1892,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Paine, 
vol.  I,  pp.  85,  86. 

In  the  terrible  hour  of  blackest  disaster, 
poverty,  suffering,  and  despair,  when 
Washington  was  retreating  before  Lord 
Howe,  defeated,  and  the  country  was 
beginning  to  feel  the  cause  hopeless,  Paine 
wrote  the  first  number  of  "Crisis." 
Washington  had  it  read  at  the  head  of  every 
army  corps ;  and  at  every  pinch  of  affairs 
throughout  the  war,  the  words  of  Paine 
were  looked  for,  to  inspirit  the  soldiers 
and  arouse  the  flagging  patriotism  of  the 
people.  Franklin  could  not  have  done  this 
work.  His  logic  of  prudence  and  honesty 
and  courage  would  have  failed  to  touch 
the  souls  that  were  discouraged.  It 
needed  words  of  fire  and  logic  that  rang 
like  the  blows  of  a  berserker's  sword  on 
his  shield.— Powell,  E.  P.,  1893,  Study 
of  Thomas  Paine,  The  Arena,  vol.  8,  p.  723. 

THE  RIGHTS  OF  MAN 

1791-92 

Mr.  Paine's  answer  to  Burke  will  be  a 
refreshing  shower  to  their  minds.  It 
would  bring  England  itself  to  reason  and 
i^evolution  if  it  was  permitted  to  be  read 
there. — Jefferson,  Thomas,  1791,  Letter 
to  Benjamin  Vaughan,  May  11 ;  Writings, 
ed.  Ford,  vol.  v,  p.  334. 

With  respect  to  Paine's  book,  the  first 
impression  was  seized  by  the  government. 


THOMAS  PAINE 


537 


and  the  circulation  of  it  stopped  as  much 
as  possible, but  still  many  copies  have  got 
abroad,  and,  as  I  am  just  informed,  have 
done  much  mischief.  Your  help,  there- 
fore, is  as  much  wanted  and  as  strongly 
called  for  as  ever.  I  will  venture  to  say, 
that  the  eyes  of  many  are  fixed  on  you  at 
this  important  crisis.  — Porteus,  Beilby, 
1793,  Letter  to  Hannah  More,  MemoirSy 
ed.  Roberts,  vol.  I,  p.  424. 

I  have  had  the  ill  or  good  fortune  to 
provoke  two  great  men  of  this  age  to  the 
publication  of  their  opinions:  I  mean 
Citizen  Thomas  Paine,  and  his  Grace  the 
*  *  *  of  *  *  *  I  am  not  so  great  a  leveller  as 
to  put  these  two  great  men  on  a  par,  either 
in  the  state,  or  the  republic  of  letters ; 
but  *'the  field  of  glory  is  a  field  for  all." 
It  is  a  large  one,  indeed ;  and  we  ail  may 
run,  God  knows  where,  in  chase  of  glory, 
over  the  boundless  expanse  of  that  wild 
heath  whose  horizon  always  flies  before 
us.  I  assure  his  Grace,  (if  he  will  yet 
give  men  leave  to  call  him  so),  whatever 
may  be  said  on  the  authority  of  the  clubs 
or  the  bar,  that  Citizen  Paine  (who,  they 
will  have  it,  hunts  with  me  in  couples,  and 
who  only  moves  as  1  drag  him  along)  has 
a  sufliicient  activity  in  his  own  native 
benevolence  to  dispose  and  enable  him  to 
take  the  lead  for  himself.  He  is  ready  to 
blaspheme  his  God,  to  insult  his  king,  and 
to  libel  the  Constitution  of  his  country, 
without  any  provocation  from  me  or  any 
encouragement  from  his  Grace. — Burke, 
Edmund,  1795,  A  Letter  to  William  Elliot, 
Works,  vol.  I,  p.  iii. 

The  book  was  characteristic  of  the  man. 
Its  purpose  was,  through  the  debasing  prin- 
ciple of  envy,  which  is  after  all  the  main 
principle  of  a  leveller,  to  reduce  all  man- 
kind to  one  standard,  to  write  up  a  sort  of 
confusion  made  easy,  by  addressing  the 
baser  to  war  against  the  better  passions 
of  our  nature,  by  pulling  down  superior 
station,  talents,  virtues,  and  distinctions 
to  the  level  of  the  lowest.  It  was  an  open 
declaration  of  hostility  to  all  the  institu- 
tions which  we  in  England  had  been  ac- 
customed to  consider  as  our  ornament  and 
pride ;  not  a  reform  of  the  real  or  imagi- 
nary abuses  of  government,  but  a  pretty 
plain  recommendation  to  pull  it  down 
altogether  for  the  pleasure  of  building 
afresh  on  the  republican  model — good  per- 
haps in  the  eyes  of  an  American,  but  at 
variance  with  the  habits,  the  feelings,  the 


opinions,  the  honest  convictions  and  prej- 
udices of  an  Englishman. — Prior,  Sir 
James,  1824,  Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Char- 
acter of  the  Right  Hon.  Edmund  Burke, 
vol.  II,  p.  113. 

This  work  should  be  read  by  every  man 
and  woman.  It  is  concise,  accurate, 
natural,  convincing,  and  unanswerable. 
It  shows  great  thought;  and  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  various  forms  of  govern- 
ment ;  deep  insight  into  the  very  springs 
of  human  action,  and  a  courage  that  com- 
pels respect  and  admiration.  The  most 
difficult  political  problems  are  solved  in  a 
few  sentences.  The  venerable  arguments 
in  favor  of  wrong  are  refuted  with  a  ques- 
tion— answered  with  a  word.  For  forci- 
ble illustration,  apt  comparison,  accuracy 
and  clearness  of  statement,  and  absolute 
thoroughness,  it  has  never  been  excelled. 
— Ingersoll,  Robert  G.,  1874,  The  Gods 
and  Other  Lectures,  p.  130. 

AGE  OF  REASON 
1794-95-1811 

How  exceedingly  superficial  and  frivo- 
lous are  the  hacknied  objections  to  Chris- 
tianity, and  how  entirely  they  arise  from 
the  grossest  ignorance  of  the  subject,  will 
appear  from  my  animadversions  on  Mr. 
Paine's  boasted  work.  He  would  have 
written  more  to  the  purpose,  if  he  had 
been  acquainted  with  the  writings  of 
Voltaire,  and  other  better  informed  un- 
believers. But  he  seems  entirely  un- 
read on  the  subject,  and  thereby  to  be 
acquainted  with  the  ground  on  which 
either  the  friends  or  the  enemies  of  Chris- 
tianity must  stand.  Had  he  been  better 
acquainted  with  the  Scriptures  which  are 
a  constant  subject  of  his  ridicule,  he  might 
have  made  a  more  plausible  attack  upon 
them. — Priestley,  Joseph,  1794,  Letters 
to  a  Philosophical  Unbeliever  in  Answer  to 
Mr.  Paine^s  Age  of  Reason. 

Read  Tom  Paine's ''Age  of  Reason," — 
God  defend  us  from  such  poison. — WiL- 
berforce,  William,  1794,  Journal,  Life 
by  R.  I.  and  S.  Wilberforce,  vol.  ii,  p.  61. 

This  volume,  the  hornbook  of  vulgar 
infidelity,  is  now  before  us,  and  we  have 
doubted  how  far  we  ought  to  refer  to  it, 
or  what  use  to  make  of  it.  It  has  passed 
utterly  out  of  the  world's  thoughts,  and 
we  have  a  repugnance,  not  easily  to  be 
overcome,  in  bringing  it  to  light  again. 
Its  blasphemies  are  enough  to  sicken  the 
heart ;  but  still  it  may  not  be  useless,  in 


538 


THOMAS  PAINE 


one  view,  to  show  the  Christian  reader  to 
what  dregs  infidelity,  beginning  with  re- 
finement and  high-bred  speculation,  will 
at  last  come.— Read,  W.  B.,  1843,  The 
Life  and  Character  of  Thomas  Painey 
North  American  Review y  vol.  57,  p.  49. 

Perhaps  the  most  blasphemous  and 
mischievous  book  that  was  ever  issued 
from  the  English  press.  — Perry,  George 
G.,  1864,  The  History  of  the  Church  of 
England^  vol.  ill,  p.  436. 

That  hasty  pamphlet  of  his  which  he 
named  ''The  Age  of  Reason, written  to 
alleviate  the  tedium  of  his  Paris  prison, 
differs  from  other  deistical  works  only  in 
being  bolder  and  honester.  It  contains 
not  a  position  which  Franklin,  John 
Adams,  Jefferson,  and  Theodore  Parker 
would  have  dissented  from ;  and,  doubtless, 
he  spoke  the  truth  when  he  declared  that 
his  main  purpose  in  writing  it  was  to 
''inspire  mankind  with  a  more  exalted  idea 
of  the  Supreme  Architect  of  the  Uni- 
verse.'^ I  think  his  judgment  must  have 
been  impaired  before  he  could  have  con- 
sented to  publish  so  inadequate  a  per- 
formance.—Parton,  James,  1874,  Life  of 
Thomas  Jefferson^  p.  591. 

The  man  who  was  the  most  influential 
assailant  of  the  orthodox  faith  was  Thomas 
Paine.  He  was  the  arch  infidel,  the  infidel 
par  eminence,  whom  our  early  and  later 
theologians  have  united  in  holding  up  as 
a  monster  of  iniquity  and  unbelief.  The 
truth  is  that  Paine  was  a  dogmatic,  well- 
meaning  iconoclast,  who  attacked  religion 
without  having  any  religious  experience 
or  any  imaginative  perception  of  the  vital 
spiritual  phenomena  on  which  religious 
faith  is  based.  Nobody  can  read  his  ' '  Age 
of  Reason,"  after  having  had  some  pre- 
paratory knowledge  derived  from  the  study 
of  the  history  of  religions,  without 
wondering  at  its  shallowness.  Paine  is, 
in  a  spiritual  application  of  the  phrase, 
color-blind.  He  does  not  seem  to  know 
what  religion  is.  The  reputation  he  en- 
joyed was  due  not  more  to  his  masterly 
command  of  all  the  avenues  to  the  average 
popular  mind  than  to  the  importance  to 
which  he  was  lifted  by  his  horrified  theo- 
logical adversaries.  His  merit  as  a  writer 
against  religion  consisted  in  his  hard, 
almost  animal,  common-sense,  to  whose 
tests  he  subjected  the  current  theological 
dogmas. — Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  1886, 
American  Literature  and  Other  Papers. 


Is  popular  only  with  the  lower  classes, 
unable  to  perceive  its  cheap  and  unschol- 
arly  critical  method  and  its  vulgar  temper. 
—Richardson,  Charles  F.,  1887,  Amer- 
ican Literature,  1607-1885,  vol.  i,  p.  211. 

As  an  exponent  of  religious  views,  had 
a  position  in  his  day  somewhat  similar  to 
that  of  Robert  Ingersoll  with  us.  He 
made  a  determined  and  vigorous  attack 
upon  a  faith  of  whose  true  character  he 
was  irremediably  ignorant.  He  was  de- 
void of  Ingersoll's  quick  wit  and  poetic 
genius ;  but  he  had  his  rough  and  ready 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  his  love 
of  destruction,  his  hard  common  sense, 
his  spiritual  color-blindness,  and,  per- 
haps, more  than  his  earnestness.  As  in 
Ingersoll's  case,  too,  the  consternation 
which  his  attacks  upon  religion  produced 
among  clergymen  and  church  members 
greatly  increased  his  weight  and  impor- 
tance as  an  "infidel."  His  "Age  of 
Reason,"  is  a  shallow  production,  but  it 
had  its  effect  when  it  was  written. 
Religion,  it  needs  hardly  be  said,  sus- 
tained no  permanent  injury  at  Paine's 
hands.— Hawthorne,  Julian,  and  Lem- 
MON,  Leonard,  1891,  American  Litera- 
ture, p.  27. 

The  "Age  of  Reason"  went  everywhere, 
into  holes  and  corners,  among  backwoods- 
men and  pioneers,  and  did  more  execution 
among  plain  moral  men  than  many  a  book 
that  was  more  worthy  of  acceptance.  It 
is  a  pity  that  his  disciples  should  be  con- 
tent with  repeating  his  denials,  instead  of 
building  on  the  rational  foundations  which 
he  laidc  For  instance,  they  might  while 
adding  to  his  criticism  of  the  Scriptures, 
have  shown  their  high  moral  bearing  and 
their  spiritual  glow.  They  might  have 
carried  out  further  his  "enthusiasm  for 
humanity, "  showing  that  man  had  more  in 
him  than  Paine  suspected.  They  might 
have  justified  by  more  scientific  reasons 
his  belief  in  God  and  in  immortality. 
They  might  have  been  truly  rationalists 
as  he  wanted  to  be,  but  could  not  be  at 
that  period.  But  they  were  satisfied  in 
saying  over  and  over  again,  what  he  said 
as  well  as  he  could,  but  not  as  well  as  they 
can.  He  was  simply  a  precursor,  but  he 
was  a  precursor  of  such  men  as  Colenso 
and  Robertson  Smith,  and  a  large  host  of 
scholars  beside.— Frothingham,  Octa- 
vius  Brooks,  1891,  Recollections  and  Im- 
pressions, p.  252. 


THOMAS  PAINE 


539 


Paine's  book  has  done  as  much  to  modify 
human  belief  as  any  ever  written.  It  is 
one  of  the  very  few  religious  works  of  the 
last  century  which  survives  in  unsectarian 
circulation.  It  requires  a  scholarly  per- 
ception to  recognize  in  its  occasional  ex- 
pressions, by  some  called  coarse,"  the 
simple  Saxon  of  Norfolkshire.  .  .  . 
Paine's  book  is  the  uprising  of  the  human 
HEART  against  the  Religion  of  Inhuman- 
ity. .  .  .  But  here  is  one  man,  a 
prisoner,  preparing  for  his  long  silence. 
He  alone  can  speak  for  those  slain  between 
the  throne  and  the  altar.  In  these  out- 
bursts of  laughter  and  tears,  these  out- 
cries that  think  not  of  literary  style,  these 
appeals  from  surrounding  chaos  to  the 
starry  realm  of  order,  from  the  tribune  of 
vengeance  to  the  sun  shining  for  all,  this 
passionate  horror  of  cruelty  in  the  power- 
ful which  will  brave  a  heartless  heaven  or 
hell  with  its  immortal  indignation, — in  all 
these  the  unfettered  mind  may  hear  the 
wail  of  enthralled  Europe,  sinking  back 
choked  with  its  blood,  under  the  chain  it 
tried  to  break.  So  long  as  a  link  remains 
of  the  same  chain,  binding  reason  or  heart, 
Paine's  *'Age  of  Reason"  will  live.  It  is 
not  a  mere  book — it  is  a  man's  heart. — 
Conway,  Moncure  Daniel,  1892,  The 
Life  of  Thomas  Paine,  vol.  II,  pp.  184, 
198,  222. 

''The  Age  of  Reason"  damaged  Paine^s 
reputation  in  America,  where  the  name  of 
**Tom  Paine"  became  a  stench  in  the 
nostrils  of  the  godly,  and  a  synonym  for 
atheism  and  blasphemy.  His  book  was 
denounced  from  a  hundred  pulpits,  and 
copies  of  it  were  carefully  locked  away 
from  the  sight  of  *'the  young,"  whose 
religious  beliefs  it  might  undermine.  It 
was,  in  effect,  a  crude  an'd  popular  state- 
ment of  the  deistic  argument  against 
Christianity.  .  .  .  The  contest  between 
skepticism  and  revelation  has  long  since 
shifted  to  other  grounds.  Both  the  phi- 
losophy and  the  temper  of  ''The  Age  of 
Reason"  belong  to  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. But  Paine's  downright  pugnacious 
method  of  attack  was  effective  with 
shrewd,  half-educated  doubters;  and  in 
America  well-thumbed  copies  of  his  book 
passed  from  hand  to  hand  in  many  a  rural 
tavern  or  store,  where  the  village  atheist 
wrestled  in  debate  with  the  deacon  or  the 
schoolmaster.— Beers,  Henry  A.,  1895, 
Initial  Studies  in  American  Letters. 


A  crude  but  often  acute  and  forcible 
exposition  of  deism. — Herford,  C.  H., 
1897,  The  Age  of  Wordsworth,  p.  8. 

GENERAL 

That  the  early,  unsolicited,  and  con- 
tinued labors  of  Mr.  Thomas  Paine,  in  ex- 
plaining and  enforcing  the  principles  of 
the  late  revolution  by  ingenious  and  timely 
publications  upon  the  nature  of  liberty, 
and  civil  government,  have  been  well  re- 
ceived by  the  citizens  of  these  States,  and 
merit  the  approbation  of  Congress;  and 
that  in  consideration  of  these  services, 
and  the  benefits  produced  thereby,  Mr. 
Paine  is  entitled  to  a  liberal  gratification 
from  the  United  States.— Resolution  of 
Congress,  1785,  August  25th. 

I  have  frequently  with  pleasure  reflected 
on  your  services  to  my  native  and  your 
adopted  country.  Your ' '  Common  Sense, ' ' 
and  your  "Crisis,"  unquestionably  awak- 
ened the  public  mind,  and  led  the  people 
loudly  to  call  for  a  declaration  of  our 
national  independence.  I  therefore  es- 
teemed you  as  a  warm  friend  to  the  liberty 
and  lasting  welfare  of  the  human  race. 
But  when  I  had  heard  you  had  turned  your 
mind  to  a  defence  of  infidelity,  I  felt  my- 
self much  astonished  and  more  grieved, 
that  you  had  attempted  a  measure  so  in- 
jurious to  the  feelings  and  so  repugnant 
to  the  true  interest  of  so  great  a  part  of 
the  citizens  of  the  United  States.  The 
people  of  New  England,  if  you  will  allow 
me  to  use  a  Scripture  phrase,  are  fast  re- 
turning to  their  first  love.  Will  you  ex- 
cite among  them  the  spirit  of  angry  con- 
troversy at  a  time  when  they  are  hasten- 
ing to  amity  and  peace  ?  I  am  told  that 
some  of  our  newspapers  have  announced 
your  intention  to  publish  an  additional 
pamphlet  upon  the  principles  of  your  "Age 
of  Reason."  Do  you  think  that  your 
pen,  or  the  pen  of  any  other  man,  can 
unchristianize  the  mass  of  our  citizens,  or 
have  your  hopes  of  converting  a  few  of 
them  to  assist  you  in  so  bad  a  cause  ?  We 
ought  to  think  ourselves  happy  in  the 
enjoyment  of  opinion,  without  the  danger 
of  persecution  by  civil  or  ecclesiastical 
law.  Our  friend,  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  has  been  culminated  for 
his  liberal  sentiments  by  men  who  have 
attributed  that  liberality  to  a  latent  de- 
sign to  promote  the  cause  of  infidelity. 
This,  and  all  other  slanders,  have  been 
made  without  the  least  shadow  of  proof. 


540 


THOMAS  PAINE 


Neither  religion  nor  liberty  can  long  sub- 
sist in  the  tumult  of  altercation  and  amidst 
the  noise  and  violence  of  faction.  Felix 
qui  cautus.  Adieu. —  Adams,  Samuel, 
1802,  Letter  to  Thomas  Paine,  Works,  vol. 
Ill,  p.  372. 

Nobody  now-a-days  would  trouble  him- 
self to  read  Tom  Paine. — McCarthy, 
Justin,  1872,  Science  and  Orthodoxy  in 
England,  Modern  Leaders,  p.  242. 

When  our  children's  children  shall 
celebrate  America's  second  centennial,  a 
hundred  years  from  now,  they  will  write 
in  largest  letters,  upon  their  national 
banner,  this  sentence,  which  all  intelligent 
American  citizens  will  then  enthusiastic- 
ally recognize  and  applaud:  Thomas 
Paine — The  Patriot,  Philanthropist  and 
Theologian  of  Two  Hundred  years  ago." — 
ScHERMERHORN,  Martin  K.,  1876,  Cen- 
tennial Lecture  on  Thomas  Paine,  p.  18. 

What  other  last-century  writer  on 
political  and  religious  issues  survives  in 
the  hatred  and  devotion  of  a  time  engaged 
with  new  problems  ?  What  power  is  con- 
fessed in  that  writer  who  was  set  in  the 
place  of  a  decadent  Satan,  hostility  to  him 
being  a  sort  of  sixth  point  of  Calvinism, 
and  fortieth  article  of  the  Church  ?  Large 
indeed  must  have  been  the  influence  of  a 
man  still  perenially  denounced  by  sec- 
tarians after  heretical  progress  has  left 
him  comparatively  orthodox,  and  retained 
as  the  figure-head  of  ''Free  thought"  after 
his  theism  has  been  abandoned  by  its  lead- 
ers. Religion,"  said  Paine,  **has  two 
principal  enemies.  Fanaticism  and  Infidel- 
ity." It  was  his  strange  destiny  to  be 
made  a  battle-field  between  these  enemies. 
In  the  smoke  of  the  conflict  the  man  has 
been  hidden.  In  the  catalogue  of  the 
British  Museum  Library  I  counted  327 
entries  of  books  by  or  concerning  Thomas 
Paine,  who  in  most  of  them  is  a  man- 
shaped  or  devil-shaped  shuttlecock  tossed 
between  fanatical  and  ''infidel"  rackets. 
Here  surely  were  phenomena  enough  to 
attract  the  historic  sense  of  a  scientific 
age,  yet  they  are  counterpart  of  an  his- 
toric suppression  of  the  most  famous 
author  of  his  time.  The  meagre  refer- 
ences to  Paine  by  other  than  controversial 
writers  are  perfunctory;  by  most  histo- 
rians he  is  either  wronged  or  ignored. 
Before  me  are  two  histories  of  "American 
Slavery"  by  eminent  members  of  Congress ; 
neither  mentions  that  Paine  was  the  first 


political  writer  who  advocated  and  devised 
a  scheme  of  emancipation.  Here  is  the 
latest  "Life  of  Washington"  (1889),  by 
another  member  of  Congress,  who  manages 
to  exclude  even  the  name  of  the  man  who, 
as  we  shall  see,  chiefly  converted  Washing- 
ton to  the  cause  of  independence.  And 
here  is  a  history  of  the  "American  Revolu- 
tion" (1891),  by  John  Fiske,  who,  while 
recognizing  the  effect  of  ''Common  Sense," 
reveals  his  ignorance  of  that  pamphlet, 
and  of  all  Paine's  works,  by  describing  it 
as  full  of  scurrilous  abuse  of  the  English 
people, — whom  Paine  regarded  as  fellow- 
sufferers  with  the  Americans  under  royal 
despotism. — Conway,  Moncure  Daniel, 
1892,  The  Life  of  Thomas  Paine,  vol.  I, 
Preface,  p.  ix. 

Paine  is  the  only  English  writer  who 
expresses  with  uncompromising  sharpness 
the  abstract  doctrine  of  political  rights 
held  by  the  French  revolutionists.  His 
relation  to  the  American  struggle,  and 
afterwards  to  the  revolution  of  1789,  gave 
him  a  unique  position,  and  his  writings 
became  the  sacred  books  of  the  extreme 
radical  party  in  England.  Attempts  to 
suppress  them  only  raised  their  influence, 
and  the  writings  of  the  first  quarter  of  the 
century  are  full  of  proofs  of  the  impor- 
tance attached  to  them  by  friends  and  foes. 
Paine  deserves  whatever  credit  is  due  to 
absolute  devotion  to  a  creed  believed  by 
himself  to  be  demonstrably  true  and  bene- 
ficial. He  showed  undeniable  courage, 
and  is  free  from  any  suspicion  of  mer- 
cenary motives.  He  attached  an  exces- 
sive importance  to  his  own  work,  and  was 
ready  to  accept  the  commonplace  that  his 
pen  had  been  as  eflScient  as  Washington's 
sword.  He  attributed  to  the  power  of  his 
reasoning  all  that  may  more  fitly  be 
ascribed  to  the  singular  fitness  of  his 
formulae  to  express  the  political  passions 
of  the  time.  Though  unable  to  see  that 
his  opponents  could  be  anything  but  fools 
and  knaves,  he  has  the  merit  of  sincerely 
wishing  that  the  triumph  should  be  won 
by  reason  without  violence.  With  a  little 
more  "human  nature,"  he  would  have 
shrunk  from  insulting  Washington  or  en- 
couraging a  Napoleonic  invasion  of  his 
native  country.  But  Paine's  bigotry  was 
of  the  logical  kind  which  can  see  only  one 
side  of  a  question,  and  imagines  that  all 
political  and  religious  questions  are  as 
simple  as  the  first  propositions  of  Euclid. 


PAINE— SEWARD 


541 


This  singular  power  of  clear,  vigorous  ex- 
position made  him  unequalled  as  a  pam- 
phleteer in  revolutionary  times,  when 
compromise  was  an  absurdity.  He  also 
showed  great  shrewdness  and  independence 
of  thought  in  his  criticisms  of  the  Bible. 
He  said,  indeed,  little  that  had  not  been 
anticipated  by  the  English  deists  and  their 
French  disciples;  but  he  writes  freshly 
and  independently,  if  sometimes  coarsely. 
— Stephen,  Leslie,  1895,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  XLiii,  p.  78. 

The  coarse  and  violent  expression,  as 
well  as  the  unpopular  matter,  of  ^*aine's 
works  may  have  led  to  his  being  rather 
unfairly  treated  in  the  hot  fights  of  the 
Revolutionary  period;  but  the  attempts 
which  have  recently  been  made  to  white- 
wash him  are  a  mere  mistake  of  reaction, 
or  paradox,  or  pure  stupidity.  The 
charges  which  used  to  be  brought  against 
his  moral  character  matter  little;  for 
neither  side  in  these  days  had,  or  in  any 
days  has,  a  monopoly  of  loose  or  of  holy 
living.  But  two  facts  will  always  remain ; 
first,  that  Paine  attacked  subjects  which 
all  require  calm,  and  some  of  them  rever- 
ent, treatment,  in  a  tone  of  the  coarsest 


violence ;  and,  secondly,  that  he  engaged 
in  questions  of  the  widest  reach,  and  re- 
quiring endless  thought  and  reading,  with 
the  scanty  equipments  and  the  super- 
abundant confidence  of  a  self-educated 
man. — Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A 
History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature, 
p.  31. 

When  we  consider  the  dignity,  the 
elevation,  and  the  reasonableness  of  so 
much  that  he  says  in  his  argument  for  the 
separation  of  the  Colonies  from  England, 
and  of  many  passages  even  in  the  "Age  of 
Reason, "  one  hardly  knows  how  to  account 
for  the  ribaldry  which  belongs  to  so  many 
of  his  later  writings:  ribald  about  old 
friends  and  benefactors ;  ribald  about  re- 
ligion ;  ribald  about  the  public  which  had 
honored  him.  Jealous,  morbid,  crazed  by 
his  vanities — his  clever  mind  at  intervals 
blazing  through  the  clouds  and  foulnesses 
which  his  own  dissipations  and  selfish 
arrogance  had  created;  dying  at  last, 
after  long  stages  of  drunkenness,  and,  as 
many  report,  with  a  nose  as  bloated  as 
Bardolph's. — Mitchell,  Donald  G.,1897, 
American  Lands  and  Letters,  The  May- 
flower to  Rip- Van- Winkle,  p.  115. 


Anna  Seward 

1747-1809 

The  *'Swan  of  Lichfield,"  born  in  1747  at  Eyam  rectory,  Derbyshire,  lived  from 
seven  at  Lichfield,  where  her  father,  himself  a  poet,  became  a  canon.  He  died  in 
1790,  but  she  lived  on  in  the  bishop's  palace,  dear  to  her  friends  and  correspondents, 
Mrs.  Piozzi,  Hayley,  Southey,  Scott,  and  died  23d  March  1809.  She  published  her 
poetical  novel,  ''Louisa,''  in  1782;  her  ''Sonnets"  in  1799;  her  Life  of  Dr.  Darwin 
in  1804 ;  but  bequeathed  to  Walter  Scott  the  care  of  the  collected  edition  of  her  poems 
(1810).  Her  .  .  .  letters  fill  six  volumes  (1811-13). — Patrick  and  Groome, 
eds.y  1897,  Chambers^ s  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  843. 


PERSONAL 
The  great  command  of  literary  anecdotes 
which  Miss  Seward  possessed,  her  ready 
perception  both  of  the  serious  and  ludi- 
crous, and  her  just  observation  and  original 
taste,  rendered  her  society  delightful. 
She  entered  into  every  topic  with  the  keen- 
ness and  vivacity  of  youth,  and  it  was  dif- 
ficult to  associate  the  idea  of  advanced 
years  either  with  her  countenance  or  con- 
versation. The  possessor  of  such  quick 
feelings  seldom  escapes  the  portion  of  pain 
with  which  all  earthly  good  are  alloyed 
and  tempered.  With  the  warmest  heart 
of  her  friends,  and  an  unbounded  enthu- 
siasm in  their  service.  Miss  Seward  united 


a  sensibility  to  coldness,  or  to  injuries  real 
or  supposed,  which  she  permitted  to  dis- 
turb her  more  than  was  consistent  with 
prudence  or  with  happiness.  The  same 
tone  of  mind  rendered  her  jealous  of 
critical  authority,  when  exercised  over 
her  own  productions,  or  those  of  her 
friends.— Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1810,  ed.. 
The  Poetical  Works  of  Anna  Seward, 
Memoir. 

Miss  Seward  had  not  the  art  of  making 
friends,  except  among  the  little  circle 
whom  she  flattered,  and  who  flattered  her. 
I  never  saw  her  myself,  but  judge  only 
from  the  manner  in  which  she  was  spoken 
of.    My  friend  Shaw,  whom  she  noticed, 


642 


ANNA  SEWARD 


thought  her  the  greatest  of  poetesses. 
She  both  gave  offence  and  provoked  ridicule 
by  her  affectation,  and  bad  taste,  and  pomp- 
ous pretensions.- — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel 
Egerton,  1834,  Autobiography,  vol.  i, 
p.  57. 

Anna  Seward, — the  most  successful  of 
unendowed  poetesses, — appears  before  us, 
in  or  about  her  thirtieth  year — still  in  all 
the  freshness  of  her  beauty.  Let  us 
follow  her  into  her  father's  library,  as  she 
limps  along— for  she  is  lame  from  the 
fracture  of  her  knee,  years  ago — yet  she 
is  still,  though  bent,  tall,  elegant,  and 
even  stately.  She  seats  herself  before  a 
table,  and  with  the  finest  and  fairest  of 
hands  opens  a  book.  We  gaze  upon  her 
oval  face  as  she  upraises  it  to  look  at  the 
old  man  beside  her  in  his  easy  chair.  That 
face  is  full  of  harmony,  as  it  is  of  expres- 
sion. The  features  are  small,  regular  and 
delicate;  there  is  something  very  firm, 
though  very  sweet,  in  the  mouth.  Her 
eyes,  of  auburn,  are  of  the  same  hue  and 
shade  precisely  as  her  hair,  which  is  drawn 
up  from  her  high  forehead,  and  gathered 
under  a  knot  of  pearls.  Around  her  long, 
fair  throat  is  a  string  of  pearls  sewn  to  a 
small  band  of  black  velvet;  over  her 
shoulder  she  wears  a  loose  bodice,  which 
is  edged  with  sable  fur,  leaving  her  bust 
exposed  in  the  folds  of  her  loose  and 
short-waisted  dress.  Large  white  muslin 
cambric  sleeves  fall  over  her  delicate 
arms.  —  Thomson,  Katherine  (Grace 
Wharton),  1862,  The  Literature  of  Sod- 
ety,  vol.  n,  p.  263. 

Johnson  could  not  appreciate  the  deep, 
sensitive  nature  of  Miss  Seward,  and  Bos- 
well  hated  her,  and  speaks  very  disparag- 
ingly of  her,  with  his  usual  coarseness. 
We  can  hardly  forgive  Scott  for  one  of  his 
letters,  criticising  her  little  weaknesses, 
after  she  was  dead.  No  truer  heart  ever 
beat  in  the  breast  of  any  woman. — BuT- 
TERWORTH,  Hezekiah,  1876,  Anna  Sew- 
ard and  Major  Andre,  The  Galaxy,  vol. 
21,  p.  175. 

Her  admirers  were  wont  to  call  her  The 
Swan  of  Lichfield,''  and  she  herself  seems 
to  have  imagined  the  title  not  unmerited. 
Her  chief  foible,  indeed,  must  have  been 
this  poetry.  She  could  never  have  earned 
such  hearty  esteem  from  men  like  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  and  have  avoided  so  success- 
fully the  numberless  jealousies  which  writ- 
ing people  have  to  encounter,  had  she  not 


in  all  her  private  relations  shown  herself 
a  much  more  perfect  mistress  of  her  con- 
duct than  she  was  of  the  poet's  pen. — 
Robertson,  Eric  S.,  1883,  English  Poet- 
esses, p.  98. 

GENERAL 
Misses  Seward  and  Williams,  and  half-a- 
dozen  more  of  these  harmonious  virgins, 
have  no  imagination,  no  novelty.  Their 
thoughts  and  phrases  are  like  their  gown, 
old  remnants  cut  and  turned. — Wal- 
pole,  Horace,  1786,  To  the  Countess  of 
Ossory,  Nov.  4 ;  Letters,  ed,  Cunningham, 
vol.  IX,  p.  73. 

I  had  the  satisfaction  of  hearing  that 
Miss  Seward's  ''Louisa"  made  you  weep; 
I  remember  the  difliculty  I  had  to  make 
you  promise  to  read  it;  the  same  re- 
pugnance I  have  had  to  combat  in  a 
dozen  other  people ;  all  were  as  unwilling 
as  if  it  had  been  a  sermon,  or  something  that 
was  to  do  them  good ;  but  when  they  had 
read  it,  all  who  had  any  taste  for  imagery, 
sentiment,  and  poetry  thanked  me  for 
having  compelled  them  to  enjoy  this  pleas- 
ure, and  I  expected  you  would  have  had 
the  same  gratitude.  Miss  Seward's  im- 
agination is  bright  and  glowing;  she  is 
rich  in  expression,  and  admirable  at  de- 
scription ;  but  to  counterbalance  all  these 
excellences,  she  has  one  fault,  which  is  of 
great  magnitude,  but  which  may  not  per- 
haps be  so  great  an  offence  in  your  eyes 
as  I  confess  it  is  in  mine:  what  it  is  I 
shall  not  mention,  and  in  case  it  does  not 
strike  you,  I  am  willing  you  should  call 
me  mean  and  malignant  for  suggesting 
it :  a  little  envy  is  natural,  if  not  pardon- 
able; when  I  see  Mrs.  Pepys,  I  will  tell 
her  my  objections. —  More,  Hannah, 
1784,  Letter  to  Mr.  Pepys,  July  17 ;  Mem- 
airs,  ed.  Roberts,  vol.  I,  p.  194. 

I  am  now  doing  penance  for  my  ill- 
breeding,  by  submitting  to  edit  her  pos- 
thumous poetry,  most  of  which  is  ab- 
solutely execrable.  This,  however,  is  the 
least  of  my  evils,  for  when  she  proposed 
this  bequest  to  me,  which  I  could  not  in 
decency  refuse,  she  combined  it  with*  a 
request  that  I  would  publish  her  whole  lit- 
erary correspondence-  This  I  declined  on 
principle,  having  a  particular  aversion  at 
perpetuating  that  sort  of  gossip;  but 
what  availed  it  ?  Lo !  to  ensure  the  pub- 
lication, she  left  it  to  an  Edinburgh  book- 
seller; and  I  anticipate  the  horror  of 
seeing  myself  advertised  for  a  live  poet 


ANNA  SEWARD 


543 


like  a  wild  beast  on  a  painted  streamer, 
for  I  understand  all  her  friends  are  depicted 
therein  in  body,  mind,  and  manners.  So 
much  for  the  risks  of  sentimental  corre- 
spondence.—Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1810, 
Letter  to  Joanna  Bailliey  March  18 ;  Life 
by  Lockharty  ch.  xix. 

Have  you  seen  Miss  Seward's  Let- 
ters?" The  names  of  her  correspondents 
are  tempting,  but,  alas !  though  addressed 
to  all  the  eminent  literati  of  the  last  half 
century,  all  the  epistles  bear  the  signature 
of  Anna  Seward.  To  tell  you  the  truth,  I 
was  always  a  little  shocked  at  the  sort  of 
reputation  she  bore  in  poetry.  Sometimes 
affected,  sometimes  fade,  sometimes  pe- 
dantic, and  sometimes  tinselly,  none  of 
her  works  were  ever  simple,  graceful,  or 
natural ;  and  I  never  heard  her  praised  but 
I  fancied  the  commendation  would  end  in, 
* '  It  is  very  well — for  a  woman !' '  What  I 
have  seen  of  her  letters  confirms  me  in  this 
idea.  They  are  affected,  sentimental,  and 
lackadaisical  to  the  highest  degree;  and 
her  taste  is  even  worse  than  her  execution. 
— MiTFORD,  Mary  Russell,  1811,  To  Sir 
William  Elf  or  d,  Aug.  11 ;  Life,  ed.  U  Es- 
trange, vol.  I,  p.  121. 

I  have  returned  for  entertainment  to  a 
book  you  will  not  hold  in  high  respect, 
even  Anna  Seward's  Letters"  .  .  . 
and  now  I  must  apologise  to  her  memory 
for  the  disgust  with  which  I  was  wont  to 
regard  her  pedantry,  quaint,  new-coined 
phrases,  violent  prejudices,  and  some 
small  defects  of  female  delicacy.  Yet, 
after  all,  she  amuses  me  much,  now  that 
the  country  and  rainy  weather  have  made 
me  less  critical,  and  more  grateful  for 
entertainment.  She  is  so  sincere  and 
friendly,  so  capable  of  tasting  the  beauties 
•  of  nature  and  of  poetry,  that  I  try  hard 
to  forget  her  injustice  to  Cowper,  and 
preference  of  Chatterton  to  Burns.  .  .  . 
Her  poetry,  on  which  she  prided  herself, 
I  cannot  taste  at  all ;  and  her  Darwin  I 
cannot  endure. — Grant,  Anne,  1820,  To 
Mrs.  Fletcher,  July  26 ;  Memoir  and  Cor- 
respondence, ed.  Grant,  vol.  ii,  pp.  244, 245. 

She  was  endowed  with  considerable 
genius,  and  with  an  ample  portion  of  that 
fine  enthusiasm  which  sometimes  may  be 
taken  for  it ;  but  her  taste  was  far  from 
good,  and  her  numerous  productions  (a  few 
excepted)  are  disfigured  by  florid  ornament 
and  elaborate  magnificence. — Dyce,  Alex- 
ander, 1S25,  Specimens  of  British  Poetesses. 


It  cannot  be  denied  that  she  sometimes 
showed  flashes  of  genius ;  but  never  in  con- 
tinuity. She  believed  that  poetry  rather 
lay  in  the  diction  than  in  the  thought; 
and  I  am  not  acquainted  with  any  literary 
letters,  which  exhibit  so  much  corrupt 
judgment,  and  so  many  false  beauties  as 
her's.  Her  sentiments  are  palpably 
studied,  and  disguised,  and  dressed  up. 
Nothing  seems  to  come  from  the  heart,  but 
all  to  be  put  on.  I  understand  the  Andre 
family  say,  that  in  the  "Monody  on  Major 
Andre,"  all  about  his  attachment,  and 
Honora  Sneyd,  &c.,  is  a  nonsensical  false- 
hood, of  her  own  invention.  Among  her 
numerous  sonnets,  there  are  not  above  five 
or  six  which  are  good;  and  I  cannot 
doubt  that  Dr.  Darwin's  hand  is  in  many 
of  her  early  poems.  The  inequalities  of 
all  her  compositions  are  of  the  nature  of 
patchwork. — Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Eger- 
TON,  1834,  Autobiography,  vol.  I,  p.  57. 

She  was  a  woman  whose  talents,  if  her 
language  had  not  been  distorted  by  false 
notions  of  excellence  in  composition,  might 
have  retained  for  her  the  high  station 
among  female  writers,  which  in  her  palmy 
days  it  was  allowed  that  she  had  won. 
Though  not  always  a  judicious  critic,  she 
was  nev-er  unjust  or  ungenerous  in  her 
censures;  and  if  she  frequently  mistook 
glittering  faults  for  beauties,  no  beauty 
ever  escaped  her  observation. — Southey, 
Robert,  1836-7,  The  Life  of  William 
Cowper,  vol.  ii,  p.  45. 

In  the  course  of  this  autumn  [1810]  ap- 
peared the  Poetical  Works  of  Miss  Sew- 
ard, in  three  volumes,  with  a  Prefatory 
Memoir  of  her  Life  by  Scott.  This  edition 
had,  as  we  have  seen,  been  enjoined  by  her 
last  will — but  his  part  in  it  was  an  un- 
grateful one,  and  the  book  was  among  the 
most  unfortunate  that  James  Ballantyne 
printed,  and  his  brother  published,  in  def- 
erence to  the  personal  feelings  of  their 
partner.  He  had  been,  as  was  natural, 
pleased  and  flattered  by  the  attentions  of 
the  Lichfield  poetess  in  the  days  of  his 
early  aspirations  after  literary  distinction ; 
but  her  verses,  which  he  had  with  his  usual 
readiness  praised  to  herself  beyond  their 
worth,  appeared  when  collected  a  formid- 
able monument  of  mediocrity.  Her  Cor- 
respondence, published  at  the  same  time  by 
Constable,  was  considered  by  him  with  still 
greater  aversion. — Lockhart,  John  Gib- 
son, 1836,  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  ch.xxii. 


544 


SEWARD— HOLCROFT 


Affected  and  superfluous. — Hunt,  Leigh, 
1847,  Men,  Women  and  Books. 

Anna  Seward,  yclept  the  Swan  of  Lich- 
field, was  the  Sappho  of  that  era  of  ribbons 
and  gumflowers,  and  a  fitting  one  for  such 
a  Juvenal  as  Hayley,  and  such  a  Lucretius 
as  Darwin.  She  wrote  with  fluency,  and 
poured  out  a  cataract  of  verse. — Mom, 
D.  M.,  1850-1,  Sketches  of  the  Poetical 
Literature  of  the  Past  Half-Century,  p.  12. 

Miss  Seward's  own  poetry,  with  much 
more  sentimentality  and  much  less  sense 
and  substance,  belongs  with  the  same 
school  with  Darwin's.  Hers  is  the  feeble 
commonplace  of  the  same  labored,  tortu- 
ous, and  essentially  unnatural  and  untrue 
style  out  of  which  he,  with  his  more 
powerful  and  original  genius,  has  evolved 
for  himself  a  distinctive  form  or  dialect. 
— Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Compen- 
dious History  of  English  Literature  and  of 
the  English  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  402. 


If  anything  could  be  more  absurd  than 
the  poems  themselves  in  their  form,  con- 
ception, and  execution,  it  would  be  Miss 
Seward's  criticisms  of  them.  Indeed  it  is 
scarcely  possible  to  believe  that  such  a 
work  as  her  "Life  of  Dr.  Darwin"  could 
have  been  written  in  the  present  century ; 
its  stilted  style,  its  unnatural  verbiage, 
its  pompous  solemnity,  are  so  out  of  keep- 
ing with  our  modern  habits  of  thought, 
feeling,  and  expression. — Story,  Wil- 
liam Wetmore,  1890,  Conversations  in  a 
Studio,  vol.  I,  p.  258. 

Miss  Seward's  poetry  belongs  to  the 
school  represented  by  William  Hayley  and 
satirised  by  Gifford  in  the  *'Baviad." 
.  .  .  Her  work  abounds  in  every  sort 
of  affectation.  ...  At  times  she 
shows  an  appreciation  of  natural  scenery, 
and  now  and  then  turns  a  good  line. — 
Lee,  Elizabeth,  1889,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  hi,  p.  281. 


Thomas  Holcroft 

1745-1809 

Dramatist  and  miscellaneous  writer,  was  born  10th  December,  1745  (old  style),  in 
Orange  Court,  Leicester  Fields,  London.  ...  On  the  expiry  of  his  term  of  en- 
gagement as  stable  boy  he  returned  to  assist  his  father,  who  had  again  resumed  his 
trade  of  shoemaker  in  London ;  but  after  marrying  in  1765,  he  procured  the  office 
of  teacher  in  a  small  school  in  Liverpool.  His  subsequent  career,  like  his  earlier  life, 
was  hard  and  checkered^  but  it  must  suffice  to  state  that,  after  failing  in  an  attempt 
to  set  up  a  private  school,  he  followed  for  several  years  the  profession  of  an  actor, 
often  at  a  very  meagre  salary,  and  that  he  was  more  successful  as  a  dramatist  and 
novelist,  but  suffered  much  and  frequent  anxiety  from  pecuniary  embarrassments  and 
repeated  disappointments.  He  died  23d  March,  1809,  from  enlargement  of  the  heart, 
brought  on,  it  is  supposed,  by  the  failure  of  several  of  his  dramatic  pieces.  He  was 
a  member  of  the  Society  for  Constitutional  Reform,  and  on  that  account  was,  in  1794, 
indicted  of  high  treason,  but  acquitted.  The  best  known  dramas  of  Holcroft  are 
^'Duplicity," ''The  School  for  Arrogance,"  The  Road  to  Ruin,"  and ''The  Deserted 
Daughter."  Among  his  novels  may  be  mentioned  "Alwyn,"  and  "Hugh  Trevor." 
He  was  also  the  author  of  "Travels  from  Hamburg  through  Westphalia,  Holland  and 
the  Netherlands  to  Paris,"  and  of  some  volumes  of  verse,  and  translated  several  works 
from  the  French  and  German  with  considerable  elegance.  .  .  .  His  "Memoirs 
written  by  himself  and  continued  down  to  the  time  of  his  death,  from  his  diary,  notes, 
and  other  papers,"  by  William  Hazlitt,  appeared  in  1815,  and  has  gone  into  several 
editions. — Baynes,  Thomas  Spencer,  ed.,  1880,  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  Ninth 
ed.,  vol.  XII,  pp.  59,  60. 

PERSONAL  know  nothing,  to  have  read  nothing.  He 

There  is  a  fierceness  and  dogmatism  of  is  ignorant  as  a  scholar,  and  neglectful  of 
conversation  in  Holcroft  for  which  you  re-  the  smaller  humanities  of  a  man. — Cole- 
ceive  little  compensation  either  from  the  ridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1794,  To  Robert 
veracity  of  his  information,  the  closeness  Southey,  Dec.  17 ;  Letters,  ed.  E.  H.  Cole- 
of  his  reasoning,  or  the  splendour  of  his  ridge,  vol.  i,  p.  114. 
language.  He  talks  incessantly  of  meta-  The  relaxations  in  which  Mr.  Holcroft  in- 
physics,  of  which  he  appears  to  me  to    dulged  were  few  and  regular.  He  was  fond 


THOMAS  HOLCROFT 


545 


of  riding,  and  for  some  years  kept  a  horse, 
which  had  generally  high  blood  in  its 
veins.  .  .  .  His  love  for  the  arts 
sometimes  subjected  him  to  temptations 
which  were  not  consistent  with  strict 
economy.  ...  It  may  be  supposed, 
that  that  part  of  Mr.  Holcroft's  time 
which  he  could  spare  from  his  studies, 
was  chiefly  devoted  to  the  society  of 
literary  friends.  He,  however,  gave  few 
dinner-parties,  and  those  were  not  osten- 
tatious, and  consequently  not  expensive. 
When  a  friend  dined  with  him,  a  bottle  of 
wine  was  usually  produced  after  dinner ; 
but,  with  respect  to  himself,  he  was  ex- 
tremely abstemious  in  the  use  of  liquor, 
and  the  habits  of  his  friends  were  rather 
those  of  philosophers  than  Bacchanalians. 
— Hazlitt,  William,  1816,  Memoirs  of 
the  Late  Thomas  Holcroft,  Written  by  Him- 
self, and  Continued  to  the  Time  of  his 
Death,  p.  185. 

Holcroft's  ''Memoirs"  are  valuable  as 
showing  strength  of  endurance  in  the  man, 
which  is  worth  more  than  all  the  talent  in 
the  world.— Byron,  Lord,  1816,  Letter  to 
Murray,  Oct.  5 ;  Life  by  Moore,  p.  324. 

I  own  I  could  never  think  so  considerably 
of  myself  as  to  decline  the  society  of  an 
agreeable  or  worthy  man  upon  difference 
of  opinion  only.  The  impediments  and  the 
facilitations  to  a  sound  belief  are  various 
and  inscrutable  as  the  heart  of  man. 
Some  believe  upon  weak  principles ;  others 
cannot  feel  the  efficacy  of  the  strongest. 
One  of  the  most  candid,  most  upright,  and 
single-meaning  men  I  ever  knew,  was  the 
late  Thomas  Holcrof  t.  I  believe  he  never 
said  one  thing,  and  meant  another,  in  his 
life ;  and,  as  near  as  I  can  guess,  he  never 
acted  otherwise  than  with  the  most  scrup- 
ulous attention  to  conscience.  Ought  we 
to  wish  the  character  false,  for  the  sake 
of  a  hollow  compliment  to  Christianity? — 
Lamb,  Charles,  1823,  The  Tombs  in  the 
Abbey. 

The  name  of  Holcroft  at  once  gives  rise 
to  a  crowd  of  recollections  to  those  who  are 
conversant  with  the  history  of  the  times, 
and  that  particular  circle  of  literary  men 
of  which  my  father  was  one.  The  son  of 
a  shoemaker,  he  rose  to  eminence  through 
the  energy  of  his  character,  and  the 
genius  with  which  nature  had  endowed 
him.  To  think  of  Holcroft  as  his  friends 
remember  him,  and  to  call  to  mind  whence 
at  this  day  he  principally  derives  his  fame 

35C 


as  an  author,  present  a  singular  contrast. 
He  was  a  man  of  stern  and  irascible  char- 
acter, and  from  the  moment  that  he 
espoused  liberal  principles,  he  carried  them 
to  excess.  He  was  tried  for  life  as  a 
traitor  on  account  of  his  enthusiasm  for 
the  objects  of  the  French  Revolution.  He 
believed  that  truth  must  prevail  by  the 
force  of  its  own  powers,  but  he  advocated 
what  he  deemed  truth  with  vehemence. 
He  warmly  asserted  that  death  and  disease 
existed  only  through  the  feebleness  of 
man's  mind,  that  pain  also  had  no  reality. 
Rectitude  and  Courage  were  the  gods  of 
his  idolatry,  but  the  defect  of  his  temper 
rendered  him  a  susceptible  friend.  His 
comedy,  ''The  Road  to  Ruin,"  will  always 
maintain  its  position  on  the  English 
stage,  so  long  as  there  are  actors  who  can 
fitly  represent  its  leading  characters. 
He  was  a  man  of  great  industry,  unwearied 
in  his  efforts  to  support  his  family. — 
Shelley,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  1851, 
Fragmentary  Notes,  Paul's  Life  of  God- 
win, vol.  I,  p.  25. 

Holcroft  was  a  stern  and  conscientious 
man,  with  an  irascible  temper,  great 
energy,  and  marvellous  industry.  ...  As 
an  actor  he  was  harsh  and  unsympathetic, 
and  he  appears  to  have  taken  no  further 
part  on  the  stage  after  his  performance 
of  Figaro.  In  spite  of  his  poverty  and 
many  adverse  circumstances,  Holcroft  with 
great  tenacity  of  purpose  contrived  to 
educate  himself  creditably,  and  to  acquire 
a  competent  knowledge  of  French,  Ger- 
man, and  Italian.  His  career,  however, 
was  one  continuous  struggle  against  mis- 
fortune, and  owing  to  his  many  rash 
speculations  and  his  "picture-dealing  in- 
sanity" his  affairs  were  perpetually  in  an 
embarrassed  condition. — Barker,  G.  F. 
Russell,  1891,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xxvii,  p.  117. 

GENERAL 

You  appear  to  have  seen  Holcroft's 
pamphlet ;  which  certainly  displays  much 
ability  and  good-writing,  but  most  of  all 
the  extreme  vanity  and  self-importance  of 
the  author,  which  is  equally  ridiculous  and. 
disgusting.  He  thinks  it  impossible  that 
any  court  or  jury  in  the  world  could  have 
resisted  the  force  of  his  combined  elo- 
quence and  philosophy;  and  actually  told 
us  that  he  would  gladly  have  given  one  of 
his  hands  for  the  opportunity  of  making 
his  defence,  which  by  the  way  would 


546 


THOMAS  HOLCROFT 


certainly  have  hanged  him,  however  favour- 
able his  judges  might  have  been  before- 
hand.— RiTSON,  Joseph,  1795,  Letters, 
Jan.  16 ;  vol.  ii,  p.  62. 

Upon  the  whole,  we  think  that  this  book 
is  a  great  deal  too  long,  and  that  it  has  at- 
tained this  magnitude  by  the  most  intrepid 
and  extensive  application  of  the  approved 
receipts  for  bookmaking  that  has  yet  come 
under  our  consideration.  If  everything 
were  deducted  that  has  no  relation  to  the 
present  state  of  the  countries  which  the 
author  proposes  to  describe,  and  every- 
thing which  is  transcribed  from  books  that 
might  as  well  have  been  consulted  at  home, 
the  publication,  we  are  persuaded,  would 
be  reduced  to  one  third  of  its  present  bulk. 
The  lofty  pretensions,  too,  with  which  the 
author  sets  out,  and  the  solemnity  with 
which  he  continually  speaks  of  his  labours, 
form  a  ridiculous  contrast  with  the  in- 
significance of  the  matters  upon  which  he 
rested  his  attention.  ...  Of  the 
style  and  language  of  the  book,  a  tolerable 
judgment  may  be  formed  from  the  ex- 
tracts we  have  already  given.  Its  ruling 
vice  is  affectation,  which  is  frequently 
combined  with  a  greater  degree  of  gram- 
matical inaccuracy  than  is  usual,  even 
in  works  of  this  description. — Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1804,  Holer  of fs  Travels 
from  Hamburgh  to  Paris,  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, vol.  4,  pp.  98,  99. 

This  [**Road  to  Ruin'^  comedy  ranks 
among  the  most  successful  of  modern 
plays.  There  is  merit  in  the  writing,  but 
much  more  in  that  dramatic  science,  which 
disposes  character,  scenes,  and  dialogue, 
with  minute  attention  to  theatric  exhibi- 
tion :  for  the  author  has  nicely  considered, 
that  it  is  only  by  passing  the  orjieal  of  a 
theatre  with  safety,  that  a  drama  has  the 
privilege  of  being  admitted  to  a  library. 
The  nice  art  with  which  the  conversations 
in  this  play  are  written,  will,  by  a  common 
reader,  pass  unadmired  and  unnoticed. 
Some  of  the  most  important  speeches  con- 
sist of  no  more  than  one  line.  The  grand 
skill  has  been  to  make  no  skill  evident — 
to  force  a  reader  to  forget  the  author,  but 
to  remember  his  play,  and  his  distinct 
character.  .  .  .  **The  Road  to  Ruin'' 
is  a  complete  drama;  resting  its  power 
on  itself  alone,  without  adventitious  aid. 
— Inchbald,  Mrs.  Elizabeth,  1806-9, 
The  British  Theatre,  The  Road  to  Ruin, 
Introduction. 


Mr.  Holcroft,  in  his  *'Road  to  Ruin,'' 
set  the  example  of  that  style  of  comedy, 
in  which  the  slang  phrases  of  jockey-noble- 
men and  the  humours  of  the  four-in-hand 
club  are  blended  with  the  romantic  senti- 
ments of  distressed  damsels  and  philo- 
sophic waiting-maids,  and  in  which  he  has 
been  imitated  by  the  most  successful  of 
our  living  writers,  unless  we  make  a 
separate  class  for  the  school  of  Cumber- 
land.—Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lectures 
on  the  English  Comic  Writers,  Lecture  viii. 

Becomes  one  of  the  best  and  most 
voluminous  translators  upon  record.  If 
ever  one  happens  to  take  up  an  English 
version  of  a  French  or  German  book  of 
that  period — "Memoirs of  Baron Trenck, " 
or  Caroline  de  Litchfield" — and  if  that 
version  have  in  it  the  zest  and  savor  of 
original  writmg,  we  shall  be  sure  to  find 
the  name  of  Thomas  Holcroft  in  the  title- 
page.  .  .  .  His  comedies,  Duplicity," 
*'The  School  for  Arrogance,"  and  ''The 
Road  to  Ruin,"  evinced  talent  (I  had  well 
nigh  written  genius)  of  the  highest  order. 
The  serious  parts  above  all  are  admirable. 
Perhaps  no  scenes  have  ever  drawn  so 
many  tears  as  those  between  the  father 
and  the  son  in  the  last-mentioned  play. 
The  famous  "Good  Night"  is  truly  the  one 
touch  of  nature  that  makes  the  whole 
world  kin;  and  although  I  have  seen  it 
played  as  well  as  any  thing  can  be  played 
by  Munden  and  Elliston,  I  have  always  felt 
that  the  real  merit  belonged  to  the  author. 
His  greater  novels,  too,  "Anna  St.  Ives"  and 
"Hugh  Trevor,"  were  full  of  powerful 
writing ;  and  he  seemed  destined  to  a  long 
course  of  literary  prosperity. — Mitford, 
Mary  Russell,  1851,  Recollections  of  a 
Literary  Life,  p.  82. 

Thomas  Holcroft  is  one  of  the  best  for- 
gotten men  in  English  literature.  Less 
than  a  hundred  years  ago  he  was  a  celeb- 
rity— a  prolific  writer  of  plays,  novels  and 
books  of  travel,  the  intimate  of  Hazlitt  and 
Godwin,  the  hero  of  a  political  trial. 
Now-a-days,  when  "The  Road  to  Ruin," 
his  one  work  that  has  lived,  is  occasionally 
revived,  the  eye  of  the  unlearned  play- 
goer dubiously  scans  the  bill  in  search  of 
the  author's  nam.e.  For  the  student  of  the 
stage  Holcroft' s  work  must  always  retain 
a  certain  interest.  He  was  not  in  any 
sense  a  great  writer ;  but  his  plays  were 
at  least  worthy  of  all  the  consideration 
bestowed  upon  them  in  their  time,  while 


HOLCROFT—TANNAHILL 


547 


*'The  Road  to  Ruin"  is  one  of  the  dozen 
or  so  plays  of  its  century  which  have  sur- 
vived. Holcroft  may  be  regarded  as  the 
founder  of  the  modern  school  of  melo- 
drama. He  was  the  first,  too,  to  hastily 
adapt  a  French  success  to  the  exigencies 
of  the  English  stage,  after  the  fashion  now 


in  vogue.— HiBBERT,  Henry  George, 
1892,  The  Author  of  "The  Road  to  Ruin," 
The  Theatre,  vol.  28,  p.  132. 

A  curiosity  of  literature  and  a  rather 
typical  figure  of  the  time. — Saintsbury, 
George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  p,  38. 


Robert  Tannahill 

1774-1810 

One  of  the  most  popular  of  the  song-writers  of  Scotland  since  Burns,  was  a  native 
of  Paisley,  born  in  1774.  He  was  bred  a  weaver ;  and  his  favourite  pursuit  was  to 
recover  old  and  neglected  airs,  to  which  he  adapted  new  words.  ''I  would  1  were  a 
weaver,"  says  Falstaff ;  could  sing  all  manner  of  songs."  He  continued  to  work, 
with  some  exceptions,  in  his  native  town,  where,  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  he 
made  an  acquaintance  with  Robert  Archibald  Smith,  a  musical  composer,  who  set  some 
of  his  songs  to  original  music,  and  adapted  others  to  old  airs.  In  1807,  Tannahill 
collected  his  songs  into  a  volume,  which  was  decidedly  successful.  The  higher  suc- 
cess, which  he  more  prized,  was  to  find  his  songs  universally  known  and  sung  amongst 
all  classes.  But  the  poet  was  the  victim  of  a  morbid  melancholy  which  embittered 
his  existence.  His  means  were  above  his  wants ;  he  had  no  special  unhappiness.  But 
he  died,  as  Ophelia  died, — "Where  a  willow  grows  aslant  a  brook" — perhaps  "chant- 
ing snatches  of  old  tunes."  This  event  occurred  in  1810,  near  Paisley. — Knight, 
Charles,  1847-48,  Half-Hours  With  the  Best  Authors,  vol.  iv,  p.  161. 

PERSONAL 

Tamnahill  used  to  declare,  that  one  of 
the  most  gratifying  tributes  he  ever  had 
paid  to  his  genius,  was  while  taking  a 
solitary  walk,  in  the  cool  of  a  summer's 
evening,  he  had  his  musings  interrupted 
by  the  sweet  voice  of  a  country  girl,  who, 
on  his  approaching  nearer  the  spot,  he  dis- 
covered was  singing  one  of  his  composi- 
tions— 

"We'll  meet  beside  the  dusky  glen  on  yon 
burn  side." 


This,  he  said,  was  one  of  the  sweetest  and 
delightful  moments  of  his  life ;  he  beheld 
in  it  a  promise  of  future  fame,  and  hailed 
it  as  a  pledge  of  the  rising  popularity  of 
his  Songs:  but  the  highest  tribute  ever 
paid  to  the  genius  of  Tannahill,  was  the 
visit  which  James  Hogg,  the  Ettrick 
Shepherd,  paid  him,  not  long  before  his 
death.  There  was  something  romantic  in 
this  pilgrimage  of  the  Mountain  Bard,  to 
feel,  and  see, — to  converse  and  enjoy  the 
fellowship  of  one  whose  heart,  like  his 
own,  was  gifted  with  the  "magic  voice  of 
song:"  they  spent  the  night  in  each 
other's  company.  Tannahill  convoyed 
Hogg,  on  the  following  morning,  half  way 
to  Glasgow,  where  they  parted.  It  was  a 
melancholy  adieu  which  Tannahill  gave 
him — "Farewell,"  he  cried,  "we  shall 


never  meet  again,  — farewell,  I  shall  never 
see  you  more!" — Ryan,  Richard,  1826, 
Poetry  and  Poets,  vol.  ii,  p.  246. 

As  with  the  generality  of  people  of  his 
rank,  the  poet's  education  was  limited  to 
reading,  writing,  and  accounts.  At  an 
early  age  he  was  sent  to  the  loom, — then 
a  profitable  calling, — at  which  he  distin- 
guished himself  by  his  industry.  .  .  . 
He  was  possessed  of  a  correct  musical  ear, 
and  played  well  on  the  German  flute.  His 
favourite  pursuit  was  to  recover  old  or 
neglected  airs,  and  unite  them  to  appro- 
priate words.  The  airs  he  hummed  over 
while  plying  the  shuttle,  and  as  the 
words  arose  in  his  mind,  he  jotted  them 
down  at  a  rude  desk  which  he  had  attached 
to  his  loom,  and  w^hich  he  could  use  with- 
out rising  from  his  seat.  Thus  did  he 
contrive  to  relieve  the  monotonous  dulness 
of  his  daily  occupation,  by  combining  with 
it  the  exercise  of  his  more  gentle  craft, — 
weaving  threads  and  verses  alternately. 
.  .  .  The  melancholy  to  which  Tanna- 
hill had  been  occasionally  subject,  now 
became  deep  and  habitual.  He  evinced  a 
proneness  to  imagine  that  his  best  friends 
were  disposed  to  injure  him,  and  a  certain 
jealous  fear  of  his  claims  to  genius  being 
impugned.  These  imaginary  grievances 
were  confided  to  his  faithful  adviser  Smith, 


548 


ROBERT  TANNAHILL 


who  found  it  impossible  to  convince  him 
of  the  hallucination  under  which  he 
laboured.  His  eyes  sank,  his  countenance 
became  pale,  and  his  body  emaciated. 
The  strange  and  incoherent  texture  of 
some  poetical  pieces  which  he  wrote  about 
this  time,  betrayed  the  state  of  his  mind. 
In  short,  it  became  apparent  that  a  break- 
ing up  of  his  mental  and  bodily  powers  was 
at  hand.  He  now  set  himself  to  destroy 
all  his  manuscripts ;  not  a  scrap  which  he 
could  possibly  collect  was  allowed  to 
escape  the  flames.  This  is  the  more  to  be 
regretted,  since  the  corrections  and  addi- 
tions he  had  made  for  a  second  edition  of 
his  works,  and  some  unpublished  pieces  of 
much  merit,  all  of  which  fell  a  prey  to  the 
flames,  would  have  added  greatly  to  his 
reputation. — Ramsay,  Philip  A.,  1838, 
ed.y  The  Works  of  Robert  Tannahilly  Mem- 
oir, pp.  XV,  xxxiv. 

The  victim  of  dissappointments  which  his 
sensitive  temperament  could  not  endure, 
Tannahill  was  naturally  of  an  easy  and 
cheerful  disposition.  As  a  child,  his  ex- 
emplary behaviour  was  so  conspicuous 
that  mothers  were  satisfied  of  their 
children's  safety  if  they  learned  that  they 
were  in  company  with  *^Bob  Tannahill.'' 
Inoffensive  in  his  own  dispositions,  he  en- 
tertained every  respect  for  the  feelings  of 
others.  He  enjoyed  the  intercourse  of 
particular  friends,  but  avoided  general 
society ;  in  company  he  seldom  talked,  and 
only  with  a  neighbour;  he  shunned  the 
acquaintance  of  persons  of  rank,  because 
he  disliked  patronage,  and  dreaded  super- 
ciliousness. His  conversation  was  simple ; 
he  possessed,  but  seldom  used,  consider- 
able powers  of  satire ;  but  he  applied  his 
keenest  shafts  of  sarcasm  against  the 
votaries  of  cruelty.  In  performing  acts 
of  kindness  he  took  delight,  but  he  was 
scrupulous  of  accepting  favours;  he  was 
strong  in  the  love  of  independence,  and 
had  saved  twenty  pounds  at  the  period  of 
his  death.  His  general  appearance  did 
not  indicate  intellectual  superiority;  his 
countenance  was  calm  and  meditative; 
his  eyes  were  grey,  and  his  hair  a  light 
brown.  In  person,  he  was  under  the 
middle  size.  Not  ambitious  of  general 
learning,  he  confined  his  reading  chiefly 
to  poetry.— Rogers,  Charles,  1855-57- 
70,  Tfie  Scottish  Minstrel,  The  Songs  of 
Scotland  Subsequent  to  Burns,  p.  133. 

Robert  Tannahill,  a  Scotch  weaver. 


whose  songs  in  their  artless  sweetness, 
their  simplicity  of  diction,  their  tender- 
ness of  sentiment,  have  long  since  won 
distinction,  came  up  to  Edinburgh  very 
poor  in  purse,  but  rich  in  the  future  that 
poetic  aspirations  imaged  forth.  He  put 
his  manuscripts  into  Constable's  hands, 
offering  the  whole  of  them  at  a  very  small 
price.  Day  after  day  he  waited  for  an 
answer,  with  a  mind  alternating  between 
hope  and  fear.  Constable,  who  always 
distrusted  his  own  judgment  in  such 
matters,  and  who,  perhaps,  at  the  moment 
had  no  one  else  to  consult,  eventually  re- 
turned the  poems.  Tannahill  in  a  madness 
of  despair  put  a  period  to  his  existence, 
adding  one  to  those ''young shadows"  who 
hover  round  the  shrine  of  genius,  as  if  to 
warn  all  but  the  boldest  from  attempting 
to  approach  it.— Curwen,  Henry,  1873, 
A  History  of  Booksellers,  p.  122. 

The  good  people  of  Paisley  have  cher- 
ished the  memory  of  Tannahill.  The 
house  in  which  he  was  born  has  inserted 
in  its  front  wall  a  granite  memorial-stone 
recording  the  circumstance.  His  brother, 
when  old  age  compelled  him  to  cease  from 
labour,  was  provided  with  a  competency 
by  his  fellow-citizens,  who  long  ago  formed 
a  Tannahill  Club,  which  always  celebrated 
the  anniversary  of  the  poet's  birth.  The 
centenary  of  the  ''prince  of  Paisley 
poets,"  as  he  has  been  called,  was  cele- 
brated with  the  utmost  enthusiasm  by  the 
inhabitants  of  Paisley.  A  general  holiday 
was  held,  and  the  town  was  decorated  with 
flags  and  flowers.  More  than  15,000  per- 
sons assembled  on  the  Braes  o'  Gleniffer  to 
listen  to  addresses  spoken  in  the  poet's 
honour,  and  to  the  singing  of  his  own 
sweet  songs — songs  that  are  a  priceless 
heritage  to  his  native  land. — Wilson, 
James  Grant,  1876,  The  Poets  and  Poetry 
of  Scotland,  vol.  i,  p.  502. 

Poor  Tannahill !  Paisley  truly  has  good 
reason  to  be  proud  of  her  handloom 
weaver,  who  knew  to  mingle  the  whir  of 
his  busy  loom,  not  with  the  jarring  notes 
of  political  fret  or  atheistic  pseudo- 
philosophy,  but  with  the  sweet  music  of 
Nature  in  the  most  melodious  season  of 
the  year.  Sad  to  think  that  the  author 
of  this  song,  one  of  the  most  lovable, 
kindly,  and  human-hearted  of  mortals,  and 
who,  in  spite  of  the  deficiencies  of  his  early 
culture,  had  achieved  a  reputation  second 
only  to  Burns  among  the  song-writers  of 


ROBERT  TANNAHILL 


549 


his  tuneful  fatherland,  should  have  bade 
farewell  to  the  sweet  light  of  the  sun  and 
the  fair  greenery  of  his  native  glens  at 
the  early  age  of  thirty -six— drowning  him- 
self, poor  fellow !  in  a  pool  not  far  from 
the  place  of  his  birth. — Blackie,  John 
Stuart,  1889,  Scottish  Song,  p.  49. 

GENERAL 

Tannahill  could  achieve  only  a  song ;  but 
as  the  songs  which  he  did  achieve  were 
very  genuine  ones,  with  the  true  faculty 
in  them,  Scotland  seems  to  be  in  no  danger 
of  forgetting  them. — Miller,  Hugh, 
1856,  Essays,  p.  449. 

The  poems  of  this  ill-starred  son  of 
genius  are  greatly  inferior  to  his  songs. 
They  have  all  a  common-place  artificial 
character.  His  lyrics,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  rich  and  original,  both  in  description 
and  in  sentiment.  His  diction  is  copious 
and  luxuriant,  particularly  in  describing 
natural  objects  and  the  peculiar  features 
of  the  Scottish  landscape.  His  simplicity 
is  natural  and  unaffected,  and  though  he 
appears  to  have  possessed  a  deeper  sym- 
pathy with  nature  than  with  the  workings 
of  human  feeling,  or  even  the  passion  of 
love,  he  is  often  tender  and  pathetic. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopoedia  of 
'  English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

If,  as  was  said  by  Fletcher  of  Saltoun, 
song-writers  are  to  be  classed  among 
lawgivers,  then  may  we  hail  Tannahill  as 
one  of  the  foremost  Scottish  legislators — 
ruling  by  the  sceptre  of  song. — Wilson, 
James  Grant,  1876,  The  Poets  and  Poetry 
of  Scotland,  vol.  i,  p.  501. 

For  delicacy  and  refinement  of  feeling 
and  expression,  comes  nearest  to  Burns  of 
all  our  song-writers.  His  range  was 
narrow,  even  compared  with  Hogg  and 
Lady  Nairne ;  for  he  had  not  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  one,  nor  the  humour  of  the 
other;  yet  he  possessed  that  sensitive 
tenderness  of  the  poetic  instinct,  capable 
of  touching  the  finest  cords  in  nature 
to  which  the  human  soul  has  ever  re- 
sponded, in  a  degree  which  Burns  alone 
excelled.  Like  all  their  contemporaries 
he  was  greatly  Burns's  inferior  in  passion, 
both  as  to  range  and  intensity.  .  .  . 
We  have  already  remarked  that  his  poetic 
range  is  a  narrow  one ;  out  of  it  he  pro- 
duced nothing  of  self-sustaining  merit, 
and  his  poems  which  are  not  songs  are 
very  commonplace.  As  a  specialist  his 
fame  is  secure,  and  as  living  at  the 


present  day  as  when  he  first  delighted  his 
admiring  countrymen.  His  songs,  though 
true  to  universal  nature,  have  certain 
local  features  which  make  their  perfect 
enjoyment  dependent  on  that  sensitiveness 
to  the  influences  of  locality  which  charac- 
terises the  Scotch  mind,  and  in  con- 
sequence he  is  not  so  highly  appreciated 
anywhere  as  in  Scotland,  nor,  in  Scotland, 
anywhere  as  in  Paisley,  of  which  he  is  the 
poetic  divinity. — Ross,  J.,  1884,  The  Book 
of  Scottish  Poems,  pp.  707,  708. 

Setting  aside  Burns,  there  is  no  song- 
writer more  popular  in  Scotland  than 
Tannahill.  His  memory  is  cherished  with 
the  deepest  affection  of  his  own  West 
country.  A  gathering,  at  which  the  finest 
of  his  songs  are  sung,  is  annually  held  on 
the  Braes  of  Gleniffer,  and  is  attended  by 
crowds  from  Glasgow,  Paisley,  and  other 
towns  in  the  neighbourhood.  And  he 
thoroughly  merits  the  place  he  has  won  in 
his  countrymen's  hearts.  A  poet  of  the 
people,  he  has  not  received  due  recogni- 
tion at  the  hands  of  literary  critics.  He 
has  lines  than  which  there  are  none 
sweeter  in  the  Scottish  tongue;  a  lyric 
could  not  be  ''more  lightly,  musically 
made''  than ''Gloomy  Winter's  now awa'." 
He  has  a  curiously  fine  sense  of  words, 
his  lyrics  are  as  finished  in  their  diction 
as  they  are  true  and  touching  in  their 
sentiment  and  spontaneous  in  their  flow. 
In  one  respect  he  may,  perhaps,  be  said  to 
have  excelled  Burns;  namely,  in  his 
delicate  aptness  of  descriptive  phrase 
when  dealing  with  nature.  ...  An 
exquisite  artist  was  lost  by  the  death  of 
the  Paisley  weaver.  He  had  not  a  wide 
range,  he  had  almost  no  sense  of  humour, 
no  satiric  or  narrative  faculty.  His  gift 
was  purely  lyrical,  and,  the  gift,  was  in 
its  way  perfect.  His  love-songs,  so  pure 
and  tender,  so  graceful  in  form,  so  musical, 
so  admirably  adapted  to  be  sung,  with  the 
fragrance  of  the  woodland  braes  he  loved 
so  well  still  clinging  to  the  lines,  are 
almost  as  little  likely  as  the  songs  of  Burns 
to  lose  their  hold  on  Scotchmen's  hearts. 
— Whyte,  Walter,  1896,  The  Poets  of 
the  Century,  Southey  to  Shelley,  ed.  Miles, 
pp.  74,  75. 

With  a  more  original  gift  of  song  than 
Cunningham,  Robert  Tannahill  owed  noth- 
ing to  Scott,  who  w^as  but  slightly  his 
senior,  and  not  very  much  to  Burns.  .  .  . 
His  language  is  not,  any  more  than  Burns's, 


550 


TANNAHILL—TIGHE 


free  from  occasional  intrusions  of  discord- 
ant Anglicism ;  but  in  his  own  dialect  he 
has  an  exquisite  delicacy,  and  at  times 
subtlety,  of  phrase.  His  love-songs  are 
fine  examples  of  the  Scottish  gift  of  paint- 
ing passion  by  the  human  and  sympathetic 
traits  of  landscape.  —  Herford,  C.  H., 
1897,  The  Age  of  Wordsworth,  p,  197. 

Tannahill  versified  early,  and  some 
poetical  epistles  to  his  friends — e.  g. 

Epistle  to  James  Barr,'^  written  in  1804 
— are  not  without  vigor  and  occasional 
epigrammatic  points,  though  they  are 
too  discursive  and  diffuse  to  be  generally 
effective.    ''The    Soldier's  Return,  an 


Interlude,"  contains  geveral  good  songs 
—some  of  which  helped  to  win  Tannahill 
his  fame— but  he  has  no  dramatic 
quality.  ...  In  sentimental  song 
Tannahill  ranks  almost  with  the  greatest 
of  Scottish  song-writers,  approaching  Lady 
Nairne  and  Burns  himself  in  such  dainty 
and  winning  lyrics  as  "Bonnie  Wood  o' 
Craigielee, ' '  "Sleepin'  Maggie, "  * ' Braes  o' 
Gleniffer,''  ''Gloomy  Winter's  noo  awa',", 
"The  Lass  o'  Arranteenie, "  "Cruikston 
Castle's  lonely  wa's,"  and  "Jessie  the 
Flower  o'  Dunblane." — Bayne,  Thomas, 
1898,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography , 
vol,  LV,  p.  358. 


Mary  Tighe 

1772-1810 

Mary  Tighe,  the  daughter  of  the  Rev.  William  Blachf  ord,  by  Theodosia,  the  daughter 
of  William  Tighe,  of  Rosanna,  Co.  Wicklow,  Ireland,  was  married  to  Henry  Tighe, 
M.  P.,  of  Woodstock,  Co.  Wicklow,  and  died  March  24  1810,  after  an  illness  of  six 
years.  Perhaps  she  is  better  known  to  many  as  the  subject  of  Moore's  touching  lyric, 
"I  saw  Thy  Form  in  Youthful  Prime,"  and  Mrs.  Hemans's "Grave  of  a  Poetess,"  than 
by  her  own  exquisite  verses.  Her  poem  of  "Psyche,  or  the  Legend  of  Love"  (founded 
on  the  story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche  as  related  in  the  Golden  Ass  of  Apuleius),  was 
privately  printed  (100  copies)  by  C.  Whittingham,  London,  1805,  12mo.  After  her 
death  appeared:  "Psyche,  with  other  Poems,  by  the  Late  Mrs.  Henry  Tighe"  (with 
portrait),  1811.— Allibone,  S.  Austin,  1871,  A  Critical  Dictionary  of  English  Liter- 
ature, p.  2419. 

PERSONAL 
Thou  hast  left  sorrow  in  thy  song, 

A  voice  not  loud  but  deep ! 
The  glorious  bowers  of  earth  among, 

How  often  didst  thou  weep? 
Where  couldst  thou  fix  on  mortal  ground 

Thy  tender  thoughts  and  high?— 
Now  peace  the  woman's  heart  hath  found, 

And  joy  the  poet's  eye. 
— Hemans,  Felicia  Dorthea,  1828,  The 
Grave  of  a  Poetess. 

Perhaps  no  writer  of  merit  has  been 
more  neglected  by  her  own  friends  than 
Mrs.  Tighe.  With  every  means  of  giving  to 
the  public  a  good  memoir  of  her,  I  believe 
no  such  is  in  existence.  .  .  .  The  very 
servants  who  had  lived  years  in  the  family 
had  never  heard  the  name  of  Mrs.  Tighe, 
the  poetess,  mentioned!  These  present 
Tighes  had  been  marrying  the  daughters 
of  lords — this  a  daughter  of  the  Duke  of 
Richmond,  and  Dan  Tighe,  a  daughter  of 
Lord  Crof  ton.  They  were  ashamed,  prob- 
ably, that  any  of  their  name  should  have 
degraded  herself  by  writing  poetry,  which 
a  man  or  woman  without  an  acre  may  do. 
When  I  reached  the  church  at  Innerstiogue, 
the  matter  received  a  most  striking 


confirmation.  There,  sure  enough,  was  the 
monument,  in  a  small  mausoleum  in  the 
church-yard.  It  is  a  recumbent  figure, 
laid  on  a  granite  altar-shaped  basement. 
The  figure  is  of  a  freestone  resembling 
Portland  stone,  and  is  lying  on  its  side,  as 
on  a  sofa,  being  said,  by  the  person  who 
showed  it,  to  be  the  position  in  which  she 
died,  on  coming  in  from  a  walk.  The  ex- 
ecution of  the  whole  is  very  ordinary,  and 
if  really  by  Flaxman,  displays  none  of  his 
genius.  I  have  seen  much  better  things 
by  a  common-stone-mason.  There  is  a 
little  angel  sitting  at  the  head,  but  this 
has  never  been  fastened  down  by  cement. 
The  monument  was,  no  doubt,  erected  by 
the  widower  of  the  poetess,  who  was  a 
man  of  classical  taste,  and,  I  believe,  much 
attached  to  her.  There  is  no  inscription 
yet  put  upon  the  tomb,  though  one,  said 
to  be  written  by  her  husband,  has  loqg 
been  cut  in  stone  for  the  purpose.  In  the 
wall  at  the  back  of  the  monument,  aloft, 
there  is  an  oblong-square  hole  left  for  this 
inscription,  which  I  understood  was  lying 
about  at  the  house,  but  no  single  effort 
had  been  made  to  put  it  up,  though  it 


MARY  TIGHE 


551 


would  not  require  an  hour's  work,  and 
though  Mrs.  Tighe  has  been  dead  six-and- 
thirty  years !  This  was  decisive !  If  these 
two  gentlemen,  nephews  of  the  poetess, 
who  are  enjoying  the  two  splendid  estates 
of  the  family,  Woodstock  and  Rosanna, 
show  thus  little  respect  to  the  only  one  of 
their  name  that  ever  lifted  it  above  the 
mob,  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  they 
will  show  much  courtesy  to  strangers. 
Well  is  it  that  Mrs.  Tighe  raised  her  own 
monument,  that  of  immortal  verse,  and 
wrote  her  own  epitaph  in  the  hearts  of  all 
the  pure  and  loving,  not  on  a  stone  which 
sordid  relatives,  still  fonder  of  earth  than 
stone,  may  consign  to  the  oblivion  of  a 
lumber  room. — Howitt,  William,  1846, 
Homes  and  Haunts  of  the  Most  Eminent 
British  Poets,  vol.  I,  pp.  461,  471. 

PSYCHE 
Tell  me  the  witching  tale  again, 

For  never  has,  my  heart  or  ear 
Hung  on  so  sweet,  so  pure  a  strain. 

So  pure  to  feel,  so  sweet  to  hear. 


Still  be  the  song  to  Psyche  dear, 

The  song,  whose  gentle  voice  was  given 
To  be,  on  earth,  to  mortal  ear, 
An  echo  of  her  own,  in  heaven. 
—Moore,  Thomas,  1805  ?  To  Mrs.  Henry 
Tighe  on  Reading  Her  ''Psyche." 

Sorrow  seems  to  be  the  muse  of  song, 
and  from  Philomela  to  Mrs.  Tighe  the 
most  plaintive  notes  are  the  most  melo- 
dious. I  have  read  "Psyche I  am  sorry 
that  Mrs.  Tighe  chose  such  a  story :  it  is 
both  too  mystical  and  too  much  exhausted. 
For  the  first  three  cantos  I  felt  a  sort  of 
languid  elegance  and  luscious  sweet- 
ness, which  had  something  of  the  same 
effect  as  if  I  had  been  overpowered  by  per- 
fumes; but  the  three  last  are  of  such 
exquisite  beauty  that  they  quite  silence 
me.  They  are  beyond  all  doubt  the  most 
faultless  series  of  verses  ever  produced  by 
a  woman. —Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  1812, 
Journal,  Memoirs,  ed.  by  his  Son,  vol.  ii, 
p.  195. 

The  greater  part  of  the  poem  itself  is 
little  worth,  except  as  a  strain  of  elegance ; 
but  now  and  then  we  meet  with  a  fancy 
not  unworthy  a  pupil  of  Spenser. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  1847,  Men,  Women  and  Books. 

She  is  chiefly  known  by  her  splendid 
poem  of  "Psyche,"  which  for  gorgeous- 
ness  of  colouring  and  refinement  of  im- 
agination, is  scarcely  behind  the  best 


verse  of  Moore,  while  it  is  certainly  more 
chaste  and  spiritual  in  its  sentiment. — 
RowTON,  Frederic,  1848,  The  Female 
Poets  of  Great  Britain,  p.  200. 

Her  imagination  is  warm,  and  her  de- 
scriptions often  voluptuous,  though  always 
refined.  Perhaps  she  has  been  somewhat 
diffuse ;  but,  taking  her  altogether  she  is 
not  equalled  in  classical  elegance  by  any 
English  female,  and  not  excelled  (in  that 
particular)  by  any  male  English  poet. 
She  has  that  rare  quality  for  a  poetess  of 
not  sparing  the  pumice-stone,  her  verses 
being  seduously  polished  to  the  highest 
degree.  She  shows  also  her  great  taste 
in  omitting  obsolete  words,  the  affectation 
of  which  so  frequently  disfigures  imita- 
tions of  the  great  master  of  English  alle- 
gory.— Bethune,  George  Washington, 
1848,  The  British  Female  Poets, 

An  adventurous  and  elaborate  effort, 
full  of  power  and  beauty  which  wanted 
only  a  little  more  of  artistic  skill  and  con- 
centration to  have  entitled  it  to  a  place 
among  first-class  productions. — MoiR,  D. 
M.,  1850-51,  Sketches  of  the  Poetical  Lit- 
erature of  the  Past  Half-Century. 

Displays  everywhere  an  imagination, 
immature,  indeed,  and  wanting  in  vigor, 
but  yet  both  rich  and  delicate,  such  as 
might  have  shown  forth  in  Spenser  himself 
if  he  had  been  a  woman,  or,  as  compared  to 
that  which  we  have  inthe'Tairy  Queen, 
something  like  what  moonlight  is  to  sun- 
shine.— Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Com- 
pendious History  of  English  Literature  and 
of  the  English  Language,  vol.  ii,  p.  541. 

A  very  fair  and  gentle  representative 
of  poetry,  Mary  Tighe,  the  daughter  of  a 
clergyman,  the  wife  of  an  Irish  M.  P.,  is 
another  of  the  rare  instances  of  literary 
production  in  Ireland.  She  was  the 
author  of  a  poem  called  ''Psyche,"  an  ex- 
tremely sweet  and  melodious  rendering 
of  the  classical  legend,  the  external  form 
of  which,  in  a  slim  and  sumptuous  quarto, 
with  creamy  pages  as  thick  as  velvet 
eiishrining  in  big  margins  a  limpid  stream 
of  elaborate  verse,  gives  a  very  just  idea 
of  its  merit.  It  is  one  of  those  essays 
in  art  which  at  any  time  it  would  be  cruel 
to  judge  rigorously,  all  the  more  as  it  is 
the  composition  of  a  gentle  creature  who 
died  young  and  knew  nothing  of  the  world 
— which,  with  a  humane  sense  of  the  claims 
of  weakness,  generally  does  receive  such 


552 


TIGHE— BROWN 


gentle  efforts  tenderly. — Oliphant,  Mar- 
garet 0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History  of 
England y  XVIII .  and  XIX.  Centuries y  vol. 
Ill  p.  213. 

The  poem  is  written  in  the  Spenserian 
stanza,  and  has  decided  merit.  The  verse 
is  melodious,  and  the  tale  is  told  with 
pi  easing  directness  and  simplicity.  It  has 
suffered  equally  from  excessive  praise 
and  undue  disparagement.  Mackintosh 
considered  the  last  three  cantos  to  be  of 
exquisite  beauty,  and  ''beyond  all  doubt 
the  most  faultless  series  of  verses  ever 
produced  by  a  woman.'' — Lee,  Eliza- 
beth, 1898,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  LVI,  p.  388. 

GENERAL 

Many  of  the  pictures  in  this  ["Psyche"], 
the  chief  production  of  her  muse,  are  con- 
ceived in  the  true  spirit  of  poetry,  while 
over  the  whole  composition  is  spread  the 
richest  glow  of  purified  passion.    It  is  a 


poem,  however,  to  be  read  as  a  whole, 
and  cannot  well  be  appreciated  by  any  de- 
tached passages.  A  luxurious,  dreamy 
sweetness  pervades  the  descriptions,  and 
gives  them  a  peculiar  charm,  while  the 
elegance  of  the  easy-flowing  language 
attests  the  complete  power  of  the  poet 
over  her  theme.  Some  of  her  minor 
pieces,  also,  are  exceedingly  beautiful; 
and  the  lines  ''On  Receiving  a  Branch  of 
Mezereon,"  are  scarcely  exceeded,  for 
beauty  and  pathos,  by  anything  of  the  kind 
in  the  language  —Cleveland,  Charles 
D.,  1853,  English  Literature  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  p.  86. 

Mrs.  Tighe  ought  not  to  be  omitted  in 
an  enumeration  of  the  writers  who  were 
read  by  Keats,  and  from  whom  conse- 
quently his  poetry  may  be  supposed  to 
have  taken  some  of  its  colour. — Main, 
David  M.,  1879,  ed.,  A  Treasury  of  Eng- 
lish Sonnets,  p.  393. 


Charles  Brockden  Brown 

1771-1810 

Charles  Brockden  Brown  was  born  in  Philadelphia,  Jan.  17,  1771,  and  died  in  the 
same  city,  of  consumption,  Feb.  22,  1810.  By  his  own  statement,  made  in  a  letter 
just  before  his  death,  we  learn  that  he  never  had  more  than  one  continuous  half-hour 
of  perfect  health.  In  spite  of  his  short  life  and  his  ill-health  he  accomplished  much. 
At  first  he  studied  law,  but  abandoned  it  for  literature.  He  was  a  frequent  con- 
tributor to  the  magazines  of  the  time  and  was  himself  editor  of  the  "Monthly  Magazine 
and  American  Review"  (1799),  and  the  "Literary  Magazine  and  American  Register" 
(1803-8).  His  first  published  work,  "The  Dialogue  of  Alcuin"  (1797),  dealt  with 
questions  of  marriage  and  divorce,  and  he  was  also  the  author  of  several  essays  on 
political,  historical,  and  geographical  subjects.  His  novels  followed  each  other  with 
astonishing  rapidity:  "Sky  Walk;  or  the  Man  Unknown  to  Himself"  (1798,  not  pub- 
lished), "Wieland;  or  the  Transformation"  (1798),  "Ormond;  or  the  Secret  Wit- 
ness" (1799),  "Arthur  Mervyn;  or  Memoirs  of  the  year  1793"  (1799-1800),  "Edgar 
Huntly;  or  Memoirs  of  a  Sleep- Walker"  (1801),  "Jane  Talbot"  (1801),  and  "Clara 
Howard  or  the  Enthusiasm  of  Love"  (1801).  They  met  with  an  equally  astonishing 
success,  and  constitute  the  first  important  contribution  to  American  fiction. — Carpen- 
ter, George  Rice,  1898,  ed.,  American  Prose,  p.  84. 

« 

PERSONAL  Yvas  not  aware  of  the  great  strength  of 

Acted  as  if  he  had  no  use  for  money,  certain  temptations  over  others. — Dana, 
.  .  .  Without  system  in  every  thing.  Richard  Henry,  1827-50,  The  Novels  of 
.  .  ,  Was  negligent  of  personal  ap-  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  Poems  and 
pearance,  even  to  slovenliness.  .  .  .  Prose  Writings,  vol.  ii,  p.  335. 
In  mixed  company  often  silent  and  absent.  His  religious  views  were  unsettled  in 
.  .  .  Fitful  and  irregular.— Dunlap,  the  early  period  of  his  life,  but  in  the 
William,  1815,  Life  of  Charles  Brockden  preface  of  his  Magazine  he  emphatically 
Brown,  vol.  i,  pp.  56,  57.  professes  his  faith  in  Christianity.  His 

We  believe  Brown  to  have  been  one  of  moral  character  was  unexceptionable, 
the  purest  of  men.  The  intellectual  so  He  was  much  beloved  by  his  friends  and 
predominated  in  him,  and  he  seems  so  to  relatives,  and  was  liberal  notwithstanding 
have  loathed  the  sensual,  that  perhaps  he    his  poverty,  receiving  his  sisters-in-law. 


or  THc 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


553 


on  their  father's  death,  into  his  own 
family.  In  person,  Brown  was  tall  and 
strongly  framed,  but  extremely  thin.  His 
complexion  was  pale  and  sallow,  his  hair 
straight  and  black.  The  expression  of 
his  face  was  strongly  marked  with  melan- 
choly. **I  saw  him,"  says  Sully,  the 
painter,  "a  little  before  his  death.  I  had 
never  known  him — never  heard  of  him — 
never  read  any  of  his  works.  He  was  in 
a  deep  decline.  It  was  in  the  month  of 
November — our  Indian  summer — when  the 
air  is  full  of  smoke.  Passing  a  window  one 
day,  I  was  caught  by  the  sight  of  a  man, 
with  a  remarkable  physiognomy,  writing 
at  a  table  in  a  dark  room.  The  sun  shone 
directly  upon  his  head.  I  never  shall  for- 
get it.  The  dead  leaves  were  falling  then 
— it  was  Charles  Brockden  Brown." — 
DuYCKiNCK,  Evert  A.,  and  George  L., 
1855-65-75,  Cyolopcedia  of  American  Lit- 
erature, ed.  Simons,  vol,  i,  p.  611. 

Mr.  Brown's  character  was  one  of 
great  amiability  and  moral  excellence,  and 
his  manners  were  distinguished  by  a 
gentleness  and  unaffected  simplicity.  His 
great  colloquial  powers  made  him  a  most 
agreeable  companion ;  and  his  unwearied 
application  is  attested  by  the  large  amount 
of  his  works,  the  whole  number  of  which, 
including  his  editorial  labors,  must  be 
equal  to  twenty-four  volumes, — a  vast 
amount  to  be  produced  in  the  brief  com- 
pass of  a  little  more  than  ten  years. — 
Cleveland,  Charles  D.,  1859,  A  Com- 
pendium of  American  Literature,  p.  178. 

He  had  little  of  the  spirit  of  adventure, 
and  on  one  occasion  said  he  would  rather 
consort  with  a  ploughman  or  an  old  mar- 
ket-woman forever,  than  expose  himself  to 
the  hundredth  part  of  the  perils  which 
beset  the  heels  of  a  Ledyard  or  a  Park. 
He  was  careless  of  money,  and  slovenly  in 
dress,  but  he  was  habitually  careful  in 
his  diet.  He  abstained  from  spirituous 
liquors  long  before  temperance  societies 
were  established,  and  he  wrote  papers  in 
one  of  his  magazines  on  the  deleterious 
effects  of  intemperance,  and  of  the  use  of 
greasy  articles  of  food.— Smith,  George 
Barnett,  1878,  Brockden  Brown,  Fort- 
nightly Review,  vol.  30,  p.  408. 

Truly  he  was  a  man  of  letters,  in  the 
fullest  sense  of  the  phrase;  and  though 
consumption  ended  his  career  at  the  age 
of  thirty-nine,  he  had  his  share  of  the 
labor  of  life.— Hawthorne,  Julian  and 


Lemmon,  Leonard,  1891,  American  Lit- 
erature, p.  25. 

WIELAND 
1798 

This  powerful  and  original  romance, 
excited  attention  and  brought  the  author 
into  the  notice  of  all  readers  of  works  of 
this  description.  Few  novels  or  romances 
have  been  written,  which  seize  so  strongly 
upon  the  imagination  and  feelings  of  the 
reader,  hurry  him  from  the  realities  which 
surround  him,  bury  in  oblivion  his  joys  or 
sorrov/s,  and  fix  his  whole  attention  on  the 
images  which  the  author  presents  before 
him,  as  Wieland."— Dunlap,  William, 
1815,  Life  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown, 
vol.  II,  p.  12. 

This  novel  is  the  history  of  a  fanatic, 
whose  religious  mania  incited  him  to 
murder  his  wife  and  children,  and  at  last 
to  commit  suicide,  and  is  one  of  the  most 
masterly  stories  that  has  ever  been  told 
of  the  human  soul.— Scherr,  J.,  1874, 
A  History  of  English  Literature,  tr.  M.  F., 
V.  307. 

In  the  hands  of  a  tiro,  the  materials  of 
which ''Wieland"  is  composed  would  have 
resulted  in  a  melodrama  of  the  commonest 
and  most  pinchbeck  order ;  but  being  in- 
fused by  the  spirit  and  power  of  genius, 
they  are  transformed  into  a  gloomy  and 
awful  tragedy,  in  which  the  reader  forgets 
for  a  time  the  incredibility  of  the  incidents 
and  the  impossibility  of  the  situations. 
''Wieland"  upon  the  whole,  deservedly 
ranks  as  Brown's  completest  work  of 
fiction. — Smith,  George  Barnett,  1878, 
Brockden  Brown,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol. 
30,  p.  414. 

Brown's  early  life  was  unmistakably 
gloomy.  From  a  temperament  delicate 
and  fine,  but  morbid, — in  which  the  intel- 
lectual overbalanced  the  physical  forces, 
— sprang  his  first  book,  which,  though 
stimulated  from  across  the  water,  was 
wholly  within  the  range  of  his  mood  and 
spirit.  It  contained,  however,  not  a  hint 
of  the  new  American  life,  not  a  spark  of 
that  humor  which  afterward  flashed  freely 
in  American  literature.  Except  for  an 
awful  sense  of  solitude, — the  gloom  of 
primeval  nature, — there  was  scarcely  a 
touch  of  our  glorious  scenery.  No  social 
element  is  represented. — Morse,  James 
Herbert,  1883,  The  Native  Element  in 
American  Fiction,  The  Century^  vol.  26, 
p.  289. 


554 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


In  spite  of  confusion  and  turgidity,  the 
story  has  power.  The  end  is  ludicrously 
weak.  The  chapters  in  which  the  mind  of 
Wieland  is  gradually  possessed  by  delusion 
could  have  been  written  only  by  one  who 
had  genuinely  felt  a  sense  of  what  hide- 
ously mysterious  things  may  lie  beyond 
human  ken.  Some  such  sense  as  this,  in 
terrible  serious  form,  haunted  the  imagina- 
tion of  Puritans.  In  a  meretricious  form 
it  appears  in  the  work  of  Poe.  In  a  form 
alive  with  beauty  it  reveals  itself  through- 
out the  melancholy  romances  of  Haw- 
thorne. In  Poe's  work  and  in  Haw- 
thorne's, it  is  handled  with  something  like 
mastery,  and  few  men  of  letters  have  been 
much  further  from  mastery  of  their  art 
than  Charles  Brockden  Brown;  but  the 
sense  of  horror  which  Brown  expressed  in 
Wieland"  is  genuine.  To  feel  its  power 
you  need  only  compare  it  with  the  similar 
feeling  expressed  in  Lewis's  *'Monk,"  in 
the  "Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  or  even  in 
"Caleb  Williams"  itself.— Wendell, Bar- 
rett, 1900,  A  Literary  History  of  Amer- 
ica, p,  163. 

ORMOND 

1799 

The  appearance  of  these  two  novels 
["Wieland,"  and  "Ormond"],  consti- 
tutes an  epoch  in  the  ornamental  literature 
of  America.  They  are  the  first  decidedly 
successful  attempts  in  the  walk  of  roman- 
tic fiction.  They  are  still  farther  remark- 
able as  illustrating  the  character  and  state 
of  society  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
instead  of  resorting  to  the  exhausted 
springs  of  European  invention.  These 
circumstances,  as  well  as  the  uncommon 
powers  they  displayed  both  of  conception 
and  execution,  recommended  them  to  the 
notice  of  the  literary  world,  although 
their  philosophical  method  of  dissecting 
passion  and  analyzing  motives  of  action 
placed  them  somewhat  beyond  the  reach  of 
vulgar  popularity. — Prescott,  William 
H.,  1834,  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  Bio- 
graphical and  Critical  Miscellanies,  p.  26. 

"Ormond"  is  mainly  remarkable  for  the 
analytical  power  shown  in  the  author's  one 
fine  female  character,  Constantia  Dudley, 
who,  reduced  from  affluence  to  poverty, 
braves  all  the  threats  and  seductions  of 
the  hypocritical  Lovelace,  from  whom  the 
book  takes  its  name.  Brown's  plots  are, 
as  a  rule,  methodless  and  improbable :  his 
bursts  of  passion  are  dulled  by  intervening 


tediousness;  and  his  style,  generally 
rough,  is  sometimes  further  deformed  by 
pedantic  circumlocutions;  but  he  leaves 
us,  despite  his  acknowledged  obligations 
to  Godwin,  with  the  impression  of  an 
original  power  cramped  by  the  necessities 
of  hasty  work,  unhappily  because  prema- 
turely quenched,  and  of  a  writer  who  has 
been  unduly  forgotten. — Nichol,  John, 
1880-85,  American  Literature,  p,  162. 

ARTHUR  MERVYN 
1799-1800 

"Arthur  Mervyn"  is,  of  all  his  books, 
the  most  wandering  and  forgetful  in  narra- 
tive, continually  throwing  out  false  clews 
and  leaving  behind  unsolved  mysteries, 
leading  with  elaborate  pains  up  to  situa- 
tions which  amount  to  nothing.  With 
something  of  Poe's  sombre  imagination, 
Brown  lacked  Poe's  fine  economy  of  liter- 
ary structure.  The  strength  of  "Arthur 
Mervyn"  is  in  its  episodes, — its  vivid 
pictures  of  Philadelphia  ravaged  by  the 
yellow  fever,  its  glimpses  of  the  debtors' 
prison,  anticipating  "Little  Dorrit." — 
Bates,  Katharine  Lee,  1897,  American 
Literature,  p.  89. 

EDGAR  HUNTLY 

1801 

"Edgar  Huntly,"  the  scene  of  which  is 
laid  in  a  then  thinly-settled  part  of  Penn- 
sylvania, is  full  of  vivid,  if  somewhat  over- 
colored,  descriptions  of  the  solitudes  of 
mountain  and  forest.  We  are  taken,  per- 
haps for  the  first  time  in  fiction,  into  the 
midst  of  the  perils  of  our  frontier  life ; 
we  encounter  the  panther  and  the  Indian, 
the  latter  surrounded  with  none  of  Coop- 
er's tinge  of  romance,  but  depicted  as  the 
mere  wily  and  bloodthirsty  savage.  This 
choice  of  a  native  theme  was  a  deliberate 
one,  for  Brown  says  in  his  preface  that  he 
is  the  first  to  call  forth  the  reader's  sym- 
pathy by  substituting  for  puerile  super- 
stitions, Gothic  castles,  and  chimeras, — 
the  conventional  machinery  of  the  English 
romances, — "the  incidents  of  Indian  hos- 
tility and  the  perils  of  the  Western  wilder- 
ness. ' '  In  this  story  he  distantly  suggests 
Cooper,  in  his  fondness  for  psychological 
problems,  and  in  the  morbid  strain  that 
runs  through  many  of  his  books,  he  still 
more  faintly  fore-shadows  Poe  and  the  yet 
greater  Hawthorne. — Pancoast,  Henry 
S.,  1898,  An  Introduction  to  American 
Literature,  p.  110. 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


555 


GENERAL 

Brown  owes  his  reputation  to  his  novels. 
He  wrote  them  indeed  principally  for  his 
amusement,  and  preferred  publishing  them 
when  unfinished  to  labouring  upon  them 
after  they  had  lost  their  interest  to  him- 
self :  they  are  proofs  or  signs  of  power 
rather  than  the  result  of  its  complete  and 
steady  exertion ;  but  they  shew  the  char- 
acter of  his  mind  and  will  justify  our  curi- 
osity to  examine  it.  In  attempting 
this,  we  do  not  feel  as  if  we  were  bringing 
forward  a  deserving  but  neglected  author  ; 
he  has  received  honourable  notice  from 
distinguished  men  abroad,  and  his  country- 
men discerned  his  merits  without  waiting 
till  a  foreign  glory  had  shone  on  and  re- 
vealed them.  Still  he  is  very  far  from 
being  a  popular  writer.  There  is  no  call, 
as  far  as  we  know,  for  a  second  edition  of 
any  of  his  works.  He  is  rarely  spoken  of 
but  by  those  who  have  an  habitual  curios- 
ity about  everything  literary,  and  a  becom- 
ing pride  in  all  good  writing  which  appears 
amongst  ourselves.  They  have  not  met  with 
the  usual  success  of  leaders,  in  matters  of 
taste,  since,  with  all  their  admiration, 
they  have  not  been  able  to  extend  his 
celebrity  much  beyond  themselves.  .  .  . 
We  should  not  pronounce  Brown  a  man  of 
genius,  nor  deny  him  that  distinction, 
from  his  style.  It  might  have  been  ac- 
quired by  care  and  study,  but  it  is  the  re- 
sult only  and  never  betrays  the  process. — 
Verplanck,  Gulian  Crommelin,  1819, 
Charles  Broekden  Brown,  North  American 
Review,  vol.  9,  pp.  63,  76. 

The  very  want  of  variety  has  given  such 
an  air  of  truth  to  what  he  is  about,  show- 
ing such  an  earnest  singleness  of  purpose, 
that  perhaps  no  writer  ever  made  his 
readers  more  completely  forget  that  they 
were  not  reading  a  statement  of  some 
serious  matter  of  fact ;  and  so  strong  is 
this  impression,  that  we  even  become  half 
reconciled  to  improbabilities  which  so  vex 
us  in  fiction,  though  often  happening  in 
daily  life.  This  enables  us,  also,  to  bear 
better  with  his  style;  for,  along  with 
something  like  a  conviction  that  the  man 
who  had  vivacity  of  genius  enough  for 
such  inventions  could  never  have  delivered 
himself  with  such  dull  poverty  and  pedantry 
of  phrase,  we  at  last  are  almost  driven  to 
the  conclusion,  that,  however  extraordi- 
nary they  may  be,  they  are  nevertheless 
facts ;  for  the  man  never  could  have  made 


them,  and  things  must  have  happened 
pretty  much  as  he  tells  us  they  did. — 
Dana,  Richard  Henry,  1827-50,  The 
Novels  of  Charles  Broekden  Brown,  Poems 
and  Prose  Writings,  vol.  ii,  p.  329. 

He  may  be  rather  called  a  philosophical 
than  a  poetical  writer ;  for,  though  he 
has  that  intensity  of  feeling  which  con- 
stitutes one  of  the  distinguishing  attri- 
butes of  the  latter,  yet  in  his  most 
tumultuous  bursts  of  passion  we  frequently 
find  him  pausing  to  analyze  and  coolly 
speculate  on  the  elements  which  have 
raised  it.  This  intrusion,  indeed,  of 
reason,  la  raison  froide,  into  scenes  of  the 
greatest  interest  and  emotion,  has  some- 
times the  unhappy  effect  of  chilling  them 
altogether. — Prescott,  William  H.,  1834, 
Charles  Broekden  Brown,  Biographical  and 
Critical  Miscellanies,  p.  38. 

We  have  long  been  ashamed  that  one 
who  ought  to  be  the  pride  of  the  country, 
and  who  is,  in  the  highest  qualities  of  tho 
mind,  so  far  in  advance  of  our  other 
novelists,  should  have  become  almost  inac- 
cessible to  the  public.  It  has  been  the 
custom  to  liken  Brown  to  Godwin.  But 
there  was  no  imitation,  no  second-hand  in 
the  matter.  They  were  congenial  natures, 
and  whichever  had  come  first  might  have 
lent  an  impulse  to  the  other.  Either  mind 
might  have  been  conscious  of  the  posses- 
sion of  that  peculiar  vein  of  ore  without 
thinking  of  working  it  for  the  mint  of 
the  world,  till  the  other,  led  by  accident, 
or  overflow  of  feeling,  showed  him  how 
easy  it  was  to  put  the  reveries  of  his  soli- 
tary hours  into  words  and  upon  paper  for 
the  benefit  of  his  fellow  men.  .  .  . 
Brown  is  great  as  ever  human  writer  was 
in  showing  the  self-sustaining  force  of 
which  a  lonely  mind  is  capable.  He  takes 
one  person,  makes  him  brood  like  the  bee, 
and  extract  from  the  common  life  before 
him  all  its  sweetness,  its  bitterness,  and  its 
nourishment.— OssoLi,  Margaret  Fuller, 
1845-59,  Papers  on  Literature  and  Art, 
ed.  Fuller,  pp.  322,  324. 

He  had  more  genius  than  talent,,  and 
more  imagination  than  fancy.  It  has  been 
said  that  he  outraged  the  laws  of  art  by 
gross  improbabilities  and  inconsistencies, 
but  the  most  incredible  of  his  incidents  had 
parallels  in  true  history,  and  the  meta- 
physical unity  and  consistency  of  his 
novels  are  apparent  to  all  readers  famil- 
iar with  psychological  phenomena.  His 


556 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


works,  generally  written  with  great  rapid- 
ity, are  incomplete,  and  deficient  in  method. 
He  disregarded  rules,  and  cared  little  for 
criticism.  But  his  style  was  clear  and 
nervous,  with  little  ornament,  free  of 
affectations,  and  indicated  a  singular  sin- 
cerity and  depth  of  feeling. — Griswold, 
RUFUS  WiLMOT,  1845,  ed..  Intellectual 
History,  Condition  and  Prospects  of  the 
Country,  The  Prose  Writers  of  America, 
p.  29. 

So  deficient,  indeed,  in  constructive  de- 
sign and  unity  of  purpose,  are  his  writ- 
ings, that,  with  the  exception  of  his  essays 
and  other  argumentative  papers,  they 
resemble  the  sketches  that  litter  an  artist's 
studio  more  than  elaborate  and  finished 
works.  His  fictions  might  aptly  be  desig- 
nated as  studies  in  Romance.  He  left 
many  fragmentary  narratives,  scenes  and 
dialogues —some  founded  upon  history, 
some  upon  observation,  and  others  ap- 
parently the  result  of  an  inventive  mood. 
At  one  time  he  had  no  less  than  five  novels 
commenced,  sketched  out,  or  partially 
written. — Tuckerman,  Henry  T.,  1857, 
Essays  Biographical  and  Critical,  p.  372. 

In  romantic  narrative.  Brown  was  often 
successful,  but  he  failed  in  the  delinea- 
tion of  character. — Chambers,  Robert, 
1876,  Cyclopcedia  of  English  Literature, 
ed.  Carruthers. 

Some  of  his  novelshave  been  republished 
in  this  country,  but  copies  of  these  it  is 
now  difficult  to  meet  with.  Yet  a  public 
which  so  liberally  admired  Hawthorne, 
ought  to  know  something  about  a  writer 
of  kindred  and  more  potent  genius.  If 
Hoffmann's  Night-pieces  and  Fancy  Pieces 
after  the  manner  of  Jacques  Callot  must 
rank  first  in  the  literature  of  the  Weird, 
Brockden  Brown  comes  second,  and  he 
adds  to  the  weird  such  elements  of  psy- 
chological subtlety  as  give  him  a  place  to 
which  Hoffmann  had  no  claim  in  the  litera- 
ture of  spiritual  analysis.  To  a  daring 
imagination — the  most  singular  and  flex- 
ible, perhaps,  yet  witnessed  amongst 
American  writers — Charles  Brockden 
Brown  united  a  placid  temperament  and  a 
contemplative  intellect.  Such  a  com- 
bination of  seeming  discordant,  and  yet 
sharply  defined  qualities,  is  almost  unique. 
Deep-rooted  melancholy,  and  the  pathos 
of  an  apparently  disordered  mind,  distin- 
guish the  works  of  this  author,  and  yet  few 
men  were  happier  in  their  lives,  or  more 


profoundly  enjoyed  the  simple  fact  of  ex- 
istence. He  coveted  no  complex  pleas- 
ures or  recreations;  his  greatest  solace 
was  Nature ;  and  he  extracted  happiness 
from  those  commonplace  pursuits  which 
by  most  men  of  genius  would  have  been 
deemed  monotonous  and  insupportable. 
His  creations  are  dire,  astounding,  terrible 
— his  life  was  sedate,  tranquil,  serene. — 
Smith,  George  Barnett,  1878,  Brockden 
Brown,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  30,  p.  399. 

In  1800  he  was  the  best  writer  of  fiction 
of  his  time ;  he  led  the  way  to  the  general 
diffusion  of  the  novel.  His  scenery  was 
all  American :  he  loved  to  paint  sometimes 
the  golden  air  of  autumn,  the  evening 
sinking  over  the  Schuylkill,  rich  in  un- 
rivalled colors,  the  splendors  of  a  clime 
to  which  Europe  offered  no  parallel ;  but 
of tener  the  city  street,  the  plague-stricken 
homes,  the  stately  mansion.  In  this  rare 
setting  his  sombre,  mysterious  characters 
move  dark  and  dreadful,  scarcely  human 
in  their  objects,  always  governed  by  some 
immutable  law.  ...  He  was  the 
morning-star  that  beckoned  in  the  day. — 
Lawrence,  Eugene,  1880,  A  Primer  of 
American  Literature,  pp.  48,  49. 

Brown,  in  his  depth  of  insight  into  the 
morbid  phenomena  of  the  human  mind, 
really  anticipated  Hawthorne ;  but  hurried 
as  he  was  by  that  most  malignant  of  liter- 
ary devils,  the  printer's,  he  produced  no 
such  masterpieces  of  literary  art  as  *'The 
Scarlet  Letter,"  **The  Bltthedale  Ro- 
mance, "  and ' '  The  Marble  Faun. ' '  Brown 
is  one  of  the  most  melancholy  instances  of 
a  genius  arrested  in  its  orderly  develop- 
ment by  the  pressure  of  circumstances. 
In  mere  power  his  forgotten  novels  rank 
very  high  among  the  products  of  the 
American  imagination.  And  it  should  be 
added  that  though  he  is  unread,  he  is  by 
no  means  unreadable.  .  .  .  With  all 
his  faults.  Brown  does  not  deserve  to  be 
the  victim  of  the  bitterest  irony  of  criti- 
cism, that,  namely,  of  not  being  considered 
worth  the  trouble  of  a  critical  examina- 
tion. His  writings  are  contemptuously 
classed  among  dead  books,  interesting  to 
the  antiquary  alone.  Still,  they  have  that 
vitality  which  comes  from  the  presence  of 
genius,  and  a  little  stirring  of  the  ashes 
under  which  they  are  buried  would  reveal 
sparks  of  genuine  fire. — Whipple,  Edwin 
Percy,  1886,  American  Literature  and 
Other  Papers,  ed.  Whittier,  pp.  28,  29. 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 


557 


Brockden  Brown  introduced  the  weird, 
the  romantic,  the  appalling,  the  ''native 
American,"  and  made  a  failure,  on  the 
whole.— Richardson,  Charles  F.,  1887, 
American  Liter ature,  1607-1885,  vol.  i, 
p,  263. 

Charles  Brockden  Brown,  of  Philadel- 
phia, had  all  the  qualities  which  would 
have  recommended  him  to  Goethe's  par- 
ticular detestation,  being  slipshod  in  style 
and  exhibiting  a  sovereign  disregard  of 
reality.  His  works  abound  in  psycho- 
logical curiosities  and  super-ingenious 
mysteries,  exulting,  like  those  of  his 
romantic  compeers,  in  all  the  calamities 
from  which  in  the  Prayer  Book  we  ask  God 
to  deliver  us.  —  Boyesen,  Hjalmar 
Hjorth,  1892-94,  Literary  and  Social 
Silhouettes^  p.  59. 

Brown's  romances  are  not  wanting  an 
inventive  power ;  in  occasional  situations 
that  are  intensely  thrilling,  and  in  subtle 
analysis  of  character ;  but  they  are  fatally 
defective  in  art.  The  narrative  is  by  turns 
abrupt  and  tiresomely  prolix,  proceeding 
not  so  much  by  dialogue  as  by  elaborate 
dissection  and  discussion  of  motives  and 
states  of  mind,  interspersed  with  the 
author's  reflections.  The  wild  improba- 
bilities of  plot  and  the  unnatural  and  even 
monstrous  developments  of  character  are 
in  startling  contrast  with  the  old-fashioned 
preciseness  of  the  language ;  the  conversa- 
tions, when  there  are  any,  being  conducted 
in  that  insipid  dialect  in  which  a  fine 
woman  was  called  an  ''elegant  female." 
— Beers,  Henry  A.,  1895,  Initial  Studies 
in  American  Letters,  p.  65. 

Judged  by  the  standards  set  by  Poe  and 
Hawthorne,  his  work  is  crude  and  defect- 
ive in  art.  The  story  is  at  times  tediously 
spun  out ;  character  is  dissected  with  dis- 
gusting minuteness ;  the  plots  are  glaring- 
ly improbable ;  the  characters  either  mon- 
sters or  angels.  He  is  not  even  a ' '  clumsy 
Poe,"  as  some  have  called  him,  so  vastly 
inferior  is  his  art  to  his  who  produced  the 
"Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher."  Brown's 
excellences  are  his  graphic  portrayals  of 
action  and  his  descriptions  of  wild  nature. 
He  had  the  art  of  stimulating  expecta- 
tions ; — it  is  hard  to  lay  down  one  of  his 
romances  unfinished ;  one  reads  on  and  on 
in  a  sort  of  ghastly  dream  until  at  length 
the  end  of  the  book  completes  the  hideous 
nightmare. — Pattee,  Fred  Lewis,  1896, 
A  History  of  American  Literature,  p.  104. 


The  first  imaginative  writer  worth  men- 
tioning in  America.  ...  He  was  also 
the  first  to  exert  a  positive  influence, 
across  the  Atlantic,  upon  British  litera- 
ture, laying  thus  early  a  few  modest 
strands  towards  an  ocean-cable  of  thought. 
As  a  result  of  this  influence  concealed 
doors  opened  in  lonely  houses,  fatal  epi- 
demics laid  cities  desolate,  secret  plots 
were  organized,  unknown  persons  from 
foreign  lands  died  in  garrets  leaving  large 
sums  of  money;  the  honor  of  innocent 
women  was  occasionally  endangered, 
though  usually  saved  in  time ;  people  were 
subject  to  somnambulism  and  general 
frenzy ;  vast  conspiracies  were  organized 
with  small  aims  and  smaller  results.  His 
books,  published  between  1798  and  1801, 
made  their  way  across  the  ocean  with  a 
promptness  that  now  seems  inexplicable ; 
and  Mrs.  Shelley  inhernovelof  "The  Last 
Man"  founds  her  description  of  an  epidemic 
on '  ''the  masterly  delineations  of  the  author 
of  'Arthur  Mervyn.' "  Shelley  himself 
recognized  his  obligations  to  Brown ;  and 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  Brown  himself 
was  evidently  familiar  with  Godwin's 
philosophical  writings,  and  that  he  may 
have  drawn  from  those  of  Mary  Wollstone- 
craft  his  advanced  views  as  to  the  rights 
and  education  of  women,  a  subject  on 
which  his  first  book,  "Alcuin,"  provided 
the  eariest  American  protest.  .  .  .  There 
is  so  much  of  monotony  in  the  general 
method,  that  one  novel  seems  to  stand  for 
all ;  and  the  same  modes  of  solution  reap- 
pear so  often — somnambulism,  ventrilo- 
quism, yellow  fever,  forged  letters,  con- 
cealed money,  secret  closets — that  it  not 
only  gives  a  sense  of  puerility,  but  makes 
it  very  difficult  to  recall,  as  to  any  par- 
ticular passage,  from  which  book  it  came. 
— HiGGiNSON,  Thomas  Wentworth,1898, 
American  Prose,  ed.  Carpenter,  pp.  84,88. 

The  style,  also,  is  a  combination  of 
crudeness  and  power.  It  is  often  stiflt  and 
sometimes  ludicrously  stilted ;  but  every- 
where it  has  strength ;  and  in  passages  of 
exciting  description  and  narration  it  rises 
to  a  very  high  degree  of  power.  In  these 
scenes  of  horror — the  maniac  Wieland 
about  to  kill  his  sister;  Huntly  groping 
about  in  the  black  pit;  the  midnight 
burial  of  Watson  in  the  cellar;  Ormond's 
deliberate  and  gloating  assault  upon  his 
trembling  victim  in  the  lonely  house ;  the 
loathsome  scenes  in  the  pestilence-stricken 


558 


BRO  WN~  CUMBERLAND 


city — Brown  is  in  his  element,  and  by  them 
he  has  made  a  permanent  contribution  to 
the  literature  of  terror.  Inferior  to 
Hawthorne  in  subtle  spiritual  suggestive- 
ness,  to  Poe  in  brilliancy,  intensity,  and 
enveloping  atmosphere  of  poetic  gloom,  he 


is  perhaps  superior  to  them  and  to  the 
whole  contemporary  English  school  of 
terror  in  Defoe-like  sense  of  reality  and  in 
sheer  mass  of  overwhelming  horror. — ■ 
Bronson,  Walter  C,  1900,  A  Short  His- 
tory of  American  Literature,  p.  99. 


Richard  Cumberland 

1732-1811 

Born,  at  Trinity  Coll.,  Dublin,  19  Feb.  1732.  Educated  at  a  school  at  Bury  St. 
Edmunds,  1738-44;  at  Westminster  School,  1744-46.  To  Trinity  Coll.,  Cambridge, 
1747;  B.  A.,  1750;  Fellowship,  1752;  M.  A.,  1754.  Private  Secretary  to  Lord 
Halifax  in  Board  of  Trade ;  and  afterwards  Crown  Agent  to  Nova  Scotia.  Married 
Elizabeth  Ridge,  19  Feb.  1759.  Ulster  Secretary  to  Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  1761. 
Clerk  of  Reports  in  Board  of  Trade,  1762.  Began  to  write  plays.  *'The  Summer's 
Tale"  produced,  1765;  ''The  Brothers"  at  Covent  Garden,  1769;  ''The  West  Indian," 
1771 ;  "The Fashionable  Lover,"  Jan.  1772;  "The Choleric  Man,"  1774;  "The  Battle 
of  Hastings, "  1778.  Secretary  to  Board  of  Trade,  1776.  On  secret  mission  to  Spain, 
1780-81.  On  abolition  of  Board  of  Trade,  he  retired  to  Tunbridge  Wells.  Great 
literary  activity;  many  plays  produced,  including:  "The  Walloons,"  20  April  1782; 
*'The  Jew,"  1794;  "The  Wheel  of  Fortune,"  1795,  etc.  Edited  "The  London  Re- 
view" 1809.  Died,  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  7  May  1811.  Buried  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
Works:  "An  Elegy,  written  on  St.  Mark's  Eve"  (anon.),  1754;  "The  Banishment  of 
Cicero,"  1761;  "The  Summer's  Tale"  (anon.),  1765;  "A  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of 
0-d,"  (anon.),  1767;  "Amelia"  (anon.),  1768;  "The  Brothers"  (anon.),  1770; 
"The  West  Indian"  (anon.),  1771;  "Timon  of  Athens,  altered  from  Shakespeare," 
1771;  "The  Fashionable  Lover"  (anon.),  1772;  "The  Note  of  Hand"  (anon.),  1774; 
^'The  Choleric  Man,"  1775;  "The  Widow  of  Delphi"  (anon.),  1775;  "Odes,"  1776; 
"The  Battle  of  Hastings,"  1778;  "Calypso,"  1779;  "Anecdotes  of  Eminent  Painters 
in  Spain,"  1782;  "A  Letter  to  Richard,  Lord  Bishop  of  Landaff,"  1783;  "The 
Mysterious  Husband,"  1783;  "The  Carmelite,"  1784;  "Character  of  the  late  Lord 
Viscount  Sackville,"  1785;  "The  Natural  Son,"  1785 ;  "The Observer"  (anon.),  1785; 
"An  accurate  .  .  .  Catalogue  of  the  several  Paintings  in  the  King  of  Spain's 
Palace  at  Madrid,"  1787;  "Arundel"  (anon.),  1789;  "The  Impostors,"  1789;  "A 
Volume  of  Comedies,"  1791;  "Curtius  rescued  from  the  Gulph"  (anon.),  1792; 
"Calvary,"  1792;  "The  Armourer"  (anon.),  1793;  "The  Box-Lobby  Challenge," 
1794;  "The  Jew,"  1794;  "First  Love,"  1795;  "Henry,"  (anon.),  1795;  "The  Wheel 
of  Fortune,  "1795;  "False  Impressions,"  1797;  "The  Days  of  Yore,"  1798;  "Joanna 
of  Montfaucon"  (adapted  from  Von  Kotzebue,)  1800;  "A  Poetical  Version  of  certain 
Psalms  of  David,"  1801;  "A  Few  Plain  Reasons  why  we  should  believe  in  Christ," 
1801;  "The  Tailor's  Daughter,"  1804;  "A  Melo-Dramatic  Piece"  (1805);  "A  Hint 
to  Husbands,"  1806;  "Memoirs,"  1806;  "The  Jew  of  Mogadore,"  1808;  "John  de 
Lancaster,"  1809;  "Retrospection,"  1811.  Posthumous:  "Posthumous  Dramatic 
Works"  (2  vols.),  1813.  He  translated:  Lucan's  "Pharsalia,"  1760 ;  "Aristophanes' 
€louds,"  1797. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors, 
p.  71. 

with  which  he  seduces  you  to  give  a  free 
opinion  on  any  of  his  works;  can  only  be  ex- 
ceeded by  the  petulant  arrogance  with 
which  he  is  sure  to  reject  your  observa- 
tions. .  .  .  Then  his  affected  contempt  of 
all  the  newspapers  strictures ;  though,  at 
the  same  time,  he  is  the  sorest  man  alive, 
and  shrinks  like  scorched  parchment  from 
the  fiery  ordeal  of  true  criticism ;  yet  is 
he  so  covetous  of  popularity,  that  he  had 


PERSONAL 

Mr.  Cumberland  is  unquestionably  a  man 
of  very  great  abilities ;  it  is  his  misfortune 
to  rate  them  greatly  above  their  value; 
and  to  suppose  that  he  has  no  equal. — 
Davies,  Thomas,  1780,  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  of  David  Garrick,  vol.  n,  p.  275. 

Sneer — "He  is  envious  as  any  old  maid 
verging  on  the  desperation  of  six-and- 
thirty;  and  then  the  insidious  humility 


RICHARD  CUMBERLAND 


559 


rather  be  abused  than  not  mentioned  at  all." 
— Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  1781, 
The  Critic. 

It  is  a  delicate  and  ardous  task  I  have 
had  in  hand,  and  I  trust  that  now,  as 
heretofore,  I  shall  be  read  and  judged  with 
candour.  I  have  not  knowingly  trans- 
gressed, or  even  strained,  the  truth,  to 
which  I  pledged  myself;  but  fairly  and 
sincerely  stated  how  I  have  employed  my 
faculities,  what  I  have  been  and  what  I 
am.  Man  hath  no  need,  no  right,  no  in- 
terest to  know  of  man  more  than  I  have 
enabled  every  one  to  know  of  me.  I  have 
no  undivulged  evil  in  my  heart ;  but  with 
unabated  affection  for  my  friends,  and 
good  will  towards  my  fellow  creatures,  I 
remain  the  reader's  most  devoted  servant. 
— Cumberland,  Richard,  1806,  Memoirs 
Written  by  Himself,  vol.  ii,  p.  405. 

The  person  you  now  see  deposited,  is 
Richard  Cumberland,  an  author  of  no  small 
merit;  his  writings  were  chiefly  for  the 
stage,  but  of  strict  moral  tendency — they 
were  not  without  their  faults,  but  these 
were  not  of  a  gross  description.  He  wrote 
as  much  as  any,  and  few  wrote  better; 
and  his  works  will  be  held  in  the  highest 
estimation,  so  long  as  the  English  language 
is  understood.  He  considered  the  theatre 
as  a  school  for  moral  improvement,  and 
his  remains  are  truly  worthy  of  mingling 
with  the  illustrious  dead  which*  surround 
us.  In  his  subjects  on  Divinity,  you  find 
the  true  Christian  spirit ;  and  may  God, 
in  his  mercy,  assign  him  the  true  Christian 
reward! — Vincent,  Dr.,  Dean  of  West- 
minster, 1811,  Funeral  Sermon, 

In  youth,  Mr.  Cumberland  must  have 
been  handsome;  in  age,  he  possessed  a 
pleasing  external  appearance,  and  the 
polite  ease  of  a  gentleman  accustomed  to 
the  best  company.  In  society  he  was  elo- 
quent, well-informed,  and  full  of  anecdote ; 
a  willing  dealer  in  the  commerce  of  praise, 
or — for  he  took  no  great  pains  to  ascertain 
its  sincerity — we  should  rather  say,  of 
flattery.  His  conversation  often  showed 
the  author  in  his  strong  and  in  his  weak 
points.  ...  In  the  little  pettish  sub- 
acidity  of  temper  which  Cumberland  some- 
times exhibited,  there  was  more  of  humor- 
ous sadness  than  of  ill-will,  either  to  his 
critics  or  his  contemporaries. — Scott,  Sir 
Walter,  1824,  Richard  Cumberland. 

Richard  Cumberland  put  forth  occasion- 
ally metrical  compositions,  but  they  were 


vapid  stuff.  He  had  a  vast  memory,  and  a 
great  facility  of  feeble  verbiage ;  but  his 
vanity,  his  self-conceit,  and  his  supercili- 
ous airs,  offended  everybody.  He  was  a 
tall,  handsome  man,  with  a  fair,  regular- 
featured  face,  and  the  appearance  of  good 
birth.  For  many  years  he  resided  at 
Tunbridge  Wells,  where  he  affected  a  sort 
of  dominion  over  the  Pantiles,  and  paid 
court,  a  little  too  servile,  to  rank  and  title. 
He  wrote  some  good  comedies,  and  was  a 
miscellaneous  writer  of  some  popularity ; 
but  in  every  department  he  was  of  a 
secondary  class, — in  none  he  had  original- 
ity. He  was  one  of  Johnson's  literary 
club,  and  therefore  could  render  himself 
amusing  by  speaking  of  a  past  age  of 
authors  and  eminent  men.  Sheridan  rep- 
resented him  as  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary.  He 
was  a  most  fulsome  and  incontinent  flat- 
terer of  those  who  courted  him. — Brydges, 
Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834,  Autobiogra- 
phy, vol.  I,  p.  189. 

Cumberland  was  a  most  agreeable  com- 
panion, and  a  very  entertaining  converser. 
His  theatrical  anecdotes  were  related  with 
infinite  spirit  and  humour.  .  .  .  When 
Cumberland  was  composing  any  work,  he 
never  shut  himself  in  his  study :  he  always 
wrote  in  the  room  where  his  family  sat, 
and  did  not  feel  the  least  disturbed  by  the 
noise  of  his  children  at  play  beside  him. — 
Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  pp.  36,  37. 

His  sensitiveness  to  criticism  made  Gar- 
rick  call  him  a  man  without  a  skin,"  but 
he  explains  that  there  was  then  ^'a  filthy 
nest  of  vipers"  in  league  against  every 
well-known  man. —Stephen,  Leslie,  1888, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol. 
XIII,  p.  291. 

To  the  last  Cumberland  is  described  as 
an  agreeable  and  even  fascinating  com- 
panion, though  he  was  so  fond  of  flattery 
himself  that  he  supposed  it  to  be  accept- 
able to  others,  even  in  the  most  exuberant 
proportions.  Certain  it  is  that,  although 
he  was  not  altogether  happy  in  his  tem- 
perament, he  made  many  friends;  and 
though  time  has  dealt  hardly  with  his 
reputation,  one  piece  of  good  fortune  can 
never  be  taken  from  him,  namely,  the 
prospect  of  going  down  to  posterity  astride 
the  epitaph  in  Goldsmith's  Retaliation" 
as  "The  Terence  of  England,  the  mender  of 
hearts." — Paston,  George,  1901,  Little 
Memoirs  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  1. 


560 


RICHARD  CUMBERLAND 


GENERAL 
Here  Cumberland  lies,  having  his  part, 
The  Terence  of  England,  the  mender  of 
hearts ; 

A  flattering  painter,  who  made  it  his  care 
To  draw  men  as  they  ought  to  be,  not  as 
they  are. 

His  gallants  are  all  faultless,  his  women 
divine, 

And  comedy  wonders  at  being  so  fine ; 
Like  a  tragedy -queen  he  has  dizen'd  her  out, 
Or  rather,  like  tragedy  giving  a  rout. 
His  fools  have  their  follies  so  lost  in  a  crowd 
Of  virtues  and  feelings,  that  folly  grows 
proud, 

And  coxcombs  alike  in  their  failings  alone, 
Adopting  his  portraits,  are  pleas 'd  with  their 
own. 

Say,  where  has  our  poet  this  malady  caught, 
Or,  wherefore  his  characters  thus  without 
fault  ? 

Say,  was  it  that  vainly  directing  his  view, 
To  find  out  men's  virtues,  and  finding  them 

few,  • 
Quite  sick  of  pursuing  each  troublesome  elf, 
He  grew  lazy  at  last,  and  drew  from  himself? 
— Goldsmith,  Oliver,  1774,  The  Retalia- 
tion. 

Withal]  the  merit  which  "The  Brothers" 
possesses,  and  which  is  of  no  small  ac- 
count, it  is  instructive  to  observe  with 
how  much  judgment  Mr.  Cumberland  cor- 
rected in  his  second  play  all  those  faults 
he  had  committed  in  the  first.  The 
language  of  "The  West  Indian"  is  wholly 
refined,  and  every  idea  it  contains  per- 
fectly delicate.  The  youthful  parts  are 
there  rendered  brilliant,  as  well  as  inter- 
esting ;  and  wit  and  humour  are  not  con- 
fined, as  here,  to  the  mean  or  the  vulgar, 
but  skilfully  on  persons  of  pleasing  forms 
and  polite  manners.  —  Inchbald,  Mrs. 
Elizabeth,  1806-9,  The  Brothers,  A  Com- 
edy ;  The  British  Theatre^  Remarks. 

We  will  pronounce  no  general  judgment 
on  the  literary  merits  of  Mr.  Cumberland ; 
but  our  opinion  of  them  certainly  has  not 
been  raised  by  the  perusal  of  these  Mem- 
oirs." There  is  no  depth  of  thought, 
nor  dignity  of  sentiment  about  him ; — he  is 
too  frisky  for  an  old  man,  and  too  gossiping 
for  an  historian.  His  style  is  too  negligent 
even  for  the  most  familiar  composition ; 
and  though  he  has  proved  himself,  upon 
other  occasions,  to  be  a  great  master  of 
good  English,  he  has  admitted  a  number  of 
phrases  into  this  work,  which,  we  are  in- 
clined to  think,  would  scarely  pass  cur- 
rent even  in  conversation.  .  .  .  Upon 
the  whole,  however,  this  volume  is  not  the 


work  of  an  ordinary  writer ;  and  we  should 
probably  have  been  more  indulgent  to  its 
faults,  if  the  excellence  of  some  of  the 
author's  former  productions  had  not  sent 
us  to  its  perusal  with  expectations  per- 
haps somewhat  extravagant. — Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1806-1844,  Memoirs  of 
Cumberland,  Contributions  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  vol.  iv,  p.  413. 

The ''Observer,"  though  the  sole  labour 
of  an  individual,  is  yet  rich  in  variety,  both 
of  subject  and  manner;  in  this  respect, 
indeed,  as  well  as  in  literary  interests,  and 
in  fertility  of  invention,  it  may  be  classed 
with  the '' Spectator"  and  ''Adventurer  ;" 
if  inferior  to  the  latter  in  grandeur  of 
fiction,  or  to  the  former  in  delicate  irony 
and  dramatic  unity  of  design,  it  is  wealthier 
in  its  literary  fund  than  either,  equally 
moral  in  its  views,  and  as  abundant  in  the 
creation  of  incident.  I  consider  it, 
therefore,  with  the  exception  of  the  pa- 
pers just  mentioned,  as  superior,  in  its 
powers  of  attraction,  to  every  other  period- 
ical composition.— Drake,  Nathan,  1810, 
Essays  Illustrative  of  the  Rambler,  Adven- 
turer and  Idler,  vol.  ii,  p.  393. 

He  could  not  easily  endure  a  rival  in  any 
branch  of  literature,  but,  without  enter- 
ing into  his  failings,  it  may  easily  be  con- 
ceded that  he  had  not  in  his  time  many 
equals.  His  talents  were  so  various,  his 
productions  so  numerous,  and  of  many  of 
them  it  may  truly  be  asserted,  that  they 
were  so  valuable  and  so  instructive,  that 
who  can  call  to  memory  without  a  sigh 
that  his  latter  hours  were  darkened  by 
poverty. — Beloe,  William,  1817,  The 
Sexagenarian,  vol.  ii,  p.  222. 

It  ["West  Indian"]  is  a  classical  com- 
edy; the  dialogue  spirited  and  elegant; 
the  characters  well  conceived,  and  pre- 
senting bold  features,  though  still  within 
the  line  of  probability ;  and  the  plot  regu- 
larly conducted,  and  happily  extricated. 
.  .  .  The  drama  must  have  been  Cumber- 
land's favourite  style  of  composition,  for 
he  went  on,  shooting  shaft  after  shaft  at 
the  mark  which  he  did  not  always  hit,  and 
often  elfacing  by  failures  the  memory  of 
triumphant  successes.  His  plays  at  last 
amounted  to  upwards  of  fifty,  and  inter- 
cession and  flattery  were  sometimes  neces- 
sary to  force  their  way  to  the  stage.  .  .  . 
He  had  a  peculiar  taste  in  love  affairs, 
which  induced  him  to  reverse  the  usual 
and  natural  practice  of  courtship,  and  to 


RICHARD  CUMBERLAND 


561 


throw  upon  the  softer  sex  the  task  of 
wooing,  which  is  more  gracefully,  as  well 
as  naturally,  the  province  of  the  man. — ■ 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1824,  Richard  Cum- 
berland. 

Cumberland  was  the  last,  and  the  best 
of  the  Sentimental  School.  His  Genius 
was  of  too  masculine  a  character  to  submit 
entirely  to  the  fetters  which  the  popular 
prejudices  would  impose  upon  it ;  and  his 
taste  too  pure,  to  relish  the  sickly  viands 
with  which  the  public  appetite  was  palled. 
— Neele,  Henry,  1827-29,  Lectures  on 
English  Poetry,  p.  153. 

Cumberland's  worthless  epics  of  Cal- 
vary,'' ''Richard  the  First,"  ''The  Ex- 
odiad." — Craik,  George  L.,  1861,  A  Com- 
pendious History  of  English  Literature  and 
of  the  English  Language,  vol.  ii.  p.  415. 

He  aimed  without  success  at  Fielding's 
constructive  excellence,  and  imitated  that 
great  master's  humor,  only  to  reproduce 
his  coarseness.— Tuckerman,  Bayard, 
1882,  A  History  of  English  Prose  Fiction, 
p.  247. 

There  were  few  departments  of  litera- 
ture in  which  this  worthy  writer  did  not 
do  fair  journeyman's  work,  and  amid;other 
work  he  employed  himself  as  a  writer  of 
comedies.  He  who  shoots  often  must  hit 
sometimes.  The ' '  West  Indian' '  has  merit 
in  it ;  but  his  characters  are  all  endowed 
with  a  superhuman  morality.  Cumberland 
understood  stage  effect, — particularly  of 
the  emotional  kind.  But  he  was  over- 
emotional. — Crawfurd,  Oswald,  1883, 
ed.y  English  Comic  Dramatists,  p.  256. 

Were  1  to  be  discovered  on  Primrose 
Hill,  or  any  other  eminence,  reading 
"Henry, "  I  should  blush  no  deeper  than  if 
the  book  had  been  "David  Grieve."  .  .  . 
Cumberland  has,  of  course,  no  place  in 
men's  memories  by  virtue  of  his  plays, 
poems,  or  novels.  Even  the  catholic 
Chambers  gives  no  extracts  from  Cumber- 
land in  the  ' '  Encyclopedia. ' '  What  keeps 
him  for  ever  alive  is — first,  his  place  in 
Goldsmith's  great  poem,  "Retaliation;" 
secondly,  his  memoirs  to  which  Sir  Walter 
refers  so  unkindly ;  and  thirdly,  the  tradi- 
tion, the  well-supported  tradition — that 
he  was  the  original ' '  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary. ' ' 
On  this  last  point  we  have  the  authority 
of  Croker,  and  there  is  none  better  for 
anything  disagreeable.  Croker  says  he 
knew  Cumberland  well  for  the  last  dozen 
years  of  his  life,  and  that  to  his  last  day 

36  C 


he  resembled  "Sir  Fretful."— Birrell, 
Augustine,  1894,  Essays  about  Men, 
Women  and  Books,  pp.  51,  52. 

A  rather  curious  person,  and  better 
known  to  literature  as  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary, 
but  a  scholar,  a  skilful  playwright,  £ind  no 
contemptible  man  of  letters. — Saints- 
bury,  George,  1898,  A  Short  History  of 
English  Literature,  p.  639. 

As  a  writer,  Cumberland  was  not  great ; 
he  was  not  even  of  the  second  rank, 
if  we  count  men  like  Goldsmith  and 
Sheridan  in  that  degree;  but  he  fre- 
quently wrote  with  effect,  and  invariably 
as  a  scholar  and  a  gentleman.  Like 
too  many  people,  he  tried  to  succeed  in 
too  many  things,  and  has  in  consequence 
just  missed  high  distinction,  alike  as  a 
poet,  a  novelist,  and  a  dramatist.  Gold- 
smith's comparison  of  him  with  Terence 
might  pass  muster  as  a  compliment,  but  cer- 
tainly could  not  be  defended  on  the  score 
of  accuracy.  No  doubt  the  later  dramatist's 
methods  were  framed  on  those  of  Terence 
but  in  all  the  latter's  great  literary  quali- 
ties Cumberland  was  but  a  shadow  of  him. 
Where  is  that  pure  and  perfect  style  which 
have  caused  some  eminent  critics  to  class 
Terence  with  Cicero,  Caesar,  and  Lucre- 
tius ?  Where  the  fine  individualisation  of 
character,  the  cosmopolitanism,  the 
metrical  skill,  the  coruscating  wit,  the 
exquisite  pathos?  Cumberland's  "Mem- 
oirs" are  garrulous,  but  interesting, 
though  some  of  his  stories  and  recollec- 
tions require  taking  with  a  considerable 
grain  of  salt.  But  he  is  so  overshadowed 
by  his  contemporaries,  that  something  less 
than  justice  has  been  done  to  his  literary 
powers.  In  private  life  he  was  all  that 
was  excellent  and  sincere,  he  had  varied 
stores  of  information,  which  he  was  never 
backward  in  imparting ;  and  he  was  ever 
moved  by  a  genuine  consideration  for  the 
claims  and  feelings  of  others. — Smith, 
George  Barnett,  1900,  The  English  Ter- 
ence, Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  73,  p.  256. 

Richard  Cumberland,  playright,  novel- 
ist, poet,  essayist,  and  editor,  civil  servant 
and  amateur  diplomatist,  belongs  to  that 
numerous  body  of  authors  who  have  had  to 
pay  for  temporary  popularity  by  perma- 
nent neglect.  His  comedies  have  not  held 
the  stage  like  those  of  his  contemporaries, 
Sheridan  and  Goldsmith :  his  novels  are  no 
longer  read  like  those  of  his  model,  Henry 
Fielding;  his " Observer"  essays  have  not 


562 


CUMBERLAND— PERCY 


become  a  classic  like  the ''Spectator"  and  place  they  deserve  in  the  biographical 

the  "Rambler;"  his  poems  are  dead;  his  literature  of  his  period. — Paston,  George, 

pamphlets  are  forgotten ;  and  even  his  de-  1901,  Little  Memoirs  of  the  Eighteenth 

lightful  "Memoirs"  have  hardly  taken  the  Century,  p.  57. 


Thomas  Percy 

1729-1811 

Bishop  of  Dromore,  1729-1811.  Born,  at  Bridgnorth,  Shropshire,  13  April,  1729. 
Early  education  at  Bridgnorth  Grammar  School.  Matric,  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  7 
July  1746;  B.  A.,  1750;  M.  A.,  1753.  Vicar  of  Easton-Maudit,  Northamptonshire, 
1753-82.  Rector  of  Wilby,  1756-82.  Married  Anne  Gutteridge,  1759.  Active 
literary  life.  Chaplain  to  George  II.,  1769.  D.  D.,  Camb.,  1770.  Dean  of  Carlisle, 
1778-82.  Bishop  of  Dromore,  1782.  Suffered  from  blindness  in  last  years  of  life. 
Died  at  Dromore,  30th  Sept.  1811.  Buried  at  Dromore  Cathedral.  Works:  **Hau 
Kiou  Choaun;or,  the  Pleasing  History"  (from  the  Chinese;  4  vols.,  anon.),  1761; 
''Miscellaneous  Pieces  relating  to  the  Chinese"  (2  vols.,  anon.),  1762;  "Five  Pieces 
of  Runic  Poetry  from  the  Islandic  Language"  (anon.),  1763;  "The  Song  of  Solomon, 
newly  translated"  (anon.),  1764;  "Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry"  (3  vols.), 
1765;  "A  Letter  describing  the  ride  to  Hulme  Abbey  from  Alnwich"  (anon.),  [1765]; 
"Four  Essays"  (anon.),  1767;  "A  Key  to  the  New  Testament,"  1769;  "A  Sermon" 
[on  John  xiii,  35],  1769;  "Northern  Antiquities"  (anon.),  1770;  "The  Hermit  of 
Warkworth"  (anon.),  1771;  "The  Matrons"  (anon.),  1772;  "Life  of  Dr.  Oliver  Gold- 
smith" (anon.),  1774;  "A  Sermon"  [on  Prov.  xxii,  6],  1790;  "An  Essay  on  the 
Origin  of  the  English  Stage,"  1793.  He  translated:  P.  H.  Mallet's  "Northern 
Antiquities,"  1770;  and  edited:  Surrey's  "Poems,"  1763;  the  "Household  Book  of 
the  Earl  of  Northumberland,"  1768.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary 
of  English  Authors,  p.  226. 


PERSONAL 

He  is  a  man  very  willing  to  learn,  and 
very  able  to  teach ;  a  man  out  of  whose 
company  I  never  go  without  having  learned 
something.  It  is  sure  that  he  vexes  me 
sometimes,  but  I  am  afraid  it  is  by  making 
me  feel  my  own  ignorance.  So  much  ex- 
tention  of  mind,  and  so  much  minute  ac- 
curacy of  inquiry,  if  you  survey  your  whole 
circle  of  acquaintance,  you  will  find  so 
scarce,  if  you  find  it  at  all,  that  you  will 
value  Percy  by  comparison.  Lord  Hailes 
is  somewhat  like  him;  but  Lord  Hailes 
does  not,  perhaps,  go  beyond  him  in  re- 
search ;  and  I  do  not  know  that  he  equals 
him  in  elegance.  Percy's  attention  to 
poetry  has  given  grace  and  splendour  to 
his  studies  of  antiquity.  A  mere  antiqua- 
rian is  a  rugged  being. — Johnson,  Sam- 
uel, 1778,  Letter  to  Boswell,  April  23; 
BoswelVs  Life  of  Johnson. 

No  bishop  in  this  kingdom  exercises  the 
various  functions  of  his  office  with  more 
ability,  diligence,  and  universal  approba- 
tion — Sturrock,  R.  W.,  1787,  Letter  to 
James  Macpherson,  Aug,  21 ;  Nicholses 
Literary  Illustrations,  vol.  vni,  p.  241. 

I  have  had  a  letter  from  the  Bishop  of 


Dromore  of  seven  sides  of  paper,  the  ob- 
ject of  which  was,  to  induce  me  to  add  to 
my  "Noble  Authors"  some  meditations  by 
a  foolish  Countess  of  Northumberland,  and 
to  set  me  to  inquire  after  a  MS.  Tract  of 
Earl  Algernon;  with  neither  of  which  I 
have  complied  or  shall.  The  Bishop  hav- 
ing created  himself  a  Percy,  is  gone  mad 
about  that  family,  tho'  the  Percys  are 
more  remembered  for  having  lost  their 
heads,  than  for  ever  having  had  a  head  that 
was  a  loss  to  lose. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1793,  Letter  to  Miss  Berry,  Oct.  16 ;  Berry 
Correspondence,  ed.  Lewis,  vol.  i,  p.  398. 

His  episcopal  functions  were  most  faith- 
fully and  efficiently  discharged,  securing 
him  (as  we  are  told)  the  respect  and  love 
of  all  denominations ;  but  this  is  no  more 
than  might  have  been  expected  from  a  man 
of  his  integrity  of  character  and  genuine 
religious  feelings — one  who  was,  in  a 
word,  actuated  by  a  high  sense  of  duty. — 
PiCKPORD,  J.,  1867,  Bishop  Percy's  Folio 
Manuscript,  Life,  p.  I. 

Percy  had  natually  a  hot  temper,  but 
this  cooled  down  with  time,  and  the  trials 
of  his  later  life  were  accepted  with  Chris- 
tian meekness.    One  of  his  relations,  who 


THOMAS  PERCY 


563 


as  a  boy  could  just  recollect  him,  told  Mr. 
Pickford  *'that  it  was  quite  a  pleasure  to 
see  even  then  his  gentleness,  amiability, 
and  fondness  for  children.  Every  day 
used  to  witness  his  strolling  down  to  a 
pond  in  the  palace  garden,  in  order  to  feed 
his  swans,  who  were  accustomed  to  come 
at  the  well-known  sound  of  the  old  man's 
voice. ' '  He  was  a  pleasing  companion  and 
a  steady  friend.  His  duties,  both  in  the 
retired  country  village  and  in  the  more 
elevated  positions  of  dean  and  bishop, 
were  all  performed  with  a  wisdom  and 
ardour  that  gained  him  the  confidence  of 
all  those  with  whom  he  was  brought  in 
contact.  The  praise  given  to  him  in  the 
inscription  on  the  tablet  to  his  memory  in 
Dromore  Cathedral  does  not  appear  to 
have  gone  beyond  the  truth.  It  is  there 
stated  that  he  resided  constantly  in  his 
diocese,  and  discharged  ''the  duties  of  his 
sacred  office  with  vigilance  and  zeal,  in- 
structing the  ignorant,  relieving  the 
necessitous,  and  comforting  the  distressed 
with  pastoral  affection."  He  was  re- 
vered for  his  piety  and  learning,  and  be- 
loved for  his  universal  benevolence,  by  all 
ranks  and  religious  denominations.  — 
Wheatley,  Henry  B.,  1891,  ed.  Percy's 
Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry^  Gen- 
eral Introduction^  vol.  I,  p.  Ixxix. 

RELIQUES  OF  ANCIENT  ENGLISH 
POETRY 

1765 

You  have  heard  me  speak  of  Mr.  Percy. 
He  was  in  treaty  with  Mr.  James  Dodsley 
for  the  publication  of  our  best  old  ballads 
in  three  volumes.  He  has  a  large  folio 
MS.  of  ballads  which  he  showed  me,  and 
which,  with  his  own  natural  and  acquired 
talents,  would  qualify  him  for  the  purpose 
as  well  as  any  man  in  England.  I  pro- 
posed the  scheme  to  him  myself,  wishing 
to  see  an  elegant  edition  and  good  collec- 
tion of  this  kind. — Shenstone,  William, 
1761,  Letter  to  Graves,  March  1. 

The  reader  is  here  presented  with  select 
remains  of  our  ancient  English  Bards  and 
Minstrels,  an  order  of  men,  who  were  once 
greatly  respected  by  our  ancestors,  and 
contributed  to  soften  the  roughness  of  a 
martial  and  unlettered  people  by  their 
songs  and  by  their  music.  The  greater 
part  of  them  are  extracted  from  an  ancient 
folio  manuscript,  in  the  Editor's  posses- 
sion, which  contains  near  two  hundred 
Poems,  Songs,  and  Metrical  Romances. 


This  MS.  was  written  about  the  middle  of 
the  last  century ;  but  contains  composi- 
tions of  all  times  and  dates,  from  the  age 
prior  to  Chaucer,  to  the  conclusion  of  the 
reign  of  Charles  1.  This  manuscript  was 
shown  to  several  learned  and  ingenious 
friends,  who  thought  the  contents  too 
curious  to  be  consigned  to  oblivion,  and 
importuned  the  possessor  to  select  some  of 
them  and  give  them  to  the  press.  As 
most  of  them  are  of  great  simplicity,  and 
seem  to  have  been  merely  written  for  the 
people,  he  was  long  in  doubt,  whether,  in 
the  present  state  of  improved  literature, 
they  could  be  deemed  worthy  the  attention 
of  the  public.  At  length  the  importunity 
of  his  friends  prevailed,  and  he  could  re- 
fuse nothing  to  such  judges  as  the  Author 
of  the  Rambler  and  the  late  Mr.  Shen- 
stone.—Percy,  Thomas,  1765,  Reliques 
of  Ancient  English  Poetry,  Preface. 

This  ingenious  work,  which  revived  the 
taste  for  our  old  poets,  is  too  well  known 
to  require  being  here  particularized. — 
Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1800, 
ed.  Phillips's  Theatrum  Poetarum  Angli- 
canorum.  Preface,  p.  Ixx. 

I  remember  well  the  spot  where  I  read 
these  volumes  for  the  first  time.  It  was 
beneath  a  huge  platanus  tree,  in  the  ruins 
of  what  had  been  intended  for  an  old- 
fashioned  arbor  in  the  garden  I  have 
mentioned.  The  summer-day  sped  onward 
so  fast,  that  notwithstanding  the  sharp  ap- 
petite of  thirteen,!  forgot  the  hour  of  din- 
ner, was  sought  for  with  anxiety,  and  was 
still  found  entranced  in  my  intellectual 
banquet.  To  read  and  to  remember  was 
in  this  instance  the  same  thing,  and  hence- 
forth I  overwhelmed  my  school-fellows, 
and  all  who  would  hearken  to  me,  with 
tragical  recitations  from  the  ballads  of 
Bishop  Percy.  The  first  time,  too,  I  could 
scrape  a  few  shillings  together,  which  were 
not  common  occurrences  with  me,  I  bought 
unto  myself  a  copy  of  these  beloved 
volumes ;  nor  do  I  believe  I  ever  read  a 
book  half  so  frequently,  or  with  half  the 
enthusiasm. — Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1808, 
Autobiography,  Life  by  Lockhart,  vol.  I, 
ch.  i. 

The  late  Bishop  of  Dromore,  if  he  merit 
no  other  distinction,  is  entitled  to  the 
proud  praise  of  being  the  Father  of  Poet- 
ical Taste,  in  that  department  of  literature 
which  he  has  the  exclusive  merit  of  having 
first  brought  into  public  notice.  His 


564 


THOMAS  PERCY 


"Reliques"  is  a  publication  that  reflects 
lasting  honor  upon  his  name ;  and  it  has 
proved  the  germ  of  a  rich  harvest  in  the 
same  field  of  the  muses. — Dibdin,  Thomas 
Frognall,  1817,  The  Bibliographical  De- 
cameroriy  vol,  ill,  p.  339. 

A  collection  singularly  heterogeneous, 
and  very  unequal  in  merit,  but  from  the 
publication  of  which,  in  1765,  some  of 
high  name  have  dated  the  revival  of  a 
genuine  feeling  for  true  poetry  in  the 
public  mind. — Hallam,  Henry,  1837-39, 
Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe^ 
pt.  ii,  eh.  v,  par.  78. 

I  never  take  up  these  three  heavily- 
bound  volumes,  the  actual  last  edition,  at 
which  Dr.  Johnson  was  wont  to  scoff,  with- 
out feeling  a  pleasure  quite  apart  from 
that  excited  by  the  charming  book  itself ; 
although  to  that  book,  far  more  than  to  any 
modern  school  of  minstrelsy  we  owe  the  re- 
vival of  the  taste  for  romantic  and  lyrical 
poetry,  which  had  lain  dormant  since  the 
days  of  the  Commonwealth.  This  pleasure 
springs  from  a  very  simple  cause.  The 
associations  of  these  ballads  with  the 
happiest  days  of  my  happy  childhood. — 
MiTPORD,  Mary  Russell,  1851,  Recollec- 
tions of  a  Literary  Life^  p.  1. 

Perhaps  the  publication  which  was  as 
yet  at  once  the  most  remarkable  product  of 
this  new  taste,  and  the  most  effective  agent 
in  its  diffusion,  was  Percy's  celebrated 
'^Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry,'' 
which  first  appeared  in  1765.  The  recep- 
tion of  this  book  was  the  same  that  what 
is  natural  and  true  always  meets  with 
when  brought  into  fair  competition  with 
the  artificial. — Craik,  George  L.,  1861, 
A  Compendious  History  of  English  Litera- 
ture and  of  the  English  Language,  vol.  ii, 
p.  308. 

The  publication  of  the  ^'Reliques,'* 
then,  constitutes  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  the  great  revival  of  taste,  in  whose 
blessings  we  now  participate.  After  1765, 
before  the  end  of  the  century,  numerous 
collections  of  old  ballads,  in  Scotland  and 
England,  by  Evans,  by  Pinkerton,  Herd, 
Ritson,  were  made.  The  noble  reforma- 
tion, that  received  so  great  an  impulse  in 
1765,  advanced  thenceforward  steadily. 
The  taste  that  was  awakened  never  slum- 
bered again.  The  recognition  of  our  old 
life  and  poetry  that  the ''Reliques"  gave, 
was  at  last  gloriously  confirmed  and  estab- 
lished by  Walter  Scott.— Hales,  John  W., 


1868,  Bishop  Percy^s  Folio  Manuscript , 
The  Revival  of  Ballad  Poetry  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  vol.  Ii,  p.  xxix. 

The  ''Reliques  of  Ancient  English 
Poetry,''  published  in  1765  by  Bishop 
Thomas  Percy,  produced  a  purer  and  more 
lasting  effect  than  Macpherson' s ' '  Ossian. ' ' 
They  are  the  fruit  of  the  industry  of  a 
loving  and  careful  collector,  and  proved  to 
every  susceptible  mind  that  the  essence  of 
poetry  is  not  to  be  found  in  formalism,  and 
in  sober  reflection,  but  in  true  and  strong 
feelings.  In  Percy's ' ' Religues' '  we  again 
meet  with  undisguised  nature,  with  simple 
feeling,  and  with  energetic  action;  they 
are  the  poetic  reflection  of  an  age  of 
national  heroes  and  whose  traditions  are 
closely  interwoven  with  English  thought 
and  feeling.  Hence  the  powerful  and 
rapid  influence  these  ancient  relics  of 
minstrelsy  acquired  in  England  and  Scot- 
land, an  influence  which  may  be  traced  in 
the  development  of  English  poetry  down  to 
our  own  days. — Scherr,  J.,  1874,  A  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  tr.  M.  F.,  p.  167. 

So  ready  and  inflammable  was  the 
material  prepared  for  these  living  coals, 
unraked  from  the  ashes  of  departed  years. 
The^'Reliques"  were  largely  composed  of 
the  lyrics  of  earlier  and  later  writers.  The 
ballads  yielded  the  key-note,  and  then  gave 
place  to  the  melody  of  more  modern  verse, 
the  most  free  and  national  in  its  charac- 
ter. Lyric  poetry,  less  ambitious  than 
other  forms,  more  close  to  the  individual 
sentiment,  is  wont  to  be  the  refuge  of 
the  most  genuine,  simple  and  passionate 
strains;  to  be  most  deeply  infused  with 
the  national  temper. — Bascom,  John, 
1874,  Philosophy  of  English  Literature, 
p.  224. 

Percy's  **Reliques"  is  commonly  men- 
tioned as  the  turning-point  in  the  taste  of 
the  last  century,  but  it  was  quite  as  much 
the  result,  as  the  cause,  of  the  renewed 
interest  in  old  ballads.  Percy  did  more 
completely  what  had  been  done  feebly  be- 
fore. Still,  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  the 
date  of  the  publication,  1765,  as  mnemonic 
point,  for  this  was  by  far  the  most  im- 
portant of  the  collections.  A  copy  of 
the  book  fell  into  the  hands  of  Biirger 
(1748-94),  who  translated  many  of  the 
ballads  into  German,  and  was  inspired  by 
it  to  write  his  own  *'Lenore."  ...  It 
would  be  fair  to  say  that  Percy's  '*Re- 
liques"  had  more  influence  in  Germany  than 


THOMAS  PERCY 


565 


in  England.  Burger  and  his  fellow-poets 
of  the  ''Hainbund, "  who  were  all  young 
men  with  a  confused  hatred  of  tyrants  and 
great  affection  for  the  full  moon,  took 
to  writing  more  ballads  after  the  old 
pattern,  as  illustrated  by  Percy's  ''Re- 
liques"  and  explained  by  Herder,  and  soon 
Herder  established  the  new  lines  in  which 
German  thought  was  destined  to  run,  sub- 
stituting the  intelligent  study  of  the  past 
for  the  faithful  following  of  academic 
rules. — Perry,  Thomas  Sergeant,  1883, 
English  Literature  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, pp.  422,- 423. 

In  undertaking  the  supervision  of  a  new 
edition  of  the* '  Reliques  of  Ancient  English 
Poetry,"  I  felt  that  no  safer  or  better 
guidance  could  be  followed  than  that  of 
Bishop  Percy  himself ;  and  as  he  always 
strove,  in  the  several  editions  published 
by  himself,  to  embody  therein  the  sum  of 
the  knowledge  of  his  times,  so  I,  following 
at  a  distance,  have  endeavoured,  by  gather- 
ing from  many  quarters  particulars  pub- 
lished since  his  death,  to  make  his  book 
still  more  worthy  of  the  great  reputation 
it  has  acquired. — Wheatley,  Henry  B., 
1891,  ed.  Percy's  Reliques  of  Ancient  Eng- 
lish Poetry^  Preface,  vol.  I,  p.  ix. 

It  was  an  epoch-making  book,  and  is 
usually  spoken  of  as  one  of  the  chief  causes 
of  the  great  re-awakening  in  English 
poetry.  But  the  course  of  our  studies  in 
the  ballad  revival  proves  that  Percy's  book 
was  fully  as  much  a  result  as  it  was  a 
cause  of  the  Romantic  movement.  — 
Phelps,  William  Lyon,  1893,  The  Begin- 
nings of  the  English  Romantic  Movement^ 
p.  129. 

Percy  was  a  critic  of  admirable  poetical 
taste  and  literary  skill,  but  he  was  not 
altogether  proof  against  the  temptations 
to  which  these  qualities  exposed  him.  In 
the  collection  of  ballads  which  he ' '  edited' ' 
from  the  MS.  in  his  possession,  he  did  not 
scruple  to  alter  and  supplement  the  origi- 
nal text  whenever  he  thought  that  by  so 
doing  he  could  improve  the  general  effect. 
By  these  practices  he  roused  the  wrath  of 
an  able  and  relentless  antagonist. — Court- 
hope,  W.  J.,  1895,  A  History  of  English 
Poetry,  vol.  i,  p.  428. 

Percy  not  only  rescued,  himself,  a  num- 
ber of  ballads  from  f orgetfulness ;  what 
was  equally  important,  his  book  prompted 
others  to  hunt  out  and  publish  similar 
relics  before  it  was  too  late.    It  was  the 


occasion  of  collections  like  Herd's  (1769), 
Scott's  (1802-03),  and  Motherwell's 
(1827),  and  many  more,  resting  on  purer 
texts  and  edited  on  more  scrupulous  prin- 
ciples than  his  own.  Furthermore,  his 
ballads  helped  to  bring  about  a  reform  in 
literary  taste  and  to  inspire  men  of  original 
genius.  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Southey, 
Scott,  all  acknowledged  the  greatest  ob- 
ligations to  them.  Wordsworth  said  that 
English  poetry  had  been  ''absolutely  re- 
deemed" by  them.  *'I  do  not  think  there 
is  a  writer  in  verse  of  the  present  day  who 
would  not  be  proud  to  acknowledge  his 
obligations  to  the  'Reliques.'  I  know 
that  it  is  so  with  my  friends;  and  for 
myself,  I  am  happy  in  this  occasion  to 
make  a  public  avowal  of  my  own."  With- 
out the  "Reliques,"  "The  Ancient 
Mariner,"  "The  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  "La 
Belle  Dame  sans  Merci,"  "Stratton 
Water,  "and "The  Haystack  in  the  Floods" 
might  never  have  been.  Perhaps  even  the 
"Lyrical  Ballads"  might  never  have  been, 
or  might  have  been  something  quite  unlike 
what  they  are.— Beers,  Henry  A.,  1898, 
A  History  of  English  Romanticism  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  299. 

GENERAL 

Dr.  Percy  was  so  abashed  by  the  ridicule 
flung  upon  his  labours  from  the  ignorance 
and  insensibility  of  the  persons  with  whom 
he  lived,  that,  though  while  he  was  writing 
under  a  mask  he  had  not  wanted  resolution 
to  follow  his  genius  into  the  regions  of 
true  simplicity  and  genuine  pathos  (as  is 
evinced  by  the  exquisite  ballad  of  "Sir 
Cauline,"  and  by  many  other  pieces),  yet 
when  he  appeared  in  his  own  person  and 
character  as  a  poetical  writer,  he  adopted, 
as  in  the  tale  of  the  "Hermit  of  Wark- 
worth,"  a  diction  scarcely  in  any  one  of 
its  features  distinguishable  from  the 
vague,  the  glossy,  and  unfeeling  language 
of  his  day.  I  mention  this  remarkable 
fact  with  regret,  esteeming  the  genius  of 
Dr.  Percy  in  this  kind  of  writing  superior 
to  that  of  any  other  man  by  whom  in 
modern  times  it  has  been  cultivated. — 
Wordsworth,  William,  1815,  Poems,  Es- 
say Supplementary  to  the  Preface. 

Percy  was  not,  perhaps,  a  man  of  much 
originality  of  genius,  or  great  strength,  or 
richness  of  mind.  Johnson  was  probably 
right  when  he  said,  "He  runs  about  with 
little  weight  upon  his  mind. "  Yet  he  was 
unquestionably  endowed  with  certain  rare 


566 


PERCY— GRAHAME 


qualities.  He  had  ardent  enthusiasm,  an 
enthusiasm  which,  like  that  of  Scott,  was 
the  same  in  kind,  although  different  in 
direction,  from  that  of  his  warlike  ances- 
tors ;  he  had  a  vivid  sympathy  with  the  old 
writers,  and  could  think  their  thoughts, 
feel  their  passions,  and  talk  their  language ; 


he  had  invincible  diligence,  an  enormous 
memory,  and  had  written  some  ballads  of 
his  own,  such  as  ''Sir  Cauline,"  which 
entitle  him  to  an  independent  and  consid- 
erable poetical  reputation. —  Gilfillan, 
George,  1858,  ed.  Reliques  of  Ancient  Eng- 
lish Poetry,  Life  of  Thomas  Percy,  p.  9. 


James  G-rahame 

1765-1811 

Born  at  Glasgow,  April  22,  1765.  His  father  was  a  successful  lawyer,  and,  by  a 
very  common  error,  he  conceived  that  no  other  profession  could  be  so  suitable  or  so 
advantageous  for  his  son.  James,  dutiful,  and  shrinking  from  opposition,  as  he  did 
all  through  life,  obeyed  the  parental  wish,  and  after  completing  his  literary  course  at 
the  university  of  his  native  city,  went  in  1784  to  Edinburgh,  where  he  studied  law, 
first  to  qualify  himself  for  the  business  of  writer  to  the  signet,  and  subsequently  for 
the  Scottish  bar,  of  which  he  was  elected  a  member  in  1795.  His  inclinations,  how- 
ever, were  all  for  retirement  and  literature;  and  finally,  when  he  had  reached  the 
mature  age  of  forty-four,  he  took  orders  in  the  English  Church,  and  became  curate 
first  at  Shipton,  Glouchestershire  and  then  at  Sedgefield  in  the  county  of  Durham.  He 
did  not  long  enjoy  an  office  which  he  adorned  by  his  pious  and  eloquent  ministrations. 
Ill  health  compelled  him  to  try  the  renovating  effects  of  his  native  air,  but  he  died 
shortly  after  his  return,  September  14,  1811.  The  works  of  Grahame  consist  of  a 
dramatic  poem  ''Mary  Queen  of  Scots"  (published  in  1801),  "The  Sabbath"  (1804), 
"British  Georgics''  (1804),  "The  Birds  of  Scotland"  (1806),  and  "Poems  on  the 
Abolition  of  the  Slave  Trade"  (1810).— Baynes,  Thomas  Spencer,  ed.,  1880,  Encyclo- 
pcedia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  XI,  p.  31. 


PERSONAL 

Yet,  well  I  loved  thee,  even  as  one  might  love 
An  elder  brother,  imaged  in  the  soul 
With  solemn  features,  half -creating  awe, 
But  smiling  still  with  gentleness  and  peace. 
Tears  have  I  shed  when  thy  most  mournful 
voice 

Did  trembling  breathe  forth  that  touching  air, 
By  Scottish  shepherd  haply  framed  of  old. 
Amid  the  silence  of  his  pastoral  hills, 
Weeping  the  flowers  on  Flodden-field  that 
died. 

Wept  too  have  I,  when  thou  didst  simply  read 
From  thine  own  lays,  so  simply  beautiful. 
Some  short  pathetic  tale  of  human  grief. 
Or  orison  or  hymn  of  deeper  love, 
That  might  have  won  the  skeptic's  sullen 
heart 

To  gradual  adoration,  and  belief 

Of  Him  who  died  for  us  upon  the  cross. 

— Wilson,  John,  1811,  Lines  Sacred  to 

the  Memory  of  the  Rev.  James  Grahame. 

Poor  Grahame,  gentle,  and  amiable,  and 
enthusiastic,  deserves  all  you  can  say  of 
him ;  his  was  really  a  hallowed  harp,  as  he 
was  himself  an  Israelite  without  guile. 
How  often  have  I  teazed  him,  but  never 
out  of  his  good-humour,  by  praising  Dun- 
dee and  laughing  at  the  Covenanters ! — 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1811,  Letter  to  Joanna 
Baillie ;  Life  by  Lockhart,  ch.  xxiii. 


I  propose  to  send  to  one  of  the  periodical 
works  a  biographical  notice  of  the  life  and 
writings  of  my  poor  friend  Grahame.  But 
so  small  a  part  of  James's  value  lay  in  his 
poetry,  that  I  feel  it  difficult  to  express  my 
real  sentiments  about  it.  .  .  .  One  of  the 
most  endearing  circumstances  which  I 
remember  of  Grahame  was  his  singing. 
I  shall  never  forget  one  summer  evening 
that  we  agreed  to  sit  up  all  night,  and  go 
together  to  Arthur's  Seat,  to  see  the  sun 
rise.  We  sat,  accordingly,  all  night  in 
his  delightful  parlor — the  seat  of  so  many 
happy  remembrances !  We  then  went  and 
saw  a  beautiful  sunrise.  I  returned  home 
with  him,  for  I  was  living  in  his  house  at 
the  time.  He  was  unreserved  in  all  his 
devoutest  feelings  before  me;  and  from 
the  beauty  of  the  morning  scenery,  and 
the  recent  death  of  his  sister,  our  con- 
versation took  a  serious  turn,  on  the 
proofs  of  infinite  benevolence  in  the  crea- 
tion, and  the  goodness  of  God.  As  I  re- 
tired to  my  own  bed,  I  overheard  his 
devotions — not  his  prayer,  but  a  hymn 
which  he  sung,  and  with  a  power  and  in- 
spiration beyond  himself,  and  everything 
else.  At  that  time  he  was  a  strong 
voiced  and    commanding-looking  man. 


JAMES  GRAHAME 


567 


The  remembrance  of  his  large,  expressive 
features  when  he  climbed  the  hill,  and  of 
his  organ-like  voice  in  praising  God,  is  yet 
fresh,  and  ever  pleasing  in  my  miud.  But 
it  is  rendered  a  sad  recollection  from  con- 
trasting his  then  energy  with  the  faltering 
and  fallen  man  which  he  afterwards  be- 
came.—Campbell,  Thomas,  1812,  Life 
and  Letter Sy  ed.,  Beattie,  vol.  I,  ch.  xxv. 

Tall,  solemn,  large-featured,  and  very 
dark,  he  was  not  unlike  one  of  the  in- 
dependent preachers  of  the  commonwealth. 
He  is  styled  "sepulchral  Grahame"  by 
Byron.  Neither  the  bar,  at  which  he 
practised  a  few  years,  nor  Whig  principles, 
in  the  promotion  of  which  he  was  most 
ardent  (but  with  which  he  meant  only  the 
general  principles  of  liberty),  were  the 
right  vocation  of  a  pensive  nature,  whose 
delight  was  in  religion  and  poetry.  .  .  . 
With  the  softest  of  human  hearts,  his  in- 
dignation knew  no  bounds  when  it  was 
roused  by  what  he  held  to  be  oppression, 
especially  of  animals  or  the  poor,  both  of 
whom  he  took  under  his  special  protection. 
He  and  a  beggar  seemed  always  to  be  old 
friends.  The  merit  of  his  verse  consists 
in  its  expressing  the  feelings  of  his  own 
heart.  It  all  breathes  a  quiet,  musing 
benevolence,  and  a  sympathy  with  the 
happiness  of  every  living  creature.  Con- 
tention, whether  at  the  bar  or  in  the 
church,  had  no  charms  for  one  to  whom  a 
Scotch  tune  was  a  pleasure  for  a  winter 
evening,  and  who  could  pass  the  whole 
summer  days  in  cultivating  the  personal 
acquaintance  of  birds  in  their  own  haunts, 
and  to  whom  nothing  was  a  luxury  that 
excluded  the  etherial  calm  of  indolence. 
Yet  his  virtue  was  by  no  means  passive. 
He  was  roused  into  a  new  nature  by  ab- 
horrence of  cruelty,  and  could  submit  to 
anything  in  the  cause  of  duty  — ^CocK- 
BURN,  Henry  Thomas  Lord,  1852,  Life 
of  Lord  Jeffrey. 

GENERAL 

We  have  a  new  poet  come  forth  amongst 
us — James  Graham,  author  of  a  poem 
called  the  "Sabbath,  "  which  I  admire  very 
much.— Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1805,  To  Miss 
Seward,  March  21 ;  Life  by  Lockhart,ch.xm. 

The  greater  part  of  it  ["The  Sabbath"] 
is  written  in  a  heavy  and  inelegant  man- 
ner. The  diction  throughout  is  tainted 
with  vulgarity,  and  there  is  no  selection 
of  words,  images,  or  sentiments,  to  con- 
ciliate the  favour  of  the  fastidious  reader. 


The  author  has  evidently  some  talents  for 
poetical  compositions,  and  is  never  abso- 
lutely absurd,  tedious,  or  silly;  but  he  has 
no  delicacy  of  taste  or  imagination;  he 
does  not  seem  to  feel  the  force  of  the 
sanction  against  poetical  mediocrity,  and 
his  ear  appears  to  have  no  perception  of 
the  finer  harmony  of  versification.  If  he 
be  a  young  man,  we  think  there  are  con- 
siderable hopes  of  him :  but  if  this  be  the 
production  of  maturer  talents,  we  cannot 
in  our  conscience  exhort  him  to  continue  to 
the  service  of  the  muses.  .  .  It 
contains  a  good  deal  of  doctrine  and 
argumentation,  indeed,  both  in  the  text 
and  in  the  notes ;  but  nothing  that  is  not 
either  very  trite  or  very  shallow  and  ex- 
travagant. .  .  .  The  whole  publica- 
tion, indeed,  though  not  entitled  to  stand 
in  the  first  rank  of  poetical  excellence,  is 
respectably  executed,  and  may  be  con- 
sidered as  very  creditable,  either  to  a 
beginner,  or  to  one  who  does  not  look 
upon  poetry  as  his  primary  vocation. — 
Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1805,  The  Sabbath, 
Edinburgh  Review ,  vol.  5,  pp.  441,  442. 
Sweet  are  thy  Sabbath  lays,  my  gentle 
Grahame, 

Pure  as  thy  mind,  and  spotless  as  thy  fame ! 
— Grant,  Anne,  1808,  Inscribed  in  ''The 
Sabbath/*  Memoir  and  Correspondence, 
ed.  Grant,  vol.  I,  p.  137. 
Moravians,  rise !  bestow  some  meet  reward 
On  dull  devotion — ^Lo  I  the  Sabbath  bard, 
Sepulchral  Grahame,  pours  hisnotes  sublime, 
In  mangled  prose,  nor  e'en  aspires  to  rhyme. 
Breaks  into  blank  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke, 
And  boldly  pilfers  from  the  Pentateuch ; 
And,  undisturb'd  by  conscientious  qualms, 
Perverts  the  Prophets   and   purloins  the 
Psalms. 

— Byron,  Lord,  1809,  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers. 

While  the  criticasters  of  his  own  coun- 
try were  pronouncing  sentence  of  con- 
demnation upon  it,  for  its  pious  dulness 
and  inanity,  the  ''Sabbath"  had  found  its 
way  from  one  end  of  Great  Britain  to  the 
other ; — it  was  in  the  mouths  of  the  young, 
and  in  the  hearts  of  the  aged. — Southey, 
Robert,  1810,  Grahame' s  British  Georgics, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  3,  p.  457. 
O  Bard  of  sinless  life  and  holiest  song ! 

 Thou  didst  despise 

To  win  the  ear  of  this  degenerate  age 
By  gorgeous  epithets,  all  idly  heaped 
On  theme  of  earthly  state,  or,  idler  still, 
By  tinkling  measures  and  unchastened  lays. 
Warbled  to  pleasure  and  her  syren-train. 


568 


JAMES  GRAHAME 


Profaning  the  best  name  of  poesy. 
With  loftier  aspirations,  and  an  aim 
More  worthy  man's  immortal  nature,  Thou 
That  holiest  spirit  that  still  loves  to  dwell 
In  the  upright  heart  and  pure,  at  noon  of  night 
Didst  fervently  invoke,  and,  led  by  her 
Above  the  Aonian  mount,  sent  from  the  stars 
Of  heaven  such  soul-subduing  melody 
As  Bethlehem-shepherds  heard  when  Christ 
was  born. 

— Wilson,  John,  1811,  Lines  Sacred  to 
the  Memory  of  the  Rev.  James  Grahame. 

His  taste  was  singular,  and  his  manner 
correspondent.  The  general  tenor  of  his 
style  is  homely,  and  frequently  so  prosaic 
that  its  peculiar  graces  appear  in  their 
full  lustre  from  the  contrast  of  meanness 
that  surrounds  them.  His  readers  may 
be  few ;  but  whoever  does  read  him  will 
probably  be  of tener  surprised  into  admira- 
tion, than  in  the  perusal  of  any  one  of  his 
contemporaries.  The  most  lively,  the 
most  lovely  sketches  of  natural  scenery, 
of  minute  imagery,  and  of  exquisite 
incident,  unexpectedly  developed,  occur 
in  his  compositions,  with  ever- varying,  yet 
ever-assimilating  features.  —  Montgom- 
ery, James,  1833,  Lectures  on  General 
Liter aturCy  Poetry,  etc.,  p.  159. 

The  blank  verse  of  Grahame  has  some 
resemblance  in  structure  to  that  of  Cowper 
and  of  Wordsworth ;  but  as  an  artist,  he 
was  much  inferior  to  and  wants  the  cor- 
rectness of  either.  Whether  this  arose 
from  deficiency  of  ear — which  could  not 
well  be,  as  he  is  said  to  have  sung  the 
ballads  and  songs  of  our  native  land 
mellifluously,  and  with  a  touching  tender- 
ness— ^or  from  some  preconceived  convic- 
tion of  its  effect  in  preventing  monotony, 
we  have  ever,  here  and  there,  a  line  that 
halts,  or  that  grates  prosaically  on  the  ear, 
like  an  instrument  out  of  tune.  His  pages 
are  never  lighted  up  with  wit  or  humour ; 
and  it  has  been  objected  to  him,  that  he 
is  too  uniformly  tender  or  solemn. — MoiR, 
D.  M.,  1850-51,  Sketches  of  the  Political 
Literature  of  the  Past  Half-Century,  p.  26. 

It  [''British  Georgics"]  does  not  exhibit 
any  particular  system  of  husbandry;  it 
amuses  rather  than  instructs,  and  recom- 
mends the  study  of  the  science  rather 
than  teaching  of  it.  The  work  embraces 
a  mixed  description,  and  is  lavish  on  rural 
modes  and  manners;  the  poetry  is  both 
lame  and  tame,  and  never  rises  beyond  a 
feebleness  of  conception,  and  a  descriptive 
halt.    The  portion  of  practical  knowledge 


is  very  minute,  with  incidental  notes  of 
new  introductions.  — Donaldson,  John, 
1854,  Agricultural  Biography. 

Grahame' s  genius  was  limited  in  its 
range  but  within  that  range  was  exquisitely 
true  and  beautiful.  He  had  no  dranfatic 
power,  has  written  no  lyrics  of  merit,  and 
his  vein  of  thought  is  far  from  profound. 
He  has  been  called  the  Cowper  of  Scot- 
land, and  resembles  him  in  tenderness  of 
feeling,  truth  of  natural  description,  and 
ardent  piety,  but  is  vastly  inferior  in 
strength  of  mind,  force  and  continuity  of 
style,  and,  whatever  he  might  do  in 
private,  has  in  his  poetry  given  no  evidence 
of  possessing  a  particle  of  Cowper's  re- 
fined and  inimitable  humour.  — Gilfillan, 
George,  1856,  ed.,  The  Poetical  Works  of 
Henry  Kirke  White  and  James  Grahame. 

We  may  add,  before  we  leave  these 
northern  scenes,  to  which  for  a  time  the 
high  flood  of  intellectual  activity  seemed 
to  have  been  transferred,  the  gentle  name 
of  James  Grahame,  the  author  of  the 
''Sabbath."  He  was  not  a  great  poet, 
nor  is  that  a  great  poem,  but  it  is  very 
national,  and  full  of  a  tender  sweetness — 
and  echo  of  Cowper  on  Scottish  soil. 
Grahame  came  to  light  among  the  early 
band  of  the  Edinburgh  Reviewers,  a 
spectator  and  sympathiser,  if  no  more — 
adding  a  mild  enthusiasm  for  the  work  of 
his  stronger  and  more  daring  friends  to 
his  own  gentle  faculty.  .  .  .  His 
poems  are  full  of  the  atmosphere  of  a  pure 
and  retired  existence,  with  something, 
however,  that  reminds  the  reader  more  of 
a  Scottish  manse  than  an  English  parson- 
age ;  and  he  was  always  intensely  national. 
— Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882, 
The  Literary  History  of  England  XVIHth- 
XlXth  Century,  vol.  n,  pp.  169,  170. 

When  married,  Grahame  discovered  that 
his  wife  thought  but  meanly  of  his  poetry, 
and  this,  no  doubt,  was  his  main  reason 
for  publishing  "The  Sabbath"  anonymously 
in  1804.  It  charmed  him  to  find  Mrs. 
Grahame  in  raptures  over  the  descriptive 
beauty,  the  vivid  historical  illustrations, 
the  moving,  sentimental  pictures,  and  the 
deep  religious  earnestness  of  a  poem  that 
is  Scottish  to  the  core ;  and  he  then  avowed 
the  authorship.  Three  new  editions  were 
called  for  in  a  year,  and  to  these  Grahame 
added  descriptive  and  thoughtful ' ' Sabbath 
Walks."— Bayne,  Thomas,  1890,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography, vol.  xxn,  p.  366. 


569 


John  Horne  Tooke 

1736-1812 

Born  [John  Horne ;  adopted  additional  name  of  Tooke  in  1782  as  a  compliment  to  a 
patron]  at  Westminster,  25  June  1736.  Early  educations  at  schools  in  Soho  and  in 
Kent.  At  Westminster  School,  1744-46;  at  Eton,  1746-53.  Matric.  St.  John's 
Coll.,  Camb.,  1755;  B.  A.,  1758;  M.  A.,  1771.  Ordained  Vicar  of  New  Brentford  in 
1760;  but  gave  up  orders  in  1773,  and  took  up  pursuit  of  law.  Imprisoned  for  libel, 
1777-78.  Tried  on  charge  of  high  treason,  but  acquitted,  1794.  M.  P.  for  Old 
Sarum,  Feb.  1801  to  1802.  Died,  at  Wimbledon,  18  March  1812.  Buried  at  Ealing. 
Works:  ''The  Petition  of  an  Englishman"  (anon.),  1765;  *'A  Sermon,"  1769;  ''An 
Oration  delivered  at  a  .  .  .  Meeting  of  the  Freeholders  of  Middlesex"  [1770] ; 
''Letter  to  John  Dunning,  Esq.,"  1778;  "Letter  to  Lord  Ashburton,"  1782;  "  'Enea 
Urepoevra^"  1786 ;  "Letter  to  a  Friend  on  the  Reported  Marriage  of  the  Prince  of  Wales," 
1787;  "Two  Pair  of  Portraits,"  1788;  "Letter  on  the  Meeting  at  the  Crown  and 
Anchor  Tavern,"  1791;  "Proceedings  in  an  Action  for  Debt,"  1792;  "Letter  on  Parlia- 
mentary Reform,"  1794;  "Speeches  .  .  .  during  the  Westminster  Election,  1796" 
[1796] ;  "Letter  to  the  Editor  of  'The  Times,'  "  1807.  Life,  by  J.  A.  Graham,  1828. 
—Sharp,  R.  Farquh arson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  281. 


PERSONAL 

There  is  abundance  of  proof  that  Mr. 
Horne  was  now  considered  an  admirable 
preacher,  and  that  his  eloquence  only 
wanted  cultivation  to  place  him  among  the 
most  successful  of  our  English  divines. 
But  it  was  in  orthodox  and  doctrinal  dis- 
courses that  he  chiefly  excelled,  and  he  is 
accordingly  reported  to  have  distinguished 
himself  greatly  by  his  exhortations  before 
confirmation,  on  which  occasion,  by  min- 
gling sound  argument  with  kind  and  affec- 
tionate persuasion,  he  never  failed  to  make 
a  suitable  impression  on  all  who  heard 
him.  In  short,  he  might  not  only  have 
been  greatly  respected  as  a  popular 
pastor,  but  was  still  in  a  fair  way  to  become 
one  of  the  pillars  of  the  Anglican  church, 
when  a  memorable  event  occurred  in  the 
political  world,  and  proved  an  insur- 
mountable, though  not,  perhaps,  an  unex- 
pected obstacle  to  his  future  preferment. 
— Stephens,  Alexander,  1813,  Memoirs 
of  John  Horne  Tooke. 

It  would  be  but  impertinent,  however, 
to  effect  to  call  such  a  character  as  that 
of  John  Horne  Tooke  to  account  for  this 
or  the  other  particular  culpability.  It 
would  be  something  like  attending  to 
criticize  the  transactions  of  a  pagan 
temple,  and  excepting  to  one  rite  as  un- 
graceful, perhaps,  and  to  another  practice 
as  irreverent ;  like  as  if  the  substance  of 
the  service  were  of  a  quality  to  deserve 
that  its  particular  parts  should  be  cor- 
rected. His  whole  moral  constitution  was 
unsound,  from  the  exclusion  ...  of 
all  respect  to  a  future  account,  to  be  given 


to  the  Supreme  Governor.  Towards  the 
conclusion  of  his  life,  he  made  calm  and 
frequent  references  to  his  death,  but  not 
a  word  is  here  recorded  expressive  of 
anticipations  beyond  it. — Foster,  John, 
1813,  Home  Tooke,  Critical  Essags,  ed. 
Ryland,  vol.  n,  p.  191. 

Mr.  Horne  Tooke  was  one  of  those  who 
may  be  considered  as  connecting  links 
between  a  former  period  and  the  existing 
generation.  His  education  and  accom- 
plishments, nay,  his  political  opinions,  were 
of  the  last  age ;  his  mind,  and  the  tone  of 
his  feeling  were  modern.  There  was  a 
hard,  dry  materialism  in  the  very  texture 
of  his  understanding,  varnished  over  by 
the  external  refinement  of  the  old  school. 
Mr.  Tooke  had  great  scope  of  attainments, 
and  great  versatility  of  pursuits ;  but  the 
same  shrewdness,  quickness,  cool  self- 
possession,  the  same  literalness  of  per- 
ception, the  absence  of  passion  and  en- 
thusiasm, characterised  nearly  all  he  did, 
said  or  wrote.  He  was  without  a  rival 
(almost)  in  private  conversation,  an  expert 
public  speaker,  a  keen  politician,  a  first- 
rate  grammarian,  and  the  finest  gentleman 
(to  say  the  least)  of  his  own  party.  He 
had  no  imagination  (or  he  would  not  have 
scorned  it!)— no  delicacy  of  taste,  no 
rooted  prejudices  or  strong  attachments  : 
his  intellect  was  like  a  bow  of  polished 
steel,  from  which  he  shot  sharp-pointed 
poisoned  arrows  at  his  friends  in  private, 
at  his  enemies  in  public.  His  mind  (so  to 
speak)  had  no  religion  in  it,  and  very 
little  even  of  the  moral  qualities  of  genius ; 
but  he  was  a  man  of  the  world,  a  scholar 


570 


JOHN  HORNE  TOOKE 


bred,  and  a  most  acute  and  powerful 
logician.  He  was  also  a  wit  and  a  for- 
midable one:  yet  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  his  wit  was  anything  more  than 
an  excess  of  his  logical  faculty :  it  did  not 
consist  in  the  play  of  fancy,  but  in  close 
and  cutting  combinations  of  the  under- 
standing.—Hazlitt,  William,  1825,  The 
Spirit  0/  the  Age. 

While  the  compositions  of  Junius  have 
furnished  a  model  of  style,  as  bold  and 
brilliant  as  it  is  classical,  the  Author  has 
eluded  discovery,  and  to  this  moment,  as 
if  disdaining  applause,  the  motto  embla- 
zoned on  the  escutcheon  of  his  fame,  ap- 
plies, "Statnominis  umbra."  This,  it 
must  be  admitted,  is  an  appalling  circum- 
stance, not  only  checking  ambition,  but 
assailing  the  enquirer  at  the  entrance; 
like  some  ancient  sepulchral  inscription, 
at  once  rebuking  the  curiosity  of  the  pro- 
fane intruder,  and  sternly  prohibiting  his 
further  advance.  Knowing,  however, 
that  the  avenues  to  the  temple  of  truth 
are  ever  open,  and  that  its  votaries  are 
not  to  be  deterred  from  fair  and  manly 
discussion,  the  Author  of  the  following 
Essay  has  ventured  upon  a  disclosure  of 
facts  and  circumstances,  which  will  not 
suffer  himself,  at  least,  to  doubt  as  to  the 
identity  of  Junius.  He  had  the  honor  of 
the  acquaintance  of  John  Horne  Tooke  ; 
and  from  the  opportunities  which  this 
afforded,  aided  by  other  circumstances, 
he  has  been  enabled  to  furnish  facts 
hitherto  unknown ;  and  to  present  others 
in  a  light  so  new,  as  to  induce  a  probability 
that  Tooke  and  Junius  are  the  same. — ■ 
Graham,  John  A.,  1828,  Memoirs  of 
John  Horne  Tooke,  together  with  His  Valu- 
able Speeches  and  Writings ;  also  contain- 
ing Proofs  Identifying  Him  as  the  Author 
of  the  Celebrated  Letters  of  Junius,  Pref- 
ace, p.  V. 

Horne  Tooke  was  always  making  a  butt 
of  Mr.  Godwin;  who  nevertheless,  had 
that  in  him  which  Tooke  could  never  have 
understood.  1  saw  a  good  deal  of  Tooke 
at  one  time :  he  left  Upon  me  the  impres- 
sion of  his  being  a  keen,  iron  man. — • 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1830,  Table- 
Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  May  8,  p.  72. 

I  often  dined  with  Tooke  at  Wimbledon ; 
and  always  found  him  most  pleasant  and 
most  witty.  There  his  friends  would  drop 
in  upon  him  without  any  invitation: 
Colonel  Bosville  would  come  frequently, 


bringing  with  him  a  dinner  from  London, 
— fish,  &c. — Tooke  latterly  used  to  expect 
two  or  three  of  his  most  intimate  friends 
to  dine  with  him  every  Sunday ;  and  I  once 
offended  him  a  great  deal  by  not  joining 
his  Sunday  dinner-parties  for  several 
weeks. — Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollec- 
tions of  Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce. 

Had,  for  many  years  been  the  dread 
of  judges,  ministers  of  State,  and  all  con- 
stituted authorities.  He  was  that  famous 
Parson  Horne  who  attacked  the  terrible 
Junius,  after  statesmen,  judges,  and 
generals  had  fled  before  him,  and  drove  him 
back  defeated  and  howling  with  his 
wounds.  He  it  was  who  silenced  Wilkes. 
Some  years  afterwards  he  fastened  a 
quarrel  on  the  House  of  Commons,  which 
he  bullied  and  baffled  with  his  usual  cool- 
ness and  address. — Masse Y,  William, 
1855-63,  History  of  England  During  the 
Reign  of  George  the  Third. 

Tooke 's  change  of  name  originated  as 
follows.  When  he  was  rising  into  celeb- 
rity, the  estate  of  Pur  ley,  near  Croydon, 
belonged  to  Mr.  William  Tooke,  one  of 
four  friends  who  joined  in  supplying  him 
with  an  income,  when,  after  quitting  the 
Church,  he  studied  for  the  Law.  One  of 
Tooke's  richer  neighbours,  in  wresting 
from  him  his  manorial  rights  by  a  lawsuit, 
had  applied  to  Parliament,  and  nearly  suc- 
ceeded in  effecting  his  purpose  by  means 
of  an  inclosure  bill,  which  would  have 
grealty  depreciated  the  Purley  estate. 
Tooke  despondingly  confided  his  aprehen- 
sions  to  Home,  who  resolved  at  once  to 
avert  the  blow,  which  he  did  in  a  very  bold 
and  very  singular  manner.  The  third 
reading  of  the  Bill  was  to  take  place  the 
next  day,  and  Horne  immediately  wrote  a 
violent  libel  on  the  Speaker  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  in  reference  to  it,  and  ob- 
tained its  insertion  in  the  Public  Adver- 
tiser. As  might  be  expected,  the  first 
Parliamentary  proceeding  the  next  day  was 
the  appearance  of  the  adventurous  libeller 
in  the  custody  of  the  Serjeant-at-Arms. 
When  called  upon  for  his  defence,  he  de- 
livered a  most  remarkable  speech,  in  which 
he  pointed  out  the  injustice  of  the  Bill  in 
question  with  so  much  success,  that  it 
was  reconsidered,  and  the  clauses  which 
affected  his  friend's  property  expugned. 
In  gratitude  for  his  important  service,  Mr. 
Tooke,  who  had  no  family,  made  Horne  his 
heir ;  and  on  his  death  in  1803,  the  latter 


JOHN  HORNE  WOKE 


571 


became  proprietor  of  Purley  as  one  of 
the  conditions  of  inheritance,  he  added 
the  name  of  Tooke  to  his  own,  and  from 
this  time  was  known  as  John  Home  Tooke. 
— TiMBS,  John,  1860,  A  Century  of  Anec- 
dote, p.  177. 

John  Horne  had  a  great  and  varied 
reputation  while  he  lived,  and  long  enough 
afterwards  to  be  honoured  with  the  most 
florid,  and  far  from  the  least  amusing,  of 
those  biographies  of  sixty  years  ago, 
which  were  adulatory,  but  never  uncandid ; 
absurd,  but  never  dull.  There  we  learn 
that  though,  like  Pericles,  he  rarely 
laughed,  like  Alcibiades  he  could  suit 
himself  to  the  humors  of  other  men ;  that 
he  could  enjoy  his  wine  with  Homer  and 
Ennius,  could  draw  a  character  with 
Tacitus,  and  was  as  ready  to  accept  money 
from  his  friends  as  Pliny  and  Cicero ;  that 
during  his  career  he  was  as  artful  in 
counsel  as  Ulysses,  as  cool  in  action  as  the 
Duke  of  Marl  borough,  and  as  self-confident 
as  Michael  Angelo ;  and  that,  when  the  end 
came,  he  was  as  ready  to  die,  and  as  desir- 
ous to  have  a  simple  funeral,  as  Titus 
Pomponius  Atticus.  But,  in  truth,  his 
character  and  powers  were  not  of  the 
heroic  order;  and  the  people  who  had 
parallel  histories  and  similiar  dispositions 
with  Horne  were  to  be  found  in  his  own 
country  and  his  own  half-century.  He 
was  the  earliest,  and  for  practical  business 
by  far  the  ablest,  of  a  class  of  men  to 
whom  Englishmen  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude 
which  they  are,  not  inexcusably,  somewhat 
unwilling  to  acknowledge.  Among  the 
most  lamentable  results  of  a  system  of 
coercion  and  repression  is  the  deteriora- 
ting effect  which  it  produces  upon  those 
who  brave  it.  When  to  speak  or  write 
one's  mind  on  politics  is  to  obtain  the 
reputation,  and  render  one's  self  liable  to 
the  punishment,  of  a  criminal,  social  dis- 
credit, with  all  its  attendant  moral  dan- 
gers, soon  attaches  itself  to  the  more 
humble  opponents  of  a  ministry.  .  .  . 
Honest,  impracticable,  insatiably  conten- 
tious, and  inordinately  vain,  he  had  thrown 
away  almost  all  his  chances  and  his 
friends.— Trevely AN,  George  Otto,  1880, 
The  Early  History  of  Charles  James  Fox, 
pp.  439,  441. 

The  man  who  appears  to  have  contributed 
most  largely  to  its  formation  was  Horne, 
the  Vicar  of  Brentford,  afterwards  better 
known  as  Horne  Tooke,  who  had  now 


thrown  aside  the  clerical  profession,  for 
which  he  was  utterly  unsuited,  and  flung 
himself  unreservedly  into  political  agita- 
tion. The  great  contributions  to  grammar 
and  the  science  of  language  which  have 
given  him  a  permanent  place  in  English 
literature  belong  to  a  later  period  of  his 
life,  and  at  this  time  he  was  known  chiefly 
as  one  of  the  most  violent  agitators  among 
the  City  politicians.  He  possessed  some 
literary  and  still  greater  forensic  ability, 
and  was  a  man  of  undoubted  energy,  cour- 
age, honesty,  and  independence,  but  at  the 
same  time  turbulent,  vain,  and  quarrel- 
some, and  very  unscrupulous  about  the 
means  he  employed. — Lecky,  William 
Edward  Hartpole,  1882,  A  History  of 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  Ill, 
ch.  xi,  p.  189. 

THE  DIVERSIONS  OF  PURLEY 

1786-1798-1805 
The  distance  between  what  he  has 
proved  and  what  he  wishes  us  to  believe 
that  he  has  proved,  is  enormous. — Dudley, 
Earl,  1812,  Reed's  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of 
John  Horne  Tooke,  Quarterly  Review,  vol. 
7,  p.  321. 

Horne  Tooke's  is  certainly  a  wonderful 
work ;  but  the  great  merit  was  the  origi- 
nal thought.  The  light  which  shines 
through  such  impenetrable  words  as 
articles  and  pronouns  is  admirable, — 
'^the"  and  *Mt."  No  single  book,  per- 
haps, ever  so  much  illustrated  language  : 
yet,  how  much  more  might  he  have  done, 
if  he  had  known  the  collateral  languages ! 
Adelung's  Dictionary"  alone  would  have 
yielded  great  assistance. — Mackintosh, 
Sir  James,  1812.  Life,  vol.  ii,  ch.  iii. 

The  great  thing  which  Mr.  Horne  Tooke 
has  done,  and  which  he  has  left  behind  him 
to  posterity,  is  his  work  on  Grammar,  oddly 
enough  entitled  *'The  Diversions  of 
Purley."  Many  people  have  taken  it  up 
as  a  description  of  a  game — others  sup- 
posing it  to  be  a  novel.  It  is,  in  truth, 
one  of  the  few  philosophical  works  on 
Grammar  that  were  ever  written.  The 
essence  of  it  (and,  indeed,  almost  all  that 
is  really  valuable  in  it)  is  contained  in  his 
Letter  to  Dunning,"  published  about  the 
year  1775.  Mr.  Tooke's  work  is  truly 
elementary.  .  .  .  It  is  also  a  pity 
that  Mr.  Tooke  spun  out  his  great  work 
with  prolix  and  dogmatical  dissertations  on 
irrelevant  matters ;  and  after  denying  the 
old  metaphysical  theories  of  language, 


572 


JOHN  HORNE  WOKE 


should  attempt  to  found  a  metaphysical 
theor}^  of  his  own  on  the  nature  and  mech- 
anism of  language. — Hazlitt,  William, 
1825,  The  Spirit  of  the  Age. 

Home  Tooke  was  pre-eminently  a  ready- 
witted  man.  He  had  that  clearness  which 
is  founded  on  shallowness.  He  doubted 
nothing ;  and,  therefore,  gave  you  all  that 
he  himself  knew,  or  meant,  with  great 
completeness.  His  voice  was  very  fine, 
and  his  tones  exquisitely  discriminating. 
His  mind  had  no  progression  of.  develop- 
ment. All  that  is  worth  anything  (and 
that  is  but  little)  in  the  ''Diversions  of 
Purley"  is  contained  in  a  short  pamphlet- 
letter  which  he  addressed  to  Mr.  Dunning ; 
then  it  was  enlarged  to  an  octavo,  but 
there  was  not  a  foot  of  progression  beyond 
the  pamphlet;  at  last,  a  quarto  volume, 
I  believe,  came  out ;  and  yet,  verily,  ex- 
cepting newspaper  lampoons  and  political 
insinuations,  there  was  no  addition  to  the 
argument  of  the  pamphlet.  It  shows  a 
base  and  unpoetical  mind  to  convert  so 
beautiful,  so  divine  a  subject  as  language 
into  the  vehicle  or  make-weight  of  political 
squibs.  All  that  is  true  in  Home  Tooke's 
book  is  taken  from  Lennep,  who  gave  it 
for  so  much  as  it  was  worth,  and  never 
pretended  to  make  a  system  of  it.  Tooke 
affects  to  explain  the  origin  and  whole 
philosophy  of  language  by  what  is,  in  fact, 
only  a  mere  accident  of  the  history  of  one 
language,  or  one  or  two  languages. — 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1830,  Table 
Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  May  7,  p.  69. 

He  has  made  one  of  the  driest  subjects  in 
the  whole  range  of  literature  or  science 
one  of  the  most  amusing  and  even  lively  of 
books ;  nor  did  any  one  ever  take  up  the 
''Diversions  of  Purley"  (as  he  has  quaintly 
chosen  to  call  it)  and  lay  it  down  till  some 
other  avocation  tore  it  from  his  hands. 
The  success  of  this  system  has  been  such 
as  its  great  essential  merits,  and  its  more 
superficial  attractions  combined,  might 
have  led  us  to  expect.  All  men  are  con- 
vinced of  its  truth;  and  as  every  thing 
which  had  been  done  before  was  superseded 
by  it,  so  nothing  has  since  been  effected 
unless  in  pursuing  its  views  and  building 
upon  its  solid  foundations. — Brougham, 
Henry  Lord,  1839-43,  Lives  of  States- 
men of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

Whatever  may  be  Home  Tooke's  short- 
comings (and  they  are  great),  whether  in 
details  of  etymology,  or  in  the  philosophy 


of  grammar,  or  in  matters  more  serious 
still,  yet,  with  all  this,  what  an  epoch  in 
many  a  student's  intellectual  life  has  been 
his  first  acquaintance  with  "The  Di- 
versions of  Purley." — Trench,  Richard 
Chenevix,  1851,  On  the  Study  of  Words, 
Preface. 

It  is  a  matter  of  sincere  regret  with  all 
who  know  the  real  merits  of  Home  Tooke, 
that  his  spleen  and  causticity  of  temper 
should  have  prevented  him  from  becoming 
what  his  talents  and  labors  might  easily 
have  made  him — the  father  of  modern 
English.  Darwin  says  very  truly  of  him, 
that  he  first  let  in  light  upon  the  chaos  of 
English  etymology,  and  displayed  the 
wonders  of  formation  in  language — at 
least  in  the  particles.  His  mistaken  voca- 
tion was  the  eternal  bar  to  real  greatness : 
the  life-long  struggle  with  it  embittered 
his  life  and  his  mind,  already  too  fond  of 
paradox,  and  made  him  the  very  Ishmael 
of  literature  and  politics — his  hand  against 
every  man's  hand,  and  every  man's  hand 
against  his.  -De  Vere,  M.  Schele,  1853, 
Outlines  of  Comparative  Philology,  p.  192. 

Dire  have  been  the  disappointments  in- 
curred by  the  "Diversions  of  Purley," — 
one  of  the  toughest  books  in  existence. 
It  has  even  cast  a  shade  over  one  of  our 
best  story-books,  "The  Diversions  of 
Hollycot,"  by  the  late  Mrs.  Johnston. — 
Burton,  John  Hill,  1860,  His  Functions, 
The  Book-Hunter,  pt.  ii. 

Him  who  yet  remains  the  greatest 
philologist  that  has  made  the  English 
language  his  peculiar  study.  Home  Tooke. 
—White,  Richard  Grant,  1870,  Words 
and  Their  Uses. 

The  main  interest  of  the  "Diversions" 
to  the  general  reader  lies  in  the  witty  in- 
termixture of  political  thrusts  and  decla- 
mations. —  Minto,  William,  1872-80, 
Manual  of  English  Prose  Literature,  p.  487. 

The  philology  is  eccentric  and  old- 
fahioned,  and  the  book  "diverting"  to  its 
author  rather  than  its  readers :  but  it  is 
very  unlike  a  work  on  which  a  revolution- 
ary accused  of  high  treason  was  likely  to 
have  been  engaged. — Oliphant,  Marga- 
ret 0.  W.,  1882,  The  Literary  History  of 
England,  XVUIth-XIXth  Century,  vol.  II, 
V.  225. 

As  a  philologist.  Home  Tooke  deserves 
credit  for  seeing  the  necessity  of  studying 
Gothic  and  Anglo-Saxon,  and  learnt  enough 
to  be  much  in  advance  of  Johnson  in  that 


TOOKE— BARLOW 


573 


direction ;  although  his  views  were  inevit- 
ably crude  as  judged  by  a  later  standard. 
His  philology  was  meant  to  subserve  a 
characteristic  philosophy.  Locke,  he  said, 
had  made  a  happy  mistake  when  he  called 
his  book  an  essay  upon  human  understand- 
ing, instead  of  an  essay  upon  grammar. 
Home  Tooke,  in  fact,  was  a  thorough 
nominalist  after  the  fashion  of  Hobbes; 
he  especially  ridiculed  the  ''Hermes"  of 
Harris,  and  Monboddo,  who  had  tried  to 
revive  Aristotelean  logic ;  held  that  every 
word  meant  simply  a  thing;  and  that 
reasoning  was  the  art  of  putting  words 
together.  Some  of  his  definitions  on  this 
principle  befcame  famous;  as  that  truth 
means  simply  what  a  man ''troweth,"  and 
that  right  means  simply  what  is  ruled, 
whence  it  follows  that  right  and  wrong 
are  as  arbitrary  as  right  and  left,  and  may 


change  places  according  to  the  legisla- 
tor's point  of  view.— Stephen,  Leslie, 
1899,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  LVii,  p.  46. 

GENERAL 

Justice  has  scarcely  been  done  to  Horne, 
as  a  mob  politician  and  political  writer. 
With  all  his  violence  he  was  generally  in 
the  right ;  and  the  best  testimony  to  his 
sincerity  is  that  he  withdrew  from  active 
politics  when  he  found  that  he  was  not 
likely  to  gain  attention.  In  these  City 
struggles  it  is  plain  that  he  was  ''pulling 
the  strings,"  yet  without  any  attempt  to 
make  himself  conspicuous.  In  his  appeals 
to  the  throne  and  the  public  there  is  an 
earnest  ring,  with  a  sarcastic,  vigorous 
power,  which  excites  admiration.  ^ — Fitz- 
gerald, Percy,  1888,  The  Life  and  Times 
of  John  Wilkes,  vol.  ii,  p.  164. 


Joel  Barlow 

1754-1812 

Born  at  Reading,  Conn.,  1754:  died  near  Cracow,  Poland,  Dec.  24,  1812.  An 
American  poet  and  politician,  one  of  the ' '  Hartford  Wits. ' '  He  resided  abroad,  chiefly 
in  France,  1788-1805,  where  he  identified  himself  with  the  Girondist  party ;  was  consul 
to  Algiers  1795-97;  and  was  United  States  minister  to  France  1811-12.  Author  of 
"The  Vision  of  Columbus"  (1787:  enlarged  as  "The  Columbiad,"  1807),  "Hasty 
Pudding,"  and  "Advice  to  the  Privileged  Orders"  (Parti.  1791,  Part  IL  1795).— 
Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  121. 


PERSONAL 

In  private  life,  our  author  was  highly 
esteemed  for  his  amiable  temperament, 
and  many  social  excellences.  His  man- 
ners were  generally  grave  and  dignified, 
and  he  possessed  but  little  facility  of 
general  conversation;  but  with  his  inti- 
mate friends  he  was  easy  and  familiar,  and 
upon  topics  which  deeply  interested  him 
he  conversed  with  much  animation.  His 
mind  was  rather  of  a  philosophical  than  a 
poetical  cast,  and  better  adapted  to  those 
studies  which  require  patient  investigation 
and  profound  thought  than  to  the  lighter 
and  more  fanciful  labors  of  the  Muse. 
Still,  as  a  poet,  he  held  no  humble  place 
among  the  authors  of  his  day ;  while,  as 
an  ardent  patriot,  a  sincere  philanthropist, 
a  zealous  republican,  and  a  friend  and 
patron  of  science  and  art,  he  must  ever 
stand  among  the  most  distinguished  men 
of  his  age  and  country.  —  Everest, 
Charles  W.,  1843,  Poets  of  Connecticut, 
p.  80. 

We  had  in  Paris  at  this  period  a  few 


Americans.  ...  In  order  to  reach 
the  apartment  of  Mr.  Barlow,  I  was  obliged 
to  pass  through  the  door  of  a  great  gamb- 
ling establishment  that  occupied  the  floor 
immediately  below  his.  This  door  was 
attended  by  a  porter,  who  kept  it  locked, 
so  that  to  get  admittance  I  had  to  announce 
myself  as  a  visitor  to  Mr.  Barlow.  A 
man  ought  to  be  cheaply  lodged  to  be  in- 
duced to  reside  behind  such  a  barrier. 
The  poet's  poverty  consented  rather  than 
his  Will.  Barlow  was  a  very  estimable 
man,  and  I  am  happy  to  say  that  prosper- 
ous circumstances  soon  removed  him  from 
this  attic  prison  to  comfortable  quarters, 
and  a  few  years  after  he  was  enabled  to 
display  the  suitable  magnificence  of  an 
ambassador  in  one  of  the  best  hotels  in 
the  city  when  he  represented  our  republic 
at  Bonaparte's  court. — Breck,  Samuel, 
1862-77,  Recollections,  ed.  Scudder,  p.  171. 

The  life  of  Joel  Barlow  is  still  unwrit- 
ten. Political  prejudice  may  have  some- 
thing to  do  with  this,  but  to  one  who  has 
pored  over  his  private  papers,  read  the 


574 


JOEL  BARLOW 


letters  written  to  him,  by  him,  and 
about  him,  by  all  the  celebrated  people 
of  his  time,  there  is  something  ludicrous 
in  opening  an  Encyclopaedia  and  read- 
ing ''Joel  Barlow  was  an  American  poet." 
Barlow  was  a  poor  poet,  but  a  very 
great  man,  and  so  posterity  will  one  day 
rate  him.  Impracticable  he  may  have 
been,  for  his  wishes  and  aspirations  were 
far  before  the  possibilities  of  his  time ;  yet 
in  hurrying  to  Wilna,  that  he  might  force 
from  the  reluctant  Napoleon  some  ac- 
knowledgement of  the  rights  and  suffer- 
ings of  impoverished  American  citizens, 
he  laid  down  his  life  for  his  people  as  de- 
liberately as  if,  like  Warren,  he  had  exposed 
it  upon  the  first  battle-field.  The  record 
of  the  terrible  privations  and  sufferings 
which  led  to  his  death  in  a  peasant's  hut 
near  Zarnovitch,  Dec.  26,  1812,  still  sur- 
vives, and  will  one  day  justify  my  words. 
— Dall,  Caroline  H.,  1876,  A  Centennial 
"Posie/^  The  Unitarian  Review,  vol.  6, 
p.  158. 

Barlow  left  Paris  for  Wilna  on  the  26th 
of  October  in  his  private  carriage,  yet 
travelling  night  and  day  and  with  relays  of 
horses  at  the  post-towns  to  expedite  his 
progress.  .  .  .  The  perilous  journey 
had  been  made  in  vain,  and  the  treaty  was 
doomed  to  still  further  delay.  It  now  only 
remained  for  Barlow  to  extricate  himself 
from  his  dangerous  position  and  to  reach 
the  frontiers  before  the  fleeing  army  and 
the  pursuing  Cossacks  should  close  every 
avenue  of  escape.  .  .  .  On  reaching 
Zarrow,  an  obscure  village  near  Cracow, 
the  poet  was  seized  with  a  sudden  and 
fatal  attack  of  pneumonia,  the  result,  no 
doubt,  of  privation  and  exposure.  He  was 
borne  to  a  little  Jewish  cottage,  the  only 
inn  that  the  village  afforded,  and  there 
died  December  26,  1812.  His  remains 
were  interred  in  the  little  churchyard  of 
the  village  where  he  died.  It  is  rarely 
that  an  American  visits  his  grave,  and  the 
government  has  never  taken  interest 
enough  in  its  minister  to  erect  a  memorial 
slab  above  his  dust :  but  wifely  devotion 
has  supplied  the  omission,  and  a  plain 
monument  of  marble,  on  which  are  in- 
scribed his  name,  age  and  station  and  the 
circumstances  of  his  death,  marks  the 
poet's  place  of  sepulture. — Todd,  Charles 
Burr,  1880,  A  Forgotten  American  Wor- 
thy, LippincotVs  Magazine,  voL  26,  pp. 
77,  78. 


This  Barlow  is  memorable  as  the  only 
one  of  our  countrymen  who  has  been  guilty 
of  the  folly  of  attempting  to  produce  an 
American  epic  poem.  But  a  better  title 
to  immortality  is  the  infamous  part  he  bore 
in  enticing  innocent  Frenchmen  to  buy  and 
settle  the  lands  of  the  Scioto  Company  on 
the  Ohio.  Towards  Adams,  Barlow  felt  the 
same  contempt  which  any  man  who  admires 
poetry  must  feel  towards  the  scribbler  who 
defiled  the  English  language  by  writing 
the  ''Columbiad,"  and,  when  he  heard 
that  John  Adams  was  chosen  President  he 
poured  out  his  thoughts  on  the  political 
position  in  a  letter  to  Abraham  Baldwin,  a 
brother-in-law  and  a  Member  of  Congress. 
The  letter  abounded  in  obscure  passages, 
but  the  one  selected  by  the  prosecutors  of 
Lyon  contained  an  expression  of  surprise 
that  the  answer  of  the  House  to  the  Presi- 
dent's speech  of  April  third,  1797,  had  not 
been  *'an  order  to  send  him  to  a  mad- 
house."—McMaster,  John  Bach,  1885, 
History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States, 
vol.  II,  p.  399. 

THE  COLUMBIAD 

1787-1807 

America. — An  epic  poet  has  already  ap- 
peared in  that  hemisphere.  Barlow,  author 
of  the  '^Columbiad, " — not  to  be  compared 
with  the  works  of  more  polished  nations. 
—Byron,  Lord,  1807,  Memoranda  of 
Readings,  Nov.  30 ;  Life,  Letters  and  Jour- 
nals, ed.  Moore,  ch.  v. 

The  author's  talents  are  evidently  re- 
spectable ;  and,  severely  as  we  have  been 
obliged  to  speak  of  his  taste  and  his  diction 
in  a  great  part  of  the  volume,  we  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying,  that  we  consider  him 
as  a  giant,  in  comparison  with  many  of  the 
puling  and  paltry  rhymsters,  who  dis- 
grace our  English  literature  by  their  occa- 
sional success.  As  an  Epic  poet,  we  do 
think  his  case  is  desperate;  but,  as  a 
philosophical  and  moral  poet,  we  think  he 
has  talents  of  no  ordinary  value ;  and,  if 
he  would  pay  some  attention  to  purity  of 
style,  and  simplicity  of  composition,  and 
cherish  in  himself  a  certain  fastidiousness 
of  taste, — which  is  not  yet  to  be  found, 
we  are  afraid,  even  among  the  better 
educated  of  the  Americans, — we  have  no 
doubt  that  he  might  produce  something 
which  English  poets  would  envy,  and  Eng- 
lish critics  applaud.  In  the  meantime,  we 
think  it  quite  certain,  that  his  present 
work  will  have  no  success  in  this  country. 


JOEL  BARLOW 


575 


Its  faults  are  far  too  many,  and  too  glaring, 
to  give  its  merits  any  chance  of  being  dis- 
tinguished ;  and  indeed  no  long  poem  was 
ever  redeemed  by  the  beauty  of  particular 
passages— especially  if  its  faults  were 
owing  to  affectation,  and  its  beauties  ad- 
dressed rather  to  the  judgment  than  to  the 
heart  or  the  imagination.  —  Jeffrey, 
FraxXCIS  Lord,  1809,  Barlow's  Columbiad, 
Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  15,  p.  39. 

The  ''Columbiad"  is  not,  in  our  opinion, 
so  pleasing  a  poem  in  its  present  form  as 
in  that  in  which  it  was  originally  written. 
.  .  .  Barlow,  in  his  later  poetry,  at- 
tempted to  invigorate  his  style,  but,  in- 
stead of  drawing  strength  and  salubrity 
from  the  pure  wells  of  ancient  English,  he 
corrupted  and  debased  it  with  foreign  in- 
fusions. The  imposing  but  unchaste  glit- 
ter which  distinguished  the  manner  of 
Darwin  and  his  imitators,  appears  likewise 
to  have  taken  strong  hold  on  his  fancy, 
and  he  has  not  scrupled  to  bestow  on  his 
poem  much  of  this  meretricious  decoration. 
But,  notwithstanding  the  bad  taste  in 
which  his  principal  work  is  composed,  not- 
withstanding he  cannot  be  said  to  write 
with  much  pathos  or  many  of  the  native 
felicities  of  fancy,  there  is  yet  enough  in 
the  poetry  of  Mr.  Barlow  to  prove  that,  had 
he  fixed  his  eye  on  purer  models,  he  might 
have  excelled,  not  indeed  in  epic  or  narra- 
tive poetry  nor  in  the  delineation  of  passion 
and  feeling,  but  in  that  calm,  lofty,  sus- 
tained style,  which  suits  best  with  topics 
of  morality  and  philosophy,  and  for  which 
the  vigor  and  spirit  of  his  natural  manner, 
whenever  he  permits  it  to  appear,  show 
him  to  have  been  well  qualified. — Bryant, 
William  Cullen,  1818-84,  Early  Amer- 
ican Verse,  Prose  Writings,  ed.  Godwin, 
vol.  I,  p.  51. 

The  strangest  epic  composition  ever 
issued  from  the  press.— Montgomery, 
James,  1833,  Lectures  on  General  Litera- 
ture, Poetry,  etc.,  p.  144. 

The  poem,  having  no  unity  of  fable,  no 
regular  succession  of  incidents,  no  strong 
exhibition  of  varied  character,  lacks  the 
most  powerful  charms  of  a  narrative ;  and 
has,  besides,  many  dull  and  spiritless  pas- 
sages, that  would  make  unpopular  a  work 
of  much  more  faultless  general  design. 
The  versification  is  generally  harmonious, 
but  mechanical  and  passionless,  the  lan- 
guage sometimes  incorrect,  and  the  similes 
often  inappropriate  and  inelegant.  Yet 


there  are  in  it  many  bursts  of  eloquence 
and  patriotism,  which  should  preserve  it 
from  oblivion.  The  descriptions  of  nature 
and  of  personal  character  are  frequently 
condensed  and  forceful ;  and  passages  of 
invective,  indignant  and  full  of  energy. — 
Griswold,  Rufus  W.,  1842-46,  The 
Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,  p.  25. 

It  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  there  is 
more  genuine  poetry  in  the  bare  con- 
ception of  the  -Columbiad  than  is  to  be 
found  in  all  the  works  of  many  preten- 
tious bards  of  considerable  note ;  and 
our  author  may  well  be  pardoned  for  some 
imperfections  in  the  execution  of  his  plan. 
—Baldwin,  A.  C,  1873,  Joel  Barlow, 
The  New  Englander,  vol.  32,  p.  430. 

It  is  composed  in  a  florid,  declamatory 
style,  and  has  little  real  poetic  merit  to 
recommend  it. — Baldwin,  James,  1882, 
English  Literature  and  Literary  Criticism, 
Poetry,  p.  202. 

All  the  poets  of  the  United  States  were 
threatened  with  extinction  or  subordina- 
tion when  Joel  Barlow  appeared.  He  was, 
according  to  all  accounts,  an  estimable 
man,  cursed  with  the  idea  not  only  that 
he  was  a  poet,  but  the  greatest  of  Ameri- 
can poets ;  and  in  1808  he  published,  in  a 
surperb  quarto  volume,  ''The  Columbiad." 
It  was  also  published  in  Paris  and  London. 
The  London  "Monthly  Magazine"  tried  to 
prove  not  only  that  it  was  an  epic  poem, 
but  that  it  was  surpassed  only  by  the  Iliad, 
the  JEneid,  and  "Paradise  Lost."  Joel 
Barlow  is  fairly  entitled  to  the  praise  of 
raising  mediocrity  to  dimensions  almost 
colossal.  "Columbia  is,  thank  Heaven, 
still  alive;"  "The  Columbiad"  is,  thank 
Heaven,  hopelessly  dead.  There  are  some 
elderly  gentlemen  still  living  who  declare 
that  they  have  read  "The  Columbiad, "  and 
have  derived  much  satisfaction  from  the 
perusal  of  the  same ;  but  their  evidence 
cannot  stand  the  test  of  cross-examination. 
They  cannot  tell  what  the  poem  is,  what  it 
teaches,  and  what  it  means.  No  critic 
within  the  last  fifty  years  has  read  more 
than  a  hundred  lines  of  it,  and  even  this 
effort  of  attention  has  been  a  deadly  fight 
with  those  merciful  tendencies  in  the  hu- 
man organization  which  softly  wrap  the 
overworked  mind  in  the  blessedness  of 
sleep.  It  is  the  impossibility  of  reading 
"The  Columbiad"  which  prevents  any 
critical  estimate  of  its  numberless  de- 
merits.— Whipple,  Edwin  Percy',  1886, 


576 


JOEL  BARLOW 


American  Literature  and  Other  Papers^ 
ed.  Whittier,  p,  24. 

Belton.  Did  you  ever  read  Barlow's 
"Columbiad,"  the  great  epic  of  the 
American  Revolution  ? 

Mallett.  All  of  it?  Gott  bewahr !  I 
have  read  a  good  deal  of  it,  however,  in 
pure  amusement,  but  it  has  all  gone  out 
of  my  memory.  But  there  is  no  foolish- 
ness which  is  not  to  be  found  in  verse,  and 
there  is  no  verse  so  bad  that  it  does  not 
find  readers.— Story  William  Wetmore, 
1890,  Conversations  in  a  Studio,  vol.  i, 
p.  265. 

Better  would  it  have  been,  both  for  the 
poem  and  for  the  poet,  if,  in  his  later  revi- 
sion of  the  work,  he  had  attempted  no 
change  in  its  essential  character.  ...  Of 
course,  never  upon  any  plan  could  the  poem 
have  taken  the  rank  as  a  work  of  genius, 
or  have  escaped  the  penalties  of  the 
author's  great  literary  defects.  Under 
any  character,  it  would  have  had  no  tender 
or  delicate  qualities,  no  lightness  of  touch, 
no  flashes  of  beauty,  not  a  ripple  of  humor, 
no  quiet  and  dainty  charm;  a  surfeit, 
rather,  of  vehemence  and  proclamation, — • 
sonorous,  metalic,  rhetorical ;  forced  de- 
scription, manufactured  sentiment,  sub- 
limity generated  of  pasteboard  and  starch ; 
and  ever -rolling  tattoo  of  declamation, 
invective,  eulogy ;  big,  gaudy  flowers  of  po- 
etry which  are  also  flowers  of  wax.  More- 
over, not  even  genius  could  have  saved  this 
poem  from  the  literary  disaster  involved  in 
its  adoption  of  that  conventional  poetic 
diction  and  of  that  worn-out  metrical 
form  from  which,  after  a  whole  century 
of  favor,  English  literature  was  just  then 
turning  away  in  a  recoil  of  weariness  and 
disgust.  And  yet,  with  all  his  limitations 
as  a  poet,  the  author  of ''The  Columbiad" 
is  entitled  to  the  praise  due  to  a  sturdy 
and  effective  ethical  teacher  in  verse. 
In  didactic  expression,  the  poem  is  often 
epigrammatic,  trenchant,  and  strong ;  nay, 
in  strenuous  moral  expositions  and  en- 
forcement, it  is  at  times  even  noble  and 
impressive. — Tyler,  Moses  Coit,  1895, 
Three  Men  of  Letters,  pp.  167,  168. 

From  a  literary  point  of  view,  however, 
it  ranks  among  the  curiosities  of  Ameri- 
can literature.  There  are  here  and  there 
beautiful  passj-  s.  '  --t  the  poem  is  un- 
wieldy, full  of  '  ^^.i* '  onsand  curious  ex- 
pressions.— P/Tn:; ,  'red  Lewis,  1896, 
A  History  of  Aniericari,  Literature,  p.  97. 


Barlow's  epic  was  thus  a  great  and 
serious  labor,  into  which  he  put  his  life- 
thought  ;  but  unfortunately  it  is  a  serious 
labor  for  the  reader  too.  ...  In 
brief,  ''The  Columbiad"  is  a  stage-coach 
epic,  lumbering  and  slow.  It  is  valuable 
chiefly  as  a  courageous  attempt  at  greater 
things  in  American  literature ;  and  it  failed, 
not  because  its  author  had  no  talent  (for 
he  had  a  great  deal),  but  because  epics 
demand  genius. — Bronson,  Walter  C, 
1900,  A  Short  History  of  American  Liter- 
ature, pp.  62,  63. 

Even  in  its  first  form  this  turgid  epic, 
which  few  mortals  now  living  have  more 
than  glanced  at,  was  the  most  ambitious 
attempt  at  serious  literature  which  had 
appeared  in  the  United  States.  To  this 
day,  furthermore,  a  quarto  edition  of  "The 
Columbiad' '  is  among  the  most  impressive 
books  to  look  at  in  the  world. — Wendell, 
Barrett,  1900,  A  Literary  History  of 
America,  p.  127. 

THE  HASTY  PUDDING 

The  most  amusing  and,  perhaps,  upon 
the  whole,  the  most  popular  poem  he  ever 
composed,  "Hasty-pudding,"  a  mock 
heroic  in  three  cantos,  which  no  genuine 
Yankee  ever  read  or  ever  can  read  without 
interest.  ...  In  the  whole  poem, 
there  is  such  a  commingling  of  stately, 
grandiloquent  diction,  and  ludicrous,  rus- 
tic simplicity,  as  constitutes  the  soul  of 
wit,  and  the  attention  of  the  reader  is 
enchained  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 
— Baldwin,  A.  C,  1873,  Joel  Barlow, 
The  New  Englander,  vol.  32,  pp.  424,  425. 

Of  Barlow  the  poet  a  good  deal  may  be 
said.  He  sought  to  build  his  eternal  fame 
on  "The  Columbiad,"  an  epic,  but  by  the 
irony  of  fate  he  is  known  in  literature 
only  by  an  unambitious  poem  on  hasty 
pudding.  .  .  .  Deserves  a  rank  among 
mock  heroics  and  pastorals,  and  every 
New  Englander  ought  to  read  it  occasion- 
ally. The  bard  had  the  national  fondness 
for  the  national  dish,  and  after  seeking  it  in 
the  old  world  for  many  years  in  vain,  sud- 
denly unpromised  joy  expands  his  heart  to 
meet  it  in  Savoy.  His  soul  is  soothed,  his 
cares  have  found  an  end.  He  greets  his 
long  lost,  unforgotten  friend,  and  makes 
both  self  and  friend  forever  famous.  Still 
no  part  of  "The  Hasty  Pudding, ' '  or  any  of 
Barlow's  poems,  has  proved  sufficiently 
worthy  to  gain  a  place  in  any  of  the  popular 


BARLO  W—M  ALONE 


collections  of  poetry.— Whitney,  Ernest, 
1886,  Joel  Barlow,  New  Englander,  vol.  45, 
pp.  825,  828. 

GENERAL 

The  critic,  after  a  careful  analysis  of 
the  character  of  Joel  Barlow,  would  prob- 
ably rank  him,  first,  as  philanthropist; 
second,  as  statesman;  third,  as  Philoso- 
pher ;  and  fourth,  as  poet.  His  philanthropy 
crops  out  in  every  line  of  his  writings,  in 
every  act  of  his  life.  His  letters  to 
Washington,  to  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  to  Monroe,  while  abroad  on  the 
French  mission,  and  his  Fourth  of  July 


oration  at  Washington,  give  evidence  of 
broad  and  liberal  statesmanship.  His 
philosophical  turn  was  most  apparent  in 
his  private  letters  and  intercourse  with 
familiar  friends.  As  a  poet  he  was  cer- 
tainly respectable.  His ' '  Hasty-Pudding' ' 
would  be  an  addition  to  any  literature,  and 
in  all  his  poems  are  passages  that  show 
the  inspiration  of  the  true  poet.  It  is  as 
the  pioneer  of  American  poetry,  however, 
that  he  is  worthy  of  the  highest  honor. 
He  was  not  a  voluminous  writer. — Todd, 
Charles  Burr,  1886,  Life  and  Letters  of 
Joel  Barlow,  p.  289. 


Edmond  Malone 

1741-1812 

Born,  in  Dublin,  4  Oct.  1741.  Early  education  at  private  school  in  Dublin.  To  Trin. 
Col.,  Dublin,  1756;  scholar,  1760;  B.  A.,  1762.  [Visit]  To  England,  1759.  Student 
of  Inner  Temple,  1763.  Friendship  with  Dr.  Johnson  begun,  1765.  Travelled  in 
France,  1766-67.  Called  to  Irish  Bar  at  King's  Inns,  1767.  Contrib.  to  Irish  peri- 
odicals. Settled  in  London,  May  1777.  Resided  there  till  his  death.  Mem.  of  Literary 
Club,  1782.  Friendship  with  Boswell  begun,  1785;  assisted  him  in  preparing ''Life  of 
Johnson"  for  press.  Engaged  in  Shakespearean  criticism.  Hon.  D.  C.  L.,  Oxford,  5 
July  1793.  Hon  LL.D.,  Dublin,  1801.  Unmarried.  Died,  in  London,  25  May  1812. 
Buried  in  Kilbixy  Churchyard.  Works;  ''Attempt  to  ascertain  the  order  in  which  the 
Plays  of  Shakespeare  were  written,"  1778;  "Supplement  to  Johnson's  edn.  of  Shakes- 
peare" (anon.),  1780;  "Cursory  Obseravtions  on  the  Poems  attributed  to  Thomas 
Rowley"  (anon.),  1782.  "A  Second  Appendix  to  Mr.  Malone's  Supplement,"  1783; 
"A  Dissertation  on  the  three  parts  of  'King  Henry  VL,'"  1787.  "Letter  to  the  Rev. 
R.  Farmer,"  1792;  "An  Enquiry  into  the  Authenticity  of  certain  papers"  [the  Ireland 
Forgeries],  1796;  "An  Account  of  the  incidents  from  which  the  title  and  part  of  the 
story  of  Shakespeare's  Tempest  was  derived"  (priv.  ptd.),  1808.  "Biographical 
Memoir  of  W.  Windham"  (anon.),  1810.  Posthumous:  "Correspondence  .  .  , 
with  the  Rev.  J.  Davenport,"  ed.  by  J.  0.  Halliwell,  1864;  "Original  Letters 
.  .  .  to  J.  Jordan,"  ed.  by  J.  0.  Halliwell,  1864.  He  edited:  "The  Tragicall 
Hystory  of  Romeus  and  Juliet, ' '  1780 ;  Goldsmith's  Works,  1780 ;  Shakespeare's  Works 
(11  vols.),  1790;  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  "Writings,"  1797;  Dryden's  Works  (4  vols.), 
1800;  the  1807  edn.  of  Boswell's  "Life  of  Johnson;"  Hamilton's  "Parliamentary 
Logick,"  1808.  Life:  by  Sir  James  Prior,  1860. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897, 
A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  184. 


PERSONAL 

I  have  just  dipped  far  enough  into  Mr. 
Malone's  edition  of  Shakspeare  to  find  he 
has  not  been  sparing  of  his  epithets  when- 
ever he  has  occasion  to  introduce  me  to 
the  notice  of  his  readers.  In  fact,  I 
believe  I  originally  gave  him  some  little 
provocation.  But  I  thought  your  country- 
men had  been  remarkable  rather  for  the 
suddenness  of  their  anger  than  the  dura- 
tion of  their  malignity.  Have  the  morals 
of  this  worthy  editor  been  corrupted  by 
his  long  residence  amongst  us  ? — Ritson, 
Joseph,  1790,  To  Mr.  Walker,  Dec.  14; 
Letters,  ed.  Nicolas,  vol.  i,  p.  181. 

37  C 


I  had  the  melancholy  task  of  announcing 
to  him  the  death  of  our  excellent  friend, 
Mr.  Malone.  I  am  unable  to  name  in  the 
large  circle  of  Mr.  Kemble's  acquaintance, 
any  gentleman  for  whom  he  had  a  more 
perfect  esteem.  He  frequently  alluded,  in 
conversation  to  the  elegance  of  his  man- 
ners ;  and  delighted  to  quote  him,  as  one 
of  the  best  illustrations  of  the  old  school. 
As  a  commentator  upon  Shakespeare,  Mr. 
Kemble  greatly  preferred  Mr.  Malone; 
because  he  saw  in  him  unwearied  diligence 
and  most  scrupulous  accuracy ;  with  an 
utter  rejection  of  that  impertinent  self- 
display  which  had  discredited,  on  too  many 


578 


EDMOND  MALONE 


occasions,  the  wit,  the  learning,  and  the 
labour  of  some  of  his  rivals. — Boaden, 
James,  1825,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  John 
Philip  Kemble^  vol.  ii,  p.  544. 

EDITIONS  OF  SHAKESPEARE 
The  heaviest  of  all  books,  Mr.  Malone's 
**Shakspeare,"  in  ten  thick  octavos,  with 
notes,  that  are  an  extract  of  all  the  opium 
that  is  spread  through  the  works  of  all  the 
bad  play-wrights  of  that  age :  mercy  on  the 
poor  gentleman's  patience ! — Walpole, 
Horace,  1791,  To  the  Miss  BerrySy  June 
14;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix, 
p.  326. 

His  pages  abound  with  profound  ignor- 
ance, idle  conjectures,  crude  notions, 
feeble  attempts  at  jocularity. — Ritson, 
Joseph,  1792,  Cursory  Criticism. 

Hylador  means  a  dog  with  a  clear  and 
strong  voice :  One  would  think  that ' '  this 
dog"  was  one  of  Canidia's  breed,  which 
called  from  the  sepulchre  the  actual  re^ 
mains  of  the  dead  to  enchant  and  stupefy 
the  living.  This  dog  has  been  scratching 
up  the  earth  about  Doctors  Commons," 
and  has  torn  up  all  "the  Wills"  of  the 
actors  who  lived  in  Shakspeare'stime,  and 
carried  them  in  his  mouth  to  the  printer 
of  a  late  edition  of  that  author. — Ma- 
THiAS,  Thomas  James,  1794,  The  Pur- 
suits of  Literature,  p.  97. 

Rival  editors  have  recourse  to  necro- 
mancy to  know  from  Shakspere  himself 
who  of  them  is  the  fittest  to  edit  and 
illustrate  him.  Describe  the  meeting,  the 
ceremonies  of  conjuration,  ^the  appearance 
of  the  spirit,  the  effect  on  the  rival  invok- 
ers.  When  they  have  resumed  courage, 
the  arbiter  appointed  by  them  asks  the 
question.  They  listen, — Malone  leaps  up 
while  the  rest  lay  their  heads  at  the  same 
instant  that  the  arbiter  reechoes  the 
words  of  the  spirit,  ''Let  Malone!"  The 
spirit  shudders,  then  exclaims  in  the  dread 
and  angry  utterance  of  the  dead, ' '  No !  no ! 
Let  me  alone,  I  said,  inexorable  boobies !" 
0  that  eternal  bricker-up  of  Shakspere! 
Registers,  memorandum-books — and  that 
Bill,  Jack,  and  Harry;  Tom,  Walter,  and 
Gregory ;  Charles,  Dick,  and  Jim,  lived  at 
that  house,  but  that  nothing  more  is  known 
of  them.  But,  oh !  the  importance  when 
half  a  dozen  players'-bills  can  be  made  to 
stretch  through  half  a  hundred  or  more  of 
pages,  though  there  is  not  one  word  in 
them  that  by  any  force  can  be  made  either 
to  illustrate  the  times  or  life  or  writings 


of  Shakspere,  or,  indeed,  of  any  time. 
And  yet,  no  edition  but  this  gentleman's 
name  burs  upon  it — burglossa  with  a 
vengeance.  Like  the  genitive  plural  of  a 
Greek  adjective,  it  is  Malone,  Malone, 
Malone,  MaAwi/,  MaXcui/^  MaAwv. — Cole- 
ridge, Samuel  Taylor,  1804,  Anima 
Poetce,  p.  74:. 

Allied  to  this  library  in  the  general  com- 
plexion of  its  literary  treasures  is  that  of 
Marcellus;  while  in  the  possession  of 
numberless  rare  and  precious  volumes  re- 
lating to  the  drama,  and  especially  his  be- 
loved Shakespeare,  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged that  Marcellus  hath  somewhat  the 
superiority.  Meritorious  as  have  been  his 
labours  in  the  illustration  of  our  immortal 
bard,  he  is  yet  as  zealous,  vigilant,  and 
anxious  as  ever  to  accumulate  everything 
which  may  tend  to  the  further  illustration 
of  him. —  DiBDiN,  Thomas  Frognall, 
1811,  Bibliomania. 

Malone  and  Steevens  were  two  laborious 
commentators  on  the  meaning  of  words 
and  phrases;  one  dull,  the  other  clever; 
but  the  dulness  was  accompanied  by  can- 
dor and  a  love  of  truth ;  the  cleverness, 
by  a  total  absence  of  both.  Neither  seems 
to  have  had  a  full  discernment  of  Shaks- 
peare's  genius. — Hallam,  Henry,  1837- 
39,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe, 
pt.  iii,  ch.  vi,  par.  54. 

Malone  professes  the  same  anxiety  to 
adhere  to  the  genuine  text  of  Shakspere 
as  Steevens  had  professed  before  him  ;  but 
he  opened  a  wide  field  for  editorial  licence, 
in  his  principle  of  making  up  a  text  out 
of  the  folio  edition  and  the  previous 
quartos ;  and,  to  add  to  the  apparent  value 
of  his  own  labours,  he  exaggerated,  as 
others  have  since  done,  the  real  value  of 
these  quartos. — Knight,  Charles,  1845, 
Studies  of  Shakspere,  p.  548. 

Though  not  highly  accomplished,  he  was 
a  scholar,  a  man  of  good  judgment,  and, 
for  his  day,  of  good  poetical  taste.  He 
was  patient,  indefatigably  laborious,  and 
modest — that  is,  as  modest  as  it  was  pos- 
sible for  a  Shakesperian  critic  and  editor 
of  the  last  century  to  be.  Above  all,  he 
was  honestly  devoted  to  his  task;  he 
sought  the  glory  of  his  author,  not  his 
own^except  in  so  far  as  the  latter  was  in- 
volved in  the  former.  We  of  to-day  can 
see  that  he  committed  many  and  great 
blunders ;  but  he  saved  the  text  of  Shakes- 
peare from  wide  and  ruthless  outrage,  and 


EDMOND  MALONE 


579 


by  painful  and  well-directed  investigation 
into  the  literature  and  manners  contem- 
porary with  his  author,  cast  new  light  upon 
his  pages.  To  Edmund  Malone  the  read- 
ers of  Shakespeare  during  the  last  decade 
of  the  last  century,  and  the  first  quarter 
of  this,  were  indebted  for  the  preservation 
of  his  works  in  a  condition  nearly  ap- 
proaching their  original  integrity.  — 
White,  Richard  Grant,  1854,  Shake- 
speare's Scholar,  p.  19. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  the  persistent 
raillery  of  Voltaire  ended  in  producing  in 
England  a  certain  waking  up.  Garrick, 
whilst  correcting  Shakespeare,  played 
him,  and  acknowledged  that  it  was  Shakes- 
peare that  he  played.  They  reprinted  him 
at  Glasgow.  An  imbecile,  Malone,  made 
commentaries  on  his  plays,  and,  as  a 
logical  sequence,  whitewashed  his  tomb. 
There  was  on  this  tomb  a  little  bust,  of  a 
doubtful  resemblance,  and  moderate  as  a 
work  of  art;  but,  what  made  it  a  sub- 
ject of  reverence,  contemporaneous  with 
Shakespeare.  It  is  after  this  bust  that 
all  the  portraits  of  Shakespeare  have  been 
made  that  we  now  see.  The  bust  was 
whitewashed.  Malone,  critic  and  white- 
washer  of  Shakespeare,  spread  a  coat  of 
plaster  on  his  face,  of  idiotic  nonsense 
on  his  work. — Hugo,  Victor,  1864,  Wil- 
liam Shakespeare,  tr.  Baillot,  p.  26. 

He  depended  with  greater  fidelity  than 
any  of  his  predecessors  on  the  early 
editions ;  and  in  Shakespearean  biography 
and  theatrical  history  he  brought  together 
more  that  was  new  and.  important  than 
any  predecessor  or  successor.  But  when 
he  attempted  original  textual  emendation, 
his  defective  ear  became  lamentably  ap- 
parent. His  intellect  lacked  the  alertness 
characteristic  of  Steevens  or  Gilford. — 
Lee,  Sidney,  1893,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xxxv,  p.  437. 

GENERAL 

From  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Malone's  In- 
quiry, it  must  appear  evident  to  the  mean- 
est capacity  that  the  commentator  never 
dreamed  of  an  opponent,  although  he 
ventured  to  peep  into  the  court  of  Apollo 
during  his  drowsy  fit :  for  after  his  con- 
clusions are  drawn  upon  each  topic  of  dis- 
cussion, his  pages  are  so  conceitedly  inter- 
larded with  ''Let  us  no  longer  hear  of 
this" — ''I  trust  we  shall  hear  no  more  of 
that,"  and  an  hundred  et-ceterce  of  the 
same  nature,  that  it  should  appear  as  if 


Mr.Malone's  fiat  was  irrevocable ;  whereas, 
from  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Chalmer's  Apology 
and  Supplement,  the  facts  in  them  ex- 
hibited and  the  just  conclusions  drawn,  it 
is  obvious  that  Malone  was  not  only 
dreaming  of  Parnassus,  but  absolutely  in 
a  doze  from  the  beginning  to  the  termina- 
tion of  his  boasted  inquiry. — Ireland, 
William-Henry,  1805,  Confessions,  p.  288. 

In  Malone  was  exhibited  the  character 
of  all  our  dull  and  tasteless  Life  writers, 
editors,  and  critics  for  half  a  century  past. 
— Hurd,  Richard,  1808?  Commonplace 
Book,  ed.  Kilvert,  p.  248. 

Malone  forms  a  striking  example  of  a 
life  devoted  almost  to  one  literary  pursuit. 
The  object  indeed  was  not  personal  but  na- 
tional, having  employed  more  pens  and 
given  birth  to  more  readers  and  admirers 
in  our  island  than  any  other  literary  topic 
whatever.  For  this  he  forsook  law,  wealth, 
and  probably  station  for  unprofitable  lit- 
erature; and  proved  beyond  most  other 
men  fitted  for  the  occupation.  ...  A  few, 
not  acquainted  with  the  peculiarities  of 
his  line  of  studies,  deemed  them  little  more 
than  dalliance  with  letters — a  kind  of 
agreeable  disporting  over  the  green  fields 
of  literature.  They  knew  not  the  labours 
it  involved ;  the  occasional  diflQculties  of 
access  to  the  places  where  deposited ;  the 
interminable  research,  the  exhausted 
patience,  eyes,  and  frames  of  which  I  have 
in  him  endeavoured  to  depict  an  outline. 
None  of  his  predecessors  had  attempted 
what  he  accomplished.  Few  of  his  suc- 
cessors have,  on  most  points,  added 
materially  to  our  knowledge.  When  as- 
sailed for  excess  of  accuracy  by  the  idle 
or  superficial,  he  disdained  reply.  He  was 
studious,  and  selected  an  object  of  popular 
study;  inquiring,  and  left  nothing  unex- 
plored likely  to  afford  information;  re- 
flective, and  therefore  usually  accurate  in 
drawing  conclusions  where  positive  testi- 
mony was  at  fault.  His  talents  were 
steady  and  practical ;  his  learning  exten- 
sive; his  critical  judgments,  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  preceding  pages,  sound.  He 
who  could  throw  light  upon  the  career  of 
Shakspeare  and  Dryden — give  us  the  first 
and  best  history  of  the  Stage — and  leave, 
for  our  study  and  guidance  volumes  at 
Oxford  which  no  other  spot  supplies,  must 
be  considered  no  small  benefactor  to  let- 
ters.—Prior,  Sir  James,  1860,  Life  of 
Edmond  Malone,  pp.  322,  331. 


580 


Henry  James  Pye 

1745-1813 

Born,  in  London,  20  Feb.  1745.  Early  education  at  home.  Matric,  Magdalen  Coll., 
Oxford,  12  July  1762 ;  created  M.  A.  3  July  1766.  Married  (i)  Mary  Hook,  1766. 
Created  D.  C.  L.,  Oxford,  9  July  1773.  M.  P.  for  Berkshire,  1784-90.  Appointed 
Poet  Laureate,  1790.  Police  Magistrate  for  Westminster,  1792.  Play  ''The  Siege  of 
Meaux''  produced  at  Covent  Garden,  19  May  1794;  ''Adelaide,"  Drury  Lane,  25  Jan. 
1800.  "A  Prior  Claim''  (written  with  S.  J.  Arnold),  Drury  Lane,  29  Oct.  1805. 
Wife  died,  1796.  Married  (ii)  Martha  Corbett,  Nov.  1801.  Died  at  Pinner,  11  Aug. 
1813.  Works:  "the  Rosciad  of  Covent  Garden"  (anon.;  attrib.  to  Pye),  1762; 
"Beauty"  (anon.),  1766;  "Elegies  (anon.),  1768;  "The  Triumph  of  Fashion"  (anon.), 
1771;  "Farringdon  Hill"  (anon.),  1774.  "The  Progress  of  Refinement,"  1783; 
"Shooting"  (anon.),  1784;  "Aeriphorion,"  1784;  "Poems"  (collected),  1787; 
"Amusement"  1790;  "The  Siege  of  Meaux,"  1794;  "The  Democrat"  (anon.),  1795; 
"War  Elegies  of  TyrtaBus  imitated,"  1795;  "Sketches  on  Various  Subjects, "  (anon.), 
1796;  "Naucratia"  1798;  "The  Inquisitor"  (with  J.  P.  Andrews),  1798;  "The 
Aristocrat"  (anon.),  1799;  "Carmen  Seculare"  1800;  "Adelaide,"  1800;  "Alfred," 
1801;  "Verses  on  Several  Subjects,"  1802;  "A  Prior  Claim"  (with  S.  J.  Arnold), 
1805;  "Comments  on  the  Commentators  of  Shakespeare,"  1807;  "Summary  of  the 
Duties  of  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  out  of  Sessions,"  1808.  He  translated:  "Six  Olym- 
pic Odes  of  Pindar,"  1775;  Aristotle's  "Poetics,"  1788;  Biirger's  "Lenore,"  1796; 
Homer's  "Hymns  and  Epigrams,"  1810;  and  edited:  Francis's  translation  of  the 
Odes  of  Horace,  1812. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English 
Authors,  p.  234. 

the  announcement  of  his  appointment  was 
received.  .  .  .  Every  year  on  the  king's 
birthday  he  produced  an  ode  breathing  the 
most  irreproachable  patriotic  sentiment, 
expressed  in  language  of  ludicrous  tame- 
ness.  His  earliest  effort  was  so  crowded 
with  allusions  to  vocal  groves  and 
feathered  choir  that  George  Steevens,  on 
reading  it,  broke  out  into  the  lines : 
And  when  the  pie  was  opened 

The  birds  began  to  sing ; 
And  wasn't  that  a  dainty  dish 
To  set  before  the  king? 
— Lee,  Sidney,  1896,  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography f  vol.  XLVii,  pp.  68,  69. 

GENERAL 
I  have  been  rhyming  as  doggedly  and  as 
dully  as  if  my  name  had  been  Henry  James 
Pye.— Southey,  Robert,  1814,  Letter  to 
G.  C.  Bedford,  Life  and  Correspondence, 
ch.  xix. 

The  monarch,  mute  till  then,  exclaimed, 

"What!  what! 
Pye  come  again?  No  more — no  more  of  that!" 
— Byron,  Lord,  1824,  The  Vision  of 
Judgment. 

We  must  admit  that,  as  a  poet,  his  Muse's 
chief  attributes  are  Mediocrity  and  Moral- 
ity. ...  An  industrious  student,  a  well- 
informed,  cultivated,  graceful  writer ;  but  a 
poet  he  assuredly  was  not.  Weighed  in  the 
balance  of  contemporaneous  criticisms. 


PERSONAL 

''Mr.  Pye" — a  celebrity  whom  even  the 
encyclopaedias  scorn,  and  of  whom  we 
know  nothing  save  that  he  was  Poet- 
Laureate  (!)  before  Southey  took  and  vin- 
dicated the  office.  He  was  ''a  master  of 
correct  versification,"  Lord  Beaconsfield 
says. — Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,1882, 
The  Literary  History  of  England,  XVIIIth- 
XlXth  Century,  vol  ii,  p.  313. 

Byron  said  of  him  that  he  was  eminently 
respectable  in  everything  but  his  poetry. 
This,  indeed,  appears  to  have  been  the 
case,  but  certainly  affords  no  reasonable 
explanation  of  his  appointment  to  the 
office  of  Laureate.  ...  As  Pye  was 
a  pleasant,  convivial  man,  it  was  some- 
what peculiar  that  the  Laureate's  annual 
perquisite  of  a  tierce  of  canary  from  the 
Royal  cellar,  should,  during  his  tenure  of 
the  office,  have  been  commuted  for  an  an- 
nual payment  of  £27.— Hamilton,  Wal- 
ter, 1879,  The  Poets  Laureate  of  England, 
pp.  203,  214. 

He  doubtless  owed  his  good  fortune  to 
the  support  he  had  given  the  prime  min- 
ister, Pitt,  while  he  sat  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  No  selection  could  have  more 
effectually  deprived  the  post  of  reputable 
literary  associations,  and  a  satire,  ''Epistle 
to  the  Poet  Laureate,"  1790,  gave  voice 
to  the  scorn  with  which,  in  literary  circles, 


P  YE— WILSON 


581 


he  was  found  wanting ;  and  Time  has  sanc- 
tioned the  severe  decree. — Austin,  Will- 
shire  Stanton,  Jr.,  and  Ralph,  J.,  1853, 
Lives  of  the  Poets-Laureate,  pp.  333,  345. 

He  was  always  made  fun  of  as  a  poet, 
and,  unfortunately  for  him,  there  was 
another  poet  in  the  House  at  the  same 
time  called  Charles  Small  Pybus;  hence 
the  jest,  'Tye  et  Parvus  Pybus,"  which 
was  in  everyone's  mouth.  He  was  a 
voluminous  author  and  diligent  translator, 
but  I  do  not  recollect  ever  seeing  a  single 
book  of  his  in  a  shop,  or  on  a  stall,  or  in 
a  catalogue.  Great  Pye  is  dead— as  dead 
as  Parvus  Pybus,  M.  P.— Birrell,  Au- 
gustine, 1894,  Essays  about  MeUy  Women 
and  Books,  p.  165. 

Pye  was  devoted  to  the  stage,  and  he 
tried  his  hand  at  writing  some  plays,  but 
they  are  wholly  forgotten.  For  a  complete 
list  of  these  we  have  to  go  to  a  foreign 
dictionary :  English  encyclopaedias  ignore 
this  industrious,  conscientious  worker. 


Pye's  most  ambitious  work  was  an  epic 
poem  on  King  Alfred,  but  even  he  himself 
did  not  speak  highly  of  his  effort,  and  he 
had  no  hope  that  it  would  live.  Indeed, 
Pye  was  as  modest  as  Eusden  had  been 
egotistical.  The  contrast  between  them 
in  this  respect  is  well  illustrated  in  their 
portraits.  .  .  .  Many  of  Pye's  minor 
poems  show  graceful  fancy  and  have  con- 
siderable melody  of  versification  and 
sparkle  of  style ;  but  there  is  no  originality 
of  thought  in  them,  no  eloquent  fervour, 
no  imaginative  strength.  They  are  rhetor- 
ical efforts  merely.  His  laureate  odes  are 
ardent  and  enthusiastic,  even  if  they  do 
not  soar  very  high.  He  shows  in  them 
an  earnest  patriotism ;  and  earnestness  of 
itself  is  a  form  of  strength  and  power. 
But  Pye,  with  all  his  brilliancy  of  mind  and 
his  perseverance  and  industry,  had  not  the 
making  of  a  true  poet,  and  his  work  has 
passed  into  oblivion.— Howland,  Frances, 
1895,  The  Laureates  of  England,  p,  142. 


Alexander  Wilson 

1766-1813. 

Born  at  Paisley,  Scotland,  July  6,  1766 ;  died  at  Philadelphia,  Aug.  23,  1813,  A 
Scotch- American  ornithologist.  In  early  life  he  was  a  weaver ;  was  prosecuted  and 
imprisoned  for  writing  lampoons  (in  the  dispute  between  the  weavers  and  manufac- 
turers at  Paisley) ;  emigrated  to  the  United  States  in  1794 ;  labored  as  a  peddler, 
schoolmaster,  and  editor  of  an  edition  of  ^'Rees's  Cyclopaedia ;"  and  made  many  pedes- 
trian and  other  expeditions  through  the  country.  He  published  "American  Orni- 
thology" (7  vols.  1808-1813;  vols.  8  and  9  edited  after  his  death;  supplement  by 
C.  L.  Bonaparte,  1825),  poems  (1791),  ''The  Foresters"  (1805),  etc.  His  collected 
works  were  edited  by  Grosart  (1876). — Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  1894-97,  The  Century 
Cyclopcedia  of  Names,  p.  1065. 


PERSONAL 

This  Monument 
covers  the  Remains  of 
Alexander  Wilson, 
Author  of  the 
AMERICAN  ORNITHOLOGY, 
He  was  born  in  Renfrewshire,  Scotland, 
on  the  6th  of  July,  1766? 
Emigrated  to  the  United  States 
in  the  year  1794  j 
and  died  in  Philadelphia, 
of  the  Dysentery, 
on  the  23d  of  August,  1813, 
Aged  47. 

— Inscription  on  Monument  in  the  Cem- 
etery OF  THE  Swedish  Church,  South- 
wark,  Philadelphia. 
The  library  of  Wilson  occupied  but  a 


small  space.  On  casting  my  eyes,  after 
his  decease,  over  the  ten  or  a  dozen  vol- 
umes of  which  it  was  composed,  I  was 
grieved  to  find  that  he  had  been  the  owner 
of  only  one  work  on  Ornithology,  and  that 
was  Bewick's  "British  Birds.''  For  the 
use  of  the  first  volume  of  Turton's  ''Lin- 
naeus," he  was  indebted  to  the  friendship 
of  Mr.  Thomas  Say;  the  Philadelphia 
Library  supplied  him  with  ''Latham." — 
Ord,  George,  1825,  Life  of  Wilson. 

One  fair  morning  I  was  surprised  by  the 
sudden  entrance  into  our  counting-room, 
at  Louisville,  of  Mr.  Alexander  Wilson, 
the  celebrated  author  of  the  "American 
Ornithology,"  of  whose  existence  I  had 
never  until  that  moment  been  appraised. 
This  happened  in  March  1810.  How  well 
do  I  remember  him,  as  then  he  walked  up 


582 


ALEXANDER  WILSON 


to  me !  His  long,  rather  hooked  nose,  the 
keenness  of  his  eye,  and  his  prominent 
cheek-bones,  stamped  his  countenance 
with  a  peculiar  character.  His  dress,  too, 
was  of  a  kind  not  usually  seen  in  that 
part  of  the  country ;  a  short  coat,  trow- 
sers,  and  a  waistcoat  of  gray  cloth.  His 
stature  was  not  above  middle  size.  He 
had  two  volumes  under  his  arm ;  and,  as 
he  approached  the  table  at  which  I  was 
working,  I  discovered  something  like  as- 
tonishment in  his  countenance. — Audu- 
bon, John  James,  1839?  American  Or- 
nithological Biography. 

Mr.  Bradford,  the  same  liberal  patron 
who  enabled  me  to  study  painting,  enabled 
Wilson  to  publish  the  most  interesting  ac- 
count of  birds,  and  to  illustrate  it  with  the 
best  representations  of  their  forms  and 
colours,  that  has  ever  appeared.  Wilson 
was  engaged  by  Mr.  Bradford  as  tutor  to 
his  sons,  and  as  editor  of  the  American 
edition  of  Rees's  ''Cyclopaedia,'^  while  at 
the  same  time  he  was  advancing  his  ''Or- 
nithology" for  publication.  I  assisted 
him  to  colour  some  of  its  first  plates.  We 
worked  from  birds  which  he  had  shot  and 
stuffed,  and  I  well  remember  the  extreme 
accuracy  of  his  drawings,  and  how  care- 
fully he  had  counted  the  number  of  scales 
on  the  tiny  legs  and  feet  of  his  subject. 
He  looked  like  a  bird ;  his  eyes  were  pierc- 
ing, dark,  and  luminous,  and  his  nose  shaped 
like  a  beak.  He  was  of  a  spare  bony  form, 
very  erect  in  his  carriage,  inclining  to  be 
tall ;  and  with  a  light  elastic  step,  he 
seemed  perfectly  qualified  by  nature  for  his 
extraordinary  pedestrian  achievements. — 
Leslie,  Charles  Robert,  1860,  Autobio- 
graphical Recollections,  ed.  Taylor,  ch.  xii. 

His  personal  appearance  was  that  of  a 
modest,  rather  retiring  man,  of  good 
countenance,  not  decidedly  Scotch,  but 
still  with  a  cast  of  it,  rather  more  like  a 
New  England  Congregational  clergyman 
in  his  black  dress  than  any  other  descrip- 
tion I  can  give.  He  was  held  in  great 
esteem  for  probity,  gentle  manners,  and 
accomplishments  in  his  special  branch  of 
natural  science. —BiNNEY,  Horace,  1873, 
Letter  to  James  Grant  Wilson,  Feb.  8 ;  The 
Poets  and  Poetry  oj  Scotland,  vol.  i,  p.  420. 

Thus  closed  a  life  and  a  work  which,  it 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say,  are  without  a 
parallel.  When  Wilson's  deprivations  are 
borne  in  mind, — that  his  early  instruction 
was  scant  and  contemptible ;  that,  as  a  boy. 


he  was  put  at  an  uncongenial  occupation, 
which  formed  his  means  of  livelihood 
through  nearly  half  his  days ;  that  his  was 
a  lifelong  struggle  with  difficulties,  which 
only  the  sheer  indomitable  resolution  of  a 
man  never  cheerful  or  sanguine  enabled 
him  to  surmount ;  that  he  was  thirty  years 
of  age  when,  in  a  strange  land,  he  effected 
his  own  education  by  becoming  the  in- 
structor of  others ;  that  he  was  thirty- 
three  when  he  began  the  study  of  ornithol- 
ogy, with  scarcely  any  resources  beyond 
his  own  powers  of  observation,  and  the 
practice  of  drawing  without  any  previously 
suspected  aptitude;  that  he  was  forty 
years  old  before  an  opportunity  disclosed 
itself  for  the  commencement  of  his  work, 
forty-two  when  he  first  accomplished 
publication,  and  only  forty-seven  when  his 
life  was  closed, — it  must  be  admitted  that 
few  careers  so  brief  have  been  equally 
productive.— Gardner,  Dorset,  1876, 
Wilson  the  Ornithologist,Scribnefs  Monthly 
vol.  11.  pp.  702. 

POEMS 

In  his  humor  and  feeling  Wilson,  as  a 
poet,  belongs  to  the  family  of  Burns.  He 
addresses  his  friends  in  verse  with  the 
old  loving  feeling  of  Scottish  brotherhood, 
has  his  song  for  love  and  beauty,  and  his 
similar  choice  of  subject  in  ludicrous  tale 
or  ballad,  with  a  smarting  sense  of  wrong 
and  poverty ;  while  an  early  observation  in 
natural  history,  and  his  pursuit  of  descrip- 
tive poetry,  belong  especially  to  Wilson 
the  naturalist.  ...  In  that  fine  de- 
scriptive poem  of  the  "Foresters,"  in 
which  he  describes  an  October  journey 
through  Pennsylvania,  and  across  the  Alle- 
ghanies  from  Philadelphia  to  Niagara,  the 
reader  may  have. a  true  enjoyment  of  his 
poetic  tastes  and  of  his  ardent  love  of 
nature  and  adventure.— Duyckinck,Evert 
A.,  and  George  L.,  1855-65-75,  Cyclo- 
pcedia  of  American  Literature,  ed.  Simons, 
vol.  I,  pp.  570,  571. 

I  have  placed  "Watty  and  Meg,  or  the 
Wife  Reformed:  a  Tale"  in  the  fore-front 
of  the  "Poems."  It  is  unique  in  our  lit- 
erature. ' ' Christ's  Kirk  on  the  Green' '  and 
the  "Midden  Fecht"  have  bits  perhaps  as 
effective  in  homely  portraiture.  But  as  a 
whole  it  stands  alone  for  rough,  coarse, 
realistic  painting.  It  isn't  altogether 
such  a  scene  or  incident  as  many  would 
elect  to  paint,  any  more  than  one  would 
those  drinking  groups  which  in  Ostade  and 


ALEXANDER  WILSON 


583 


Teniers  give  renown  to  a  gallery;  but 
having  been  chosen  I  know  not  where  to 
look  for  such  raciness,  vigour,  genuine- 
ness. Only  a  native-born  Scotchman  can 
take  in  the  flavour  of  its  thoroughly  Scotch 
wording  and  motif.  But  he  is  an  emascu- 
lated Scot  who  does  not  relish  it  all 
through.  Hector  Macneil's  '*Will  and 
Jean"  is  a  thin,  vapid,  namby-pamby  pro- 
duction beside  it. — Grosart,  Alexan- 
der B.,  1876,  ed.,  The  Poems  and  Liter- 
ary Prose  of  Alexander  Wilson,  Essay, 
vol.  II,  p.  X. 

More  famous  though  he  certainly  is  in 
other  fields,  the  great  American  ornithol- 
ogist is  also  a  claimant  for  a  place  of 
honour  among  the  poets  of  his  native  coun- 
try. .  .  .  "Watty  and  Meg,'' from 
the  popularity  of  its  subject — the  reform 
of  a  scolding  wife  by  a  threat  of  leaving 
her — has  generally  been  placed  first  among 
Wilson's  compositions.  Nothwithstand- 
ing  its  high  merits,  however,  of  vividness 
and  realism,  it  is  handicapped  heavily  by 
the  four-line  trochaic  measure  in  which  it 
is  written,  and  it  does  not  appear  unjust  to 
say  that  it  contains  nothing  which  might 
not  have  been  as  well  expressed  in  prose. 
The  best  qualities  of  Wilson's  genius — the 
graphic  touches  by  which  whole  scenes  of 
the  peasant  life  in  Scotland  are  brought 
vividly  before  the  eye,  and  a  happiness  of 
epithet  which  gives  the  freshness  in  in- 
dividuality to  its  work — are  to  be  found, 
with  a  higher  quality  of  art,  in  his  slightly 
longer  piece,  "The  Laurel  Disputed." — • 
Eyre-Todd,  George,  1896,  Scottish  Poetry 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  ii,  pp, 
284,  285. 

He  commended  his  wares  even  in  poetic 
broadsides,  and  dealt  not  ungraciously 
with  Scottish  dialect  at  a  time  when  Burns 
was  singing ;  indeed  his  longest  dialect 
poem  was  for  some  time  attributed  to 
Burns — only  by  the  unwary,  however. 
'Tis  hard  to  listen  contentedly  to  the  chirp- 
ing of  a  sparrow,  when  a  thrush  (like  Burns) 
fills  the  air  with  melody.  But  Wilson's 
verses,  written  on  this  side  of  the  water, 
after  he  had  made  a  tramp  across  the  Alle- 
ghanies,  are  not  to  be  scorned,  and  are 
without  the  grossness  which  belongs  to 
many  of  his  dialect  poems. — Mitchell, 
Donald  G.,  1897,  American  Lands  and 
Letters,  The  Mayflower  to  Rip-Van-Win- 
kle, p.  199. 

In  Alexander  Wilson's  "The  Foresters" 


(1809),the  humble  home  of  a  Pennsylvania 
Dutch  farmer  is  pictured  with  courageous 
truth  of  detail.  ...  In  its  neat  per- 
spective this  sketch  of  a  landscape  as  seen 
from  a  mountain-top  resembles  passages 
from  Cowper. — Bronson,  Walter  C, 
1900,  A  Short  History  of  American  Liter- 
ature, p.  84. 

AMERICAN  ORNITHOLOGY 

1808-13 

"The  Ornithology"  of  this  naturalist, 
we  look  upon  as  quite  a  magnificent  affair 
for  America.  The  plates  are  good; 
colouring  fine ;  typography  capital ;  edi- 
torial matter  excellent. — Neal,  John, 
1825,  American  Writers,  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  vol.  17,  p.  204. 

All  his  pencil  or  pen  has  touched  is 
established  incontestably :  by  the  plate, 
description,  and  history  he  has  always  de- 
termined his  bird  so  obviously  as  to  defy 
criticism  and  prevent  future  mistake.  .  .  . 
We  may  add,  without  hesitation,  that  such 
a  work  as  he  has  published  in  a  new 
country  is  still  a  desideratum  in  Europe. 
— Bonaparte,  Charles  Lucien,  1825- 
33,  Wilson's  American  Ornithology. 

It  is  as  an  ornithologist  that  Wilson's 
fame  will  last  for  after  ages.  .  .  .  Wilson 
was  an  observing  naturalist ;  and,  perhaps. 
Nature  never  had  a  more  ardent  pursuer. 
His  object  was  to  illustrate  the  different 
birds  in  their  various  states,  as  closely  to 
the  truth  as  possible,  and  to  describe 
those  parts  of  their  manners  which  he 
could  from  actual  observation,  throwing 
aside  all  hearsay  evidence  and  seldom  in- 
dulging in  any  theories  of  classification, 
or  the  scale  they  hold  in  Nature.  It  is 
from  these  circumstances  that  his  work 
derives  its  worth ;  the  facts  can  be  confi- 
dently quoted  as  authentic,  and  their 
value  depended  on  in  our  reasonings  upon 
their  history — their  migrations — their 
geographical  distribution. — Jardine,  Sir 
William,  1832,  ed.  Wilson's  American 
Ornithology,  Life. 

There  are  few  examples  to  be  found  in 
literary  history  of  resolution  equal  to  that 
of  Wilson.  Though  he  was  made  fully 
aware,  both  by  his  friends  and  his  own 
reflections,  of  the  difficulty  of  the  enter- 
prise in  which  he  was  engaged,  his  heart 
never  for  a  moment  failed  him.  By  his 
agreement  with  his  publisher,  he  bound 
himself  to  furnish  the  drawings  and  de- 
scriptions for  the  work,  indeed  everything. 


584 


ALEXANDER  WILSON 


except  the  mechanical  execution.  To 
procure  the  materials,  he  was  obliged  to 
encounter  heavy  expenses ;  and  the  money 
which  he  received  for  coloring  the  plates, 
was  the  only  revenue  from  which  he  de- 
frayed them.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the 
difficulties  which  he  must  have  encoun- 
tered ;  but  his  success  was  complete ;  and 
though  he  did  not  live  to  enjoy,  he  cer- 
tainly anticipated,  what  has  come  to  pass ; 
that  his  work  would  always  be  regarded  as 
a  subject  of  pride  by  his  adopted  country, 
and  w^ould  secure  immortal  'honor  for  him 
whose  name  it  bears. — Peabody,  William 
B.  0.,  1834,  Alexander  Wilson,  Sparks^ 
Library  of  American  Biography,  vol.  Ii, 
p.  168. 

Alexander  Wilson  was  the  great  pioneer 
in  this  branch  of  American  science ;  and 
who  that  appreciates  his  chaste  and 
eloquent  style,  his  accurate  and  happy 
delineation  of  a  class  of  the  most  lovely 
objects  in  nature,  can  fail  to  experience 
the  greatest  delight  in  reviewing  the  pages 
of  the  "American  Ornithology?" — Town- 
send,  John  K.,  1839,  Ornithology  of  the 
United  States,  Introduction, 

One  of  the  most  splendid  works  of  Nat- 
ural History  ever  produced.  ...  No 
learned  society  gave  it  encouragement; 
no  distinguished  name  in  the  world  of 
science  was  its  author.  A  poor  Scotch 
peddler,  who  had  left  his  native  country  in 
the  hope  of  bettering  his  fortune,  was  the 
writer  and  the  artist  who,  unaided  except 
by  the  general  public  support,  produced 
the  most  superb  book  of  its  class  that  the 
world  had  then  seen.  .  .  .  Well 
did  he  deserve  his  hard-earned  fame.  As 
a  writer  he  has  a  merit  which  seldom  be- 
longs to  systematic  naturalists ;  his  de- 
scriptions are  at  once  accurate  and  bril- 
liant. He  looks  at  Nature  with  the  eye  of 
a  poet ;  he  describes  with  an  exactness 
which  might  satisfy  the  most  rigid 
classifier. — Knight,  Charles,  1847-48, 
Half-Hours  with  the  Best  Authors,  vol,  ii, 
pp.'lSl,  138. 

The  types,  which  were  very  beautiful, 
were  cast  in  America ;  and  though  at  that 
time  paper  was  largely  imported,  he  (Mr. 
Bradford)  determined  that  the  paper 
should  be  of  American  manufacture; 
and  I  remember  that  Amies,  the  paper- 
maker,  carried  his  patriotism  so  far 
that  he  declared  that  he  would  use 
only  American  rags  in  making  it.  The 


result  was  that  the  book  far  surpassed 
any  other  that  had  appeared  in  that  coun- 
try, and  I  apprehend,  though  it  may  have 
been  equalled  in  typography,  has  not  be- 
fore or  since  been  equalled  in  its  matter 
or  its  plates.  Bewick  comes  nearest  to  it ; 
but  his  accounts  of  birds  are  not  so  full 
and  complete,  and  his  figures,  admirably 
characteristic  and  complete  as  they  are  in 
form,  have  not  the  advantage  of  the 
much  larger  scale  of  Wilson's, or  of  colour. 
Unfortunately  Wilson's  book  was  neces- 
sarily expensive,  and  therefore  not  remu- 
nerative ;  but  nothing  discouraged  him. — 
Leslie,  Charles  Robert,  1860,  Autobio- 
graphical Recollections,  ed.  Taylor,  ch.  xii. 

Like  Audubon,  and  like  every  great 
Ornithologist  worthy  of  the  name,  Wilson 
was  a  poet  as  well  as  a  man  of  science. 
He  had  an  eye  to  see  the  beauty  of  the  bird's 
life  as  well  as  of  his  plumage,  and  records 
the  doings  and  ways  of  his  little  friends 
with  the  fondness  of  a  lover  and  the 
imagination  of  an  artist.  Wilson's  intense 
love  for  his  subject  and  the  intrinsic 
beauty  of  the  theme  itself  seem  to  have 
had  a  transforming  and  educating  influence 
on  the  man.  When  writing  on  some 
favorite  bird  he  is  no  longer  the  mere 
scientific  naturalist,  but  rises  into  the 
region  of  poetic  fancy.  There  is  nothing 
in  Irving  or  Goldsmith  finer,  as  mere  lit- 
erary efforts,  than  some  of  Wilson's  de- 
scriptions of  the  birds  of  his  acquaintance. 
— Hart,  John  S.,  1872,  A  Manual  of 
American  Literature,  p.  118. 

His  labors  were  not  merely  in  a  field  in 
which  he  had  to  open  a  new  path,  but  where 
the  steps  that  had  been  taken  were  false 
and  misleading,  and  in  which  there  were 
but  few  fellow-travelers.  His  journeys, 
largely  performed  on  foot,  exceeded  ten 
thousand  miles.  His  work  was  unappre- 
ciated by  those  to  whom  he  had  the  clearest 
right  to  appeal,  and  patronage  was  with- 
held by  almost  every  incumbent  of  exalted 
position.  Nevertheless,  though  discour- 
aged by  neglect,  and  hampered  not  merely 
by  poverty,  but  by  the  necessity  of  succor- 
ing those  in  still  deeper  need  than  himself, 
he  both  laid  the  foundation  for  the  study 
of  natural  history  on  this  continent  and 
bequeathed  to  his  successors  the  outlines 
for  its  subsequent  development;  and  he 
described  the  habits  of  American  birds 
with  fidelity  to  truth,  graphic  vigor,  and  a 
poetical  realization  of  the  beauties  of 


WILSON— DIBDIN 


585 


nature.— Gardner,  Dorsey,  1876,  Scrib- 
nefs  Monthly,  vol.  11,  p.  703. 

Wilson  was  no  compiler ;  he  took  his  facts 
from  his  own  observations,  or  the  accounts 
of  those  who  had  known  the  birds  for  a 
lifetime.— YouMANS,  William  Jay,  1896, 
ed.y  Pioneers  of  Science  in  America,  p.  98. 

GENERAL 

In  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term, 
Wilson  was  a  man  of  genius ,  his  percep- 
tions were  quick,  his  impressions  vivid ;  a 
bright  glow  of  feeling  breathes  through 
his  compositions.  In  the  professed  walks 
of  poetry  his  attempts  were  not  often 
fortunate,  but  his  prose  writings  partake 
of  the  genuine  poetic  spirit;  a  lively 
fancy,  exuberance  of  thought,  and  minute 
observation  of  the  natural  world,  are 
strongly  indicated  in  whatever  has  flowed 
from  his  pen.— Sparks,  jARED,1827,A^ori^ 
American  Review,  vol.  24,  p.  116. 


Alexander  Wilson  was  a  remarkable 
man.  He  was  a  great  naturalist,  a  fair 
poet,  and  an  honest,  upright  gentleman, 
bearing  his  hard  won,  tardy  honors  and 
fame  as  gracefully  as  he  had  borne  poverty 
and  obscurity.  His ''American  Ornithol- 
ogy" must  ever  remain  a  classic. — Coyle, 
Henry,  1893,  Alexander  Wilson,  The 
Chautauquan,  vol.  18,  p.  184. 

Wilson's  life  and  writings  will  always 
appeal  to  the  general  reader.  Even  to  the 
ornithologist,  the  personality  of  the  man 
and  the  vitality  of  his  work  are  the  chief 
charms.  The  poem  on  the  '' Fish-Hawk" 
is  full  of  the  strong,  fresh  breeze  and 
local  color  of  the  beaches,  and  that  on 
''The  Bluebird"— "Wilson's  Bluebird"— 
breathes  the  free,  open  air  of  the  coun- 
try-side. —  Trotter,  Spencer,  1897, 
Library  of  the  WorWs  Best  Literature, 
ed.  Warner,  vol.  xxvii,  p.  16018. 


Charles  Dibdin 

1745-1814 

Charles  Dibdin  was  born  in  Southampton,  England,  in  1745.  His  mother  was  fifty 
years  old  at  the  time  of  his  birth,  and  he  was  her  eighteenth  child.  He  studied  music, 
and  in  1761  went  to  London,  where  he  composed  ballads  and  tuned  pianos.  He  also 
wrote  at  this  time  an  opera  entitled  "The  Shepherd's  Artifice,"  which  was  put  upon 
the  stage  at  Covent  Garden  Theatre  in  1763.  He  then  became  a  professional  actor 
and  composer,  and  produced  "The  Padlock,"  "The  Deserter,"  "The  Waterman," 
"The  Quaker,"  and  other  pieces,  all  of  which  were  brought  out  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre 
under  Garrick's  management,  and  in  several  of  which  Dibdin  himself  took  part.  In 
1778  he  became  musical  manager  at  Covent  Garden,  and  a  few  years  afterwards  he 
built  the  Surrey.  In  1788  he  published  his  "Musical  Tour;"  and  in  1789  he  began  an 
entertainment  called  "The  Whim  of  the  Moment,"  in  which  he  was  the  sole  author 
and  performer.  It  was  immensely  successful,  and  in  1796  a  small  theatre,  called 
Sans  Souci,  was  built  for  it.  Here  he  performed  for  nine  years,  retiring  from  the 
boards  in  1805.  In  spite  of  his  professional  success,  and  a  pension  of  £200  a  year 
which  was  awarded  him  in  1805,  he  was  poor  to  the  end  of  his  days.  He  died  on  July 
25,  1814.  Dibdin  wrote  "A  Complete  History  of  the  Stage,"  published  in  1795,  an 
autobiography,  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  dramatic  pieces,  and  something  like  a  thousand 
songs.  His  fame  now  rests  upon  his  sea-songs,  some  of  which,  it  is  said,  have  been 
quoted  with  good  effect  in  cases  of  mutiny.  "Poor  Tom  Bowling"  was  written  on  the 
death  of  his  eldest  brother,  captain  of  an  Indiaman.  A  fine  edition  of  the  songs, 
illustrated  by  Cruikshank,  with  a  memoir  by  Thomas  Dibdin,  was  published  in  1850. — 
Johnson,  Rossiter,  1875,  Little  Classics,  Authors,  p.  76. 


PERSONAL 
His  form  was  of  the  manliest  beauty, 

His  heart  was  kind  and  soft, 
Faithful,  below,  he  did  his  duty, 

But  now  he's  gone  aloft. 

—Inscription  on  Tomb,  St.  Martin's, 
Camden  Town. 

Charles  Dibdin's  method  of  composition, 
or  rather  the  absence  of  it,  is  illustrated 


in  the  story  of  his  lamenting  his  lack  of  a 
new  subject,  while  under  the  hairdresser's 
hand,  in  a  cloud  of  powder,  in  his  rooms 
in  the  Strand,  preparing  for  his  night's 
"entertainment."  The  friend  that  was 
with  him  suggested  various  topics— but  all 
of  a  sudden  the  jar  of  a  ladder  sounded 
against  the  lamp-iron,  and  Dibdin  ex- 
claimed, *'The  lamplighter !  a  good  notion,'* 


586 


CHARLES  DIBDIN 


— and  at  once  began  humming  and  finger- 
ing on  his  knee.  As  soon  as  his  head  was 
dressed,  he  stepped  to  the  piano,  finished 
ofi:  both  music  and  words,  and  that  very 
night  sang  "Jolly  Dick,  the  Lamplighter" 
at  the  theatre,  nor  could  he,  we  are  assured, 
on  critical  authority,  have  well  made  a 
greater  hit  if  the  song  had  been  the  de- 
liberate work  of  two  authors — one  for  the 
words,  another  for  the  air — and  had  taken 
weeks  to  finish  it,  and  been  elaborated  in 
studious  leisure,  instead  of  the  distraction 
of  dressing-room  din. — Jacox,  Francis, 
1872,  Aspects  of  Authorship^  p.  19. 

He  was  popular  with  the  public,  but, 
thanks  to  the  close  monopoly  which  theat- 
rical aifairs  were  then  subject  to,  he  could 
not  reach  that  public  in  the  ordinary  way. 
.  .  .  Dibdin  had  quite  as  ill  treatment  as 
Burns,  although  his  follies  were  not  so 
great  or  so  gross ;  but  he  was  of  tougher 
material,  and  did  not  drink,  and  so  lived 
his  evil  days  down ;  while  the  other  per- 
ished miserably  in  the  flower  of  his  man- 
hood.— Dibdin,  Edward  Rimbault,  1886, 
Dibdin  at  Sea,  Temple  Bar,  vol.  78,  p.  348. 

Dibdin' s  ambition  seems  to  have  been 
not  so  much  in  the  direction  of  future 
fame  as  of  universal  recognition  during  his 
life-time.  His  appears  to  have  been  the 
kind  of  nature  which  is  spurred  on  better 
by  the  shout  of  the  multitude  than  by  the 
**well  done"  of  the  conscience  .  .  . 
Perhaps  Dibdin  might  have  been  more  con- 
tent to  work  and  live  for  posterity  if  the 
nation  had  only  been  capable  of  supplying 
him  with  funds  for  the  needs  of  the  present. 
Poet  though  he  was,  he  had  strong  leanings 
towards  the  practical.  If  he  had  been 
asked  to  decide  between  the  cabbage  and 
the  rose,  he  would  have  undoubtedly  voted 
for  the  cabbage.  While  other  composers 
might  feel  flattered  by  having  their  songs 
echoed  through  the  streets  on  barrel 
organs  and  other  mediums  of  musical  tor- 
ture, he  only  regretted  that  there  could  be 
no  tangible  participation  in  the  popularity. 
His  sea-songs  had  undoubtedly  been  a 
powerful  influence  for  good,  yet,  with  a 
depth  of  sarcasm,  which  he  had  always  at 
command,  he  tells  us  that  before  1802  the 
only  symptom  of  acknowledgment  he  ever 
received  was  a  hearty  shake  of  the  hand 
from  Admiral  Gardner,  ''when  I  gave  him 
my  vote  for  Westminster." — Hadden,  J. 
CuTHBERT,  1889,  Charles  Dibdin,  Gentle- 
man's Magazine,  vol.  267,  pp.  567,  568. 


GENERAL 
These  "Songs"  have  been  the  solace  of 
sailors  in  long  voyages,  in  storms,  in 
battles;  and  they  have  been  quoted  in 
mutinies  to  the  restoration  of  order  and 
discipline.— Dibdin,  Thomas,  1850,  erf., 
Sea-Songs,  Memoir. 

One  man — a  man  without  any  great 
musical  or  nautical  knowledge — has  given 
poetic  and  musical  utterance  to  the  deep 
passion  of  the  English  nation  for  the  sea, 
and  done  more  to  set  up  a  standard  type 
for  the  British  sailor  than  any  number  of 
navy  regulations.  Wherever  an  English 
ship  is  found,  beneath  the  tropical  sun  or 
in  the  ice  of  the  poles,  while  an  English 
sailor  crosses  the  rolling  deep,  or  English- 
men delight  to  speak  of  their  country  as 
the  empress  of  the  ocean,  the  name  of 
Charles  Dibdin  will  be  known.  His  songs 
portray  the  sailor's  strength  and  weakness, 
his  valour  afloat  and  his  joviality  ashore, 
the  warmth  of  his  heart  and  the  force  of 
his  hand,  his  fidelity  to  King  and  flag, — in 
short,  they  lay  open  every  throb  of  Eng- 
land's hearts  of  oak. — Tompkins,  W. 
Earp,  1865,  Charles  Dibdin  the  Ocean 
Minstrel,  St.  James's  Magazine,  vol.  13, 
p.  480. 

As  a  ballad  writer,  and  as  a  composer 
of  sea  songs,  Dibdin  has  made  himself  a 
name  which  will  last  as  long  as  English 
poetry  is  read.  ...  No  man  knew 
better  how  to  please  the  popular  taste. — 
— Bellew,  J.  C.  M.,  1866,  Poets'  Corner, 
p.  630. 

The  insertion  of  these  ["Anchorsmiths"] 
grandly — simply,  almost  Homeric  stanzas 
is  due  to  the  suggestion  of  Mr.  W.  E. 
Gladstone.  —  Palgrave,  Francis  Tur- 
ner, 1875,  ed..  The  Children's  Treasury 
of  English  Song,  p.  292,  note. 

Dibdin's  fine  ''Anchorsmiths"  I  inserted 
in  consequence  of  your  praise  of  it  some 
years  ago.  It  is  truly  so  much  grander  in 
style  than  his  sea-songs,  and  so  different 
in  manner,  that,  except  yourself,  I  have 
met  with  no  one  who  knew  it. — Palgrave, 
Francis  Turner,  1875,  Letter  to  Mr. 
Gladstone,  Oct.;  Journals  and  Memories, 
ed.  Palgrave,  p.  143. 

The  great  merit  of  Dibdin's  best  songs, 
his  sea-songs  especially,  words  and  music, 
in  undeniable.  His  autobiography  is 
dreary  and  egotistical  in  the  extreme,  and 
he  is  loose  and  inaccurate,  whether  by 


DIBDIN—BURNEY 


587 


defect  of  memory  or  by  intentional  distor- 
tion of  truth.  His  sea-sonpjs  are  full  of 
generous  sentiment  and  manly  honesty. 
Somehow  he  cared  less  for  a  practical  ful- 
fillment of  the  ethics  that  he  preached  so 
well.  He  invented  his  own  tunes,  for  the 
most  part  spirited  and  melodious,  and  in 
this  surpassed  Henry  Carey  beyond  all  com- 
parison. They  were  admirably  suited  to 
his  words.  He  boasted  truly :  My  songs 
have  been  the  solace  of  sailors  in  long 
voyages,  in  storms,  in  battle;  and  they 
have  been  quoted  in  mutinies  to  the 
restoration  of  order  and  discipline.'' 
He  brought  more  men  into  the  navy 
in  war  time  than  all  the  press-gangs 
could.  Exclusive  of  the ''entertainments 
sans  souci,"  commenced  in  1797,  with 
their  360  songs,  he  wrote  nearly  seventy 
dramatic  pieces,  and  set  to  music  produc- 
tion of  other  writers.  He  claimed  nine 
hundred  songs  as  his  own,  of  which  two 
hundred  are  repeatedly  encored,  ninety  of 
them  being  sea-songs,  and  undoubtedly  his 
master-work.  He  was  a  rapid  worker. 
No  one  of  his  entertainments  cost  him 
more  than  a  month ;  his  best  single  songs 
generally  half  an  hour,  e.  g.  his  "Sailor's 
Journal. ' '  Music  and  words  came  together. 
— Ebsworth,  J.  W.,  1888,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography^  vol.  XV,  p.  5. 

Charles  Dibdin — the  author  of  half  a 
hundred  plays,  and  no  less  than  fourteen 
hundred  songs,  to  say  nothing  of  a  dozen 
or  more  novels,  and  a  history  of  the  stage. 
.  .  .  In  his  day,  his  ballads  and  plays 
delighted  countless  thousands  of  his  fellow 
countrymen;  they  stimulated  good  feel- 
ings, and  were  of  immeasurable  pleasure 
to  our  soldiers  and  sailors. — Brereton, 
Austin,  1888,  Tom  Bowling,  The  Theatre, 
vol.  20,  pp.  136,  138. 

There  is  perhaps  a  touch  of  cant  and  also 


of  political  purpose  in  it  ["Tom  Bowling"], 
here  and  there,  but  "The  little  cherub  that 
sits  up  aloft"  has  grown  into  our  litera- 
ture, and  embedded  in  it  and  in  the  popu- 
lar estimation  is  the  couplet — 
"For  my  heart  is  my  Poll's,  and  my  rhino's 

my  friend's, 
And  as  for  my  life,  'tis  the  king's." 
It  is  the  philosophy  of  the  true  fighting 
British  sailor  now  as  it  was  in  King 
George's  day.  Then  again  there  are  two 
verses  which  to  the  serious  student  of 
literature  deserve  all  attention,  for  they 
show  how  the  real,  at  times,  trancends 
the  ideal  and  the  artificial,  even  in  the 
most  conventional  periods  of  our  liter- 
ature. 

"What  argufies  snivelling  and  piping  your 

eye? 

Why,  what  a  damned  fool  you  must  be!" 
— Crawfurd,  Oswald,  1896,  ed.,  Lyrical 
Verse  from  Elizabeth  to  Victoria,  p.  433, 
note. 

In  all  of  these  songs,  whether  the  theme 
be  his  native  land  or  the  wind-swept  seas 
that  close  it  round,  love  is  the  poet's  real 
inspiration ;  love  of  old  England  and  her 
sovereign,  love  of  the  wealth-bringing 
ocean,  love  of  the  good  ship  that  sails  its 
waves.  This  fundamental  afliection  for 
the  things  of  which  he  sings  has  endeared 
the  songs  of  Dibdin  to  the  heart  of  the 
British  sailor ;  and  in  this  lies  the  proof  of 
their  genuineness.  His  songs  are  simple 
and  melodious ;  there  is  a  manly  ring  in 
their  word  and  rhythm;  they  have  the 
swagger  and  the  fearlessness  of  the  typical 
tar ;  they  have,  too,  the  beat  of  his  true 
heart,  his  kindly  waggery,  his  sturdy 
fidelity  to  his  country  and  his  king.  There 
is  nothing  quite  like  them  in  any  other 
literature. — Warner,  Charles  Dudley, 
ed.y  1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best 
Literature,  vol.  viii,  p.  4621. 


Charles  Bnrney 

1726-1814 

Born,  at  Shrewsbury,  12  April  1726.  Educated  at  Free  School,  Chester.  To 
Shrewsbury,  to  study  music,  1741  [?].  Articled  as  pupil  to  Dr.  Arne,  1744;  with  him 
in  London,  1744-47.  Taken  under  patronage  of  Fulke  Greville,  1747.  Taught  and 
composed  music.  Married  Esther  Sleepe,  1749.  Organist  of  St.  Dionis,  Backchurch, 
1749.  Mem.  of  Roy.  Soc.  of  Musicians,  3  Dec.  1749.  Organist  of  Lynn  Regis,  1751-60. 
Returned  to  London,  1760.  Wife  died,  1761.  Married  (privately)  Mrs.  Stephen  Allen, 
1767.  Mus.  Doc.  degree,  Oxford,  June  1769.  Travelled  on  Continent,  1770  and  1772. 
F.  R.  S.,  1773.  Organist  of  Chelsea  Hospital,  1783.  Mem.  of  Literary  Club,  1784. 
Contrib.  to ''Monthly  Review,"  1790-93.  Second  wife  died,  Oct.  1796.  Contrib.  to 
Rees's  ''Encyclopeedia,"  1800-05.    Crown  pension  granted,  1806.    Foreign  Member 


588 


CHARLES  BURNEY 


of  Institut  de  France,  1810.  Died,  at  Chelsea,  12  April  1814;  buried  in  churchyard  of 
Chelsea  Hospital.  Works :  Essay  toward  the  History  of  the  principal  Comets,  etc.,'* 
(anon.),  1769;  -'The  Present  State  of  Music  in  France  and  Italy,"  1771;  ''The  Present 
State  of  Music  in  Germany,  the  Netherlands,  and  the  United  Provinces, "  1773 ;  "History 
of  Music,"  vol.  i.,  1776;  vol.  ii.,  1782;  vols,  iii.,  iv.,  1789;  "Account  of  an  Infant 
Musician,"  1779;  "An  Account  of  the  Musical  Performances  ...  in  1784  in 
Commemoration  of  Handel,"  1785;  "Memoir  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Metastasio" 
(3  vols.),  1796.  Life ;  by  his  daughter  Frances,  1832. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson, 
1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Author s^  p,  40. 


PERSONAL 
See  next,  happy  contrast !  in  Burney  combine 
Every  power  to  please,  every  talent  to  shine. 
In  professional  science  a  second  to  none, 
In  social  if  second,  through  shyness  alone. 
So  sits  the  sweet  violet  close  to  the  ground, 
Whilst  holy-oaks  and  sunflowers  flaunt  it 
around. 

His  character  formed  free,  confiding,  and 
kind. 

Grown  cautious  by  habit,  by  station  confined : 
Though  born  to  improve  and  enlighten  our 
days, 

In  a  supple  facility  fixes  his  praise ; 
And  contented  to  soothe,  unambitious  to 
strike, 

Has  a  faint  praise  from  all  men,  from  all 
men  alike. 

While  thus  the  rich  wines  of  Frontiniac  im- 
part 

Their  sweets  to  our  palate,  their  warmth  to 
our  heart. 

All  in  praise  of  a  liquor  so  luscious  agree, 
From  the  monarch  of  France  to  the  wild 
Cherokee. 

— Piozzi,  Hester  Lynch,  1773?  The 
Streatham  Portraits,  Autobiography,  ed. 
Hayward,  p.  256. 

I  never  met  with  any  person  who  had 
more  decided  talents  for  conversation, 
eminently  seasoned  with  wit  and  humour, 
and  these  talents  were  so  at  command  that 
he  could  exert  them  at  will.  He  was  re- 
markable for  some  sprightly  story  or  witty 
bon  mot  just  when  he  quitted  a  company, 
which  seemed  as  much  as  to  say,  There 
now,  I  have  given  you  a  dose  which  you 
may  work  upon  in  my  absence."  His 
society  was  greatly  sought  after  by  all 
classes,  from  the  first  nobility  to  the  mere 
homme  de  lettres.  He  dressed  expensively, 
always  kept  his  carriage,  and  yet  died 
worth  about  15,000/,  leaving  a  most  capital 
library  of  curious  books.  His  second  wife 
was  my  wife's  sister. — Young,  Arthur, 
1820?  Autobiography,  ed.,  Betham-Ed- 
wards,  p.  101. 

Where  the  life  has  been  as  private  as 
that  of  Dr.  Burney,  its  history  must 
necessarily  be  simple,  and  can  have  little 


further  call  upon  the  attention  of  the 
world,  than  that  which  may  belong  to  a 
wish  of  tracing  the  progress  of  a  nearly 
abandoned  child,  from  a  small  village  of 
Shropshire,  to  a  man  allowed  throughout 
Europe  to  have  risen  to  the  head  of  his 
profession;  and  thence,  setting  his  pro- 
fession aside,  to  have  been  elevated  to  an 
intellectual  rank  in  society,  as  a  man  of 
letters.  Though  not  first  in  the  very 
line"  with  most  of  the  eminent  men  of  his 
day.  Dr.  Johnson  and  Mr.  Burke,  soaring 
above  any  contemporary  mark,  always, 
like  senior  wranglers  excepted.  And 
this  height,  to  which,  by  means  and  re- 
sources all  his  own,  he  arose,  the  genius 
that  impelled  him  to  fame,  the  integrity 
that  established  his  character,  and  the 
amiability  that  magnetized  all  hearts, — in 
the  phrase  of  Dr.  Johnson, — to  go  forth  to 
meet  him,  were  the  only  materials  with 
which  he  worked  his  way. — D'Arblay, 
Mme.  (Fanny  Burney),  1832,  Memoirs 
of  Doctor  Burney,  Preface,  p.  vii. 

His  mind,  though  not  very  powerful  or 
capacious,  was  restlessly  active;  and,  in 
the  intervals  of  his  professional  pursuits, 
he  had  contrived  to  lay  up  much  miscel- 
laneous information.  His  attainments, 
the  suavity  of  his  temper,  and  the  gentle 
simplicity  of  his  manners,  had  obtained  for 
him  ready  admission  to  the  first  literary 
circles.— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington, 
1842,  Madame  D^Arblay,  Critical  and 
Miscellaneous  Essays. 

His  place  in  social  life  was  unique,  being 
due  to  what  Dr.  Johnson  implied  to  be  an 
almost  unique  blending  of  a  happy  temper 
of  mind,  an  affectionate  disposition,  gentle 
and  attractive  manners  (having  dignity  in 
reserve  should  it  be  needed),  with  a  very 
active  and  versatile  intellect,  and  con- 
siderable acquirements.  The  charm  of 
character  and  of  manners,  the  vivacity 
and  readiness  of  wit,"  which  made  him 
the  man  of  the  eighteenth  century  who 
gained  and  kept  the  greatest  number  of 


B  URNEY—R  UMFORD 


589 


friends,  can  now  be  brought  before  us  only 
by  the  warmth  of  the  praise  of  those 
friends ;  and  of  the  love  (rising  to  enthu- 
siasm) of  his  children,  to  which  the  diaries 
that  follow  bear  continuous  testimony. — 
Ellis,  Annie  Raine,  1889,  ed.,  The  Early 
Diary  of  Frances  Burney,  Preface,  vol,  I, 
p.  vii. 

GENERAL 

He  [Johnson],  gave  much  praise  to  his 
friend,  Dr.  Burney's  elegant  and  entertain- 
ing "Travels,"  and  told  Mr.  Seward  that 
he  had  them  in  his  eye,  when  writing  his 

Journey  to  the  Western  Islands  of  Scot- 
land."— BoswELL,  James,  1791-93,  Life 
of  Samuel  Johnson,  ed.  Hill,  vol.  iv,  p.  215. 

Dr.  Burney's  "History"  is  one  continu- 
ous misrepresentation  of  English  music 
and  musicians,  only  rendered  plausible  by 
misquotation  of  every  kind.  .  .  . 
Burney  carries  his  depreciation  of  English 
authors  systematically  throughout  his 
work.  ...  It  is  sufficient  for  my 
present  purpose  to  say  that  Dr.  Burney's 
"History"  is  written  throughout  in  this 
strain.  What  with  mistake,  and  what 
with  misrepresentation,  it  can  but  mislead 
the  reader  as  to  English  music  or  musi- 
cians ;  and  from  the  slight  search  I  have 
made  into  his  early  Italian  authorities,  I 
doubt  whether  even  that  portion  is  very 
reliable. — Chappell,  William,  1855-59, 
Popular  Music  of  the  Olden  Time,  Intro- 
duction, vol.  I,  pp.  vii,  viii,  ix. 

Between  the  two  rival  histories,  the  pub- 
lic decision  was  loud  and  immediate  in 
favour  of  Dr.  Burney.    Time  has  modified 


this  opinion,  and  brought  the  merits  of 
each  work  to  their  fair  and  proper  level — 
adjudging  to  Burney  the  palm  of  style, 
arrangement,  and  amusing  narrative,  and 
to  Hawkins  the  credit  of  minuter  accuracy 
and  deeper  research,  more  particularly  in 
parts  interesting  to  the  antiquary  and  the 
literary  world  in  general. — Rimbault, 
Edward  F.,  1879,  A  Dictionary  of  Music 
and  Musicians,  ed.  Grove,  vol.  I,  p.  284. 

The  work  was  from  the  outset  very  suc- 
cessful, and  was  generally  pronounced 
superior  to  the  similar  undertaking  of  Sir 
John  Hawkins.  .  .  .  Both  works  are  of  the 
highest  value,  and  form  the  foundation  of 
nearly  every  English  work  on  musical  his- 
tory which  has  appeared  since;  but 
Burney's  is  disfigured  by  the  undue  promi- 
nence he  gives  to  the  fashionable  music  of 
his  own  day,  and  the  lack  of  appreciation 
he  displays  toward  the  compositions  of  the 
English  schools  of  the  preceding  centuries. 
— Squire,  W.  Barclay,  1886,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  vii,  p.  417. 

No  list  of  his  musical  compositions  is 
known  to  exist.  His  daughter  admits  that 
they  were  out  of  date  even  in  her  own  day. 
No  list  of  his  many  articles  in  the ' '  Monthly 
Review,"  and  the  Cyclopaedia  of  Abraham 
Rees,  has  ever  been  compiled ;  his  "  Tours' ' 
are  less  read  than  they  might  well  be,  and 
his  "History  of  Music"  has,  in  the  very 
course  and  progress  of  Music,  been  super- 
seded. The  repute  of  his  reputation  sur- 
vives.— Ellis,  Annie  Raine,  1889,  ed.. 
The  Early  Diary  of  Frances  Burney,  Pref- 
ace, vol.  I.  p,  vi. 


Count  Rumford. 

Sir  Benjamin  Thompson 
1753-1814 

Benjamin  Thompson,  Count  Rumford.  Born  at  Woburn,  Mass.,  March  26,  1753: 
died  at  Auteuil,  near  Paris,  Aug.  21,  1814.  An  American  scientist  and  Bavarian  ad- 
ministrator. Having  been  refused  a  commission  in  the  Continential  army,  he  offered 
his  services  to  the  British,  and  in  1776  was  sent  to  England  with  despatches  from 
General  William  Howe.  Here  he  was  given  a  place  in  the  administrative  service  by 
Lord  George  Germaine,  secretary  of  state  for  the  colonies,  and  rose  to  the  post  of 
under-secretary  of  state  (1780).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1779. 
On  the  retirement  of  his  patron,  he  returned  in  1781  to  America,  and  raised  in  New  York 
the  ''King's  American  Dragoons,"  of  which  he  was  commissioned  lieutenant-colonel. 
He  returned  to  England  before  the  close  of  the  war,  and  in  1784  accepted  a  confidential 
appointment  with  the  rank  of  aide-de-camp  and  chamberlain  at  the  Court  of  the  Elector 
of  Bavaria.  He  reorganized  the  military  establishment  of  Bavaria,  and  introduced 
important  economic  and  other  reforms,  with  the  result  that  he  was  rapidly  promoted  to 
the  highest  ofl[ices  in  the  state,  including  those  of  commander-in-chief  of  the  general 
Staff,  minister  of  war,  and  superintendent  of  the  police.    He  was  created  a  count  in 


590 


COUNT  RUMFORD 


the  Holy  Roman  Empire  in  1791.  Owing  to  ill  health  he  quitted  Bavaria  about  1798, 
and  was  for  a  time  a  private  agent  of  Bavaria  in  England.  He  removed  to  Paris  in 
1802,  and  in  1804  married  as  his  second  wife  the  widow  of  the  French  chemist  Lavoisier. 
The  rest  of  his  life  was  spent  at  his  wife's  villa  in  Auteuil.  He  gave  $5,000  to  the 
American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences  and  a  like  amount  to  the  Royal  Society  of 
London  to  found  prizes  bearing  his  name  for  the  most  important  discoveries  in  heat  and 
light.  He  left  to  Harvard  the  funds  with  which  the  Rumford  professorship  of  the 
physical  and  mathematical  sciences  as  applied  to  the  useful  arts  has  been  erected. — 
Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  993. 


PERSONAL 
Knight  of  the  Dishclout,  whereso'er  I  walk 
I  hear  thee,  Rumford,  all  the  kitchen  talk: 
Note  of  melodious  cadence  on  the  ear, 
Loud  echoes,  Rumford  here,  and  Rumford 
there! 

Lo,  every  parlour,  drawing-room  I  see. 
Boasts  of  thy  stoves,  and  talks  of  nought 
but  thee. 

— WoLCOTT,  John  (Peter  Pindar),  1801, 
A  Poetical  Epistle  to  Benjamin  Count 
Rumford. 

From  this  general  view  of  the  conduct 
of  Major  Thompson  and  his  manner  of 
leaving  America,  some  may  have  received 
unfavorable  impressions  of  his  character. 
But  he  had  never  made  politics  his  study, 
and  never  perhaps  seriously  considered  the 
origin  and  progress  of  the  contest ;  and  if 
he  had  sought  for  employment  against  his 
countrymen,  he  had  sufficient  opportuni- 
ties of  being  gratified.  But  he  wished  not 
to  build  his  fame  upon  his  exploits  and 
dexterity  in  warlike  achievements.  He 
wished  not  to  sacrifice  his  countrymen, 
that  he  might  thereby  become  the  hero  of 
the  British  arms.  But,  believing  that  the 
benevolent  plans  which  he  has  since 
adopted  could  never  be  executed  but  under 
the  fostering  hand  of  well-directed  power, 
he  sought  a  field  for  the  exercise  of  his 
goodness  and  ingenuity  where  they  could 
be  executed,  and  where  there  was  the  most 
obvious  demand.  In  doing  this,  success 
has  attended  his  steps,  and  he  has  erected 
in  the  bosom  of  every  poor  man  a  temple 
to  gratitude  which  will  endure  as  long  as 
benevolence  and  charity  shall  be  con- 
sidered Christian  virtues. — Baldwin,  Lo- 
AMMI,  1805,  Literary  Miscellany,  vol.  i. 

I  am  almost  afraid  to  tell  you  the  story, 
my  good  child,  lest  in  future  you  should 
not  be  good ;  lest  what  I  am  about  relat- 
ing should  set  you  a  bad  example,  make 
you  passionate,  and  so  on.  But  I  had  been 
made  very  angry.  A  large  party  had  been 
invited  I  neither  liked  nor  approved  of, 
and  invited  for  the  sole  purpose  of  vexing 


me.  Our  house  being  in  the  centre  of  the 
garden,  walled  around,  with  iron  gates,  I 
put  on  my  hat,  walked  down  to  the  porter's 
lodge,  and  gave  him  orders,  on  his  peril, 
not  to  let  any  one  in.  Besides  I  took  away 
the  keys.  Madame  went  down,  and  when 
the  company  arrived,  she  talked  with  them 
— she  on  one  side,  they  on  the  other,  of 
the  high  brick  wall.  After  that  she  goes 
and  pours  boiling  water  on  some  of  my 
beautiful  flowers.  —  Rumford,  Count, 
1806,  Letter  to  his  Daughter. 

I  wish  here  and  now  only  to  recall  to 
your  minds  those  of  his  most  directly  use- 
ful and  beneficient  works  which  have  made 
his  name  known  in  every  part  of  Europe. 
Who  is  ignorant  of  what  he  has  done  for 
relieving  the  scarcity  in  food ;  of  his  multi- 
plied efforts  for  making  food  more  health- 
ful, more  agreeable,  and,  above  all,  more 
economical ;  what  service  he  has  rendered 
to  humanity  in  introducing  the  general  use 
of  the  soups  which  go  by  his  own  name,  and 
which  have  been  so  invaluable  to  so  many 
thousands  of  persons  exposed  to  the 
horrors  of  the  prevailing  scarcity  ?  Who 
has  not  been  made  acquainted  with  his 
effective  methods  for  suppressing  mendic- 
ity ;  with  his  Houses  of  Industry,  for  work 
and  instruction;  with  his  means  for  im- 
proving the  construction  of  chimneys,  of 
lamps,  of  furnaces,  of  baths,  of  heating  by 
steam ;  and,  in  fine,  with  his  varied  under- 
takings in  the  cause  of  domestic  economy  ? 
In  England,  in  France,  in  Germany,  in  all 
parts  of  the  continent,  the  people  are  en- 
joying the  blessings  of  his  discoveries; 
and,  from  the  humble  dwelling  of  the  poor 
even  to  the  palaces  of  sovereigns,  all  will 
remember  that  his  sole  aim  was  to ,  be 
always  useful  to  his  fellow-men. — Deles- 
SERT,  Benjamin,  1814,  Address  Pro- 
nounced over  the  Grave  of  Count  Rumford, 
Aug.  24. 

We  have  seen  him  here,  in  fact,  for  ten 
years  honored  by  Frenchmen  and  foreign- 
ers, held  in  high  regard  by  the  lovers  of 


COUNT  RUMFORD 


591 


science,  sharing  their  labors,  aiding  with 
his  advice  the  humblest  artisans,  and  nobly 
serving  the  public  by  a  constant  succes- 
sion of  useful  inventions.  Nothing  would 
have  been  lacking  to  the  perfect  enjoyment 
of  his  life,  if  the  amenity  of  his  manners 
had  equalled  his  ardor  in  promoting  the 
public  welfare.  But  it  must  be  confessed 
that  he  exhibited  in  conversation  and  in- 
tercourse, and  in  all  his  demeanor,  a  feel- 
ing which  would  seem  most  extraordinary 
in  a  man  who  was  always  so  well  treated  by 
others,  and  who  had  himself  done  so  much 
good  to  others.  It  was  as  if  while  he  had 
been  rendering  all  these  services  to  his 
fellow-men  he  had  no  real  love  or  regard 
for  them.  It  would  appear  as  if  the  vile 
passions  which  he  had  observed  in  the 
miserable  objects  committed  to  his  care, 
or  those  other  passions,  not  less  vile,  which 
his  success  and  fame  had  excited  among 
his  rivals,  had  imbittered  him  towards 
human  nature.  So  he  thought  it  was  not 
wise  or  good  to  intrust  to  men  in  the  mass 
the  care  of  their  own^  well-being. — 
CuviER,  Baron,  1815,  Eloge  on  Count 
Rumfordy  Jan.  9. 

The  sight  of  him  very  much  reduced  our 
enthusiasm.  We  found  him  a  dry,  precise 
man,  who  .spoke  of  beneficence  as  a  sort 
of  discipline,  and  of  the  poor  as  we  had 
never  dared  to  speak  of  vagabonds.  It 
was  necessary,  he  said,  to  punish  those 
who  dispensed  alms ;  we  must  compel  the 
poor  to  work,  etc.  Our  amazement  was 
great  on  hearing  such  maxims.  M.  de 
Rumford  established  himself  in  Paris, 
where  he  married  Madame  Lavoisier,  the 
widow  of  the  celebrated  chemist.  I  had 
relations  with  each  of  them,  and  never  saw 
a  more  bizarre  connection.  Rumford  was 
cold,  calm,  obstinate,  egotistic,  prodig- 
iously occupied  with  the  material  element 
of  life  and  the  very  smallest  inventions  of 
detail.  He  wanted  his  chimneys,  lamps, 
coffee-pots,  windows,  made  after  a  certain 
pattern,  and  he  contradicted  his  wife  a 
thousand  times  a  day  about  the  household 
management.  Madame  Lavoisier-Rumf ord 
(for  so  she  was  called  during  his  life,  and 
did  not  begin  to  bear  the  name  of  Rumford 
till  after  his  death)  was  a  woman  of  a  reso- 
lute and  willful  character.  A  widow  during 
twelve  or  fifteen  years,  she  had  the  habit 
of  following  her  own  inclination,  and 
with  difficulty  bore  opposition.  Her  spirit 
was  high,  her  soul  strong,  her  character 


masculine.  Her  second  marriage  was  very 
soon  vexed  by  the  most  grotesque  scenes. 
Their  separation  was  more  of  a  blessing  to 
both  of  them  than  was  their  union. — De 
Candolle,  Augustin-Pyramus,  1842-62, 
Memoires  et  Souvenirs. 

His  true  character  is  rather  to  be  in- 
ferred from  his  useful  and  philanthropic 
labors,  and  his  numerous  useful  and  scien- 
tific discoveries,  than  from  the  report  of 
those  who  only  knew  him  after  his  energy 
was  impaired,  and  he  had  experienced  dis- 
appointment and  ingratitude.  We,  how- 
ever, draw  from  the  report  of  his  French 
eulogist  one  prominent  trait,  which  may 
not  have  been  developed  in  the  preceding 
pages;  this  was  the  love  of  order, and  the 
strictest  observance  of  method,  in  all  his 
pursuits.  This  he  called  ''the  necessary 
auxiliary  of  genius,  the  only  possible  in- 
strument of  true  happiness,  and  almost  a 
subordinate  divinity  in  this  lower  world." 
It  is  to  this  feature  in  his  character,  that 
we  are  to  ascribe  all  his  scientific  attain- 
ments, and  the  high  reputation  he  must 
ever  hold  in  the  eyes  of  posterity.  From 
the  time  he  landed  in  England,  except  a 
single  short  interval,  until  he  bade  adieu 
to  Bavaria,  he  had  been  engaged  in  one 
continued  series  of  important  and  engross- 
ing employments,  civil,  military,  and  diplo- 
matic ;  and  yet,  by  a  wise  and  skillful  dis- 
tribution of  his  time,  he  found  leisure  not 
only  to  devote  himself  to  the  most  minute 
objects  of  domestic  economy,  but  to  enter 
into  and  accomplish  philosophic  investiga- 
tions, that  have  become  a  portion  of 
physical  science,  which  no  future  dis- 
coveries can  obliterate. — Ren  wick,  James, 
1845,  Count  Rumford,  Sparks'  Library  of 
American  Biography,  vol.  XV,  p.  200. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  there 
was  no  ground  whatever  for  the  morbid 
fancy  which  the  Countess  connected  with 
the  loss  of  her  father,  nor  was  there  any 
extraordinary  circumstance  attending  his 
death.  He  was  a  lonely,  and  he  was  not 
a  happy  man.  Having  spent  years  of  most 
thoughtful,  wise,  arduous  labour  for  his 
fellow-men,  and  having  advanced  the  wel- 
fare and  comfort  and  happiness  of  millions 
of  his  race, — especially  of  the  poor,  the 
abject,  and  the  forlorn  among  them, — he 
did  not  himself  find  serenity  of  heart,  or 
satisfaction  in  society,  or  peace  in  his  own 
fragment  of  a  home.  A  fever  came  upon 
him  which,  after  a  rapid  course  of  three 


592 


COUNT  RUMFORD 


days,  ended  fatally. — Ellis,  George  E., 
1871,  Memoir  of  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson^ 
Count  Rumford,  p.  613. 

Men  find  pleasure  in  exercising  the 
powers  they  possess,  and  Rumford  pos- 
sessed, in  its  highest  and  strongest  form, 
the  power  of  organization.  In  him  flexible 
wisdom  formed  an  amalgam  with  despotic 
strength.  He  held  undoubtingly  that 
arrangement,  method,  provision  for  the 
minutest  details,  subordination,  co-opera- 
tion, and  a  careful  system  of  statistics, 
will  facilitate  and  make  effective  any 
undertaking,  however  burdensome  and 
comprehensive."  Pure  love  of  humanity 
would  at  first  sight  seem  to  be  the  motive 
force  of  his  action.  Still,  it  has  been 
affirmed  by  those  who  knew  him  that  this 
was  not  the  case.  Fontenelle  said  of 
Dodard,  that  he  turned  his  rigid  obser- 
vance of  the  fasts  of  the  Church  into  a 
scientific  experiment  on  the  effects  of  ab- 
stinence, thereby  taking  the  path  which 
led  at  once  to  heaven  and  into  the  French 
Academy.  In  Rumford' s  case  the  pleasure 
of  the  administrator  outweighed,  it  was 
said,  that  of  the  philanthropist. — Tyn- 
DALL,  John,  1883,  Count  Rumford,  Con- 
temporary Review,  vol.  44,  p.  48. 

In  the  Maximilian  Strasse,  the  finest 
street  in  Munich,  there  stands  the  bronze 
statue  of  an  American  who  won  renown  in 
three  countries  of  Europe, — England, 
Germany,  and  France.  Born  in  Woburn, 
Mass.,  marrying  in  Concord,  N.  H.,  he  was 
made  a  baronet  by  George  III.,  and  Count 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  by  the  Elector 
of  Bavaria.  He  often  dined  with  Napoleon, 
he  corresponded  with  the  Czar  of  Russia, 
and  the  Emperor  of  Austria,  and  he  was 
on  intimate  terms  with  all  the  scientific 
men  of  his  time.  In  London  he  founded 
the  Royal  Institution,  and  cured  five 
hundred  smoking  chimneys.  In  Bavaria 
he  suppressed  the  system  of  beggary  and 
reformed  the  army.  He  taught  the  world 
how  to  cook,  he  discovered  the  principle  of  ^ 
the  correlation  of  forces,  and  he  invented 
porcelain  kettles. — Abbott,  Frances  M., 
1893,  Count  Rumford  arid  his  Daughter, 
New  England  Magazine,  vol.  15,  p.  463. 

GENERAL 

This  most  valuable  and  important  work, 
whose  truly  philosophick  and  benevolent 
author  must  feel  a  joy  and  self-satisfac- 
tion far  superior  to  any  praise  which  man 


can  bestow.  — Mathias,  Thomas  James, 
1794-8,  The  Pursuits  cf  Literature,  J9.224. 

We  profess  to  be  of  the  daily  increasing 
number  of  those  who  do  not  think  very 
highly  of  Count  Rumford' s  talents  as  a 
philosopher ;  and  if  our  former  preposses- 
sion required  any  confirmation  (which  it 
certainly  did  not),  he  has  taken  very  great 
pains,  in  the  elaborate  performance  now 
before  us,  to  supply  a  variety  of  new 
proofs.  .  .  .  The  merits  of  Count 
Rumford,  too,  have  been  so  much  a  theme 
of  conversation,  and  have  had  such  an 
active  influence  in  the  fashionable  world 
of  science,  that  it  is  proper  his  preten- 
sions should  at  length  be  sifted.  But, 
above  all,  a  paper  filled  with  theoretical 
matter,  abounding  in  pulses,  vibrations, 
internal  motions,  and  ethereal  fluids,  de- 
serves to  be  exposed ;  the  more,  because 
these  chimeras  are  mingled  with  a  portion 
of  induction,  and  have  received  the  ill- 
deserved  honour  of  a  place  in  the  Philo- 
sophical Transactions. — Brougham,Henry 
Lord,  1804,  Count  Rumford  on  the  Nature 
of  Heat,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  4,  pp. 
399,  400. 

The  uncommon  popularity  which  the 
Count  enjoyed  for  some  years  seems  to  have 
produced  a  bad  effect  upon  his  disposition, 
or  perhaps  rather  induced  him  to  display 
without  reserve  those  dispositions  which 
he  had  hitherto  been  at  some  pains  to  con- 
ceal. Pomposity,  and  a  species  of  literary 
arrogance  quite  unsuitable  to  the  nature 
of  experimental  philosophy,  for  some 
years  characterized  his  writings  and  in- 
jured their  value,  feut  in  some  of  the  last 
essays  with  which  he  favoured  the  world 
we  find  much  valuable  and  curious  in- 
formation, respecting  the  heat  evolved  by 
different  combustibles  while  burning, — a 
subject  of  great  interest,  which  he  prose- 
cuted for  many  years,and  at  last  elucidated 
with  considerable  success. —  Thomson, 
Thomas,  1815,  Count  Rumford,  Annals  of 
Philosophy,  vol.  5,  p.  243. 

His  ''Essays  on  Pauperism,"  and  his 
plans  for  its  relief  and  prevention,  would 
alone  entitle  him  to  the  blessings  of  man- 
kind. Almost  everything  which  is  valu- 
able in  our  modern  systems  of  charity  may 
be  traced  in  his  writings.  When  we  add 
all  that  he  did  for  science,  and  for  the 
advancement  of  science,  at  the  Royal  In- 
stitution in  London,  and  at  Harvard,  and 
at  our  American  Academy,  his  claim  to  a 


RUMFORD— SHERIDAN 


593 


statue  seems  to  be  far  less  equivocal,  to 
say  the  least,  than  that  of  many  of  those 
who  have  lately  received  such  commemora- 
tion. I  trust  we  shall  have  a  portrait  of 
him,  one  of  these  days,  in  the  gallery  of 
our  Historical  Society,  if  nowhere  else. — 
WiNTHROP,  Robert  C.,  1867,  Letter  to 
George  E.  Ellis,  Aug.  19 ;  Memoir  of  Count 
Rumfordy  Preface,  p.  vi. 

We  enter  into  the  labors  of  Count  Rum- 
ford  every  day  of  our  lives,  without  know- 
ing it  or  thinking  of  him.  And  he  had  his 
exceeding  great  reward.  His  homely 
efforts  for  the  daily  comfort  of  mankind 
led  him  to  the  discoveries  which  have 
made  his  name  illustrious  as  a  philosopher. 
His  great  contributions  to  science  in  the 
development  of  the  correlation  and  inde- 
structibility of  forces,  of  the  relations  or 
rather  the  identity  of  force  and  heat,  place 
him  among  the  foremost  discoverers  in 
the  world  of  science.  By  his  experiments 
he  overthrew  the  theories  as  to  the  nature 
of  heat,  which  had  been  taken  for  granted 
by  natural  philosophers  from  the  time  of 
Aristotle,  and  established  the  true  doctrine 
upon  which  every  succeeding  advance  of 
knowledge  in  that  direction  rests,  and 
without  which  none  could  have  been  made. 
The  mighty  and  beneficent  agents  of  light 
and  heat  were  the  objects  of  his  intense 
study,  that  he  might  ascertain  how  they 
could  best  be  made  to  answer  the  benevo- 
lent intentions  of  the  Creator  in  promoting 
the  happiness  of  mankind.  And  his  fore- 
casting mind  provided  fit  honors  to  be 


bestowed,  on  either  continent,  after  his 
death,  on  his  successors  in  the  same  line 
of  investigation  and  discovery. — Quincy, 
Edmund,  187],  Count  Rumford,  Atlantic 
Monthly,  vol  27,  p.  521. 

In  spite  of  all  the  progress  we  have 
made  in  physical  science,  these  essays, 
written  for  the  most  part  during  the  last 
century,  contain  a  great  deal  that  is  still 
suggestive  and  worthy  of  thoughtful  read- 
ing both  by  popular  students  and  experts 
in  physical  and  social  science. — Williams, 
W.  Mattieu,  1875,  Count  Rumford's  Com- 
plete Works,  Nature,  vol.  11,  p.  206. 

The  name  and  fame  of  Rumford,  which 
were  resonant  in  Europe  at  the  beginning 
of  this  century,  have  fallen  in  England 
into  general  oblivion.  To  scientific  men, 
however,  his  figure  presents  itself  with 
singular  impressiveness  at  the  present  day. 
This  result  is  mainly  due  to  the  establish- 
ment, in  recent  times,  of  the  grand  scien- 
tific generalisation  known  as  the  Mechan- 
ical Theory  of  Heat.  Boyle,  and  Hooke,  and 
Locke,  and  Leibnitz,  had  already  ranged 
themselves  on  the  side  of  this  theory.  But 
by  experiments  conducted  on  a  scale  un- 
exampled at  the  time,  and  by  reasonings, 
founded  on  these  experiments,  of  singular 
force  and  penetration,  Rumford  has  made 
himself  a  conspicuous  landmark  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  theory.  His  inference  from  his 
experiments  was  scored  in  favour  of  those 
philosophers  who  held  that  heat  is  a  form 
of  motion. — Tyndall  J.,  1883,  Count  Rum- 
ford, Contemporary  Review,  voL  44,  p.  38. 


Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan 

1751-1816 

Born,  in  Dublin,  30  Oct.  1751.  Parents  removed  to  London,  1758.  Educated  at 
Harrow,  1762-68.  Parents  removed  to  Bath,  1771.  Eloped  with  Elizabeth  Linley, 
1772;  secretly  married  to  her  at  Calais.  Formally  married  in  London,  13  April  1773. 
Settled  in  London,  spring  of  1774.  "The  Rivals"  produced  at  Covent  Garden,  17  Jan. 
1775;  ''St.  Patrick's  Day;  or,  The  Scheming  Lieutenant,"  Covent  Garden,  May  1775; 
"The  Duenna,"  Covent  Garden,  21  Nov.  1775.  Purchased  a  share  in  Drury  Lane 
Theatre,  June  1776;  Manager,  Sept.  1776  to  Feb.  1809.  "A  Trip  to  Scarborough" 
(adapted  from  Vanbrugh's  "The  Relapse")  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  24  Feb.  1777; 
"The  School  for  Scandal,"  Drury  Lane,  8  May  1777;  "The  Critic,"  Drury  Lane, 
30  Oct.  1779.  M.  P.  for  Stafford,  1780.  Under  Secretary  of  State,  1782.  Con- 
cerned in  impeachment  of  Warren  Hastings,  1787-88.  Intimacy  with  Prince  of  Wales 
begun,  1787.  Wife  died,  1792.  Drury  Lane  Theatre  rebuilt,  1792-94 ;  new  house 
opened,  21  April  1794.  Married  (ii.)  Esther  Ogle,  27  April  1795.  "Pizarro"  (adapted 
from  Kotzebue's  "Spaniards  in  Peru")  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  24  May  1799.  Privy 
Councillor  and  Treasurer  of  Navy,  1799.  Receiver  of  Duchy  of  Cornwall,  1804. 
Drury  Lane  Theatre  burnt  down,  24  Feb.  1809.  Died,  in  London,  7  July  1816.  Buried 
in  Westminster  Abbey.   Works :  "Clio's  Protest"  (under  pseud. ;  "  Asmodeo")  [1771] ; 

38  C 


594  RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 

**The  Rivals,"  1775;  '*St.  Patrick's  Day;  or.  The  Scheming  Lieutenant/'  1775;  **The 
General  Fast'*  (anon.)  [1775?];  **The  Duenna,"  1775;  "A  Trip  to  Scarborough," 
1777;  ''The School  for  Scandal,"  (anon.),  1777;  ''Verses  to  the  Memory  of  Garrick," 
1779;  "The  Critic,"  1781;  "The  Legislative  Independence  of  Ireland"  (a  speech), 
1785;  "Speech  .  .  .  against  Warren  Hastings, "  1788;  "A  Comparative  State- 
ment of  the  two  Bills  for  the  better  Government  of  the  British  Possessions  in  India," 
1788;  "Dramatic  Works"  [1795?] ;  "Pizarro,"  1799;'  "Speech  ...  on  the 
Motion  to  address  His  Majesty"  [1798];  "Speech  ...  on  the  Union  with  Ireland," 
1799;  "Speech  ...  on  the  Army  Estimates,"  1802.  Posthumous:  "Speeches" 
(5  vols.),  1816;  "An  Ode  to  Scandal,"  2nd  edn.  1819;  "Speeches  in  the  Trial  of 
Warren  Hastings,"  ed.  by  E.  A.  Bond  (4  vols.),  1859-61.  He  translated :  "The  Love 
Epistles  of  Aristasnetus"  (with  N.  B.  Halhed),  1771.  Collected  Works:  ed.  by  F. 
Stainforth,  1874.  Life :  by  T.  Moore,  1825 ;  by  Mrs.  Oliphant,  1883 ;  by  W.  F.  Rae, 
1896. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  255. 


PERSONAL 
.  Mr.  Sheridan  has  a  very  fine  figure,  and 
a  good  though  I  don't  think  a  handsome 
face.  He  is  tall,  and  very  upright,  and 
his  appearance  and  address  are  at  once 
manly  and  fashionable,  without  the  small- 
est tincture  of  foppery  or  modish  graces. 
In  short,  I  like  him  vastly,  and  think  him 
every  way  worthy  his  beautiful  companion. 
.  .  .  He  evidently  adores  her,  and 
she  as  evidently  idolises  him.  The  world 
has  by  no  means  done  him  justice. — 
D'Arblay,  Mme.  (Fanny  Burney),  1779, 
Diary  and  Letters,  vol.  i,  ch.  iv. 

It  was  some  Spirit,  Sheridan  !  that  breathed 
O'er  thy  young  mind  such  wildly-various 
power ! 

My  soul  hath  marked  thee  in  her  shaping 
hour, 

Thy    temples  with    Hymettian  flow'rets 
wreathed : 

And  sweet  thy  voice,  as  when  o'er  Laura's 
bier 

Sad  music  trembled   through  Vauclusa's 

glade ; 

Sweet,  as  at  dawn  the  love-lorn  serenade 
That  wafts  soft  dreams  to  Slumber's  listen- 
ing ear. 

Now  patriot  Rage  and  Indignation  high 
Swell  the  full  tones!   And  now  thy  eye- 
beams  dance 
Meanings  of  Scorn  and  Wit's  quaint  revelry! 

— Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1795,  To 
Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan. 

Sheridan  is  very  little  consulted  at 
present;  and  it  is  said,  will  not  have  a 
seat  in  the  cabinet.  This  is  a  distressing 
necessity.  His  habits  of  daily  intoxica- 
tion are  probably  considered  as  unfitting 
him  for  trust.  The  little  that  has  been 
confided  to  him  he  has  been  running  about 
to  tell;  and  since  Monday,  he  has  been 
visiting  Sidmouth.  At  a  dinner  at  Lord 
Cowper's  on  Sunday  last,  where  the  Prince 


was,  he  got  drunk  as  usual,  and  began  to 
speak  slightingly  of  Fox.  From  what 
grudge  this  behsJviour  proceeds  I  have  not 
learned.  The  whole  fact  is  one  to  in- 
vestigate with  candour,  and  with  a  full 
remembrance  of  Sheridan's  great  services, 
in  the  worst  times,  to  the  principles  of 
liberty.— Horner,  Francis,  1806,  Mem- 
oirs and  Correspondence,  vol.  i,  p.  357.  ' 

I  find  things  settled  so  that  £150  will 
remove  all  difficulty.  I  am  absolutely  un- 
done and  broken-hearted.  I  shall  negotiate 
for  the  Plays  successfully  in  the  course 
of  a  week,  when  all  shall  be  returned.  I 
have  desired  Fairbrother  to  get  back  the 
Guarantee  for  thirty.  They  are  going  to 
put  the  carpets  out  of  window,  and  brake 
into  Mrs.  S.  's  room  and  take  me — for  God's 
sake  let  me  see  you. — Sheridan,  Richard 
Brinsley,  1816,  Letter  to  Samuel  Rogers, 
May  15 ;  Moore's  Memoirs  of  Sheridan,  vol. 
II,  p.  454. 

Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan 
Born,  1751. 
Died,  7th  July,  1816. 
tms  marble  is  the  tribute  of  an  attached 
Friend, 
Peter  Moore. 
—Inscription  on  Grave,  1816,  West- 
minster Abbey. 

Sheridan's  worst  can  effect  but  few ;  his 
best  will  redound  to  the  good  of  his  coun- 
try, and  to  the  delight  of  thousands  to 
come.— Hunt,  Leigh,  1816,  The  Exam- 
iner, July  14. 

Long  shall  we  seek  his  likeness — long  in 
vain. 

And  turn  to  all  of  him  which  may  remain. 
Sighing  that  Nature  form'd  but  one  such 
man, 

And  broke  the  die — in  moulding  Sheridan. 
— Byron,  Lord,  1816,  Monody  on  the  Death 
of  the  Rt.  Hon.  R.  B.  Sheridan,  Spoken 
at  Drury-Lane  Theatre. 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


595 


The  orator, — dramatist, — minstrel, — who  ran 
Thro'  each  mode  of  the  lyre  and  was  master 
of  all; — 

Whose  mind  was  an  essence  compounded 
with  art 

From  the  finest  and  best  of  all  other  men's 
powers; — 

Who  ruled,  like  a  wizard,  the  world  of  the 
heart. 

And  could  call  up  its  sunshine  or  bringdown 

its  showers; — 
Whose  humor,  as  gay  as  the  fire -fly's  light. 
Played  round  every  subject  and  shone  as  it 

played;— 

Whosejwit  in  the  combat,  as  gentle  as  bright. 
Ne'er  carried  a  heart-stain  away  on  its 
blade ; — 

Whose  eloquence — brightening  whatever  it 
tried. 

Whether  reason  or  fancy,  the  gay  or  the 
grave, — 

Was  as  rapid,  as  deep  and  as  brilliant  a  tide, 
As  ever  bore  Freedom  aloft  on  its  wave ! 

— Moore,  Thomas,  1816,  Lines  on  the 
Death  of  Sheridan. 

I  must  differ  from  Moore  in  his  view  of 
Sheridan's  heart.  Notwithstanding  his 
passion  for  Miss  Linley  and  his  grief  for 
his  father's  death,  who  used  him  ill,  I 
question  his  having  a  ''really  good  heart." 
His  making  love  to  Pamela,  Madame  de 
Genlis's  daughter,  so  soon  after  his  lovely 
wife's  death,  and  his  marriage,  in  two 
years,  with  a  young  girl  as  a  compliment 
to  her  remembrance,  renders  one  very  sus- 
picious of  the  real  depth  of  his  passion.  No 
man  of  wit  to  the  full  extent  of  the  word 
can  have  a  good  heart,  because  he  has  by 
nature  less  regard  for  the  feelings  of 
others  than  for  the  brilliancy  of  his  own 
sayings.  There  must  be  more  mischief 
than  love  in  the  hearts  of  all  radiant  wits. 
Moore's  life  of  him  wants  courage. — Hay- 
don,  Benjamin  Robert,  1825,  To  Miss 
Mitford,  Dec.  10;  Life,  Letters  and  Table 
Talk,  ed.  Stoddard,  p.  226. 

Sheridan  was  a  man  of  quick  but  not 
deep  feelings ;  of  sudden  but  not  lasting 
excitements.  He  was  not  one  of  those 
who  suffer  a  single  passion  to  influence 
the  whole  course  of  their  lives.  Even  the 
desire  to  dazzle  by  his  wit,  great  as  was 
its  power  over  him,  was  not  always  awake, 
for  we  are  told  that  he  would  sometimes 
remain  silent  for  hours  in  company,  too 
lazy  to  invent  a  smart  saying  for  the 
occasion,  but  idly  waiting  for  the  oppor- 
tunity to  apply  some  brilliant  witticism 
already  in  his  memory.    .    .    .  His 


griefs  might  have  been  violent,  but  they 
were  certainly  brief,  and  he  quickly 
forgot  them  when  he  came  to  look  again 
at  the  sunny  side  of  things.  Even  his 
political  disappointments  do  not  seem  in 
the  least  to  have  soured  his  temper,  or 
abated  his  readiness  to  adopt  new  hopes 
and  new  expedients. — Bryant,  William 
CULLEN,  1826-84,  The  Character  of  Sher- 
idan, Prose  Writings,  ed.  Godwin,  voL  li, 
p.  368. 

I  was  present  on  the  second  of  Hasting's 
trial  in  Westminster  Hall ;  when  Sheridan 
was  listened  to  with  such  attention  that 
you  might  have  heard  a  pin  drop. — Dur- 
ing one  of  those  days,  Sheridan,  having 
observed  Gibbon  among  the  audience,  took 
occasion  to  mention  ''The  luminous  author 
of 'The  Decline  and  Fall.'  "  After  he  had 
finished  one  of  his  friends  reproached  him 
with  flattering  Gibbon.  "Why,  what  did 
I  say  of  him?"  asked  Sheridan. — ''You 
called  him  the  luminous  author,"  &c., — 
"Luminous!  oh,  I  meant — voluminous." 
.  .  .  Sheridan  did  not  display  his  ad- 
mirable powers  in  company  till  he  had  been 
warmed  by  wine.  During  the  earlier  part 
of  dinner  he  was  generally  heavy  and  silent ; 
and  I  have  heard  him,  when  invited  to  drink  ' 
a  glass  of  wine,  reply,  "No,  thank  you; 
I'll  take — a  little  small  beer."  After 
dinner,  when  he  had  had  a  tolerable 
quantity  of  wine,  he  was  brilliant  indeed. 
Put  when  he  went  on  swallowing  too  much, 
he  became  downright  stupid :  and  I  once, 
after  a  dinner-party  at  the  house  of 
Edwards  the  bookseller  in  Pall  Mall,  walked 
with  him  to  Brookes's,  when  he  had 
absolutely  lost  the  use  of  speech.  .  .  . 
Sheridan  had  very  fine  eyes,  and  he  was 
not  a  little  vain  of  them.  He  said  to  me 
on  his  death-bed,  "Tell  Lady  Besborough 
that  my  eyes  will  look  up  to  the  coffin-lid 
as  brightly  as  ever. "  .  .  .  In  his  deal- 
ings with  the  world,  Sheridan  certainly 
carried  the  "privileges  of  genius"  so  far 
as  they  were  ever  carried  by  man. — 
Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table- Talk,  pp.  65,  69,  70,  71. 

Poor  Sherry!  poor  Sherry!  drunkard, 
gambler,  spendthrift,  debtor,  godless  and 
worldly  as  thou  wert,  what  is  it  that 
shakes  from  our  hand  the  stone  we  would 
fling  at  thee?  Almost,  we  must  confess 
it,  thy  very  faults ;  at  least  those  qualities 
which  seem  to  have  been  thy  glory  and  thy 
ruin ;  which  brought  thee  into  temptation ; 


596 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


to  which,  hadst  thou  been  less  brilliant,  less 
bountiful,  thou  hadst  never  been  drawn. 
What  is  it  that  disarms  us  when  we  review 
thy  life,  and  wrings  from  us  a  tear  when 
we  should  utter  a  reproach  ?  Thy  punish- 
ment ;  that  bitter,  miserable  end ;  that  long 
battling  with  poverty,  debt,  disease,  all 
brought  on  by  thyself ;  that  abandonment 
in  the  hour  of  need,  more  bitter  than  them 
all ;  that  awakening  to  the  terrible  truth 
of  the  hoilowness  of  man  and  rottenness 
of  the  world ! — Thomson,  Katherine  and 
J.  C.  (Grace  and  Philip  Wharton),  1860, 
The  Wits  and  Beaux  of  Society^  p.  329. 

The  account  of  Sheridan's  death-bed  is 
as  nearly  fabulous  as  any  narration  can  be ; 
but-  it  is  the  current  "copied"  account, 
and  passes  muster  with  the  rest.  And 
now,  we  may  fairly  ask,  if  such  "biog- 
raphies" be  true,  how  came  this  man,  so 
abused,  so  run  down,  whose  faults  were 
so  prodigious,  whose  merits  were  nil^  to 
occupy  the  position  he  did  when  living? 
.  .  .  How  did  it  happen,  then,  that  a 
man  labouring  under  such  a  disadvantage 
of  birth,  and  also  described  as  a  common- 
place swindler,  drunkard,  and  driveller, 
excelled  in  everything  he  attempted,  and, 
from  the  obscure  son  of  the  Bath  actor  and 
schoolmaster,  became  minister  of  state  and 
companion  of  princes  ?  What  dazzled  fools 
does  it  make  all  his  contemporaries  that 
they  admitted  him  unquestioned  to  a 
superiority  which  is  now  denied  to  have 
existed !  What  an  extraordinary  anomaly 
does  that  famous  funeral  in  Westminster 
Abbey  present,  amid  a  crowd  of  onlookers 
so  dense  that  they  seemed  "like  a  wall 
of  human  faces,"  if  it  was  merely  the 
carrying  of  a  poor  old  tipsy  gentleman  to 
his  grave  by  a  group  of  foolish  lords ! — 
Norton,  Hon.  Caroline,  1861,  Sheridan 
and  His  Biographers,  Macmillan^s  Maga- 
zine, vol.  3,  p.  177. 

When  Sheridan  was  dying,  in  the  ex- 
tremity of  poverty,  an  article  appeared 
from  a  generous  enemy  in  the  "Morning 
Post,"  saying  that  relief  should  be  given  be- 
fore it  was  too  late :  "Prefer  ministering 
in  the  chamber  of  sickness"  to  minister- 
ing at  "the  splendid  sorrows  that  adorn  the 
hearse" — "life  and  succor,  against  West- 
minster Abbey  and  a  funeral. ' '  But  it  was 
too  late ;  and  Westminster  Abbey  and  the 
funeral,  with  all  the  pomp  that  rank  could 
furnish,  was  the  alternative.  It  was  this 
which  suggested  the  remark  of  a  French 


journal :  "France  is  the  place  for  a  man 
of  letters  to  live  in,  and  England  the  place 
for  him  to  die  in." — Stanley,  Arthur 
Penrhyn,  1867-96,  Historical  Memorials 
of  Westminster  Ahhey^  p.  317. 

He  was  the  contemporary  of  Beaumar- 
chais,  and  resembled  him  in  his  talent  and 
in  his  life.  The  two  epochs,  the  two 
schools  of  drama,  the  two  characters  cor- 
respond. Like  Beaumarchais,  he  was  a 
lucky  adventurer,  clever,  amiable,  and 
generous,  reaching  success  through  scan- 
dal, who  flashed  up  and  shone  in  a  moment, 
scaled  with  a  rush  the  empyrean  of  politics 
and  literature,  settled  himself,  as  it  were, 
among  the  constellations,  and,  like  a  bril- 
liant rocket,  presently  went  out  in  the 
darkness.  Nothing  failed  him ;  he  attained 
all  at  the  first  leap,  without  apparent 
effort,  like  a  prince  who  need  only  show 
himself  to  win  a  place.  All  the  most  sur- 
passing happiness,  the  most  brilliant  in 
art,  the  most  exalted  in  worldly  position, 
he  took  as  his  birthright.  The  poor  un- 
known youth,  wretched  translator  of  an 
unreadable  Greek  sophist,  who  at  twenty 
walked  about  Bath  in  a  red  waistcoat  and 
a  cocked  hat,  destitute  of  hope,  and  ever  - 
conscious  of  the  emptiness  of  his  pockets, 
had  gained  the  heart  of  the  most  admired 
beauty  and  musician  of  her  time,  and  car- 
ried her  off  from  ten  rich,  elegant,  titled 
adorers,  had  fought  with  the  best-hoaxed 
of  the  ten,  beaten  him,  had  carried  by 
storm  the  curiosity  and  attention  of  the 
public.  Then,  challenging  glory  and 
wealth,  he  placed  successively  on  the  stage 
the  most  diverse  and  the  most  applauded 
dramas,  comedies,  farce,  opera,  serious 
verse;  he  bought  and  worked  a  large 
theatre  without  a  farthing,  inaugurated  a 
reign  of  success  and  pecuniary  advantages, 
and  led  a  life  of  elegance  amid  the  enjoy- 
ments of  social  and  domestic  joys,  sur- 
rounded by  universal  admiration  and  won- 
der. Thence,  aspiring  yet  higher,  he 
conquered  power,  entered  the  House  of 
Commons,  showed  himself  a  match  for  the 
first  orators.  .  .  .  Whatever  the  busi- 
ness, whoever  the  man,  he  persuaded;  none 
withstood  him,  every  one  fell  under  his 
charm.  What  is  more  difficult  than  for 
an  ugly  man  to  make  a  young  girl  forget 
his  ugliness?  There  is  one  thing  more 
difficult,  and  that  is  to  make  a  creditor 
forget  you  owe  him  money.  There  is 
something  more  difficult  still,  and  that  is, 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


597 


to  borrow  money  of  a  creditor  who  has 
come  to  demand  it.  .  .  .  In  the 
morning,  creditors  and  visitors  filled  the 
rooms  in  which  he  lived ;  he  came  in  smil- 
ing, with  an  easy  manner,  with  so  much 
loftiness  and  grace,  that  the  people  forgot 
their  wants  and  their  claims,  and  looked 
as  if  they  had  only  come  to  see  him.  His 
animation  was  irresistible ;  no  one  had  a 
more  dazzling  wit ;  he  had  an  inexhaustible 
fund  of  puns,  contrivances,  sallies,  novel 
ideas.  Lord  Byron,  who  was  a  good  judge, 
said  that  he  had  never  heard  nor  conceived 
of  a  more  extraordinary  conversation. 
Men  spent  nights  in  listening  to  him. — 
Taine,  H.  a.,  1871,  History  of  English 
Literature^  tr.  Van  Laun,  vol.  I,  hk.  iii, 
ch.  i,  pp,  524,  525. 

He  had  been  born  in  obscurity — he  died 
in  misery.  Out  of  the  humblest,  unpro- 
vided, unendowed  poverty  he  had  blazed 
into  reputation,  into  all  the  results  of 
great  wealth,  if  never  to  its  substance; 
more  wonderful  still,  he  had  risen  to  public 
importance  and  splendour,  and  his  name 
can  never  be  obliterated  from  the  page  of 
history ;  but  had  fallen  again,  down,  down 
into  desertion,  misery,  and  the  deepest 
degradation  of  a  poverty  for  which  there 
was  neither  hope  nor  help :  till  death  wiped 
out  all  possibilities  of  further  trouble  or 
embarrassment,  and  Sheridan  became  once 
more  in  his  coffin  the  great  man  whom  his 
party  delighted  to  honour — a  national 
name  and  credit,  one  of  those  whose  glory 
illustrates  our  annals.  It  may  be  per- 
mitted now  to  doubt  whether  these  last 
mournful  honours  were  not  more  than  his 
real  services  to  England  deserved ;  but  at 
the  moment  it  was,  no  doubt,  a  fine  thing 
that  the  poor,  hopeless  Sherry"  whom 
everybody  admired  and  despised,  whom  no 
one  but  a  few  faithful  friends  would  risk 
the  trouble  of  helping,  who  had  sunk  away 
out  of  all  knowledge  into  endless  debts, 
and  duns,  and  drink,  should  rise  at  an 
instant  as  soon  as  death  had  stilled  his 
troubles  into  the  Right  Honourable,  bril- 
liant, and  splendid  Sheridan,  whose  en- 
chanter's wand  the  stubborn  Pitt  had 
bowed  under,  and  the  noble  Burke  ac- 
knowledged with  enthusiasm.  It  was  a  fine 
thing ;  but  the  finest  thing  was  that  death 
which  in  England  makes  all  glory  possible, 
and  which  restores  to  the  troublesome 
bankrupt,  the  unfortunate  prodigal,  and 
all  stray  sons  of  fame,  at  one  stroke,  their 


friends,  their  reputation,  and  the  abundant 
tribute  which  it  might  have  been  danger- 
ous to  alford  them  living,  but  with  which 
it  is  both  safe  and  prudent  to  glorify  their 
tomb.— Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W., 
1883,  Sheridan  {English  Men  of  Letters), 
p.  194. 

Perhaps  Sheridan  was  never  a  wise  man, 
he  can  hardly  be  called  a  good  one,  yet  he 
was  free  from  the  worse  vices  of  his  con- 
dition and  craft.  He  never  exhibited  envy 
of  his  favoured  rivals;  his  temper  was 
never  soured  by  misfortune.  People  said 
he  had  stolen  his  wit  and  borrowed  his 
plots,  that  his  fertile  soil  was  capable  of 
one  crop  and  no  more.  But  he  was  too 
well  versed  in  the  infirmities  of  hujnan 
nature  to  look  for  generosity  where  he  was 
more  likely  to  meet  with  malice,  and  too 
sensible  or  too  indolent  to  be  angry  when 
his  experience  justified  his  insight.  Sheri- 
dan's own  infirmities  were  inconvenient 
certainly,  but  not  noxious.  .  .  .  Sheridan 
had  just  that  minimum  of  selfishness  which 
perforce  adheres  to  the  profligate ;  he  had 
few  or  none  of  the  higher  virtues  which 
belong  to  the  chivalrous  spirit ;  but  force 
of  character  lie  certainly  possessed.  It  is 
a  grave  error  to  say  that  either  the  middle 
or  the  end  of  life  found  him  deficient  in 
strength. — Caine,  Hall,  1883,  Sheridan, 
The  Academy,  vol,  24,  pp.  171,  172. 

Doubtless,  in  any  attempt  to  judge  of 
Sheridan  as  he  was  apart  from  his  works, 
we  must  make  considerable  deductions 
from  the  mass  of  floating  anecdotes  that 
have  gathered  round  his  name.  It  was  not 
without  reason  that  his  granddaughter  Mrs. 
Norton  denounced  the  unfairness  of  judg- 
ing of  the  real  man  from  unauthenticated 
stories  about  his  indolent  procrastination, 
his  wrecklessness  in  money  matters,  his 
drunken  feats  and  sallies,  his  wild  gam- 
bling, his  ingenious  but  discreditable  shifts 
in  evading  and  duping  creditors.  The  real 
Sheridan  was  not  a  pattern  of  decorous 
respectability,  but  we  may  fairly  believe 
that  he  was  very  far  from  being  as  dis- 
reputable as  the  Sheridan  of  vulgar  legend. 
Against  the  stories  about  his  reckless 
management  of  his  affairs  we  must  set  the 
broad  facts  that  he  had  no  source  of  in- 
come but  Drury  Lane  theatre,  that  he 
bore  from  it  thirty  years  all  the  expenses 
of  a  fashionable  life,  and  that  the  theatre 
was  twice  burnt  to  the  ground  during  his 
proprietorship.    Enough  was  lost  in  those 


598 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


fires  to  account  ten  times  over  for  all  his 
debts.  His  biographers  always  speak  of 
his  means  of  living  as  a  mystery.  Seeing 
that  he  started  with  borrowed  capital,  it 
is  possible  that  the  mystery  is  that  he  ap- 
plied much  more  of  his  powers  to  plain 
matters  of  business  than  he  affected  or  got 
credit  for. — Minto,  William,  1886,  En- 
cyclopoedia  Britannicay  Ninth  edition,  vol. 
XXI,  p.  836. 

No  man  has  ever  lived  in  more  worlds 
than  Sheridan,  or  has  ever  shone  with  such 
brilliancy  in  all.  In  the  world  of  fashion, 
in  the  company  of  wits,  among  authors, 
painters  and  poets,  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, at  the  Court  of  the  Prince  Regent, — 
whatever  society  he  frequented, — he  moved 
a  star.  His  charming  manners,  his  hand- 
some person,  his  gaiety,  and,  above  all,  his 
good  nature,  which  was  one  of  his  principal 
characteristics,  rendered  him  universally 
popular.  But  these  engaging  qualities 
were  sometimes  marred  by  the  foibles  and 
peculiarities  which  are  most  apt  to  attract 
attention  and  to  serve  as  weapons  in  the 
hands  of  a  man's  enemies.  In  early  man- 
hood he  became  one  of  the  chiefs  of  a 
political  party  when  party  strife  ran  high, 
and  when  virulent  calumny  and  abuse,  in 
an  age  more  coarse  than  ours,  were  con- 
sidered legitimate  means  of  offence,  and 
his  memory  has  suffered  accordingly. 
Moreover,  from  his  youth,  two  impediments 
clogged  and  embarrassed  his  every  step, — 
his  poverty  and  his  Irish  origin.  .  .  . 
Sheridan's  conviviality  has  been  more 
rigorously  denounced  than  many  a  con- 
temporary toper's  sodden  and  unredeemed 
intemperance.  Wine  quickly  disordered 
his  high-strung  nervous  system ;  and,  while 
delighting  the  harder-headed  drinkers 
around  him  with  the  sallies  of  his  wit,  two 
or  three  glasses  were  sufficient  to  overset 
the  delicate  poise  of  his  brain.  As  a  con- 
sequence, his  cheerful  and  comparatively 
innocent  indiscretions  over  the  bottle  have 
been  more  frequently  in  men's  mouths 
than  the  results  of  deeper  potations  of  his 
more  stolid  boon  companions.  In  later 
life,  alas !  for  a  certain  period,  grief  and 
accumulated  misfortunes  drove  him  into 
more  serious  lapses,  but  from  the  dominion 
of  these,  to  his  great  credit  be  it  said,  he 
eventually  redeemed  himself. — Dufferin, 
Marquess  0F,lSd6y Sheridan,  A  Biography 
by  Rae,  Introduction,  vol.  I,  pp.  viii,  xi. 

He  appears  to  have  entered  the  world  to 


demonstrate  by  his  example  and  conduct 
the  utter  and  contemptible  absurdity  of 
proclaiming  that  all  men  can  remain  equal, 
or  ought  to  rest  satisfied  with  their  lot.  It 
is  unhappily  true  that  a  dead  level  in  hu- 
manity does  exist;  but  it  can  only  be 
found  within  che  walls  of  an  asylum  for 
idiots.  Sheridan's  confidence  in  himself 
could  not  be  repressed  by  penury,  nor 
deadened  by  the  predominance  of  those 
who  were  elevated  above  him  by  the 
accident  of  high  birth  or  inherited  wealth. 
When  a  boy  he  had  resolved  to  rise  to  the 
top ;  he  neither  flinched  nor  failed  in  his 
upward  course,  and  he  lived  to  look  down 
with  serenity  from  the  pinnacle  of  fame 
upon  the  applauding  multitude  below.  It 
is  inspiring  to  follow  his  steps ;  it  is  in- 
structive to  contemplate  how  he  always 
despised  the  aid  of  unworthy  means,  and 
disdained  employing  any  of  the  despicable 
tricks  to  which  such  men  as  his  own  Joseph 
Surface  frequently  resort  for  the  attain- 
ment of  their  miserable  ends.  He  was 
always  dissatisfied  and  he  was  often  im- 
prudent ;  but  there  is  an  imprudence  which 
is  sublime  as  well  as  a  discontent  which  is 
noble,  and  their  manifestation  in  his  per- 
son constitutes  one  of  his  titles  to  esteem. 
— Rae,  W.  Fraser,  1896,  Sheridan,  A 
Biography,  vol.  I,  p.  346. 

It  is  impossible  to  close  this  rapid  and 
slight  sketch  without  one  word  at  least  on 
Mrs.  Sheridan.  One  of  the  strong  titles 
of  Sheridan  to  the  favour  of  posterity  is 
to  be  found  in  the  warm  attachment  of  his 
family  and  his  descendants  to  his  memory. 
The  strongest  of  them  all  lies  in  the  fact 
that  he  could  attract,  and  could  retain 
through  her  too  short  life,  the  devoted 
affections  of  this  admirable  woman,  whose 
beauty  and  accomplishments,  remarkable 
as  they  were,  were  the  least  of  her  titles 
to  praise.  Mrs.  Sheridan  was  certainly 
not  strait-laced :  not  only  did  she  lose  at 
cards  fifteen  and  twenty-one  guineas  on 
two  successive  nights,  but  she  played  cards, 
after  the  fashion  of  her  day,  on  Sunday 
evenings.  I  am  very  far  from  placing  such 
exploits  among  her  claims  on  our  love. 
But  I  frankly  own  to  finding  it  impossible 
to  read  the  accounts  of  her  without  pro- 
foundly coveting,  across  the  gulf  of  all 
these  years,  to  have  seen  and  known  her. 
Let  her  be  judged  by  the  incomparable 
verses  (presented  to  us  in  these  volumes) 
in  which  she  opened  the  floodgates  of  her 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


599 


bleeding  heart  at  a  moment  when  she 
feared  that  she  had  been  robbed,  for  the 
moment,  of  Sheridan's  affections  by  the 
charms  of  another.  Those  verses  of  loving 
pardon  proceed  from  a  soul  advanced  to 
some  of  the  highest  Gospel  attainments. 
She  passed  into  her  rest  when  still  under 
forty ;  peacefully  absorbed  for  days  before 
her  departure,  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
coming  world.  —  Gladstone,  William 
EwART,  1896,  Sheridan,  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  39,  p.  1041. 

It  might  indeed  be  said  that  the  low 
opinion  of  Sheridan's  character  is  so  gen- 
eral that  hardly  a  single  respectable  man 
of  his  time  is  found  to  mention  him  with- 
out contempt  or  reproach.  In  every  direc- 
tion we  hear  of  some  trickeries  and  faith- 
lessness.— Fitzgerald,  Percy,  1897,  The 
Real  Sheridan,  p.  41. 

Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  was  the  most 
distinguished  member  of  a  distinguished 
family.  His  grandfather  was  Dr.  Sheridan, 
the  friend  and  correspondent  of  Swift. 
His  father  was  Thomas  Sheridan,  elocu- 
tionist, actor,  manager,  and  lexicographer. 
His  mother  was  Frances  Sheridan,  author 
of  the  comedy  of  ''The  Discovery'*  (acted 
by  David  Garrick),  and  of  the  novel  "Miss 
Sidney  Biddulph"  (praised  by  Samuel 
Johnson).  His  three  granddaughters, 
known  as  the  beautiful  Sheridans,  became, 
one  the  Duchess  of  Somerset,  another  the 
Countess  of  Dufferin,  and  the  third  the 
Hon.  Mrs.  Norton  (afterward  Lady  Stir- 
ling-Maxwell). His  great-grandson  is 
Lord  Dufferin,  author  and  diplomatist. 
Thus,  in  six  generations  of  the  family,  re- 
markable power  of  one  kind  or  another  has 
been  revealed.  —  Matthews,  Brander, 
1897,  Library  of  the  World's  Best  Liter- 
ature, ed.  Warner,  vol.  xxiii,  p.  13317. 

SPEECHES 
If  you  could  bring  over  Mr.  Sheridan, 
he  would  do  something :  he  talked  for  five 
hours  and  a  half  on  Wednesday,  and  turned 
everybody's  head.  One  heard  everybody 
in  the  streets  raving  on  the  wonders  of  that 
speech ;  for  my  part,  I  cannot  believe  it  was 
so  supernatural  as  they  say — do  you  believe 
it  was,  xMadam  ?  I  will  go  to  my  oracle,  who 
told  me  of  the  marvels  of  the  pamphlet, 
which  assures  us  that  Mr.  Hastings  is  a 
prodigy  of  virtue  and  abilities;  and,  as 
you  think  so  too,  how  should  such  a  fellow 
as  Sheridan,  who  has  no  diamonds  to 
bostow,  fascinate  all  the  world?— Yet 


witchcraft  no  doubt,  there  has  been,  for 
when  did  simple  eloquence  ever  convince  a 
majority?— Walpole,  Horace,  1787,  To 
the  Countess  of  Ossory,  Feb.  9;  Letters, 
ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix,  p.  93. 

Mr.  Sheridan,  I  hear,  did  not  quite 
satisfy  the  passionate  expectation  that  had 
been  raised ;  but  it  was  impossible  he  could, 
when  people  had  worked  themselves  into 
an  enthusiasm  of  offering  fifty — ay,  fifty 
guineas  for  a  ticket  to  hear  him. — Wal- 
pole, Horace,  1788,  To  Thomas  Barrett, 
June  5 ;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix, 
p.  127. 

Yesterday  the  august  scene  was  closed 
for  this  year.  Sheridan  surpassed  himself 
and  though  I  am  far  from  considering  him 
as  a  perfect  orator,  there  were  many 
beautiful  passages  in  his  speech  on  justice, 
filial  love,  &c. ;  one  of  the  closest  chains 
of  argument  I  ever  heard,  to  prove  that 
Hastings  was  responsible  for  the  acts  of 
Middleton;  and  a  compliment,  much  ad- 
mired, to  a  certain  historian  of  your  ac- 
quaintance. Sheridan,  in  the  close  of  his 
speech,  sunk  into  Burke's  arms ;  but  I 
called  this  morning,  he  is  perfectly  well. 
A  good  Actor ! — Gibbon,  Edward,  1788, 
To  Lord  Sheffield,  June  17 ;  Private  Let- 
ters, ed.  Prothero,  vol.  ii,  p.  172. 

Burke  caught  him  in  his  arms  as  he  sat 
down.  ...  I  have  myself  enjoj^ed 
that  embrace  on  such  an  occasion,  and 
know  its  value. — Elliot,  Sir  Gilbert, 
1788,  Letter  to  His  Wife. 

He  possessed  a  ductility  and  versatility 
of  talents,  which  no  public  man  in  our  time 
has  equalled;  and  these  intellectual  en- 
dowments were  sustained  by  a  suavity  of 
temper,  that  seemed  to  set  at  defiance  all 
attempts  to  ruffle  or  discompose  it.  Play- 
ing with  his  irritable  or  angry  antagonist, 
Sheridan  exposed  him  by  sallies  of  wit, 
or  attacked  him  by  classic  elegance  of 
satire ;  performing  this  arduous  task  in  the 
face  of  a  crowded  assembly,  without  losing 
for  an  instant  either  his  presence  of  mind, 
his  facility  of  expression,  or  his'  good 
humour.  He  wounded  deepest,  indeed, 
when  he  smiled ;  and  convulsed  his  hearers 
with  laughter,  while  the  object  of  his 
ridicule  or  animadversion  was  twisting 
under  the  lash.  Pitt  and  Dundas,  who  pre- 
sented the  finest  marks  for  his  attack,  found 
by  experience,  that  though  they  might  re- 
pel, they  could  not  confound,  and  still  less 
could  they  silence  or  vanquish  him.  In 


600 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


every  attempt  that  they  made  by  introduc- 
ing personalities,  or  illiberal  reflections  on 
his  private  life,  and  literary  or  dramatic 
occupations,  to  disconcert  him,  he  turned 
their  weapons  on  themselves.  Nor  did  he, 
while  thus  chastising  his  adversary  alter 
a  muscle  of  his  own  countenance ;  which, 
as  well  as  his  gestures,  seemed  to  partici- 
pate and  display  the  unalterable  serenity 
of  his  intellectual  formation.  Rarely 
did  he  elevate  his  voice,  and  never  except 
in  subservience  to  the  dictates  of  his  judg- 
ment, with  a  view  to  produce  a  correspond- 
ing effect  on  his  audience.  Yet  he  was 
always  heard,  generally  listened  to  with 
eagerness,  and  could  obtain  a  hearing  at 
almost  any  hour.  Burke,  who  wanted 
Sheridan's  nice  tact,  and  his  amenity  of 
manner,  was  continually  coughed  down; 
and  on  those  occasions  lost  his  temper. 
Even  Fox  often  tired  the  House  by  the 
repetitions  which  he  introduced  into  his 
speeches.  Sheridan  never  abused  their 
patience.  Whenever  he  rose  they  antici- 
pated a  rich  repast  of  wit  without 
acrimony,  seasoned  by  allusions  and  cita- 
tions the  most  delicate  yet  obvious  in  their 
application. — Wraxall,  Sir  Nathaniel 
William,  1784-1836,  Posthumous  Mem- 
oirs of  His  Own  Time. 

The  most  deliberate  criticism  must  allow 
his  eloquence  to  be  distinguished  by  strong 
sense  and  brilliant  wit ;  by  a  vigour  of  ar- 
gument not  too  ingenious  for  business,  nor 
too  subtle  for  conviction ;  by  a  great  com- 
mand of  pure  English  words,  and  by  a 
vivid  power  of  imagination  in  those  pas- 
sages which  aimed  at  grandeur  and  pathos, 
though  they  must  be  owned  to  be  too 
artificial  and  ostentatious  to  produce  the 
highest  effect,  and  to  be  approved  by  a 
severe  taste. — Mackintosh,  Sir  James, 
1812,  Journal,  Feb.  7 ;  Memoir s,  ed.  Mack- 
intosh, vol.  II,  p.  204. 

From  the  charm' d  council  to  the  festive 
board, 

Of  human  feelings  the  unbounded  lord ; 
In  whose  acclaim  the  loftiest  voices  vied, 
The  praised — the  proud — who  made  his  praise 

their  pride. 
When  the  loud  cry  of  trampled  Hindostan 
Arose  to  Heaven  in  her  appeal  from  man, 
His  was  the  thunder — his  the  avenging  rod, 
The  wrath — the  delegated  voice  of  God ! 
Which  shook  the  nations  through  his  lips — 

and  blazed 

Till  vanquish' d  senates  trembled  as  they 
praised. 

— Byron,  Lord,  1816,  Monody  on  the 


Death  of  the  Rt.  Hon.  R.  B.  Sheridan, 
Spoken  at  Drury-Lane  Theatre. 

His  reputation  as  an  orator  may  be  said 
to  rest  substantially  on  his  two  speeches 
against  Mr. Warren  Hastings ;  and  it  unfor- 
tunately happens,as  we  have  already  hinted, 
that  both  of  these  are  miserably  reported 
in  the  parliamentary  debates.  When  he 
delivered  those  far-famed  philippics,  he 
was  a  new  man  in  St.  Stephens' — the  ex- 
tent of  his  genius  and  the  truth  of  his 
character  were  yet  to  be  developed ;  and 
we  must  be  permitted  to  doubt  whether,  if 
he  had  spoken  the  same  words  a  few  years 
later,  the  world  would  ever  have  heard  so 
much  about  the  matter. — Croker,  John 
Wilson,  1826,  Memoirs  oj  Sheridan,  Quar- 
terly Review,  vol.  33,  p.  593. 

His  most  celebrated  speech  was  certainly 
the  one  upon  the  ''Begum  Charge"  in  the 
proceedings  against  Hastings ;  and  nothing 
can  exceed  the  accounts  left  us  of  its  un- 
precedented success.  ...  All  men 
on  all  sides  vied  with  each  other  in  ex- 
tolling so  wonderful  a  performance. 
Nevertheless,  the  opinion  has  now  become 
greatly  prevalent  that  a  portion  of  this  suc- 
cess was  owing  to  the  speech  having  so 
greatly  surpassed  all  the  speaker's  former 
efforts;  to  the  extreme  interest  of  the 
topics  which  the  subject  naturally  pre- 
sented, and  to  the  artist-like  elaboration 
and  beautiful  delivery  of  certain  fine  pas- 
sages, rather  than  to  the  merits  of  the 
whole.  Certain  it  is,  that  the  repetition  of 
great  part  of  it,  presented  in  the  short-hand 
notes  of  the  speech  on  the  same  charge 
in  Westminster  Hall,  disappoints  every 
reader  who  has  heard  of  the  success  of  the 
earlier  effort.  In  truth,  Mr.  Sheridan's  taste 
was  very  far  from  being  chaste,  or  even 
moderately  correct ;  he  delighted  in  gaudy 
figures;  he  was  attracted  by  glare,  and 
cared  not  whether  the  brilliancy  came 
from  tinsel  or  gold,  from  broken  glass  or 
pure  diamond;  he  overlaid  his  thoughts 
with  epigrammatic  diction ;  he  ''played  to 
the  galleries,"  and  indulged  them,  of 
course,  with  an  endless  succession  of  clap- 
traps. His  worst  passages  by  far  were 
those  which  he  evidently  preferred  himself. 
—Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1839-43,  Lii;es 
of  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

The  charge  touching  the  spoliation  of 
the  Begums  was  brought  forward  by  Sheri- 
dan, in  a  speech  which  was  so  imperfectly 
reported  that  it  may  be  said  to  be  wholly 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


601 


lost;  but  which  was,  without  doubt,  the 
most  elaborately  brilliant  of  all  the  pro- 
ductions of  his  ingenious  mind.  The  im- 
pression which  it  produced  was  such  as  has 
never  been  equalled.  He  sat  down,  not 
merely  amidst  cheering,  but  amidst  the 
loud  clapping  of  hands,  in  which  the  Lords 
below  the  bar,  and  the  strangers  in  the 
gallery,  joined.  The  excitement  of  the 
House  was  such  that  no  other  speaker 
could  obtain  a  hearing,  and  the  debate  was 
adjourned.  The  impression  made  by  this 
remarkable  display  of  eloquence  on  severe 
and  experienced  critics,  whose  discernment 
may  be  supposed  to  have  been  quickened 
by  emulation,  was  deep  and  permanent. 
Mr.  Windham,  twenty  years  later,  said 
that  the  speech  deserved  all  its  fame,  and 
was,  in  spite  of  some  faults  of  taste,  such 
as  were  seldom  wanting  either  in  the  liter- 
ary or  in  the  parliamentary  performances 
of  Sheridan,  the  greatest  that  had  been 
delivered  within  the  memory  of  man.  Mr. 
Fox,  about  the  same  time,  being  asked  by 
the  late  Lord  Holland  what  was  the  best 
speech  ever  made  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, assigned  the  first  place,  without 
hesitation,  to  the  great  oration  of  Sheridan 
on  the  Oude  charge. — Mac  aula  Y,  Thomas 
Babington,  1841,  Warren  Hastings,  Crit- 
ical and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

There  was,  undoubtedly,  some  bombast 
in  Mr.  Sheridan's  speeches;  but  they 
were  marked  by  glowing  eloquence,  and  not 
unfrequently  by  brilliant  wit.  Although 
some  of  his  jokes  were  the  result  of  great 
study,  yet,  as  they  were  perfect  in  their 
kind,  and  that  kind  of  the  very  highest, 
we  may  forgive  the  labour.  Few  men  have 
possessed  the  power  to  make  such  a  speech 
as  that  which  dazzled  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  the  Begum  Charge;  few  ever 
wrote  so  good  a  comedy  as  "The  School 
for  Scandal."  It  is  melancholy  to  reflect 
that  the  possessor  of  such  talents  should, 
as  it  were  in  mere  wantonness,  have 
thrown  away  the  influence  which  he  was  so 
well  qualified  to  exercise  over  the  destiny 
of  his  country. — Russell,  Lord  John, 
1853,  ed.,  Memoirs,  Journal  and  Corre- 
spondence of  Thomas  Moore,  vol.  ii,  p.  187, 
note. 

Sheridan,  like  Whitefield,  was  a  great 
rhetorician,  not  a  great  orator. — Dicey, 
A.  v.,  1884,  Sheridan,  The  Nation,  vol. 
39,  p.  137. 

He  cannot  be  called  a  classic  orator. 


His  oriental  exuberance  of  imagination  is 
Asiatic  rather  than  Greek.  With  a  Celtic 
intellect  that  was  always  in  extremes, 
joined  to  a  native  sense  of  humor  he  could 
not  be  reckoned  with  the  grand  orators  of 
the  Demosthenean  type.  Impetuous  and 
heedless  he  plunged  into  the  very  errors 
he  was  quick  to  detect  and  expose.  But  for 
conjouring  up  a  storm  of  eloquence  that 
should  bear  his'  hearers  away  from  their 
sober  sense,  stirring  their  emotions  and 
moving  their  will  his  magnetic  and  impul- 
sive oratory  was  surpassed  by  none  and 
equalled  by  fevv^.— Sears,  Lorenzo,  1895, 
The  History  of  Oratory,  p.  295. 

THE  RIVALS 

1775 

I  prefer  Sheridan's  ''Rivals"  to  his 
''School  for  Scandal:"  exquisite  humour 
pleases  me  more  than  the  finest  wit. — 
Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table-Talk. 

In  such  a  play  as  "The  Rivals"  the 
reader  is  kept  in  a  state  of  continual 
hilarious  delight  by  a  profusion  of  sallies, 
rejoinders,  blunders,  contrasts,  which 
seem  to  exhaust  all  the  resources  of  the 
ludicrous.  Mrs.  Malaprop's  "parts  of 
speech"  will  raise  the  laughter  of  unborn 
generations,  and  the  choleric  generous  old 
father  will  never  find  a  more  perfect  repre- 
sentative than  Sir  Anthony  Absolute. — 
Arnold,  Thomas,  1868-75,  Chaucer  to 
Wordsworth,  p.  371. 

After  the  lapse  of  a  hundred  years, 
"The  Rivals"  still  remains,  next  to  its 
author's  greater  work,  the  most  popular 
comedy  of  the  last  century. — Baker,  H. 
Barton,  1878,  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan, 
Gentleman's  Magazine,  vol.  243,  p.  308. 

"The  Rivals"  is  artificial  comedy,  in- 
clining on  one  side  to  farce,  and,  in  the 
parts  of  Falkland  and  Julia,  to  the  senti- 
mental. But  it  is,  on  its  own  rather 
artificial  plan,  constructed  with  remark- 
able skill  and  tightness ;  and  the  characters 
of  Sir  Anthony  Absolute,  Mrs.  Malaprop, 
Sir  Lucius  O'Trigger,  and  Bob  Acres,  with 
almost  all  the  rest,  combine  fun  with  at 
least  theatrical  verisimilitude  in  a  very 
rare  way.  Indeed,  Sir  Anthony  and  Mrs. 
Malaprop,  though  heightened  from  life, 
can  hardly  be  said  to  be  false  to  it,  and 
though  in  the  other  pair  the  license  of 
dramatic  exaggeration  is  pushed  to  its 
farthest,  it  is  not  exceeded.    The  effect 


602 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


could  not  have  been  produced  without  the 
sparkling  dialogue,  but  this  alone  could 
not  have  given  it.— Saintsbury,  George, 
1898,  A  Short  History  of  English  Litera- 
ture, p.  641. 

''The Rivals,"  from  the  date  of  its  first 
night's  failure,  has  neither  merited  nor 
enjoyed  a  like  measure  of  success  as, 
throughout  the  world,  has  followed  the 
''School  for  Scandal;"  while  I  venture  to 
think  the  incidents  of  the  comedy  are  too 
fragile  and  farcical  to  bear  such  elaborate 
scenic  treatment  as  we  endeavoured  to 
depict  of  last-century  life,  when  Beau 
Nash  reigned  in  the  pumproom  at  Bath. — 
Bancroft,  Sir  Squire  Bancroft,  1896, 
Sheridan,  A  Biography  by  Rae,  vol.  ii, 
p.  321. 

THE  DUENNA 

1775 

This  drama  has  a  charm  for  the  public 
beyond  its  own  intrinsic  worth — it  was 
written  by  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan.  If 
that  name  has  no  power  over  the  reader's 
imagination,  so  as  to  give  to  every  sentence 
a  degree  of  interest,  let  him  throw  aside 
the  book,  and  forbear  to  seek  after  literary 
pleasures,  for  he  has  not  the  taste  to  en- 
joy them.  Although  "The  Duenna's" 
highest  claim  to  notice  depends,  now,  upon 
the  reputation  of  its  author,  yet  the  author 
was  first  indebted  to  "The  Duenna"  for 
the  honour  of  ranking  among  poets,  and  of 
receiving  from  the  fashionable  world  all 
those  animating  caresses,  so  dear  to  a 
poet's  heart.  .  .  .  Divested  of  all 
adventitious  aid,  the  value  of  the  opera 
consists  in  the  beautiful  poetry  of  many 
of  the  songs ;  for  though  it  is  a  production 
of  much  ingenuity  and  skill,  it  does  not 
give  a  presage,  either  in  wit  or  incident, 
of  such  a  work,  from  the  same  hand,  as 
"The  School  for  Scandal." — Inchbald, 
Mrs.  Elizabeth,  1806-9,  The  British 
Theatre,  vol.  ii. 

The  "Duenna"  is  a  perfect  work  of  art. 
It  has  the  utmost  sweetness  and  point. . 
The  plot,  the  characters,  the  dialogue, 
are  all  complete  in  themselves,  and  they 
are  all  his  own ;  and  the  songs  are  the  best 
that  ever  were  written,  except  those  in 
the  "Beggar's  Opera."  They  have  a  joy- 
ous spirit  of  intoxication  in  them,  and  a 
strain  of  the  most  melting  tenderness. — 
Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lectures  on  the 
English  Comic  Writers,  Lecture  viii. 

One  of  the  very  few  operas  in  our 


language,  which  combines  the  merits  of 
legitimate  comedy  with  the  attractions  of 
poetry  and  song.— Moore,  Thomas,  1825, 
Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  the  Right  Honour- 
able Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan,  vol.  i, 
p.  169. 

The  "Duenna"  is  partly  a  pasticcio,  con- 
sisting of  original  music  mingled  with 
popular  airs,  glees,  &c.,  adapted  to  new 
words;  and  it  appears  from  the  above 
passages  in  Sheridan's  letters,  that  he 
himself  had  a  hand  in  the  selection  and 
adaptation  of  the  old  music.  Several  of 
the  original  pieces  were  contributed  by 
Thomas  Linley,  the  composer's  eldest  son. 
These  were,  the  overture;  the  songs, 
"Could  I  each  fault  remember,"  "Friend- 
ship is  the  bond  of  reason,"  and  "Sharp 
is  the  woe ;"  the  duet,  "Turn  thee  round, 
I  pray  thee ;"  and  the  trio  which  concludes 
the  first  act.  These  are  all  charming 
things,  and  do  honour  to  the  genius  of  a 
young  musician,  who,  but  for  his  untimely 
fate,  would  undoubtedly  have  achieved  the 
highest  triumphs  in  his  art. — Hogarth, 
George,  1838,  Memoirs  of  the  Musical 
Drama,  vol.  ii,  p.  433. 

The  songs  in  his  opera  of  the  "Duenna" 
are  as  superior  to  the  productions  of  the 
century  before,  as  they  are  inferior  to 
those  of  the  Elizabethan  age.  They  have 
the  sharpness  and  the  grace  of  a  fine  in- 
taglio: Ovid  might  have  been  proud  of 
them:  they  have  as  much  tenderness  as 
the  best  portions  of  his  "Amores,"  and 
the  tour  de  malice  of  his  epigrammatic 
couplets.  If  Sheridan  had  turned  his  at- 
tention to  the  writing  of  lyrical  dramas. 
Gay  would  have  had  a  formidable  rival  for 
his  "Beggar's  Opera."— Donne,  William 
BoDHAM,  1854-58,  Essays  on  the  Drama, 
p.  117. 

Not  only  in  the  drawing  of  character, 
but  also  in  dialogue,  is  "The  Duenna"  in- 
ferior to  Sheridan's  better-known  plays. 
In  spite  of  all  its  brightness  and  lightness, 
it  is  impossible  not  to  acknowledge  that  it 
does  not  contain  his  best  work.  It  has 
few  specimens  of  the  recondite  wit  and 
quaint  fancy  which  make  "The  School  for 
Scandal"  so  brilliant  and  unequalled  a 
comedy.  If  Sheridan's  wit,  like  quick- 
silver, is  always  glistening,  perhaps  at 
times,  like  mercury  it  seems  a  little  heavy. 
Now  and  again  the  dialogue  vies  in  sparkle 
and  point  with  the  talk  of  its  author's 
other  plays,  but  not  as  often  as  might  be 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


603 


wished.—  Matthews,   Brander,  1880, 
Pinafore's"  Predecessor,  Harpefs  Maga- 
zine, vol.  60,  p,  504. 

A  lyric  poet  of  somewhat  limited 
powers.— Crawfurd,  Oswald,  1896,  ed.. 
Lyrical  Verse  from  Elizabeth  to  Victoria, 
p.  434,  note. 

With  the  progress  of  musical  composi- 
tions, especially  in  connexion  with  the 
Drama,  ''The  Duenna,"  greatly  admired 
as  it  was  on  its  first  production,  passed 
out  of  fashion ;  and  in  spite  of  the  simplic- 
ity and  the  charm  of  many  of  the  melodies 
composed  for  the  work  by  Linley,  in  spite, 
above  all,  of  the  ingenuity,  wit  and  humour 
of  the  piece,  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
Sheridan's  ''Duenna,"  will  ever  be  played 
again  in  its  original  form.  ...  A 
justly  admired  composer  of  our  time,  Mr. 
J.  L.  Roeckel,  has  set  to  music  Sheridan's 
ancient  opera-book  with  such  lyrical  addi- 
tions as  the  taste  and  fashion  of  the  day 
seemed  to  render  necessary,  but  with  no 
change  whatever  in  the  origihal  dialogue, 
and  "The  Duenna"  with  music  by  Roeckel 
will  probably  supersede  "The  Duenna" 
with  music  by  Linley,  just  as  the  operatic 
version  of  Beaumarchais'  "Barber  of 
Seville"  with  music  by  Rossini  has  dis- 
placed the  older  operatic  version  of  the 
same  work  with  music  by  Paisiello. — ■ 
Edwards,  Sutherland,  1896,  Sheridan, 
A  Biography  by  Rae,  vol.  I,  p.  305. 

SCHOOL  FOR  SCANDAL 

1777 

How  is  the  Saint  to-day  ?  A  gentleman 
who  is  as  mad  as  myself  about  y^  School 
remark' d,  that  the  characters  upon  the 
stage  at  y^  falling  of  the  screen  stand  too 
long  before  they  speak ; — I  thought  so  too 
y^  first  night : — he  said  it  was  the  same 
on  y^  2""^,  and  was  remark'd  by  others ; — 
tho'  they  should  be  astonish'd,  and  a  little 
petrify'd,  yet  it  may  be  carry'd  to  too 
great  a  length. — All  praise  at  Lord 
Lucan's  last  night. — Garrick,  David, 
1777,  Letter  to  Mr.  Sheridan,  May  12. 

I  have  seen  Sheridan's  new  comedy,  and 
liked  it  much  better  than  any  I  have  seen 
since  "The  Provoked  Husband."  There 
is  a  great  deal  of  wit  and  good  situations ; 
but  it  is  too  long,  has  two  or  three  bad 
scenes  that  might  easily  be  omitted,  and 
seemed  to  me  to  want  nature  and  truth  of 
character ;  but  I  have  not  read  it,  and  sat 
too  high  to  hear  it  well. — Walpole, 


Horace,  1778,  To  Rev.  Wm.  Mason,  May 
16;  Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vn, 
p.  67. 

The  "School  for  Scandal"  is,  if  not  the 
most  original,  perhaps  the  most  finished 
and  faultless  comedy  which  we  have. 
When  it  is  acted  you  hear  people  all  around 
you  exclaiming:  "Surely it  is  impossible 
for  anything  to  be  cleverer."  The  scene 
in  which  Charles  sells  all  the  old  family 
pictures  but  his  uncle's,  who  is  the  pur- 
chaser in  disguise,  and  that  of  the  dis- 
covery of  Lady  Teazle  when  the  screen 
falls,  are  among  the  happiest  and  most 
highly  wrought  that  comedy,  in  its  wide 
and  brilliant  range,  can  boast.  Besides 
the  wit  and  ingenuity  of  this  play,  there 
is  a  genial  spirit  of  frankness  and  gener- 
osity about  it  that  relieves  the  heart  as 
well  as  clears  the  lungs.  It  professes  a 
faith  in  the  natural  goodness  as  well  as 
habitual  depravity  of  human  nature. 
While  it  strips  off  the  mask  of  hypocrisy 
it  inspires  a  confidence  between  man  and 
man.  As  often  as  it  is  acted  it  must  serve 
to  clear  the  air  of  that  low,  creeping, 
pestilent  fog  of  cant  and  mysticism,  which 
threatens  to  confound  every  native  im- 
pulse, or  honest  conviction,  in  the  nauseous 
belief  of  a  perpetual  lie,  and  the  laudable 
profession  of  systematic  hypocrisy. — 
Hazlitt,  William,  1818,  Lectures  on  the 
English  Comic  Writers,  Lecture  viii. 

Amidst  the  mortifying  circumstances  at- 
tendant upon  growing  old,  it  is  something 
to  have  seen  the  "School  for  Scandal"  in  its 
glory.  This  comedy  grew  out  of  Congreve 
and  Wycherley,  but  gathered  some  allays 
of  the  sentimental  comedy  which  followed 
theirs.  It  is  impossible  that  it  should  be 
now  acted,  though  it  continues,  at  long 
intervals,  to  be  announced  in  the  bills. 
Its  hero,  when  Palmer  played  it  at  least, 
was  Joseph  Surface.  When  I  remember 
the  gay  boldness,  the  graceful  solemn 
plausibility,  the  measured  step,  the  in- 
sinuating voice — to  express  it  in  a  word — 
the  downright  acted  villainy  of  the  part,  so 
different  from  the  pressure  of  conscious 
actual  wickedness, — the  hypocritical  as- 
sumption of  hypocrisy, — which  made  Jack 
so  deservedly  a  favourite  in  that  charac- 
ter, I  must  needs  conclude  the  present 
generation  of  playgoers  more  virtuous  than 
myself,  or  more  dense.  I  freely  confess 
that  he  divided  the  palm  with  me  with  his 
better  brother ;  that,  in  fact,  I  liked  him 


604 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


quite  as  well.  .  .  .  You  did  not  believe 
in  Joseph  with  the  same  faith  with  which 
you  believed  in  Charles.  The  latter  was  a 
pleasant  reality,  the  former  a  no  less 
pleasant  poetical  foil  to  it.  The  comedy, 
I  have  said  is  incongruous;  a  mixture 
of  Congreve  with  sentimental  incompati- 
bilities: the  gaiety  upon  the  whole  is 
buoyant ;  but  it  required  the  consummate 
art  of  Palmer  to  reconcile  the  discordant 
elements. — Lamb,  Charles,  1824?  On 
the  Artificial  Comedy  of  the  Last  Century. 

The  beauties  of  this  Comedy  are  so  uni- 
versally known  and  felt,  that  criticism  may 
be  spared  the  trouble  of  dwelling  upon 
them  very  minutely.  With  but  little  in- 
terest in  the  plot,  with  no  very  profound 
or  ingenious  development  of  character, 
and  with  a  group  of  personages,  not  one  of 
whom  has  any  legitimate  claims  upon  either 
our  affection  or  esteem,  it  yet,  by  the  ad- 
mirable skill  with  which  its  materials  are 
managed, — the  happy  contrivance  of  the 
situations,  at  once  both  natural  and  strik- 
ing,— the  fine  feeling  of  the  ridiculous 
that  smiles  throughout,  and  that  perpetual 
play  of  wit  which  never  tires,  but  seems, 
like  running  water,  to  be  kept  fresh  by 
its  own  flow, — by  all  this  general  anima- 
tion and  effect,  combined  with  a  finish  of 
the  details  almost  faultless,  it  unites  the 
suffrages,  at  once,  of  the  refined  and  the 
simple,  and  is  not  less  successful  in  minis- 
tering to  the  natural  enjoyment  of  the 
latter,  than  is  satisfying  and  delighting  the 
most  fastidious  tastes  among  the  former. 
—Moore,  Thomas,  1825,  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  of  the  Right  Honourable  Richard 
Brinsley  Sheridan,  vol.  I,  p.  245. 

Many  of  the  situations  are  so  exquisitely 
comic,  though  a  large  portion  of  the  piece 
is  passed  in  talk  which  does  not  advance 
the  action,  the  habit  of  scandal  and  tale- 
bearing is  so  admirably  ridiculed,  and  the 
tone  of  the  whole  is  so  brilliant  and  re- 
fined, that  it  is  equally  delightful  when  read 
or  when  acted.— Shaw,  Thomas  B.,  1847, 
Outlines  of  English  Literature,  p.  404. 

The  surpassing  merits  of  the  ''School 
for  Scandal"  become  the  more  brilliant, 
the  more  minutely  they  are  scanned,  and 
the  more  fairly  the  faults  of  the  play  are 
in  juxtaposition  with  its  beauties.  Its 
merits  are  not  so  much  to  be  sought  in  the 
saliency  of  any  predominating  excellence 
as  in  the  harmonious  combination  of  great 
varieties  of  excellence,  in  a  unity  of 


purpose  sufficiently  philosophical  for  the 
intellect  of  comedy,  but  not  so  metaphys- 
ical as  to  mar  the  airy  playfulness  of  comic 
mirth.  The  satire  it  conveys  is  directed, 
not  to  rare  and  exceptional  oddities  in  vice 
or  folly,  but  to  attributes  of  human  society 
which  universally  furnish  the  materials 
and  justify  the  ridicule  of  satire.  It  is 
one  of  the  beauties  of  this  great  drama, 
that  its  moral  purpose  is  not  rigidly  nar- 
rowed into  the  mere  illustration  of  a 
maxim — that  the  outward  plot  is  indeed 
carried  on  by  personages  who  only  very 
indirectly  serve  to  work  out  the  interior 
moral. — Lytton,  Edward  Bulwer  Lord, 
1863-68,  Caxtoniana,  Miscellaneous  Prose 
Works,  vol.  HI,  p.  457. 

Seems  fairly  to  deserve  the  character 
generally  given  to  it  of  being  the  most  per- 
fect comedy  which  has  been  composed 
since  the  time  of  Shakespeare.  .  .  . 
The  justice  of  the  general  verdict  of  its 
pre-eminent  excellence  is  sufficiently  con- 
firmed by  its  remaining  undisturbed  after 
the  lapse  of  little  less  than  a  century. — 
YoNGE,  Charles  Duke,  1872,  Three  Cen- 
turies of  English  Literature,  p.  78. 

Is  perhaps  the  best  existing  English 
comedy  of  intrigue. — GossE,  Edmund, 
1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  337. 

Since  the  ''School  for  ScandaF'  no  Eng- 
lish drama  has  been  produced  which  has 
anything  like  the  same  hold  on  the  stage. 
— Harrison,  Frederic,  1894,  Early  Vic- 
torian Literature,  p.  21. 

Sheridan  is  not  of  course  to  be  likened 
to  Moliere :  the  Frenchman  had  a  depth  and 
a  power  to  which  the  Irishman  could  not 
pretend.  But  a  comparison  with  Beaumar- 
chais  is  fair  enough,  and  it  can  be  drawn 
only  in  favor  of  Sheridan ;  for  brilliant  as 
the  "Marriage  of  Figaro"  is,  it  lacks  the 
solid  structure  and  the  broad  outlook  of 
the  "School  for  Scandal."  Both  the 
French  wit  and  the  Irish  are  masters  of 
fence,  and  the  dialogue  of  these  comedies 
still  scintillates  as  steel  crosses  steel. 
Neither  of  them  put  much  heart  into  his 
plays;  and  perhaps  the  "School  for  Scan- 
dal" is  even  more  artificial  than  the  "Mar- 
riage of  Figaro," — but  it  is  wholly  free 
from  the  declamatory  shrillness  which  to- 
day mars  the  masterpiece  of  Beaumar- 
chais. — Matthews,  Brander,  1897,  Li- 
brary of  the  World's  Best  Literature^  ed. 
Warner,  vol.  xxiii,  p.  13320. 


^  ^  RICHARD  BRIK 

THE  CRITIC 

177<J-81 

I  have  read  Sheridan's  Critic,"  but, 
not  having  seen  it,  for  they  say  it  is  admira- 
bly acted,  it  appeared  wondrously  flat  and 
old,  and  a  poor  imitation:  it  makes  me 
fear  I  shall  not  be  so  much  charmed  with 
*'The  School  for  Scandal"  on  reading,  as 
I  was  when  I  saw  it. — Walpole,  Horace, 
1779,  To  Rev.  Wm.  Mason,  Dec,  11 ;  Let- 
ter  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  vii,  p.  291. 

In  some  of  its  most  admired  passages 
little  better  than  an  exquisite  cento  of  the 
wit  of  the  satirists  before  him.  Sheridan 
must  have  felt  himself  emphatically  at 
home  in  a  production  of  this  kind,  for 
there  was  every  call  in  it  upon  the  powers 
he  abounded  in, — wit,  banter,  and  style, 
— and  none  upon  his  good  nature. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  1841,  ed.  Sheridan's  Dramatic 
Works,  Critical  Sketch. 

Sir  Fretful,  between  his  twatormenters, 
and  the  cheerful  bustle  and  assured  con- 
fidence of  Mr.  Puff,  have  held  their  ground 
when  hundreds  of  sensational  dramas  have 
drooped  and  died.  Never  was  a  more 
wonderful  literary  feat.  The  art  of  puffing 
has  been  carried  to  a  perfection  unsus- 
pected by  Mr.  Puff,  and  not  one  person  in 
a  thousand  has  the  most  remote  idea  who 
Cumberland  was;  but  ''The  Critic"  is  as 
delightful  as  ever,  and  we  listen  to  the 
gentlemen  talking  with  as  much  relish  as 
our  grandfathers  did.  Nay,  the  simpJest- 
minded  audience,  innocent  of  literature, 
and  perhaps  not  very  sure  what  it  all 
means,  will  still  answer  to  the  touch  and 
laugh  till  they  cry  over  the  poor  author's 
wounded  vanity  and  the  woes  of  Tilburina. 
Shakspeare,  it  is  evident,  found  the  ma- 
chinery cumbrous,  and  gave  up  the  idea 
of  making  Sly  and  his  mockers  watch  the 
progress  of  the  ''Taming  of  the  Shrew," 
and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  lose  our  in- 
terest altogether  in  their  long-drawn-out 
by-play,  though  the  first  idea  of  it  is 
comical  in  the  highest  degree.  Nor  could 
Fielding  keep  the  stage  with  his  oft- 
repeated  efforts,  notwithstanding  the  wit 
and  point  of  many  of  his  dialogues.  But 
Sheridan  at  last,  after  so  many  attempts, 
found  out  the  right  vein. — Oliphant, 
Margaret  0.  W.,  1883,  Sheridan  (Eng- 
lish Men  of  Letters),  p.  97. 

"The  Critic"  is  perhaps  the  highest 
proof  of  Sheridan's  skill  as  a  dramatist, 
for  in  it  he  has  worked  out,  with  perfect 


LEY  SHERIDAN  605 

success  for  all  time,  a  theme  which,  often 
as  it  has  been  attempted,  no  other  dram- 
atist has  ever  succeeded  in  redeeming 
from  tedious  circumstantiality  and  ephem- 
eral personalities.  The  laughable  infirmi- 
ties of  all  classes  connected  with  the  stage, 
— authors,  actors,  patrons,  and  audience, 
— are  touched  off  with  the  lightest  of 
hands ;  the  fun  is  directed,  not  at  individ- 
uals, but  at  absurdities  that  grow  out  of 
the  circumstances  of  the  stage  as  naturally 
and  inevitably  as  weeds  in  a  garden. — 
MiNTO,  William,  1886,  Encyclopcedia  Bri- 
tannica.  Ninth  edition,  vol.  xxi,  p.  835, 
GENERAL 

At  the  same  age  with  Congreve,  he  com- ' 
posed  comedies  of  similar,  and  one  of 
almost  equal,  merit :  like  his  great  master, 
he  neglected  incident  and  character,  and 
sought  only  brilliancy  of  dialogue :  what 
he  sought,  he  attained,  even  to  excess ;  and 
his  wit  was  fertile  enough  to  betray  him 
into  the  splendid  fault  of  rendering  his 
dialogue  more  dazzling  and  poignant  than 
suited  his  own  personages,  or,  indeed,  any 
human  conversation. — Mackintosji,  Sir 
James,  1812,  Journal,  Feb.  7;  Memoirs, 
ed.  Mackintosh,  vol.  ii,  p.  203. 

Lord  Holland  told  me  a  curious  piece  of 
sentimentality  in  Sheridan.  The  other 
night  we  were  all  delivering  our  respective 
and  various  opinions  on  him  and  other 
hommes  marquans,  and  mine  was  this: 
"What  ever  Sheridan  has  done  or  chosen 
to  do  has  been,  par  excellence,  always  the 
best  of  its  kind.  He  has  written  the  best 
comedy  ('School  for  Scandal'),  the  best 
drama  (in  my  mind,  far  before  that  St. 
Giles's  lampoon,  'The  Beggar's  Opera,') 
the  best  farce  ('the  Critic' — it  is  only  too 
good  for  a  farce),  and  the  best  Address 
('Monologue  on  Garrick'),  and,  to  crown 
all,  delivered  the  very  best  Oration  (the 
famous  Begum  Speech)  ever  conceived  or 
heard  in  this  country."  Somebody 
told  S.  this  the  next  day,  and  on  hearing 
it  he  burst  into  tears !  Poor  Brinsley !  if 
they  were  tears  of  pleasure,  I  would  rather 
have  said  these  few,  but  most  sincere,  words 
than  have  written  the  Iliad  or  made  his 
own  celebrated  Philippic.  Nay,  his  own 
comedy  never  gratified  me  more  than  to 
hear  that  he  had  derived  a  moment's 
gratification  from  any  praise  of  mine, 
humble  as  it  must  appear  to  "my  elders 
and  my  betters."— Byron,  Lord,  1813, 
Journal,  Dec.  17,  18. 


606 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


V 


The  comedy  of  the  fourth  period  is 
chiefly  remarkable  for  exhibiting  "The 
Rivals"  and  ''The  School  for  Scandal." 
Critics  prefer  the  latter ;  while  the  general 
audience  reap,  perhaps,  more  pleasure 
from  the  former,  the  pleasantry  being  of 
a  more  general  cast,  the  incident  more 
complicated  and  varied,  and  the  whole  plot 
more  interesting.  In  both  these  plays,  the 
gentlemanlike  ease  of  Farquhar  is  united 
with  the  wit  of  Congreve.  Indeed,  the 
wit  of  Sheridan,  though  equally  brilliant 
with  that  of  his  celebrated  predecessor, 
flows  so  easily,  and  is  so  happily  elicited 
by  the  tone  of  the  dialogue,  that  in  admir- 
ing its  sparkles,  we  never  once  observe  the 
stroke  of  the  flint  which  produces  them. 
Wit  and  pleasantry  seemed  to  be  the 
natural  atmosphere  of  this  extraordinary 
man,  whose  history  was  at  once  so  bril- 
liant and  so  melancholy. — Scott,  Sir 
Walter,  1814-23,  The  Drama, 

There  is  too  much  merely  ornamental 
dialogue,  and,  with  some  very  fine  rhetor- 
ical situations,  too  much  intermission  in  the 
action  and  business  of  the  play ;  and,  above 
all,  th&re  is  too  little  real  warmth  of  feel- 
ing, and  too  few  indications  of  noble  or 
serious  passion,  thoroughly  to  satisfy  the 
wants  of  English  readers  and  spectators — 
even  in  a  comedy.  Their  wit  [that  of 
''The  Rivals"  and  "The  School  for  Scan- 
dal"] is  the  best  of  them. —Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1826,  Moore's  Life  of 
Sheridan,  Edinburgh  Review^  vol,  45,  p,  7. 

The  dramas  of  Sheridan  .  .  .  have 
placed  him  at  the  head  of  the  genteel 
comedy  of  England ;  and  while  truth  of 
character  and  manners,  chastised  brilliancy 
of  wit,  humour  devoid  of  the  least  stain  of 
coarseness,  exquisite  knowledge  of  stage- 
effect,  and  consummate  ease  and  elegance 
of  idiomatic  language  are  appreciated, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  name  of 
Sheridan  will  maintain  its  place. — Cro- 
KER,  John  Wilson,  1826,  Memoirs  of 
Sheridan,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  33,^9.592. 

No  writers  have  injured  the  Comedy  of 
England  so  deeply  as  Congreve  and  Sheri- 
dan. Both  were  men  of  splendid  wit  and 
polished  taste.  Unhappily  they  made  all 
their  characters  in  their  own  likeness. 
Their  works  bear  the  same  relation  to  the 
legitimate  drama  which  a  transparency 
bears  to  a  painting ;  no  delicate  touches ; 
no  hues  imperceptibly  fading  into  each 
other;  the  whole  is  lighted  up  with  a 


universal  glare.  Outlines  and  tints  are  for- 
gotten, in  the  common  blaze  which  illumi- 
nates all.  The  flowers  and  fruits  of  the 
intellect  abound ;  but  it  is  the  abundance 
of  a  jungle,  not  of  a  garden — unwholesome, 
bewildering,  unprofitable  from  its  very 
plenty,  rank  from  its  very  fragrance. 
Every  fop,  every  boor,  every  valet  is  a  man 
of  wit.  The  very  butts  and  dupes.  Tattle, 
Urkwould,  Puff,  Acres,  outshine  the  whole 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  To  prove  the  whole 
system  of  this  school  absurd,  it  is  only 
necessary  to  apply  the  test  which  dissolved 
the  enchanted  Florimel — to  place  the  true 
by  the  false  Thalia,  to  contrast  the  most 
celebrated  characters  which  have  been 
drawn  by  the  writers  of  whom  we  speak, 
with  the  Bastard  in  King  John,  or  the 
Nurse  in  Romeo  and  Juliet. — Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1827,  Machiavelli 
Edinburgh  Review,  Critical  and  Miscella- 
neous Essays, 

Sheridan  is,  indeed,  a  golden  link  which 
connects  us  with  the  Author  j  of  better 
days.  He  has  wit ;  pure,  polished,  genuine 
wit.  He  has  humour;  not,  perhaps,  of 
quite  so  pure  an  order,  a  little  forced  and 
overstrained,  but  its  root  is  in  Nature, 
whatever  aberrations  it  may  spread  into  in 
its  branches.  His  dialogue  is  of  matchless 
brilliancy ;  so  brilliant  as  to  enchain  the 
attention,  and  to  blind  us  to  the  grand 
defect  of  his  Plays,  their  want  of  action, 
and'Of  what  is  technically  called,  business. 
This  defect  alone  shuts  out  Sheridan  from 
taking  his  place  by  the  side  of  the  elder 
Dramatists,  and  assigns  him  his  situation 
a  step  lower  among  the  writers  of  the  age 
of  Charles.  He  is,  however,  free  from 
their  impurities  of  thought  and  language ; 
their  equal  in  wit,  and  their  superior  in 
genuine  humour. — Neele,  Henry,  1827- 
29,  Lectures  on  English  Poetry ,  p.  155. 

Sheridan's  defects  as  a  dramatist  answer 
to  the  defects  of  his  mind  and  character. 
Acute  in  observing  external  appearance^ 
and  well  informed  in  what  rakes  and  men 
of  fashion  call  life,  he  was  essentially 
superficial  in  mind  and  heart.  A  man  of 
great  wit  and  fancy,  he  was  singularly 
deficient  in  the  deeper  powers  of  humor 
and  imagination.  All  his  plays  lack  or- 
ganic life.  In  plot,  character,  and  inci- 
dent, they  are  framed  by  mechanical,  not 
conceived  by  vital,  processes.  They  evince 
no  genial  enjoyment  of  mirth,  no  insight 
into  the  deeper  springs  of  the  ludicrous. 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


607 


The  laughter  they  provoke  is  the  laughter 
of  antipathy,  not  of  sympathy.  It  is  wit 
detecting  external  inconsistencies  and 
oddities,  not  humor  representing  them  in 
connection  with  the  inward  constitution 
whence  they  spring. — Whipple,  Edwin 
P.,  1848,  Essays  and  Reviews^  vol.  Ii, 
p.  306. 

The  close  of  the  last  century  gave  birth 
to  the  finest  prose  comedy  in  the  English, 
or  perhaps  any  other  language.  In  ab- 
stract wit,  Congreve  equals,  and,  in  the 
opinion  of  some  critics,  even  surpasses, 
Sheridan ;  but  Congreve's  wit  is  disagree- 
ably cynical ;  Sheridan's  wit  has  the  divine 
gift  of  the  Graces — charm.  The  smile  it 
brings  to  our  lips  is  easy  and  cordial ;  the 
smile  which  Congreve  brings  forth  is 
forced  and  sardonic.  In  what  is  called  vis 
comica,  Farquhar,  it  is  true,  excels  Sheri- 
dan by  the  rush  of  his  animal  spirits,  by 
his  own  hearty  relish  of  the  mirth  he 
creates.  Sheridan's  smile,  though  more 
polished  th  n  Farquhar's,  has  not  less 
ease;  but  his  laugh,  though  as  genuine, 
has  not  the  same  lusty  ring.  It  is  scarcely 
necessary,  however,  to  point  out  Sheri- 
dan's superiority  to  Farquhar  in  the 
quality  of  the  mirth  excited.  If  in  him 
the  vis  comica  has  not  the  same  muscular 
strength,  it  has  infinitely  more  elegance 
of  movement,  and  far  more  disciplined 
skill  in  the  finer  weapons  at  its  command ; 
and  whatever  comparison  may  be  drawn 
between  the  general  powers  of  Sheridan 
for  comic  composition  and  those  of  Far- 
quhar and  Congreve,  neither  of  the  two 
last-named  has  produced  a  single  comedy 
which  can  be  compared  to  the  School  for 
Scandal . "  —  L ytton,  Edward  Bulwer 
Lord,  1863-68,  Caxtoniana,  Miscellaneous 
Prose  Works,  vol.  iii,  p.  454. 

His  comedies  were  comedies  of  society, 
the  most  amusing  ever  written,  but  merely 
comedies  of  society. — Taine,  H.  A.,  1871, 
History  of  English  Literature,  tr.  Van 
Laun,  vol.  i,  bk.  iii,  ch.  i,  p.  526. 

Sheridan's  Irish  birth  and  Celtic  tem- 
perament must  be  largely  credited  with  the 
brightness  and  permanent  attractiveness 
of  his  plays.— Arnold,  Thomas,  1878, 
English  Literature,  Encyclopcedia  Britan- 
nica,  Ninth  edition. 

His  comedies  are  a  continual  running 
fire  of  wit ;  not  true  to  nature  and  utterly 
destitute  of  that  highest  kind  of  humour 
which  approaches  pathos,  but  full  of  happy 


turns  of  expression  and  admirably  con- 
structed with  a  view  to  stage  representa- 
tion. He  is  the  last  of  our  playwriters 
who  have  produced  works  both  excellent 
as  literature  and  also  good  acting  dramas. 
NicoLL,  Henry  J.,  1882,  Landmarks  of 
English  Literature,  p.  152. 

He  had  a  fit  of  writing,  a  fit  of  oratory, 
but  no  impulse  to  keep  him  in  either  path 
long  enough  to  make  anything  more  than 
the  dazzling  but  evanescent  triumph  of  a 
day.  His  harvest  was  like  a  Southern 
harvest,  over  early,  while  it  was  yet  but 
May ;  but  he  sowed  no  seed  for  a  second 
ingathering,  nor  was  there  any  growth  or 
richness  left  in  the  soon  exhausted  soil. — ■ 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1883,  Sher- 
idan (English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  199. 

Sheridan's  was  a  brilliant,  shallow  intel- 
lect, a  shifty,  selfish  nature ;  his  one  great 
quality,  his  one  great  element  of  success 
as  a  dramatist,  as  an  orator  and  as  a  man, 
was  mastery  of  effect.  His  tact  was  ex- 
quisitely nice  and  fine.  He  knew  how  to 
say  and  how  to  do  the  right  thing,  at  the 
right  time,  in  the  right  way.  This  was 
the  sum  of  him;  there  was  no  more. 
Without  wisdom,  without  any  real  insight 
into  the  human  heart,  without  imagina- 
tion, with  a  flimsy  semblance  of  fancy, 
entirely  devoid  of  true  poetic  feeling,  even 
of  the  humblest  order,  incapable  of  philo- 
sophic reflection,  never  rising  morally 
above  the  satirizing  of  the  fashionable 
vices  and  follies  of  his  day,  to  him  the 
doors  of  the  great  theatre  of  human  life 
were  firmly  closed.  His  mind  flitted  lightly 
over  the  surface  of  society,  now  casting  a 
reflection  of  himself  upon  it,  now  making 
it  sparkle  and  ripple  with  a  touch  of  his 
flashing  wing.  He  was  a  surface  man,  and 
the  name  of  the  two  chief  agents  in  the 
plot  of  his  principal  comedy  is  so  suitable 
to  him  as  well  as  to  their  characters,  that 
the  choice  of  it  would  seem  to  have  been 
instinctive  and  intuitive.  He  united  the 
qualities  of  his  Charles  and  Joseph  Sur- 
face ;  having  the  wit,  the  charming  man- 
ner, the  careless  good-nature  of  the  one, 
with  at  least  a  capacity  of  the  selfishess, 
the  duplicity,  the  crafty  design,  but  with- 
out the  mischief  and  the  malice,  of  the 
other.— White,  Richard  Grant,  1883, 
ed.y  The  Dramatic  Works  of  Richard 
Brinsley  Sheridan,  Introduction. 

Compared  even  with  Congreve  himself, 
he  stands  high  as  a  dialoguist,  for  though 


608 


RICHARD  BRINSLEY  SHERIDAN 


his  wit  is  not  quite  so  keen  or  so  nimble, 
or  his  style  quite  so  polished,  his  epigrams 
and  jests  seem  to  grow  more  naturally  and 
unforcedly  out  of  the  circumstances  of  the 
play ;  his  geniality,  too,  is  much  greater, 
and  is  contagious.  After  a  play  of  Sheri- 
dan's we  feel  on  better  terms  with  human 
nature.  His  plots  are  admirable — not 
solutions  of  any  of  the  problems  of  social 
life  as,  according  to  some  critics,  comedies 
should  be,  but  easy,  pleasant,  and  fluent, 
and  full,  as  such  ease  and  pleasantness 
implies,  of  much  concealed  art.  The  spirit 
of  Sheridan's  plays  is  so  thoroughly 
modern,  they  are  salted  with  so  good  and 
true  a  wit,  have  so  much  of  honest  stage- 
craft in  them,  and  are  so  full  of  a  humour 
which  is  wholly  that  of  the  present  period, 
that  a  play  of  his  adequately  put  upon  the 
stage  will  hold  its  own  to  this  day  trium- 
phantly against  the  most  successful  of  mod- 
ern pieces.— Crawfurd,  Oswald,  1883, 
sd.,  English  Comic  Dramatists,  p.  262. 

There  is  more  freedom,  more  freshness 
of  impulse,  more  kindness,  more  joy,  more 
nature  in  "The  Rivals"  than  there  is  in  the 

School  for  Scandal;"  but  both  are  arti- 
ficial ;  both  reflect,  in  a  mirror  of  artistic 
exaggeration,  the  hollow,  feverish,  cere- 
monious, bespangled,  glittering,  heart- 
breaking fashionable  world,  in  which  their 
author's  mind  was  developed  and  in  which 
they  were  created.  The ' '  School  for  Scan- 
dal," indeed,  is  completely  saturated  with 
artificiality,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  in- 
tended to  satirise  and  rebuke  the  faults  of 
an  insincere,  scandal-mongering  society 
does  not — and  was  not  meant  to — modify 
that  pervasive  and  predominant  element  of 
its  character. — Winter,  William,  1892, 
Old  Shrines  and  Ivy,  p.  225. 

His  wit  was  an  incessant  flame. — He 
sometimes  displayed  a  kind  of  serious  and 
elegant  playfulness,  not  apparently  arising 
to  wit,  but  unobservedly  saturated  with  it, 
which  was  unspeakably  pleasing. — His 
wit  is  the  wit  of  common  sense. — Grace 
of  manner,  charm  of  voice,  fluency  of 
language,  and,  above  all,  a  brilliancy  of 
sarcasm,  a  wit  and  a  humour ;  and  again 
a  felicity  of  statement  that  made  him  the 
delight  of  every  audience  and  that  excited 
the  admiration  of  his  very  opponents  them- 
selves.— The  wit  displayed  by  Sheridan  in 
Parliament  was  perhaps,  from  the  suavity 
of  his  temper,  much  less  sharp  than 
brilliant. — Jerrold,  Walter,  1893,  ed., 


Bon-Mots  of  R.  Brinsley  Sheridan,  Intro- 
duction, p.  12. 

Can  any  one  see  such  plays  acted,  for 
instance,  as  Sheridan's,  without  being 
forcibly  struck  by  the  total  absence  of 
spontaneity  and  the  absolute  submission  to 
social  routine  of  the  average  society  man 
and  woman  of  those  days.  Sheridan's 
comedies  are  undoubtedly  as  true  to  their 
times  on  the  one  hand  as  they  are  to  human 
nature  on  the  other,  but  the  humanity  of 
them  is  thrown  into  vivid  and  strong  relief 
by  the  artificiality  of  the  elements  in  the 
midst  of  which  the  chief  actors  have  their 
being.  As  for  the  literature,  it  is  hardly 
necessary  for  me  to  defend  the  statement 
that  it  was  conventional. — ^  Crawford, 
F.  Marion,  1893,  The  Novel,  What  it  is, 
p.  100. 

The  real  risk  to  which  ''The  School  for 
Scandal"  is  more  and  more  exposed  as  the 
years  roll  by,  is  lest  it  may  be  found  tres- 
passing on  the  borderlands  of  truth  and 
reality,  and  evoking  genuine  feeling ;  for 
as  soon  as  it  does  this,  the  surroundings 
must  become  incongruous  and  therefore 
painful.  Too  long  ago,  when  Miss  Ellen 
Terry  used  to  act  Lady  Teazle  at  the 
Vaudeville  with  a  moving  charm  still  hap- 
pily hers,  I  remember  hearing  behind  me  a 
youthful  voice  full  of  tears  and  terror  (it 
was  of  course  when  Joseph  Surface  was 
making  his  insidious  proposals  to  Lady 
Teazle)  exclaim,  *'0h,  mother,  I  hope  she 
won't  yield!"  and  I  then  became  aware  of 
the  proximity  of  some  youthful  creature 
to  whom  all  this  comic  business  (for  one 
knew  the  screen  was  soon  to  fall)  was 
sheer  tragedy.  It  made  me  a  little  un- 
comfortable. To  Sheridan,  nearer  to  Con- 
greve  than  we  are  now  to  Sheridan,  it  was 
all  pure  comedy.  We  see  this  from  the 
boisterous  laughter  with  which  Charles 
Surface  greets  the  denouement.  Charles 
was  no  doubt  a  rake,  but  he  was  not  meant 
to  be  a  heartless  rake  after  the  fashion  of 
the  Wildairs  of  an  earlier  day.  Had  he 
not  refused  five  hundred  pounds  for  a 
trumpery  picture  of  his  uncle,  for  whose 
fortune  he  was  waiting  ?  It  was  all  comedy 
to  Sheridan,  and  if  it  ever  ceases  to  be  all 
comedy  to  us,  it  will  be  the  first  blow  this 
triumphant  piece  has  ever  received.— 
Birrell,  Augustine,  1896,  The  School 
for  Scandal  and  the  Rivals,  Introduction. 

Sheridan  brought  the  comedy  of  man- 
ners to  the  highest  perfection,  and  ''The 


SHERIDAN— FERGUSON 


609 


School  for  Scandal"  remains  to  this  day 
the  most  popular  comedy  in  the  English 
language.  Some  of  the  characters  both 
in  this  play  and  in  ''The  Rivals"  have  be- 
come so  closely  associated  with  our  current 
speech  that  we  may  fairly  regard  them  as 
imperishable.  No  farce  of  our  time  has 
so  excellent  a  chance  of  immortality  as 
''The  Critic."  A  playwright  of  whom 
these  things  are  commonplaces  must  have 
had  brilliant  qualities  for  his  craft ;  but 
the  secret  in  this  case,  I  think,  lies  in  the 
pervading  humanity  of  Sheridan's  work. 
That  is  the  only  preservative  against  de- 
cay.— Irving,  Sir  Henry,  1896,  Sheri- 
dan, A  Biography  by  Rae,  vol.  ii,  p,  322. 

As  a  dramatist  Sheridan  carried  the 
comedy  of  manners  in  this  country  to  its 
highest  pitch,  and  his  popularity  as  a 
writer  for  the  stage  is  exceeded  by  that 
of  Shakespeare  alone. — Rae,  Fraser, 
1897,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography y 
vol.  Lii,  p.  84. 

The  fact  that  Sheridan  has  held  the 
stage,  while  his  far  greater  predecessor, 
Congreve,  has  disappeared  from  it,  is  due 
to  an  accident  of  time.  Luckily  for 
Sheridan's  permanence,  he  began  to  write 
when  that  wave  of  squeamishness  and  ret- 
icence in  regard  to  certain  things  .  .  . 
had  fairly  washed  over  England.  .  .  . 
No  one  who  knows  them  both  can  doubt 
that  Sheridan  helped  himself  from  Con- 
greve with  a  generous  hand.  It  is  prob- 
able that  he  consciously  "refined"  him :  it 
is  certain  that  he  unconsciously  vulgarised 
him.  ...  In  this  matter  of  breeding 
Sheridan  comes  off  ill.  In  the  more  im- 
portant matter  of  intellect  he  comes  off 


worse.  Epigrams  and  witty  remarks 
apart,  in  which  Congreve  can  beat  the 
whole  of  Sheridan  with  one  act  of  "The 
Way  of  the  World,"  there  is  a  meaning, 
a  thought,  in  Congreve's  characters  and 
oppositions  of  characters  which  Sheridan 
never  approaches.  In  this  respect,  at 
least,  Sheridan  is  by  far  the  coarser  of  the 
two.  .  .  .  Congreve's  plays  are  more 
genuine  comedies  than  Sheridan's.  Sheri- 
dan had  an  eye  for  fantastic  accessories 
and  little  more  in  his  plays:  Congreve 
was  concerned,  not  primarily  perhaps,  but 
because  he  could  not  help  using  his  intel- 
lect and  his  knowledge  of  life,  with  essen- 
tials of  character  and  human  relations. 
.  .  .  Sheridan,  then,  is  popularly  re- 
garded as  the  great  and  permanent  ex- 
emplar of  witty  old  English  comedy  by  an 
accident.  He  does  not  deserve  this  pre- 
eminence, which  should  have  been  Con- 
greve's. But  he  does  deserve  to  hold  the 
stage,  and  to  be  revived  at  the  expense  of 
contemporary  dramatists.  His  wit  is 
superficial  and  intellectually  coarse,  but 
there  is  plenty  of  it.  His  characters  are 
rather  thin  and  farcical,  but  they  are  dis- 
tinct and  act  funnily  on  one  another.  A 
few  lapses  excepted,  he  is  gay  and  lively. 
He  has  a  style  and  a  manner.  Above  all, 
he  is  an  ingenious  and  effective  crafts- 
man, and  therefore  a  good  friend  and  a 
stimulus  to  the  players.  He  is  a  fair  task 
master  to  them.  If  they  act  well,  they  are 
sure  of  their  due  effect:  he  does  not 
stultify  them  with  inconsistencies  or  nega- 
tions.— Street,  G.  S.,  1900,  Sheridan  and 
Mr.  Shaw,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol.  167, 
pp.  832,  833,  834. 


Adam  Fergnson 

1723-1816 

Philosopher  and  historian,  was  born  20th  June  1723,  at  Logierait  in  Perthshire, 
where  his  father  was  parish  minister.  He  studied  at  St.  Andrews  and  Edinburgh,  and 
as  chaplain  to  the  Black  Watch  was  present  at  Fontenoy  (1745).  In  1757  he  succeeded 
David  Hume  as  keeper  of  the  Advocate's  Library  in  Edinburgh,  and  was  next  professor, 
first  of  Natural  Philosophy  (1759),  and  subsequently  (1764)  of  Moral  Philosophy.  He 
accompanied  the  young  Earl  of  Chesterfield  (1774)  on  his  travels  on  the  Continent,  and 
acted  as  secretary  to  the  commission  sent  out  by  Lord  North  to  try  to  arrange  the 
disputes  with  the  North  American  colonies  (1778-79).  Ill  health  compelled  him  in 
1785  to  resign  his  professorship,  in  which  he  was  succeeded  by  Dugald  Stewart.  He 
next  travelled  on  the  Continent,  then  lived  at  Neidpath  Castle,  and  latterly  at  St. 
Andrews,  where  he  died  22nd  of  February  1816.  His  works  are  an  "Essay  on  Civil 
Society"  (1766),  "Institutes  of  Moral  Philosophy"  (1772),  "History  of  the  Roman 
Republic"  (1782;  long  a  standard  authority),  and  "Moral  and  Political  Science"  (1792). 
— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  360. 

39  c 


610 


ADAM  FERGUSON 


PERSONAL 

He  had  the  manners  of  a  man  of  the 
world,  and  the  demeanor  of  a  high-bred 
gentleman,  insomuch  that  his  company 
was  much  sought  after ;  for  though  he  con- 
versed with  ease,  it  was  with  a  dignified 
reserve.  If  he  had  any  fault  in  conversa- 
tion, it  was  of  a  piece  with  what  1  have 
said  of  his  temper,  for  the  elevation  of  his 
mind  prompted  him  to  such  sudden  transi- 
tions and  dark  allusions  that  it  was  not 
always  easy  to  follow  him,  though  he  was 
a  very  good  speaker.  He  had  another 
talent,  unknown  to  any  but  his  intimates, 
which  was  a  boundless  vein  of  humour, 
which  he  indulged  when  there  were  none 
others  present,  and  which  flowed  from  his 
pen  in  every  familiar  letter  he  wrote.  He 
had  the  faults,  however,  that  belonged  to 
that  character,  for  he  was  apt  to  be  jealous 
of  his  rivals,  and  indignant  against  assumed 
superiority.  His  wife  used  to  say  that  it 
was  very  fortunate  that  I  was  so  much  in 
Edinburgh,  as  I  was  a  great  peacemaker 
among  them.  She  did  not  perceive  that 
her  own  husband  was  the  most  difficult  of 
them  all. — Carlyle,  Alexander,  1753- 
56-1860,  Autobiography,  p.  229. 

His  hair  was  silky  and  white ;  his  eyes 
animated  and  light-blue;  his  cheeks 
sprinkled  with  broken  red,  like  autumnal 
apples,  but  fresh  and  healthy;  his  lips 
thin,  and  the  under  one  curled.  A  severe 
paralytic  attack  had  reduced  his  animal 
vitality,  though  it  left  no  external  ap- 
pearance, and  he  required  considerable 
artificial  heat.  His  raiment,  therefore, 
consisted  of  half-boots,  lined  with  fur; 
cloth  breeches;  a  long  cloth  waistcoat, 
with  capacious  pockets ;  a  single-breasted 
coat ;  a  cloth  greatcoat,  also  lined  with  fur, 
and  a  felt  hat,  commonly  tied  by  a  ribbon 
below  the  chin.  His  boots  were  black; 
but,  with  this  exception,  the  whole  cover- 
ings, including  the  hat,  were  of  a  quaker- 
gray  color,  or  of  a  whitish-brown ;  and  he 
generally  wore  the  furred  greatcoat  even 
within  doors.  When  he  walked  forth,  he 
used  a  tall  staff,  which  he  commonly  held 
at  arm's  length  out  towards  the  right  side ; 
and  his  two  coats,  each  buttoned  by  only 
the  upper  button,  flowed  open  below,  and 
exposed  the  whole  of  his  curious  and 
venerable  figure.  His  gait  and  air  were 
noble ;  his  gestures  slow ;  his  look  full  of 
dignity  and  composed  fire.  He  looked  like 
a  philosopher  from  Lapland.— Cockburn, 


Henry  Lord,  1830-54,  Memorials  of  his 
Time,  ch.  i. 

He  was  none  the  less,  in  affection  as 
well  as  in  character,  a  thorough  Celt,  with 
all  the  impulsiveness  and  dash  that 
belonged  to  the  race ;  and  in  later  days, 
when  Jacobitism  was  only  a  romantic 
memory,  he  was  wont  to  delight  his  friends 
by  his  singing  of  Jacobite  songs.  Alone 
amongst  the  philosophers  he  spoke  the 
language,  and  was  stirred  by  the  traditions 
of  Gaul,  and  retained  for  that  race  to  the 
end  of  his  life  the  passionate  attachment 
which  it  never  fails  to  inspire.  .  .  . 
Amongst  a  galaxy  of  men — none  of  the 
first  rank  in  intellect,  but  all  of  more  than 
respectable  calibre — he  has  a  place  all  his 
own.  He  achieved  it  partly  by  his  wide 
and  varied  experience  of  life.  But  it  was 
aided  by  his  Celtic  temperament,  which 
gave  a  freedom  and  a  verve  to  his  specu- 
lation which  was  lacking  to  others  of  his 
school.  Morality  was  to  him  essentially  a 
thing  of  great  deeds  upon  a  great  stage. 
The  type  he  sought  for  was  that  of  Aris- 
totle's great-souled  man.  The  subtleties 
of  free  thinking  would  have  vexed  his  soul 
as  much  as  the  subleties  of  doctrine ;  but 
he  was  more  than  any  of  them — however 
little  he  would  have  avowed  it — the  type 
of  a  purely  pagan  morality.  His  stoicism 
was  a  picturesque  fiction,  indeed,  and  none 
confessed  more  frankly  than  he  that  in  the 
affairs  of  ever  day  life  he  was  nervous  and 
irritable  to  the  last  degree. — Craik,  Sir 
Henry,  1901,  A  Century  of  Scottish  His- 
tory, vol.  II,  pp.  210,  216. 

At  ninety-three  there  was  still  wondrous 
freshness  in  the  venerable  face,  with 
the  ribstone-pippin  complexion,  the  mild 
blue  eyes,  the  soft,  humorous  mouth,  the 
silvery  hair.  There  was  the  old  mental 
alertness  about  everything  that  was  new, 
and  the  aged  philosopher  listened  eagerly 
when  the  divinity  student  who  attended 
him  read  out  to  him  the  newspapers.  He 
was  a  young  man  when  the  Rebellion  of  '45 
broke  out,  lived  to  read  the  bulletins  of  the 
battle  of  Waterloo.  At  last,  in  1816,  he 
died,  his  final  words  as  he  turned  to  his 
daughters  by  the  bedside  being  the  excla- 
mation of  bright  assurance:  There  is 
another  world,"  and  in  a  few  minutes  he 
was  gone  to  see  it.  One  of  the  best  of  a 
brilliant  company  of  literary  comrades,  he 
was  the  last  to  die.  He  had  seen  his  old 
friends  pass  away  one  by  one,  in  fame, 


ADAM  FERGUSON 


611 


honour,  and  old  age.  After  having  lived 
in  the  bright  old  days  of  Scottish  litera- 
ture, he  survived  to  see  with  unjealous 
eyes  another  brilliant  day  dawn  which 
should  rival  the  past.— Graham,  Henry 
Grey,  1901,  Scottish  Men  of  Letters  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  p.  120. 

GENERAL 

It  was  provoking  to  hear  those  who 
were  so  ready  to  give  loud  praises  to  very 
shallow  and  imperfect  English  productions 
— to  curry  favor,  as  we  supposed,  with  the 
booskellers  and  authors  concerned, — tak- 
ing every  opportunity  to  undermine  the 
reputation  of  Ferguson's  book.  *'It  was 
not  a  Roman  history,"  said  they  (which 
it  did  not  say  it  was).  **This  delineation  of 
the  constitution  of  the  republic  is  well 
sketched;  but  for  the  rest,  it  is  any- 
thing but  history,  and  then  it  is  so 
incorrect  that  it  is  a  perfect  shame.'' 
All  his  other  books  met  with  the  same 
treatment,  while,  at  the  same  time,  there 
were  a  few  of  us  who  could  not  re- 
frain from  saying  that  Ferguson's  was  the 
best  history  of  Rome ;  that  what  he  had 
omitted  was  fabulous  or  insignificant,  and 
what  he  had  wrote  was  more  profound  in 
research  into  characters,  and  gave  a  more 
just  delineation  of  them  than  any  book  now 
extant.  The  same  thing  was  said  of  his 
book  on  Moral  Philosophy,  which  we  held  to 
be  the  book  that  did  the  most  honor  of  any 
to  the  Scotch  philosophers,  because  it 
gave  the  most  perfect  picture  of  moral 
virtues,  with  all  their  irresistible  attrac- 
tions. His  book  on  Civil  Society  ought 
only  to  be  considered  as  a  college  exercise, 
and  yet  there  is  in  it  a  turn  of  thought  and 
a  species  of  eloquence  peculiar  to  Fergu- 
son.—Carlyle,  Alexander,  1753-56- 
1860,  Autobiography,  p.  230. 

Read  the  first,  and  half  the  second, 
volume, quarto,  of  Dr.  Ferguson's  *Trinci- 
ples  of  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy." 
He  was  Dugald  Stewart's  predecessor, 
and,  as  I  attended  his  lecture,  I  heard  the 
substance  of  his  book.  He  has,  in  some 
degree,  the  Scotch  fault  of  expressing 
common  ideas  in  a  technical  form.  He 
had  adopted  the  very  just,  stoical  principle, 
"that  the  state  of  the  mind  is  of  more  im- 
portance to  happiness  than  outward  cir- 
cumstances;" but  he  is  so  entirely  and 
constantly  occupied  with  it,  as  to  forget 
everything  else.  There  is  something  not 
unbecoming  a  moral  teacher  in  his  austere, 


dogmatic,  sententious  manner ;  and  he  con- 
templates human  life  with  a  cold  sternness 
worthy  of  those  magnanimous  moralists 
whom  he  professes  to  follow.  ...  It  is 
not  a  pleasing,  but  it  is  an  improving  book ; 
it  elevates  the  moral  sentiments. — Mack- 
intosh, Sir  James,  1812,  Journal,  April 
10;  Memoirs,  ed.  Mackintosh,  vol.  II,  pp. 
243,  244. 

Ferguson's  History  of  the  Roman 
Republic"  is  not  only  well  written,  but 
meritorious  for  its  researches  into  the 
constitution  of  Rome. — Spalding,  Wil- 
liam, 1852-82,  A  History  of  English  Lit- 
erature,  p.  347. 

In  Roman  history,  Hooke,  the  friend  of 
Pope,  was  first  in  the  field;  and  to  him 
succeeded  Dr.  Ferguson,  with  his  dry  book 
on  the  Roman  republic. — Arnold,  ThOxMAS, 
1862-87,  A  Manual  of  English  Literature, 
p.  486. 

Ferguson's  style  and  manner  are  not  so 
subdued  as  those  of  the  Scottish  metaphy- 
sicians who  preceded  him.  He  has  more 
of  a  leaping  mode  of  composition,  as  if  he 
had  an  audience  before  bim,  and  is  at 
times  eloquent  or  magniloquent.  I  have 
an  idea  that,  as  Dugald  Stewart  drew  his 
philosophy  mainly  from  Reid,  so  he  got  his 
taste  for  social  studies  from  Ferguson, 
who  may  also  have  helped  to  give  him  a 
livelier  style, — the  academic  dignity, 
however,  being  entirely  Stewart's  own. — 
McCosh,  James,  1874,  The  Scottish  Phi- 
losophy, p.  260. 

Ferguson's  book  has  the  superficial 
merits  which  were  calculated  for  the  ordi- 
nary mind.  He  possessed  the  secret  of 
that  easy  gallicised  style,  which  was  more 
or  less  common  to  the  whole  Scott  school, 
including  Hume,  Robertson,  and  Adam 
Smith.  He  makes  elegant  and  plausible 
remarks,  and  the  hasty  reader  does  not 
perceive  that  the  case  is  gained  by  the 
evasion,  instead  of  the  solution,  of  dif- 
ficulties. Here  and  there  we  come  across 
an  argument  or  an  illustration  which  seems 
to  indicate  greater  acuteness.  .  .  . 
Ferguson  was  in  politics  what  Blair  was  in 
theology — a  facile  and  dexterous  de- 
claimer,  whose  rhetoric  glides  over  the 
surface  of  things  without  biting  into  their 
substance.  He  expounds  well  till  he  comes 
to  the  real  difficulty,  and  then  placidly 
evades  the  dilemma. — Stephen,  Leslie, 
1876,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  II,  p.  215. 


612 


FERGUSON— A  USTEN 


A  work  History  of  the  Roman  Repub-  politics,  with  a  strong  leaven  of  stoicism, 
lie"]  which  under  the  guise  of  history  is  — Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Century  of 
in  truth  a  series  of  lectures  on  ethics  and    Scottish  History^  vol.  ii,  p,  216. 


Jane  Ansten 

1775-1817 

No  other  English  woman  of  letters  ever  lived  a  life  so  entirely  uneventful.  .  .  . 
Born  on  the  16th  of  December,  1775.  In  the  year  1796  and  '97,  before  she  was  twenty- 
three  years  old,  she  wrote  the  novel  **Pride  and  Prejuduce;"  in  1797, and  '98,  "Sense 
and  Sensibility,"  and  "Northanger  Abbey."  These  works,  however,  waited  fifteen 
years  for  a  publisher ;  and  Jane,  who  wrote  merely  for  her  own  amusement,  seems  to 
have  possessed  her  soul  in  patience.  In  ISOIr^fee-family  removed  to  Bath ;  in  1805  the 
Rev.  George  Austen  died,  and  they  again  removed  to  Southampton.  In  1809  they 
settled  at  Chawton,  Hampshire;  and  in  1811  Jane  was  at  length  enabled  to  publish 
**Sense  and  Sensibility."  It  was  followed  in  1813  by Pride  and  Prejudice."  Mans- 
field Park"  appeared  in  1814,  and  "Emma"  in  1816.  Jane  Austen  died  on  the  18th 
of  July,  1817.  After  her  death  her  early  novel  "Northanger  Abbey,"  and  "Persua- 
sion," a  mature  work  which  has  the  same  mellower  quality  as  "Emma,"  together  with 
a  pathos  peculiarly  its  own,  were  published. — Cone,  Helen  Gray,  and  Gilder,  Jean- 
NETTE  L.,  1887,  Pen-Portraits  of  Literary  Women,  vol.  i,  p.  195. 


PERSONAL 

There  were  twenty  dances,  and  I  danced 
them  all,  and  without  fatigue.  I  was  glad 
to  find  myself  capable  of  dancing  so  much 
and  with  so  much  satisfaction  as  I  did; 
from  my  slender  enjoyment  of  the  Ashford 
balls,  I  had  not  thought  myself  equal  to 
it,  but  in  cold  weather  and  with  few 
couples  I  fancy  I  could  just  as  well  dance 
for  a  week  together  as  for  half  an  hour. 
— Austen,  Jane,  1799,  To  her  Sister,  Dec, 
24 ;  Letters,  ed.  Brabourne. 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  visits  her  now, 
says  that  she  has  stiffened  into  the  most 
perpendicular,  precise,  taciturn  piece  of 
"single  blessedness"  that  ever  existed, 
and  that,  till  *  *  Pride  and  Prejudice' '  showed 
what  a  precious  gem  was  hidden  in  that 
unbending  case,  she  was  no  more  regarded 
in  society  than  a  poker  or  a  fire-screen,  or 
any  other  thin  upright  piece  of  wood  or 
iron  that  fills  its  corner  in  peace  and  quiet- 
ness. The  case  is  very  different  now ;  she 
is  still  a  poker,  but  a  poker  of  whom  every 
one  is  afraid.  It  must  be  confessed  that 
this  silent  observation  from  such  an  ob- 
server is  rather  formidable.  .  .  .  After  all, 
I  do  not  know  that  I  can  quite  vouch  for 
this  account,  though  the  friend  from  whom 
I  received  it  is  truth  itself ;  but  her  family 
connections  must  render  her  disagreeable 
to  Miss  Austen,  since  she  is  the  sister-in- 
law  of  a  gentleman  who  is  at  law  with  Miss 
A.'s  brother  for  the  greater  part  of  his 
fortune.— MiTFORD,  Mary  Russell,  1815, 


Letter  to  Sir  Wm-  Elford,  April  3 ;  Life, 
ed.  UEstrange. 

I  remember  Jane  Austen,  the  novelist,  a 
little  child.  .  .  .  When  I  knew  Jane 
Austen,  I  never  suspected  that  she  was  an 
authoress ;  but  my  eyes  told  me  she  was 
fair  and  handsome,  slight  and  elegant,  but 
with  cheeks  a  little  too  full.  The  last 
time  I  think  that  I  saw  her  was  at  Rams- 
gate  in  1803 :  perhaps  she  was  then  about 
twenty-seven  years  old.  Even  then  I  did 
not  know  she  was  addicted  to  literary  com- 
position.—Br  ydges.  Sir  Samuel  Eger- 
TON,  1834,  Autobiography,  vol.  ii,  p.  41. 

In  person  she  was  very  attractive ;  her 
figure  was  rather  tall  and  slender,  her  step 
light  and  firm,  and  her  whole  appearance 
expressive  of  health  and  animation.  In 
complexion  she  was  a  clear  brunette  with 
a  rich  colour ;  she  had  full  round  cheeks, 
with  mouth  and  nose  small  and  well 
formed,  bright  hazel  eyes,  and  brown  h-air 
forming  natural  curls  close  round  her  face. 
If  not  so  regularly  handsome  as  her  sister, 
yet  her  countenance  had  a  peculiar  charm 
of  its  own  to  the  eyes  of  most  beholders. 
.  .  .  She  was  not  highly  accomplished 
according  to  the  present  standard,  .  .  . 
was  fond  of  music,  and  had  a  sweet  voice, 
both  in  singing  and  in  conversation;  in 
her  youth  she  had  received  some  instruc- 
tion of  the  pianoforte ;  and  at  Chawton  she 
practised  daily,  chiefly  before  breakfast. 
.  .  .  She  read  French  with  facility, 
and  knew  something  of  Italian.    In  those 


m  ViBHAKt 


JANE  AUSTEN 


613 


days  German  was  no  more  thought  of  than 
Hindostanee,  as  part  of  a  Lady's  educa- 
tion. .  .  .  She  was  well  acquainted 
with  the  old  periodicals  from  the  "Spec- 
tator" downwards.  Her  knowledge  of 
Richardson's  works  was  such  as  no  one  is 
likely  again  to  acquire, now  that  the  multi- 
tude and  the  merits  of  our  light  literature 
have  called  off  the  attention  of  readers 
from  that  great  master. — Leigh,  J.  E. 
Austen,  1870,  A  Memoir  of  Jane  Austen, 
by  her  Nephew,  pp.  82,  83,  84. 

During  her  whole  life  she  remained 
to  a  great  extent  engrossed  by  the  in- 
terests of  her  family  and  their  limited 
circle  of  old  and  intimate  friends.  This 
was  as  it  should  be — so  far,  but  there  may 
be  too  much  of  a  good  thing.  The  tend- 
ency of  strictly  restricted  family  parties 
and  sets — when  their  members  are  above 
small  bickerings  and  squabblings — when 
they  are  really  superior  people  in  every 
sense,  is  to  form  ''mutual  admiration'* 
societies,  and  neither  does  this  more  re- 
spectable and  amiable  weakness  act  bene- 
ficially upon  its  victims.  .  .  .  Fondly 
loved  and  remembered  as  Jane  Austen  has 
been,  with  much  reason,  among  her  own 
people,  in  their  considerable  ramifications, 
i  cannot  imagine  her  as  greatly  liked,  or 
even  regarded  with  anything  save  some 
amount  of  prejudice,  out  of  the  immediate 
circle  of  her  friends,  and  in  general 
society.  .  .  .  What  I  mean  is,  that 
she  allowed  her  interests  and  sympathies 
to  become  narrow,  even  for  her  day,  and 
that  her  tender  charity  not  only  began,  but 
ended,  in  a  large  measure,  at  home. — Ked- 
DiE,*  Henrietta  (Sarah  Tytler),  1880, 
Jane  Austen  and  Her  Works,  pp.  15,  16. 

Jane  is  described  as  tall,  slender,  and 
remarkably  graceful ;  she  was  a  clear  bru- 
nette with  a  rich  colour,  hazel  eyes,  fine 
features,  and  curling  brown  hair.  Her 
domestic  relations  were  delightful,  and 
she  was  specially  attractive  to  children. 
A  vague  record  is  preserved  of  an  attach- 
ment for  a  gentleman  whom  she  met  at  the 
seaside,  and  who  soon  afterwards  died' 
suddenly.  '  But  there  is  no  indication  of 
any  serious  disturbance  of  her  habitual 
serenity. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1885,  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography,  vol.  ii, 
p.  259. 

The  precise  locality  of  the  gravestone 
is  in  the  pavement  of  the  fifth  bay  of  the 
north  aisle,  counting  from  the  west.  It 


is  a  slab  of  black  marble  with  the  follow- 
ing inscription: — ''In  memory  of  JANE 
AUSTEN,  youngest  daughter  of  the  late 
Revd.  George  Austen,  formerly  Rector  of 
Steventon  in  this  Gounty.  She  departed 
this  life  on  July  18,  1817,  aged  41,  after 
a  long  illness,  supported  with  the  patience 
and  hope  of  a  Christian.  The  benevolence 
of  her  heart,  the  sweetness  of  her  temper, 
and  the  extraordinary  endowments  of  her 
mind,  obtained  the  regard  of  all  who  knew 
her,  and  the  warmest  love  of  her  immediate 
connexions.  Their  grief  is  in  proportion 
to  their  affection ;  they  know  their  loss  to 
be  irreparable,  but  in  their  deepest  afflic- 
tion they  are  consoled  by  a  firm,  though 
humble,  hope  that  her  charity,  devotion, 
faith,  and  purity  have  rendered  her  soul 
acceptable  in  the  sight  of  her  Redeemer. " 
—Adams,  Oscar  Fay,  1891-96,  The  Story 
of  Jane  Austen^  s  Life,  p.  220. 

All  the  time  that  she  was  writing  her 
three  best  novels  she  had  no  private  study : 
she  wrote  in  the  general  sittingroom  at 
her  little  mahogany  desk,  and  when  visitors 
interrupted,  a  handkerchief  or  a  news- 
paper was  tnrown  over  the  tell-tale  MSS. 
Very  often  her  nephews  and  nieces  rushed 
in,  and  she  was  always  ready  to  break  off 
from  her  writing  to  tell  them  long  delight- 
ful fairy  stories.  .  .  .  She  was  essentially 
a  womanly  woman.  Everything  that  she 
did  with  her  fingers  was  ^\  jll  done.  She 
wrote  a  clear,  firm  hand,  as  easy  to  read 
as  print. — Hamilton,  Catherine  J.,  1892, 
Women  Writers,  First  Series,  pp.  203, 204. 

May  we  not  be  well  content  with  Jane 
Austen  as  we  have  her,  the  central  figure 
of  a  little  loving  family  group,  the  dearest 
of  daughters  and  sisters,  the  gayest  and 
birghtest  of  aunts,  the  most  charming  and 
incomparable  of  old  maids? — Repplier, 
Agnes,  1892-95,  Essays  in  Miniature, 
p.  170. 

No  book  published  in  Jane  Austen's 
lifetime  bore  her  name  on  the  title-page ; 
she  was  never  lionized  by  society ;  she  was 
never  two  hundred  miles  from  home ;  she 
died  when  forty-two  years  of  age,  and  it 
was  sixty  years  before  a  biography  was 
attempted  or  asked  for.  She  sleeps  in  the 
cathedral  at  Winchester,  and  not  so  very 
long  ago  a  visitor,  on  asking  the  verger 
to  see  her  grave,  was  conducted  thither, 
and  the  verger  asked,  "Was  she  anybody 
in  particular?  so  many  folks  ask  where 
she's  buried,  you  know!"    But  this  is 


614 


JANE  AUSTEN 


changed  now,  for  when  the  verger  took 
me  to  her  grave  and  we  stood  by  that  plain 
black  marble  slab,  he  spoke  intelligently 
of  her  life  and  work.  And  many  visitors 
now  go  to  the  cathedral  only  because  it  is 
the  resting-place  of  Jane  Austen,  who 
lived  a  beautiful,  helpful  life  and  produced 
great  art,  yet  knew  it  not. — Hubbard, 
Elbert,  1897,  Little  Journeys  to  the  Homes 
of  Famous  Women,  p.  353. 

PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE 

1796-1813 

Read  again,  and  for  the  third  time  at 
least,  Miss  Austen's  very  finely  written 
novel  of  ''Pride  and  Prejudice."  That 
young  lady  had  a  talent  for  describing  the 
involvements,  and  feelings,  and  characters 
of  ordinary  life,  which  is  to  me  the  most 
wonderful  I  every  met  with.  The  Big 
Bow-wow  strain  I  can  do  myself  like  any 
now  going ;  but  the  exquisite  touch,  which 
renders  ordinary  commonplace  things  and 
characters  interesting,  from  the  truth  of 
the  description  and  the  sentiment,  is  denied 
to  me.  What  a  pity  such  a  gifted  creature 
died  so  early! — Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1826, 
Diary,  March  14 ;  Memoirs,  ed.  Lockhart, 
ch.  Ixviii. 

Why  do  you  like  Miss  Austen  so  very 
much  ?  I  am  puzzled  on  that  point.  What 
induced  you  to  say  that  you  would  rather 
have  written  "Pride  and  Prejudice,''  or 
*'Tom  Jones,"  than  any  of  the  Waver ly 
Novels?  I  had  not  seen  'Tride  and  Prej- 
udice" till  I  read  that  sentence  of  yours— 
then  I  got  the  book.  And  what  did  I  find  ? 
An  accurate  daguerreotyped  portrait  of  a 
commonplace  face;  a  carefully  fenced, 
high-cultivated  garden,  with  neat  borders 
and  delicate  flowers ;  but  no  glance  of  a 
bright,  vivid  physiognomy,  no  open  coun- 
try, no  fresh  air,  no  blue  hill,  no  bonny 
beck.  I  should  hardly  like  to  live  with  her 
ladies  and  gentlemen,  in  their  elegant  but 
confined  houses.  .  .  .  She  (George  Sand) 
is  sagacious  and  profound — Miss  Austen  is 
only  shrewd  and  observant.  .  .  .  You 
say  I  must  familiarize  my  mind  with  the 
fact  that  ''Miss  Austen  is  not  a  poetess, 
has  no  'Sentiment,'  no  eloquence,  none  of 
the  ravishing  enthusiasm  of  poetry,  "—and 
then  you  add,  I  must ' '  learn  to  acknowledge 
her  as  one  of  the  greatest  artists,  of  the 
greatest  .painters  of  human  character,  and 
one  of  the  writers  with  the  nicest  sense  of 
means  to  an  end  that  ever  lived. ' '  The  last 
point  only  will  I  ever  acknowledge.  Can 


there  be  a  great  artist  without  poetry  ? — 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  1848,  Letters  to  G. 
H.  Lewes,  Life  of  Bronte  by  GaskeJl,  pp. 
313,  319. 

She  was  only  about  twenty  in  her  shel- 
tered and  happy  life  at  home  in  the  end  of 
the  old  century,  when  she  wrote  what  might 
have  been  the  outcome  of  the  profoundest 
prolonged  observation  and  study  of  man- 
kind— what  is,  we  think,  the  most  perfect 
of  all  her  works — "Pride  and  Prejudice. " 
— Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882, 
Literary  History  of  England,  XVUI  and 
XIX  Centuries,  vol.  iii,  p.  184. 

To  say  nothing  of  the  supreme  excel- 
lence of  the  dialogue,  there  is  scarcely  a 
page  but  has  its  little  gem  of  exact  and 
polished  phrasing;  scarcely  a  chapter 
which  is  not  adroitly  opened  or  artistically 
ended ;  while  the  whole  book  abounds  in 
sentences  over  which  the  writer,  it  is 
plain,  must  have  lingered  with  patient  and 
loving  craftsmanship.  .  .  .  Criticism 
has  found  little  to  condemn  in  the  details 
of  this  capital  novel.— Dobson,  Austin, 
1895,  ed.,  Pride  and  Prejudice,  Introduc- 
tion. 

Never  was  there  a  book  written  which 
has  given  more  harmless  pleasure  to  those 
who  have  come  under  its  spell.  As  we 
open  its  pages,  we  bid  adieu  to  a  world  of 
sordid  cares  and  troublesome  interests,  and 
though  we  do  not  wander  into  fairy-land, 
for  Miss  Austen's  world  is  always  matter- 
of-fact,  we  do  catch  a  breath  of  an  air  less 
severe  than  that  which  we  habitually  draw, 
and  find,  if  not  fairy-land,  at  least  a 
touch  of  the  lightness  of  fairy-land 
brought  down  to  us. — Jack,  Adolphus 
Alfred,  1897,  Essays  on  the  Novel,  p.  254. 

"Pride  and  Prejudice"  is  realistic  in  its 
narrowness  of  scope,  in  its  lack  of  com- 
plicated plot,  and  in  that  it  sets  forth 
clearly  and  fully  a  limited  section  of  life. 
It  attempts  to  hold  up  no  ideals ;  it  deals 
for  the  most  part  with  middle-class  people ; 
it  has  in  it  no  literary  atmosphere  sug- 
gested either  by  the  characters  or  by  the 
author's  allusions.  And  yet  one  forgets 
that  he  is  reading  a  book ;  he  feels  as  if 
he  were  making  a  visit  among  people  in 
whom  he  had  a  human  interest.  He  finds 
himself  scheming  with  the  fond  mother 
in  her  matchmaking  interests  for  her 
daughters  five.— Dye,  Charity,  1898, 
The  Story-Tellefs  Art,  p.  71. 

Perhaps  "Pride  and  Prejudice^*  is  the 


1 


JANE  AUSTEN 


615 


only  one  where  the  general  design  can  be 
almost  unreservedly  praised,  but  even  in 
this,  which  is  undoubtedly  the  finest  of 
her  novels,  there  is  one  serious  defect  that 
is  absent  in  none  of  them,  namely,  an  in- 
adequate sense  of  dramatic  climax.  It 
may  be  ungenerous  to  find  fault  with  the 
author  for  the  perfunctory  manner  in 
which  she  disposes  of  the  minor  figures  in 
her  story  after  the  main  interest  has  been 
exhausted.  ...  It  was  entirely  in- 
excusable that  she  should  invariably  fail 
to  realise  the  opportunity  of  making 
emotional  capital  out  of  the  supreme 
psychological  moment  of  her  denoument — 
Oliphant,  James,  1899,  Victorian  Novel- 
ists, pp.  26,  27. 

It  is  a  dated  society,  and  it  is  a  dated 
woman,  not  the  woman  of  all  time,  that 
we  have  portrayed ;  but  it  is  a  society  and 
a  woman  portrayed  with  marvellous  per- 
fection. .  .  .  Moreover,  if  we  had  a 
complete  novel-form,  we  Kave  an  equally 
complete  method.  One  can  use  the  style 
of  Jane  Austen  as  a  model  for  study  in 
the  schoolroom.  There  is  repression  in 
every  detail ;  the  plot  is  made  simple ;  the 
adjective  is  cut  out  of  the  sentences; 
every  detail  of  finish  is  subordinated  to  a 
requirement  of  sincerity,  to  a  limited  and 
selected  variety.  The  humor  is  cultivated, 
genial ;  it  is  the  humor  of  an  observer — of 
a  refined,  satisfied  observer — rather  than 
the  humor  of  a  reformer ;  it  is  the  humor 
of  one  who  sees  the  incongruities,  but 
never  dreams  of  questioning  the  general 
excellence  of  the  system  as  a  whole.  All 
this  is  the  method  of  a  completed  ideal ;  a 
method  of  manifest  limits,  but  within  its 
limits  absolutely  true.  Still  further  we 
may  claim  that  this  novel  is  not  only  an 
expression  of  a  complete  novel  form ;  it 
is  not  only  an  expression  of  a  complete 
literary  method ;  it  is  also  an  embodiment 
of  completed  ideals. — Stoddard,  Francis 
HovEY,  1900,  The  Evolution  of  the  Eng- 
lish Novel,  pp.  53,  55. 
/  May  lay  claim  to  being  the  most  enjoy- 
able book  any  woman  ever  wrote. — Grey, 
•Rowland,  1901,  The  Bores  of  Jane  Aus- 
(ten,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  76,  p.  43. 

SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY 

1797-1811 

I  think  the  title  of  the  book  is  mislead- 
ing to  modern  ears.  Sensibility  in  Jane 
Austen's  day  meant  warm,  quick  feeling, 
not  exaggerated  or  over  keen,  as  it  really 


does  now ;  and  the  object  of  the  book,  in 
my  belief,  is  not  to  contrast  the  sensibility 
of  Marianne  with  the  sense  of  Elinor,  but 
to  show  how  with  equally  warm,  tender 
feelings  the  one  sister  could  control  her 
sensibility  by  means  of  her  sense  when  the 
other  would  not  attempt  it.  These  quali- 
ties come  still  more  prominently  forward 
when  Mrs.  Dashwood  and  her  daughters 
have  found  a  home  at  Barton  Cottage. 
.  .  .  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  in 
Sense  and  Sensibility"  we  have  the  first 
of  Jane  Austen's  revised  and  finished 
works,  and  in  several  respects  it  reveals 
an  inexperienced  author.  The  action  is 
too  rapid,  and  there  is  a  want  of  dexterity 
in  getting  the  characters  out  of  their 
difficulties.  Mrs.  Jennings  is  too  vulgar, 
and  in  her,  as  in  several  of  the  minor  char- 
acters, we  see  that  Jane  Austen  had  not 
quite  shaken  off  the  turn  for  caricature, 
which  in  early  youth  she  had  possessed 
strongly. — Malden,  Mrs.  Charles,  1889, 
Jane  Austen  {Famous  Women),  pp.  60,  77. 

To  contend,  however,  for  a  moment  that 
the  present  volume  is  Miss  Austen's  great- 
est, as  it  was  her  first  published,  novel, 
would  be  a  mere  exercise  in  paradox. 
There  are,  who  swear  by  "Persuasion;" 
there  are,  who  prefer  * '  Emma' '  and ' '  Mans- 
field Park there  is  a  large  contingent  for 
Pride  and  Prejudice;"  and  there  is  even 
a  section  which  advocates  the  pre-emi- 
nence of Nor  thanger  Abbey."  But  no 
one,  as  far  as  we  can  remember,  has  ever 
put  Sense  and  Sensibility"  first,  nor  can 
I  believe  that  its  author  did  so  herself. 
And  yet  it  is  she  herself  who  has  furnished 
the  standard  by  which  we  judge  it,  and  it 
is  by  comparison  with  ''Pride  and  Prej- 
udice," in  which  the  leading  characters 
are  also  two  sisters,  that  we  assess  and 
depress  its  merit.  The  Elinor  and 
Marianne  of  Sense  an  Sensibility"  are 
only  inferior  when  they  are  contrasted 
with  the  Elizabeth  and  Jane  of  Pride  and 
Prejudice;"  and  even  then,  it  is  probably 
because  we  personally  like  the  handsome 
and  amiable  Jane  Bennet  rather  better 
than  the  obsolete  survival  of  the  senti- 
mental novel  represented  by  Marianne 
Dashwood.  Darcy  and  Bingley  again  are 
much  more  ''likeable"  (to  use  Lady 
Queensberry's  word)  than  the  colourless 
Edward  Ferrars  and  the  stiif-jointed 
Colonel  Brandon.— DoBSON,  Austin,  1896, 
Sense  and  Sensibility,  Introduction. 


616 


JANE  AUSTEN 


NORTHANGER  ABBEY 
1797-1818 

The  behaviour  of  the  General  in  North- 
anger  Abbey,"  packing  off  the  young  lady 
without  a  servant  or  the  common  civilities 
which  any  bear  of  a  man,  not  to  say  gentle- 
man, would  have  shown,  is  quite  outra- 
geously out  of  drawing  and  out  of  nature. 
— Edgeworth,  Maria,  1818,  Letters,  vol. 
I,  p.  246. 

I  read  Dickens'  "Hard  Times. One 
excessively  touching,  heartbreaking  pas- 
sage and  the  rest  sullen  socialism.  The 
evils  which  he  attacks  he  caricatures 
grossly,  and  with  little  humor.  Another 
book  of  Pliny's  letters.  Read  ''North- 
anger  Abbey ;"  worth  all  Dickens  and  Pliny 
together.  Yet  it  was  the  work  of  a  girl. 
She  was  certainly  not  more  than  twenty- 
six.  Wonderful  creature! — Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1854,  Journal,  Aug. 
12 ;  Life  and  Letters,  ed.  Trevelyan. 

Her  style  deserves  the  highest  com- 
mendation. It  has  all  the  form  and  finish 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  without  being 
in  the  least  degree  stilted  or  unnatural. 
It  has  all  the  tone  of  good  society  without 
being  in  the  least  degree  insipid.  For  a 
specimen  of  crisp,  rich  English,  combining 
all  the  vigour  of  the  masculine  with  all  the 
delicacy  of  the  feminine  style,  we  suggest 
the  opening  chapter  of  ''Northanger 
Abbey"  as  a  model  for  any  young  lady 
writer  of  the  present  age. — Kebbel,  T. 
E.,  1870,  Jane  Austen,  Fortnightly  Re- 
view, vol.  13,  p.  193. 

MANSFIELD  PARK 

1814 

It  is  certainly  not  incumbent  on  you  to 
dedicate  your  work  now  in  the  press  to  His 
Royal  Highness ;  but  if  you  wish  to  do  the 
Regent  that  honour  either  now  or  at  any 
future  period  I  am  happy  to  send  you  that 
permission,  which  need  not  require  any 
more  trouble  or  solicitation  on  your  part. 
Your  late  works.  Madam,  and  in  particular 
''Mansfield  Park,"  reflect  the  highest 
honour  on  your  genius  and  your  principles. 
In  every  new  work  your  mind  seems  to  in- 
crease its  energy  and  power  of  discrimina- 
^■ion.  The  Regent  has  read  and  admired 
all  your  publications. — Clarke,  J.  S., 
5;  Letter  to  Miss  Austen, 

i  ix.-  .         ansfield  Park,"  which  hur- 
ries with  a  Vbry  inartificial  and  disagree- 
^le  rapidity  to  its  conclusions,  leaving 


some  opportunities  for  most  interesting 
and  beautiful  scenes,  particularly  the  de- 
tailed expression  of  the  "how  and  the 
when"  Edward's  love  was  turned  from 
Miss  Crawford  to  Fanny  Price.  The  great 
merit  of  Miss  Austen  is  in  the  finishing  of 
her  characters ;  the  action  and  conduct  of 
her  stories  I  think  frequently  defective. — 
Macready,  W.  C,  1836,  Diary,  July  10; 
Reminiscences,  ed.  Pollock,  p.  393. 

The  longest,  and,  we  think,  least  valuable 
of  her  books. — Oliphant,  Margaret,  0. 
W.,  1882,  Literary  History  of  England, 
XVIII  and  XIX  Centuries,  'vol.  iii,  y.  192. 

How  well  I  recall  the  greatest  literary 
pleasure  of  my  life,  its  time  and  place !  A 
dreary  winter's  day  without,  within  a  gen- 
erous heat  and  glow  from  the  flaming 
grate,  and  I  reclining  at  my  ease  on  the 
library  lounge,  "Mansfield  Park"  in  hand. 
Then  succeed  four  solid  hours  of  literary 
bliss,  and  an  absorption  so  great  that  when 
I  mechanically  close  the  book  at  the  last 
page  it  is  only  by  the  severest  eff'ort  that 
I  come  back  to  the  real  world  of  pleasant 
indoors  and  bleak  outdoors.  I  was  amazed 
that  I,  a  hardened  fiction  reader,  should 
be  so  transported  by  this  gentle  tale  of 
Miss  Austen's,  and  yet  I  enjoyed  to  the 
full  the  after-taste  of  her  perfect  realistic 
art.  This  first  enthusiasm,  however,  soon 
abated,  and  I  began  to  see  flaws,  to  note 
the  prolixity  and  unevenness  of  the  work, 
and  to  feel  that  it  was  almost  school-girlish 
in  tone  and  sentiment.  While  the  verisi- 
militude is,  indeed,  fascinating,  the  realiza- 
tion is  far  from  profound.  And  the  char- 
acters are  too  one-sided  for  full  human 
beings — are  only  puppets,  each  pulled  by 
a  single  string.  Edmund  Bertram  is,  per- 
haps, the  most  woodeny  of  these  marion- 
ettes. Lady  Bertram,  the  languid  beauty, 
seems  often  overdrawn.  Mrs.  Norris  is  a 
perfect  busybody,  but  a  pettiness  so  abso- 
lutely consistent  at  length  rouses  our  sus- 
picions and  irritates  us.  We  feel  that 
human  nature,  outside  of  the  madhouse, 
does  not  fulfill  the  single  types  so  com- 
pletely. But  in  Fanny  Price  we  find  no 
flaw  or  artistic  presentment.  Here  comes 
before  our  eyes  a  real,  a  free,  a  complex 
human  being.  ...  I  am  acquainted  with 
no  more  charming  figure  in  fiction  than 
Fanny ;  she  is  so  completely,  perfectly,  de- 
liciously  feminine  in  instinct,  feeling, man- 
ner and  intelligence. — Stanley,  Hiram 
M.,  1897,  Essays  on  Literary  Art,  p.  47. 


JANE  AUSTEN 


G17 


EMMA 
1816 

We,  therefore,  bestow  no  mean  compli- 
ment upon  the  author  of ' '  Emma,"  when  we 
say  that,  keeping  close  to  common  inci- 
dents, and  to  such  characters  as  occupy  the 
ordinary  walks  of  life,  she  has  produced 
sketches  of  such  spirit  and  originality, 
that  we  never  miss  the  excitation  which 
depends  upon  a  narrative  of  uncommon 
events,  arising  from  the  consideration  of 
minds,  manners  and  sentiments,  greatly 
above  our  own.  In  this  class  she  stands 
almost  alone ;  for  the  scenes  of  Miss  Edge- 
worth  are  laid  in  higher  life,  varied  by 
more  romantic  incident,  and  by  her  re- 
markable power  of  embodying  and  illus- 
trating national  character.  But  the  author 
of  ''Emma''  confines  herself  chiefly  to  the 
middling  classes  of  society ;  her  most  dis- 
tinguished characters  do  not  rise  greatly 
above  well-bred  country  gentlemen  and 
ladies ;  and  those  which  are  sketched  with 
most  originality  and  precision,  belong  to  a 
class  rather  below  that  standard. — Scott, 
Sir  Walter,  1815,  Emma,  Quarterly  Re- 
view, vol.  14,  p.  193. 

Finished  Miss  Austen's* 'Emma,"  which 
amused  me  very  much,  impressing  me  with 
a  high  opinion  of  her  powers  of  drawing 
and  sustaining  character,  though  not 
satisfying  me  always  with  the  end  and  aim 
of  her  labours.  She  is  successful  in 
painting  the  ridiculous  to  the  life,  and 
while  she  makes  demands  on  our  patience 
for  the  almost  intolerable  absurdities  and 
tediousness  of  her  well-meaning  gossips, 
she  does  not  recompense  us  for  what  we 
suffer  from  her  conceited  and  arrogant 
nuisances  by  making  their  vices  their 
punishments.  We  are  not  much  better, 
but  perhaps  a  little  more  prudent  for  her 
writings.  She  does  not  probe  the  vices, 
but  lays  bare  the  weaknesses  of  character ; 
the  blemish  on  the  skin,  and  not  the  cor- 
ruption at  the  heart,  is  what  she  examines. 
Mrs.  Brunton's  books  have  a  far  higher 
aim ;  they  try  to  make  us  better,  and  it  is 
an  addition  to  previous  faults  if  they  do 
not.  The  necessity,  the  comfort,  and  the 
elevating  influence  of  piety  is  continually 
inculcated  throughout  her  works— which 
never  appears  in  Miss  Austen's. — Mac- 
ready,  W.  C,  1834,  Diary,  Feb.  15; 
Reminiscences,  ed.  Pollock,  p.  312. 

I  have  likewise  read  one  of  Miss 
Austen's  works — "Emma" — read  it  with 


interest  and  with  just  the  degree  of  ad- 
miration which  Miss  Austen  herself  would 
have  thought  sensible  and  suitable. 
Anything  like  warmth  or  enthusiasm — 
anything  energetic,  poignant,  heart-felt 
is  utterly  out  of  place  in  commending  these 
works :  all  such  demonstration  the  author- 
ess would  have  met  with  a  well-bred  sneer, 
would  have  calmly  scorned  as  outre  and 
extravagant.  She  does  her  business  of 
delineating  the  surface  of  the  lines  of 
genteel  English  people  curiously  well. 
There  is  a  Chinese  fidelity,  a  miniature 
delicacy  in  the  painting.  She  rufl^es  her 
reader  by  nothing  vehement,  disturbs  him 
by -nothing  profound.  The  passions  are 
perfectly  unknown  to  her ;  she  rejects  even 
a  speaking  acquaintance  with  that  stormy 
sisterhood.  Even  to  the  feelings  she 
vouchsafes  no  more  than  an  occasional 
graceful  but  distant  recognition — too  fre- 
quent converse  with  them  would  ruffle  the 
smooth  elegance  of  her  progress.  Her 
business  is  not  half  so  much  with  the 
human  heart  as  with  the  human  eyes, 
mouth,  hands,  and  feet.  What  sees 
keenly,  speaks  aptly,  moves  flexibly,  it 
suits  her  to  study ;  but  what  throbs  fast 
and  full,  though  hidden,  what  the  blood 
rushed  through,  what  is  the  unseen  seat  of 
life  and  the  sentient  target  of  death— 
this  Miss  Austen  ignores.  She  no  more, 
with  her  mind's  eye,  beholds  the  heart  of 
her  race  than  each  man,  with  bodily  vision, 
sees  the  heart  in  his  heaving  breast. 
Jane  Austen  was  a  complete  and  most 
sensible  lady,  but  a  very  incomplete  and 
rather  insensible  (not  senseless)  woman. 
If  this  is  heresy,  I  cannot  help  it. — 
Bronte,  Charlotte,  1850,  Letter  to  W. 
S.  Williams,  April  12;  Charlotte  Bronte 
and  her  Circle,  by  Shorter,  p.  399. 

"Emma,"  perhaps,  is  the  work  upon 
which  most  sufl^rages  would  meet  as  the 
most  perfect  of  all  her  performances. — 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  Lit- 
erary History  of  England,  XVIII  and  XIX 
Centuries,  vol.  iii,  p.  192. 

I  have  a  great  liking,  witnessed  by  a 
periodical  re-reading,  for  the  pleasant 
scampishness  and  easy,  go  as  you  please 
narrative  of  "Gil  Bias;"  and  I  humbly 
claim  to  share  in  the  learned 's  appreciation 
of  Miss  Austen,  taking  "Emma"  as  my 
first  choice  among  the  fruits  of  a  genius  so 
great  and  yet  so  ladylike,  so  almost  young 
ladylike.  —  Hawkins,   Anthony  Hope, 


618 


JANE  AUSTEN 


1897,  My  Favorite  Novelist  and  His  Best 
Book,  Munsey's  Magazine^  vol.  18,  jo.  351. 

PERSUASION 
1818 

Persuasion" — excepting  the  tangled, 
useless  histories  of  the  family  in  the  first 
fifty  pages — appears  to  me,  especially  in 
all  that  relates  to  poor  Anne  and  her  lover, 
to  be  exceedingly  interesting  and  natural. 
The  love  and  the  lover  admirably  well 
drawn:  don't  you  see  Captain  Wentworth, 
or  rather  don't  you  in  her  place  feel  him 
taking  the  boisterous  child  off  her  back  as 
she  kneels  by  the  sick  boy  on  the  sofa? 
And  is  not  the  first  meeting  after  their 
long  separation  admirably  well  done? — 
Edgeworth,  Maria,  1818,  Letters,  vol.  i, 
p.  247. 

The  book  shows  broader  sympathies, 
deeper  observation,  and  perhaps  more  per- 
fect symmetry,  balance,  poise,  than  the 
others.  The  always  flexible,  unobtrusive 
style,  in  which  reduction  of  emphasis  is 
carried  sometimes  to  the  verge  of  equivo- 
cation, concealing  the  author,  yet  instinct 
with  her  presence,  in  none  of  her  books 
approximates  more  nearly  to  Cardinal 
Newman's  definition — ''a  thinking  out  into 
language."  In  general,  the  qualities  that 
appear  in  the  others  are  in  Persuasion" 
perhaps  more  successfully  fused  than  be- 
fore.—Clymer,  W.  B.  Shubrick,  1891, 
A  Note  on  Jane  Austen,  Scribnefs  Maga- 
zine, vol.  9,  p.  384. 

'Tersuasion"  represents  the  ripest  de- 
velopment of  Jane  Austen's  powers,  that 
latest  phase  of  her  thoughts  and  feelings. 
It  is  a  novel  which,  while  not  wanting  in 
the  several  excellences  of  those  which  pre- 
ceded it,  has  a  mellower  tone  and  a  more 
finished  grace  of  style  than  any  of  the 
others.  It  was  written  at  a  time  when 
bodily  strength  had  given  place  to  weak- 
ness; and  although  her  mind  was  more 
active  than  ever,  her  physical  condition 
insensibly  influenced  her  thought,  giving 
this  latest  of  her  books  that  deeper  note 
of  feeling,  that  finer  touch  of  sympathy 
and  tenderness,  which  make  Persuasion" 
the  greatest  of  all  her  works. — Adams, 
Oscar  Fay,  1891-96,  The  Story  of  Jane 
Austen's  Life,  p.  254. 

It  was  Miss  Austen's  last  story,  and  has 
more  depth  of  feeling  and  pathos  than 
most  of  hers.  .  .  .  The  delicate  miniature 
painting  of  the  characters  in  these  tales  is 
apt  not  to  be  appreciated  by  the  young, 


and  the  tone  of  county  society  of  that  day 
disgusts  them;  but  as  they  grow  older 
they  perceive  how  much  ability  and  insight 
is  displayed  in  the  work,  and  esteem  the 
forbearance,  sweetness,  and  self-restraint 
of  such  a  heroine  as  Anne. — Yonge, 
Charlotte  M.,  1893,  Anne  Elliot,  Great 
Characters  of  Fiction,  ed.  Townsend,  pp, 
18,  19. 

Of  Anne  Elliot,  the  heroine  of  Persua- 
sion," she  wrote  to  a  friend,  **You  may 
perhaps  like  her,  as  she  is  almost  too  good 
for  me. ' '  She  is  too  good  for  most  of  us, 
but  not  the  less  charming,  and  even  the  bril- 
liancy of  Elizabeth  Bennet  pales  a  little 
before  the  refined  womanliness  of  this  de- 
lightful English  lady.  Whether  the  future 
of  Catherine  Morland  and  Henry  Tilney 
was  wholly  ideal  may  be  doubted ;  we  may 
even  have  secret  reservations  as  to  the 
absolute  bliss  of  Emma  and  her  Knightley ; 
but  there  can  be  no  sort  of  question  as  to 
the  ultimate  and  unalloyed  happiness  of 
Anne  Elliot  and  Captain  Wentworth,  who 
is  another  of  those  pleasant  manly  naval 
officers  whom  Miss  Austen,  drawing  no 
doubt  from  material  in  her  own  family 
circles,  depicts  so  sympathetically.  — 
DoBSON,  Austin,  1897,  Northanger  Abbey 
and  Persuasion,  Introduction,  p.  xii. 

GENERAL 

Miss  Austin's  works  may  be  safely  rec- 
ommended, not  only  as  among  the  most  un- 
exceptionable of  their  class,but  as  combin- 
ing, in  an  eminent  degree,  instruction  with 
amusement,  though  without  the  direct 
effort  at  the  former,  of  which  we  have  com- 
plained as  sometimes  defeating  its  object. 
For  those  who  cannot  or  will  not  learn  any- 
thing from  productions  of  this  kind,  she 
has  provided  entertainment  which  entitles 
her  to  thanks ;  for  mere  innocent  amuse- 
ment is  in  itself  a  good,  when  it  interferes 
with  no  greater;  especially  as  it  may  oc- 
cupy the  place  of  some  other  that  may  not 
be  innocent.  The  Eastern  monarch  who 
proclaimed  a  reward  to  him  who  should 
deserve  a  new  pleasure,  would  have  de- 
served well  of  mankind  had  he  stipulated 
that  it  should  be  blameless.  Those,  again, 
who  delight  in  the  study  of  human  nature, 
may  improve  in  the  knowledge  of  it,  and 
in  the  profitable  application  of  that  knowl- 
edge by  the  perusal  of  such  fictions  as 
those  before  us. — Whately,  Archbishop, 
1821,  Northanger  Abbey  and  Persuasion, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  24,  p.  375.  . 


JANE  AUSTEN 


619 


;y  the  way,  did  you  know  Miss  Austen, 
authoress  of  some  novels  which  have  a 
great  deal  of  nature  in  them  ? — nature  in 
ordinary  and  middle  life,  to  be  sure,  but 
valuable  from  its  strong  resemblance  and 
correct  drawing.  I  wonder  which  way 
she  carried  her  pail. — Scott,  Sir  Wal- 
ter, 1822,  Letter  to  Miss  Joanna  Bailliey 
Memoirs,  ed.  Lockhart,  ch.  Iv. 

All -perfect  Austen.  Here 
Let  one  poor  wreath  adorn  thy  early  bier, 
That  scarce  allowed  thy  modest  yoath  to 
claim 

Its  living  portion  of  thy  certain  fame. 
Oh,  Mrs.  Bennet-!  Mrs.  Norris,  too! 
While  memory  survives  we'll  dream  of  you, 
And  Mr.  Woodhouse,  whose  abstemious  lip 
Must  thin,  but  not  too  thin,  his  gruel  sip ; 
Miss  Bates,  our  idol,  though  the  village  bore ; 
And  Mrs.  Elton,  ardent  to  explore : 
While  the  dear  style  flows  on  without  pre- 
tence, 

With  unstained  purity,  and  unmatched  sense. 
— Carlisle,  Earl  of,  1825,  The  Keepsake. 

Our  dinner-party  this  evening  was  like 
nothing  but  a  chapter  out  of  one  of  Miss 
Austen's  novels.  What  wonderful  books 
those  are !  She  must  have  written  down 
the  very  conversations  she  heard  verbatim, 
to  have  made  them  so  like,  which  is  Irish. 
— Kemble,  Frances  Ann.  1831,  Records 
of  a  Girlhood,  July  31,  p.  441. 

My  idol.— Mitford,  Mary  Russell, 
1832,  Letter  to  Mrs.  Trollope;  What  I 
Remember,  by  T.  A.  Trollope,  p.  496. 

The  delicate  mirth,  the  gently  hinted 
satire,  the  feminine,  decorous  humor  of 
Jane  Austen,  who,  if  not  the  greatest,  is 
surely  the  most  faultless  of  female  novel- 
ists. My  Uncle  Southey  and  my  father 
had  an  equally  high  opinion  of  her  merits, 
but  Mr.  Wordsworth  used  to  say  that 
though  he  admitted  that  her  novels  were 
an  admirable  copy  of  life,  he  could  not  be 
interested  in  productions  of  that  kind ;  un- 
less the  truth  of  nature  were  presented  to 
him  clarified,  as  it  were,  by  the  pervading 
light  of  imagination,  it  had  scarce  any  at- 
tractions in  his  eyes.— Coleridge,  Sara, 
1834,  Letter  to  Miss  Emily  Trevenen,  A^ug.; 
Memoirs  and  Letters,  ed.  by  her  Daughter, 
p.  11. 

It  is  the  constant  manner  of  Shakspeare 
to  represent  the  human  mind  as  lying,  not 
under  the  absolute  dominion  of  one  do- 
mestic propensity,  but  under  a  mixed 
government,  in  which  a  hundred  powers 
balance  each  other.    Admirable  as  he  was 


in  all  parts  of  his  art,  we  most  admire  him 
for  this,  that,  while  he  has  left  us  a  greater 
number  of  striking  portraits  than  all  other 
dramatists  put  together,  he  has  scarcely 
left  us  a  single  caricature.  Shakspeare 
has  had  neither  equal  nor  second.  But 
among  the  writers  who,  in  the  point  which 
we  have  noticed,  have  approached  nearest 
to  the  manner  of  the  great  master,  we 
have  no  hesitation  in  placing  Jane  Austen, 
a  woman  of  whom  England  is  justly  proud. 
She  has  given  us  a  multitude  of  characters, 
all,  in  a  certain  sense,  commonplace,  all 
such  as  we  meet  every  day.  Yet  they  are 
all  as  perfectly  discriminated  from  each 
other  as  if  they  were  the  most  eccentric 
of  human  beings.— Macaulay,  Thomas 
Babington,  1842,  Madame  UArblay,  Crit- 
ical and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

We  should  say  that  Fielding  and  Miss 
Austen  are  the  greatest  novelists  in  our 
language.  .  .  .  Miss  Austen  has  been 
called  a  prose  Shakspeare; — and,  among 
others,  by  Macaulay.  In  spite  of  the  sense 
of  incongruity  which  besets  us  in  the  words 
prose  Shakspeare,  we  confess  the  great- 
ness of  Miss  Austen,  her  marvelous  dra- 
matic power,  seems  more  than  anything 
in  Scott,  akin  to  the  greatest  quality  in 
Shakspeare.  —  Lewes,  George  Henry, 
1847,  Recent  Novels,  Eraser's  Magazine, 
vol.  36,  p.  687. 

Home,  and  finished  Persuasion."  I 
have  now  read  over  again  all  Miss  Austen's 
novels.  Charming  they  are,  but  I  found  a 
little  more  to  criticise  than  formerly. 
Yet  there  are  in  the  world  no  compositions 
which  approach  nearer  to  perfection. — 
Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1851, 
Journal,  May  1 ;  Life  and  Letters,  ed. 
Trevelyan. 

She  [Miss  MilfordJ  never  taught  me 
anything  but  a  very  limited  admiration  of 
Miss  Austen,  whose  people  struck  me  as 
wanting  souls,  even  more  than  is  neces- 
sary for  men  and  women  of  the  world.  The 
novels  are  perfect  as  far  as  they  go — 
that's  certain.  Only  they  don't  go  far,  I 
think.  It  may  be  my  fault. — Browning, 
Elizabeth  Barrett,  1855,  To  Mr.  Rus- 
kin,  Nov.  5 ;  Letters,  ed.  Kenyon,  vol.  ii, 
p.  217. 

All  in  all,  as  far  as  my  information  goes, 
the  best  judges  unanimously  prefer  Miss 
Austen  to  any  of  her  contemporaries  of 
the  same  order.    They  reckon  her  ''Sense 


620 


JANE  AUSTEN 


and  Sensibility/'  her  'Tride  and  Prej- 
udice," her  "Mansfield  Park"  and  her 
''Emma"  (which  novels  were  published  in 
her  lifetime),  and  also  her  ''Northanger 
Abbey"  and  her  "Persuasion"  (which  were 
published  posthumously)  as  not  only  better 
than  anything  else  of  the  kind  written  in 
her  day,  but  also  among  the  most  perfect 
and  charming  fictions  in  the  language.  I 
have  known  the  most  hard-headed  men  in 
ecstasies  with  them ;  and  the  only  objec- 
tion I  have  heard  of  as  brought  against 
them  by  ladies  is,  that  they  reveal  too 
many  of  their  secrets. — Masson,  David, 
1859,  British  Novelists  and  Their  Styles, 
p.  189. 

Miss  Austen  is,  of  all  his  successors,  the 
one  who  most  nearly  resembles  Richardson 
in  the  power  of  impressing  reality  upon 
her  characters.  There  is  a  perfection  in 
the  exhibition  of  Miss  Austen's  characters 
which  no  one  else  has  approached;  and 
truth  is  never  for  an  instant  sacrificed  in 
that  delicate  atmosphere  of  satire  which 
pervades  her  works.  .  .  .  She  has 
been  accused  of  writing  dull  stories  about 
ordinary  people.  But  her  supposed  ordi- 
nary people  are  really  not  such  very  ordi- 
nary people.  Let  any  one  who  is  inclined 
to  criticize  on  this  score,  endeavour  to  con- 
struct one  character  from  among  the  ordi- 
nary people  of  his  own  acquaintance  that 
shall  be  capable  of  interesting  any  reader 
for  ten  minutes.  It  will  then  be  found 
how  great  has  been  the  discrimination  of 
Miss  Austen  in  the  selection  of  her  charac- 
ters and  how  skillful  is  her  treatment  in 
the  management  of  them. — Pollock,  W. 
F.,  1860,  British  Novelists,  Eraser's  Mag- 
azine, vol.  61,  pp.  30,  31. 

By  those  who  have  studied  character 
distinct  from  its  outward  manifestations, 
as  expressed  in  conformity  to  uses  and 
customs,  there  will  be  found  in  Miss 
Austen's  novels  an  expression  of  firm  and 
original  courage  as  clear  as  if  she  had 
braved  society,  whether  theoretically  or 
practically.  The  boldness  which  will  vin- 
dicate for  persons  of  mediocre  intellect 
souls  to  be  saved  and  feelings  to  be  tor- 
tured, and  which  by  such  vindication  can 
interest  and  compel  a  jaded,  hurrying  pub- 
lic, eager  for  changing  excitements,  to 
pause  and  to  listen — is  surely  no  common 
quality ;  but  it  has  within  itself  a  promise 
and  an  assurance  of  enduring  reputation. 
— Chorley,  G.  F.,  1870,  Miss  Austen 


and  Miss  Mitford,  Quarterly  Review,  vol. 
128,  p.  203. 

Jane  Austen  was  the  flower  of  a  stock, 
full,  apparently,  through  all  its  branches, 
of  shrewd  sense  and  caustic  humour,  which 
in  her  were  combined  v;ith  the  creative 
imagination.  .  .  .  She  possessed  a 
real  and  rare  gift,  and  she  rendered  a  good 
account  of  it.  If  the  censer  which  she 
held  among  the  priests  of  art  was  not  of 
the  costliest,  the  incense  was  of  the 
purest.  If  she  cannot  be  ranked  with  the 
very  greatest  masters  of  fiction,  she  has 
delighted  many,  and  none  can  draw  from 
her  any  but  innocent  delight. — Smith, 
GoLDWiN,  1870-81,  Austen-Leigh's  Mem- 
oir of  Jane  Austen,  Lectures  and  Essays. 

She  was  always  very  careful  not  to 
meddle  with  matters  which  she  did 
not  thoroughly  understand.  She  never 
touched  upon  politics,  law,  or  medicine; 
but  with  ships  and  sailors  she  felt  herself 
at  home,  or  at  least  could  always  trust  to 
a  brotherly  critic  to  keep  her  right.  It 
is  said  that  no  flaw  has  ever  been  found  in 
her  seamanship  either  in  ''Mansfield  Park" 
or  in  "Persuasion."— Con  ANT,  S.  S.,  1870, 
Jane  Austen,  Harper's  Magazine,  vol.  41, 
p.  227. 

I  am  equally  sure  that  Miss  Austen  can- 
not be  third,  any  more  than  first  or  second : 
I  think  you  were  rather  drawn  away  by  a 
fashion  when  you  put  her  there :  and  really 
old  Spedding  seems  to  me  to  have  been  the 
Stag  whom  so  many  followed  in  that  fash- 
ion. She  is  capital  as  far  as  she  goes: 
but  she  never  goes  out  of  the  Parlour ;  if 
but  Magnus  Troil,  or  Jack  Bunce,  or  even 
one  of  Fielding's  Brutes,  would  but  dash 
in  upon  the  Gentility  and  swear  a  round 
Oath  or  two !  I  must  think  the  "Woman 
in  White,"  with  her  Count  Fosco,  far  be- 
yond all  that.  Cowell  constantly  reads 
Miss  Austen  at  night  after  his  Sanskrit 
Philology  is  done :  it  composes  him,  like 
Gruel:  or  like  Paisiello's  Music,  which 
Napoleon  liked  above  all  other,  because  he 
said  it  didn't  interrupt  his  Thoughts. — 
Fitzgerald,. Edward,  1871,  Letters,  vol. 
I,  p.  335. 

Miss  Austen  is  without  a  rival  in  the 
field  she  occupied.  .  .  .  It  was  a  mere 
fragment  of  human  life  that  Miss  Austen 
saw  with  a  clearness  and  an  intelligence 
and  a  reproductive  power  that  defy  pane- 
gyric.—Hales,  John  W.,  1873,  Notes 
and  Essays  on  Shakespeare,  p.  72. 


JANE  AUSTEN 


621 


The  extraordinary  skill  which  Miss 
Austen  displayed  in  describing  what  Scott 
called  *'the  involvements  and  feelings  and 
characters  of  ordinary  life, "  places  her  as 
a  novelist  above  her  predecessor,  Miss 
Burney.  But  it  is  more  doubtful  whether 
she  is  entitled  to  rank  above  her  contem- 
porary Miss  Edge  worth.  In  Macaulay's 
opinion  Madame  de  Stael  was  certainly  the 
first  woman  of  her  age ;  Miss  Edgeworth 
the  second;  and  Miss  Austen  the  third. 
Yet  Miss  Austen  has  one  advantage  over 
Miss  Edgeworth  which  is  very  important. 
In  reading  Miss  Austen  no  one  ever  thinks 
of  the  moral  of  the  story,  everyone  becomes 
insensibly  the  better  person  for  perusing 
it.— Walpole,  Spencer,  1878,  ^  History 
of  England  from  the  Conclusion  of  the 
Great  War  in  1815,  vol.  i,  p.  378. 

A  distinguished  English  scholar  said  to 
a  lecturer  who  had  extolled  the  tales  of 
Charlotte  Bronte,  "I  am  afraid  you  do  not 
know  that  Miss  Austen  is  the  better  novel- 
ist.'' If  the  scholar  had  explained  doubt- 
less he  would  have  said,  in  comparing  Miss 
Bronte  or  George  Eliot  with  Miss  Austen, 
— and  the  three  are  the  chief  of  their  sex 
in  this  form  of  English  literature — that 
her  distinction  and  superiority  lie  in  her 
more  absolute  artistic  instinct.  She 
writes  wholly  as  an  artist,  while  George 
Eliot  advocates  views,  and  Miss  Bronte's 
fiery  page  is  often  a  personal  protest.  In 
Miss  Austen,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is 
in  kind,  but  infinitely  less  in  degree,  the 
same  clear  atmosphere  of  pure  art  which 
we  perceive  in  Shakespeare  and  Goethe. 
It  is  a  thread  of  exceeding  fineness  with 
which  she  draws  us,  but  it  is  spun  of  pure 
gold.  There  are  no  great  characters,  no 
sweep  of  passion,  no  quickening  of  soul 
and  exaltation  of  purpose  and  sympathy, 
upon  her  page,  but  there  is  the  pure 
pleasure  of  a  Watteau.  .  .  .  Miss 
Austen's  art  is  not  less  in  the  choice  than 
in  the  treatment.  She  does  not,  indeed, 
carve  the  Moses  with  Michael  Angelo, 
but  she  moulds  the  delicate  cup,  she 
cuts  the  gem.— Curtis,  George  William, 
1881,  Editor's  Easy  Chair,  Harper's  Maga- 
zine,  vol.  62,  p.  309. 

Like  Wordsworth,  she  sought  to  show 
the  charm  that  lies  under  the  common 
things  about  us,  and  with  a  fine  feminine 
humour,  under  sentences  clear,  simple,  and 
exactly  fitted  to  expression  of  a  shrewd 
good  sense,  she  came  nearer  to  Fielding 


than  any  novelist  who  vvTote  before  the 
reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  —  Morley, 
Henry,  1881,  Of  English  Literature  in 
the  Reign  of  Victoria,  With  a  Glance  at 
the  Past,  p.  111. 

Her  humour  flows  gentle  and  spontane- 
ous; it  is  no  elaborate  mechanism  nor 
artificial  fountain,  but  a  bright  natural 
stream,  rippling  and  trickling  over  every 
stone  and  sparkling  in  the  sunshine.  .  .  . 
Her  picnics  are  models  for  all  future  and 
past  picnics.  .  .  .  Her  machinery  is 
simple  but  complete ;  events  group  them- 
selves so  vividly  and  naturally  in  her  mind 
that,  in  describing  imaginary  scenes,  we 
seem  not  only  to  read  them,  but  to  live 
them,  to  see  the  people  coming  and  going : 
the  gentlemen  courteous  and  in  top-boots, 
the  ladies  demure  and  piquant ;  we  almost 
hear  them  talking  to  one  another. — 
PiTCHiE,  Anne  Isabella  Thackeray, 
1883,  A  Book  of  Sibyls,  pp.  200,  201. 

To-day,  more  than  seventy  long  years 
have  rolled  away  since  the  greater  part  of 
them  [''Letters"]  were  written ;  no  one  now 
living  can,  I  think,  have  any  possible  just 
cause  of  annoyance  at  their  publication, 
whilst,  if  I  judge  rightly,  the  public  never 
took  a  deeper  or  more  lively  interest  in  all 
that  concerns  Jane  Austen  than  at  the  pres- 
ent moment.  Her  works,  slow  in  their 
progress  towards  popularity,  have  achieved 
it  with  the  greater  certainty,  and  have 
made  an  impression  the  more  permanent 
from  its  gradual  advance.  The  popularity 
continues,  although  the  customs  and  man- 
ners which  Jane  Austen  describes  have 
changed  and  varied  so  much  as  to  belong 
in  a  great  measure  to  another  age. — 
Brabourne,  Edward  Lord,  1884,  ed.. 
Letters  of  Jane  Austen,  Introduction,  vol. 
I,  p.  xii. 

She  never  exhausts  a  scene  by  what  is 
called  word-painting.  She  indicates  its 
main  features,  and  describes  the  general 
effect  it  produces  upon  the  spectator, 
rather  than  recapitulates  the  size,  weight, 
and  colour  of  its  various  component  ele- 
ments. To  say  that  she  has  a  strong 
insight  into  female  character  is  almost 
superfluous.  George  Eliot  does  not  enter 
more  deeply  into  the  workings  of  the 
female  mind  and  heart  than  she  does.  Add 
to  all  these  claims  that  our  author's  novels 
are  perfectly  unexceptionable  from  every 
point  of  view,  and  that  they  combine 
rational  amusement  with  no  small  degree 


622 


JANE  AUSTEN 


of  instruction,  and  we  have  advanced 
tolerably  sufficient  grounds  for  the  con- 
tinuous favour  with  which  they  have  been 
and  are  still  regarded.  The  critic  who 
said  that  these  novels  added  a  new  pleasure 
to  existence  was  not  wide  of  the  mark. 
In  Miss  Austen's  later  books,  the  most 
exacting  may  discover  a  maturity  of 
thought  and  a  felicity  of  expression  seldom 
attained  by  members  of  her  craft;  and 
these  augured  still  greater  achievements 
in  the  future  had  her  life  been  spared. — 
Smith,  George  Barnett,  1885,  More  Views 
of  Jane  Austen,  Gentleman's  Magazine, 
vol.  258,  p,  44. 

Even  Jane  Austen's  novels,  which 
strangely  retain  their  hold  on  the  public 
taste,  are  tedious  to  those  who  dare  to 
think  for  themselves  and  forget  Macaulay's 
verdict.— Sanborn,  Kate,  1885,  The  Wit 
of  Women,  p.  33. 

As  to  your  own  works  (immortal,  as  I 
believe),  I  have  but  little  that  is  wholly 
cheering  to  tell  one  who,  among  women 
of  letters,  was  almost  alone  in  her  freedom 
from  a  lettered  vanity.  You  are  not  a 
very  popular  author :  your  volumes  are  not 
found  in  gaudy  covers  on  every  bookstall ; 
or,  if  found,  are  not  perused  with  avidity 
by  the  Emmas  and  Catherines  of  our  gen- 
eration. .  .  .  Your  admirers,  if  not 
very  numerous,  include  all  persons  of 
taste.  .  .  .  Your  volumes  neither 
excite  nor  satisfy  the  curiosities  provoked 
by  that  modern  and  scientific  fiction,  which 
is  greatly  admired,  I  learn,  in  the  United 
States  as  well  as  in  France  and  at  home. 
— Lang,  Andrew,  1886,  To  Jane  Austen, 
Letters  to  Dead  Authors,  pp.  75,  76,  79. 

The  great  literary  artist  to  whom  we  are 
indebted,  among  other  things,  for  a  gal- 
lery of  those  clerical  portraits,  destined 
to  last  as  long  as  the  English  language. 
.  .  .  I  am  one  of  the  regular  Austen 
vassals,  and  consider  her  as  without  a 
rival  among  English  writers,  in  her  own 
line  and  within  her  own  limits.  I  should 
not  say,  as  Macaulay  says,  that  she  ranks 
next  to  Shakspeare,  any  more  than  I 
should  put  a  first-rate  miniature  painter 
on  the  same  level  with  Raphael  or  Titian. 
It  is  enough  for  me  that  she  stands  alone 
as  a  first-rate  miniature  painter  in  her  own 
particular  school  of  design. — Doyle,  Sir 
Francis  Hastings,  1886,  Reminiscences 
and  Opinions,  p.  353. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  Paris,  to  which 


the  works  of  Jane  Austen  were  lately  as 
unknown  as  if  she  were  an  English  painter, 
has  just  discovered  her  existence.  More- 
over, it  has  announced  that  she,  and  she 
only,  is  the  founder  of  that  realistic  school 
which  is  construed  to  include  authors  so 
remote  from  each  other  as  the  French  Zola 
and  the  American  Howells.  The  most 
decorous  of  maiden  ladies  is  thus  made  to 
originate  the  extreme  of  indecorum ;  and 
the  good  loyal  Englishwoman,  devoted  to 
Church  and  King,  is  made  sponsor  for  the 
most  democratic  recognition  of  persons 
whom  she  would  have  loathed  as  vulgar. 
There  is  something  extremely  grotesque  in 
the  situation ;  and  yet  there  is  much  truth 
in  the  theory.  It  certainly  looked  at  one 
time  as  if  Miss  Austen  had  thoroughly 
established  the  claim  of  her  sex  to  the 
minute  delineation  of  character  and  man- 
ners, leaving  to  men  the  bolder  school  of 
narrative  romance.  .  .  .  But  the 
curious  thing  is  that  of  the  leading  novel- 
ists in  the  English  tongues  to-day  it  is  the 
men,  not  the  women,  who  have  taken  up 
Miss  Austen's  work,  while  the  women 
show  more  inclination,  if  not  to  the  ' '  big 
bow-wow  style"  of  Scott,  at  least  to  the 
novel  of  plot  and  narrative.  Anthony 
Trollope  among  the  lately  dead,  James  and 
Howells  among  the  living,  are  the  lineal 
successors  of  Miss  Austen.  Perhaps  it  is 
an  old-fashioned  taste  which  leads  me  to 
think  that  neither  of  these  does  his  work 
quite  so  well  as  she. — Higginson,  Thomas 
Wentworth,  1887,  Women  and  Men, 
pp.  156,  157. 

I  very  early  enjoyed  Jane  Austen's 
novels.  I  can  sustain  a  competitive  ex- 
amination upon  them  now,  having  probably 
read  each  of  the  more  important  ones  at 
least  fifty  times  in  my  life. — Hale,  Ed- 
ward Everett,  1888,  Books  That  Have 
Helped  Me,  p.  8. 

Miss  Austen  is  likely  to  remind  the 
average  reader  more  of  Cowper  than  of 
Shakspeare.  Her  books  seem  redolent  of 
the  aroma  of  tea  mixed  in  just  the  right 
proportion.  They  are  comfortable  — 
steeped  in  comfort.  If  there  is  no  word 
in  them  that  can  bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek 
of  a  young  girl,  there  is  likewise  no  word 
in  them  to  "catch  us  by  the  throat"  and 
to  force  us  to  acknowledge  there  are  better 
things  in  the  world  than  a  comfortable 
income,  a  bright  grate,  and  pleasant 
acquaintances.    Nevertheless  she  was  an 


JANE  AUSTEN 


G23 


artist  of  the  highest  type.— Egan,  Mau- 
rice Francis,  1889,  Lectures  on  English 
Literature,  p.  146. 

Her  work  displays  creative  imagination, 
wonderful  power  of  observing,  fine  feeling 
for  dramatic  situation,  and  perfect  com- 
mand of  her  literary  vehicle  ;  but  we  can- 
not help  feeling  conscious  of  a  certain  lack 
of  weight  which  comes  of  her  steady 
avoidance  of  the  heights  and  the  depths  of 
human  nature.  We  are  charmed  always, 
but  seldom,  if  ever,  deeply  moved. 
Though  in  various  respects  Jane  Austen 
may  be  compared  favourably  with  George 
Sand,  George  Eliot,  and  Charlotte  Bronte, 
we  feel  that  these  writers  have  spells  of 
which  she  knew  not  the  secret.  It  is  in 
virtue  of  their  combination  of  veracious 
and  uncompromising  realism  with  unfail- 
ing vivacity  and  ever-present  grace  that 
the  novels  of  Jane  Austen  are  unique  in 
literature.  —  Noble,  James  Ashcroft, 
1889,  Jane  Austen,  The  Academy,  vol.  36, 
p.  96. 

Criticism  is  becoming  the  art  of  saying 
fine  things,  and  there  are  really  no  fine 
things  to  be  said  about  Jane  Austen. — 
Smith,  Gold  win,  1890,  Jane  Austen 
(Great  Writers). 

Realism  is  nothing  more  and  nothing  less 
than  the  truthful  treatment  of  material, 
and  Jane  Austen  was  the  first  and  the 
last  of  the  English  novelists  to  treat 
material  with  entire  truthfulness.  Be- 
cause she  did  this,  she  remains  the  most 
artistic  of  the  English  novelists,  and  alone 
worthy  to  be  matched  with  the  great 
Scandinavian  and  Slavic  and  Latin  artists. 
— HowELLS,  W.  D.,  1891,  Criticism  and 
Fiction,  p.  73. 

Nobody  can  read  any  of  Miss  Austen's 
works  without  admiring  her  wonderful 
closeness  and  keenness  of  humorous  obser- 
vation, the  skill  with  which  she  displays 
every  turn  in  the  motives  of  commonplace 
character,  and  the  exquisite  quality  of  the 
ridicule  with  which  her  fancy  dances  round 
and  round  them  as  she  holds  them  up  to 
our  inspection.  If  you  once  make  the 
acquaintance  of  the  Bennet  family  in 
'Tride  and  Prejudice,"  you  can  never  for- 
get them,  so  distinctly  is  each  individual 
marked,  and  so  keen  and  exquisite  is  the 
revelation  of  their  foibles.  In  mere  art 
of  humorous  portraiture,  in  a  quieter  and 
less  farcical  style  than  Miss  Burney's,  Miss 
Austen  is  an  expert  of  classical  finish. 


But  somehow,  speaking  for  myself,  I  must 
confess  to  a  certain  want  of  interest  in 
the  characters  themselves.  Unless  one  is 
really  interested  in  the  subjects  of  such 
an  elaborate  art  of  portraiture,  the  gradual 
revelation  of  them,  touch  after  touch,  is 
apt  to  become  tedious,  however  much  one 
may  enjoy  for  a  time  the  quick  and  delicate 
play  of  the  writer's  gently  malicious 
humor.  But  this  want  of  interest  in  the 
characters  of  English  middle-class  provin- 
cial life  is  of  course  a  personal  defect. 
— MiNTO,  William,  1894,  The  Literature 
of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed.  Knight,  p.  281. 

The  perfection  of  Miss  Austen's  work- 
manship has  been  seized  upon  by  unfavour- 
able critics  and  used  as  a  weapon  of 
offence.  She  is  perfect,  they  allege,  only 
as  some  are  virtuous,  because  she  has  no 
temptation ;  she  lives  in  an  abject  world, 
dead  to  poetry,  visited  by  no  breath  of 
romance,  and  is  placidly  contented  with 
her  ant-hill,  which  she  describes  with 
great  accuracy  and  insight.  It  w^ould  be 
unjust  to  this  type  of  criticism  to  interpret 
it  merely  as  a  complaint  that  one  w^ho 
was  of  unsurpassed  power  in  comedy  and 
satire  did  not  forego  her  gifts  and  take 
up  with  romance  and  tragedy.  If  it  has 
a  meaning  worth  considering,  it  means 
that  even  the  comedy  of  life  has  in  it 
shades  of  pathos  and  passion  to  which  she 
is  constitutionally  blind.  And  this  is  to 
mistake  her  art.  The  world  of  pathos  and 
passion  is  present  in  her  work  by  implica- 
tion ;  her  delicious  quiet  mirth,  so  quiet  as 
to  be  inaudible  to  gross  ears,  is  stirred  by 
the  incongruity  between  the  realities  of 
the  world,  as  she  conceives  them,  and 
these  realities  as  they  are  conceived  by 
the  puppets.  The  kingdom  of  Lilliput  has 
its  meaning  only  when  it  is  seen  through 
the  eyes  of  Gulliver.  A  rabbit  fondling 
its  own  harmless  face  affords  no  matter  of 
amusement  to  another  rabbit,  and  Miss 
Austen  has  had  many  readers  who  have 
perused  her  works  without  a  smile. 
Sympathy  with  her  characters  she  fre- 
quently has,  identity  never.  Not  in  the 
high-spirited  Elizabeth  Bennet,  not  in  that 
sturdy  young  patrician  Emma,  not  even  in 
Anne  Elliot  of  ''Persuasion,"  is  the  real 
Jane  Austen  to  be  found.  She  stands  for- 
ever aloof.  Those  who  wish  to  enjoy  her 
art  must  stand  aloof  too,  and  must  not  ask 
to  be  hurried  through  her  novels  on  a 
personally  conducted  tour,  with  their 


624 


JANE  AUSTEN 


admirations  and  dislikes  prepared  for 
them. — Raleigh,  Walter,  1894,  The  Eng- 
lish Novel,  p.  263. 

She  makes  you  slip  into  easy  acquaint- 
ance with  the  people  of  her  books  as  if 
they  lived  next  door,  and  would  be  pulling 
at  your  bell  to-morrow,  or  to-night.  And 
you  never  confound  them;  by  the  mere 
sound  of  their  voices  you  know  which  is 
Ellinor,  and  which  is  Marianne ;  and  as  for 
the  disagreeable  people  in  her  stories, 
they  are  just  as  honestly  and  naturally 
disagreeable  as  any  neighbor  you  could 
name — whether  by  talking  too  much,  or 
making  puns,  or  prying  into  your  private 
affairs. — Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1895, 
English  Lands  Letters  and  Kings,  Queen 
Anne  and  the  Georges,  p.  266. 

One  indeed  of  the  most  wonderful  things 
about  her  is  her  earliness.  .  .  .  Irony 
is  by  no  means  a  frequent  feminine  gift ; 
and  as  women  do  not  often  possess  it  in 
any  great  degree,  so  they  do  not  as  a  rule 
enjoy  it.  Miss  Austen  is  only  inferior 
among  English  writers  to  Swift,  to  Field- 
ing, and  to  Thackeray— even  if  it  be  not 
improper  to  use  the  term  inferiority  at  all 
for  what  is  after  all  not  much  more  than 
difference — in  the  use  of  this  potent  but 
most  double-edged  weapon.  Her  irony 
indeed  is  so  subtle  that  it  requires  a  cer- 
tain dose  of  subtlety  to  appreciate  it,  and 
it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  those  who  con- 
sider such  personages  as  Mr.  Collins  in 

Pride  and  Prejudice"  to  be  merely  farci- 
cal, instead  of,  as  they  are  in  fact,  preach- 
ers of  the  highest  and  most  Shakespearian 
comedy.  .  .  .  the  important  thing  for  the 
purposes  of  this  history  is  to  observe  again 
that  she  '*set  the  clock,"  so  to  speak,  of 
pure  novel  writing  to  the  time  which  was 
to  be  nineteenth  century  time  to  this  pres- 
ent hour.  She  discarded  violent  and  ro- 
mantic adventure.  She  did  not  rely  in  the 
very  least  degree  on  describing  popular  or 
passing  fashions,  amusements,  politics; 
but  confined  herself  to  the  most  strictly 
ordinary  life.  Yet  she  managed  in  some 
fashion  so  to  extract  the  characteristics 
of  that  life  which  are  perennial  and  human, 
there  can  never  be  any  doubt  of  fit 
readers  in  any  age  finding  themselves  at 
home  with  her,  just  as  they  find  themselves 
at  home  with  all  the  greatest  writers  of  by- 
gone ages.  And  lastly,  by  some  analogous 
process  she  hit  upon  a  style  which,  though 
again  true  to  the  ordinary  speech  of  her 


own  day,  and  therefore  now  reviled  as 
"stilted"  and  formal  by  those  who  have 
not  the  gift  of  literary  detachment,  again 
possesses  the  universal  quality,  and,  save 
in  the  merest  externals,  is  neither  an- 
cient nor  modern. — Saintsbury,  George, 
1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century 
Literature,  pp.  129,  130. 

The  one  prose-writer  of  this  period 
whose  genius  has  proved  absolutely  per- 
durable, who  holds  no  lower  a  place  in  her 
own  class  than  is  held  in  theirs  by  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  and  Scott — for  that 
impeccable  Jane  Austen,  whose  fame 
becomes  every  day  more  inaccessible  to 
the  devastating  forces  of  time  and  shifting 
fashion.  It  has  long  been  seen,  it  was 
noted  even  by  Macaulay,  that  the  only 
writer  with  whom  Jane  Austen  can  fairly 
be  compared  is  Shakespeare.  It  is  obvious 
that  she  has  nothing  of  his  width  of  range 
or  sublimity  of  imagination;  she  keeps 
herself  to  that  two-inch  square  of  ivory 
of  which  she  spoke  in  her  proud  and  simple 
way.  But  there  is  no  other  English  writer 
who  possesses  so  much  of  Shakespeare's 
inevitability,  or  who  produces  such  evi- 
dence of  a  like  omniscience.  Like  Balzac, 
like  Tourgenieff  at  his  best,  Jane  Austen 
gives  the  reader  an  impression  of  knowing 
everything  there  was  to  know  about  her 
creations,  of  being  incapable  of  error  as 
to  their  acts,  thoughts,  or  emotions.  She 
presents  an  absolute  illusion  of  reality ;  she 
exhibits  an  art  consummate  that  we  mis- 
take it  for  nature.  She  never  mixes  her 
own  temperament  with  those  of  her  char- 
acters, she  is  never  swayed  by  them,  she 
never  loses  for  a  moment  her  perfect, 
serene  control  of  them.  Among  the 
creators  of  the  world,  Jane  Austen  takes 
a  place  that  is  with  the  highest  and  that  is 
purely  her  own. — Gosse,  Edmund,  1897, 
Short  History  of  Modern  English  Litera- 
ture, p.  295. 

Her  conditions  and  temperament  con- 
spired to  impose  limitations  which  make 
her  art  perhaps  more  enduring  than  that 
of  her  great  successors,  since  from  very 
scarcity  of  material  she  was  forced  to 
individualize  after  much  our  present  man- 
ner. But  on  account  of  these  very  limita- 
tions, her  work  has  slight  value  as  social 
evidence  to  the  wider  phases  of  contem- 
porary life. — Scudder,  Vida  D.,  1898, 
Social  Ideals  in  English  Letters,  p.  130. 

The  style  of  Jane  Austen  cannot  be 


AUSTEN— DWIGHT 


625 


separated  from  herself  or  her  method.  It 
is  the  natural  easy  flowing  garment  of  her 
mind,  delighting  in  inconsistencies  and 
infinite  detail.  It  is  so  peculiarly  her  own 
that  one  cannot  trace  in  it  with  any  degree 
of  certainty  the  course  of  her  reading. 
.  .  .  The  matter  of  observation,  in 
passing  through  Jane  Austen's  imagina- 
tion, was,  never  violently  disturbed;  the 
particular  bias  it  received  was  from  a 
delicate  and  delightful  irony ;  there  was 
precisely  that  selection  and  recombination 
and  heightening  of  incident  and  character 
that  distinguish  the  comedy  of  manners 
from  real  life. — Cross,  Wilbur  L.,  1899, 
The  Development  of  the  English  Novel,  pp. 
121,  124. 

No  doubt  the  quibs  and  cranks  and 
trickeries  of  literary  fashion  will  go  on 
and  on  so  long  as  printing  is  not  one  of  the 
lost  arts ;  but  there  will  always  be  many, 
among  whom  I  count  myself  one,  to  believe 
that  Jane  Austen's  genius  will  assert  itself 
triumphantly,  however  many  these  vacilla- 
tions and  counterchanges  in  literary  taste, 
and  however  long  they  n)ay  last. — Pol- 
lock, Walter  Herries,  1899,  Jane  Aus- 
ten, Her  Contemporaries  and  Herself,  p.  1. 

After  considering  the  short,  feverish, 
genius-filled  lives  of  such  people  as  Marie 
Bashkirtseff  or  Aubrey  Beardsley,  what  a 
rest  it  is  to  go  back  to  the  contemplation 
of  a  peaceful,  homely,  healthy  existence 
like  that  of  Jane  Austen !  It  is,  indeed, 
this  peaceful,  homely  element  in  her  writ- 
ings that  gives  them  the  place  they  are 
rightfully  reclaiming  in  English  litera- 
ture.— Harper,  Janet,  1900,  The  Renas- 
cence of  Jane  Austen,  Westminster  Re- 
view, vol.  153,  p.  442. 

It  has  sometimes  occurred  to  me  that  it 
would  be  a  very  delightful  thing  if  a 
magazine  could  be  started  which  should  be 


devoted  entirely  to  Miss  Austen,  and  to 
which  only  her  sincere  admirers  should  be 
allowed  to  contribute.  We  are  never  tired 
of  talking  about  her  ;  should  we  ever  grow 
weary  of  reading  or  writing  about  her? 
For  my  own  part  1  read  every  book  or 
article  that  relates  to  her  with  the  utmost 
eagerness,  provided  that  the  author  dis- 
plays a  due  sense  of  worship ;  but  any 
criticism  which  is  not  of  the  most  loving 
character  is  irritating,  and,  like  other 
follies,  it  should  be  avoided.  .  .  .  The 
great  men  in  literature  have  always  appre- 
ciated her.  The  praise  given  her  by  Scott 
and  Macaulay  has  been  often  quoted,  and 
I  recollect  my  mother  telling  me  of  a  con- 
versation with  Lord  Beaconsfield,  who 
certainly  expressed  his  admiration  of  the 
authoress,  and  who,  I  think,  said  that 
''Emma"  was  his  favourite  among  the 
novels.  But  since  I  was  young,  Miss 
Austen's  popularity  with  the  general  pub- 
lic has  increased  in  a  quite  remarkable 
manner.  Some  thirty  years  ago  I  was 
starting  on  a  journey  with  two  compan- 
ions, one  of  them  about  my  own  age,  the 
other  an  older  man.  My  contemporary 
went  to  the  book-stall  and  proposed  to  buy 
''Emma,"  but  his  senior  interposed  and 
told  him  it  was ' ' awfully  stupid. "  I  looked 
upwards,  but  no  lightning  struck  the 
impious  head,  nor  did  we  even  encounter 
a  railway  smash.  Fate  may  have  been 
merciful  because 'the  intending  purchaser 
proved  himself  worthy,  and  "Emma"  was 
after  all  properly  honoured.  There  are 
not  now,  one  may  hope,  many  who  can 
read  the  novel  and  decide  that  it  is 
"awfully  stupid,"  but  my  friend,  though 
undoubtedly  an  extravagant  sinner,  was 
not  altogether  peculiar  in  his  generation. 
— IDDESLEIGH,  Earl  OF,  1900,  A  Chat 
about  Jane  Austen's  Novels,  The  Nineteenth 
Century,  vol.  47,  p.  Sll. 


Timothy  Dwight 

1752-1817 

Was  born  in  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  in  1752.  After  graduating  at  Yale  College, 
he  was  chosen  tutor,  which  oflfice  he  held  for  six  years.  In  1783  he  was  ordained  over 
the  Congregational  church  in  Greenfield,  Connecticut,  and  in  1795  was  chosen  presi- 
dent of  Yale  College,  which  post  he  held  until  his  death,  which  occurred  January  11, 
1817.  Dr.  Dwight's  published  works  are,  ' '  The  Conquest  of  Canaan, ' '  a  poem  ; ' '  Green- 
field Hill,"  a  poem;  "Travels  in  New  England,"  four  volumes;  "Theology  Explained 
and  Defended,"  five  volumes;  and  some  versions  of  the  Psalms.  His  "Theology"  has 
passed  through  numerous  editions  in  England  as  well  as  in  our  own  country,  and  is  very 
highy  esteemed.— Cleveland,  Charles  Dexter,  1868,  Lyra  Sacra  Americana,  p.  308. 

40C 


626 


TIMOTHY  DWIGHT 


PERSONAL 

Of  this  American  poet  I  am  sorry  to  be 
able  to  give  the  British  reader  no  account. 
I  believe  his  personal  history  is  as  little 
known  as  his  poetry  on  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  —  Campbell,  Thomas,  1819, 
Specimens  of  the  British  Poets. 

As  a  poet  President  Dwight  was  little 
inferior  to  any  of  his  contemporaries  in 
America ;  but  it  was  not  on  his  poetry  that 
his  claims  to  the  respect  of  mankind  were 
based.  As  an  instructor  probably  he  was 
never  surpassed  in  this  country,  and  as  a 
theologian  he  had  no  equal  among  the  men 
of  his  time.  An  eloquent  preacher,  with 
a  handsome  person,  an  expressive  counte- 
nance, polished  and  affable  manners,  bril- 
liant conversational  abilities,  and  vast 
stores  of  learning, — it  was  almost  impos- 
sible that  he  should  fail  of  success  in  any 
effort,  and  least  of  all  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  important  office  which  he  so 
long  and  so  honourably  filled.  When  he 
died,  the  country  was  bereaved  of  a  great 
and  good  man. — Griswold,  Rufus  W., 
1842-46,  The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  Amer- 
ica, p.  14. 

Stately  and  majestic,  and  every  way  well 
proportioned.  His  features  were  regular ; 
his  eye  black  and  piercing,  yet  benignant ; 
and  his  countenance  altogether  indicative 
of  a  high  order  of  mind.  His  voice  was  rich 
and  melodious,  adapted  alike  to  music  and 
oratory. —  Sprague,  William  B.,  1844, 
Life  of  Timothy  Dwight,  Library  of  Ameri- 
can Biography,  ed.  Sparks,  vol.  14,  p.  230. 

Pleasing  as  Dr.  Dwight  is  as  a  poet,  and 
learned  and  eloquent  as  he  was  as  a  divine, 
it  is  as  President  of  Yale  College  that  he 
was  most  valued,  and  honoured,  and  loved 
while  living,  and  as  such  is  embalmed  in 
the  hearts  of  the  large  number  of  scholars, 
divines,  and  statesmen  still  living,  who 
were  instructed  by  him  in  their  collegiate 
course.  He  had  the  remarkable  faculty 
of  winning  the  affections  and  commanding 
the  most  profound  respect  of  the  young 
men  who  came  under  his  influence,  while 
he  poured  forth  his  instructions  in  a  most 
impressive  eloquence,  from  a  mind  stored 
with  the  treasures  of  ancient  and  modern 
learning.  And  knowing,  as  we  do,  that 
for  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life  he 
could  scarcely  use  his  eyes  at  all,  our 
wonder  increases  that  he  accomplished  so 
much.— Cleveland,  Charles  D.,  1859,  A 
Compendium  of  American  Literature,  p.  103. 


His  influence  was  extensive  and  bene- 
ficent beyond  that  of  any  other  man  in 
New  England;  indeed,  his  enemies  called 
him  ' 'old  Pope  Dwight.''  .  .  .  Whenever 
he  came  to  my  house,  the  family  thought 
it  a  privilege  to  gather  round  him  to  listen 
to  his  conversation.  We  sat  round,  and 
he  talked.  A  question  now  and  then  would 
be  asked,  but  nobody  ever  thought  of 
talking  much,  only  of  hearing.  He  loved 
to  talk,  and  we  loved  to  listen.  When- 
ever I  wanted  advice,  I  went  to  him  as 
to  a  father,  and  told  him  everything. — 
Beecher,  Lyman,  1863,  Autobiography, 
vol.  I,  p.  328. 

He  was  himself  greater  than  anything 
he  ever  said  or  did;  and  for  those  who 
came  near  him,  all  that  he  did  or  said  had 
an  added  import  and  fascination  as  pro- 
ceeding from  one  so  overpoweringly  com- 
petent and  impressive. — Tyler,  Moses 
CoiT,  1895,  Three  Men  of  Letters,  p.  99. 

GENERAL 
In  his  fictions  he  discovers  much 
warmth  of  conception,  and  his  numbers 
are  very  harmonious.  His  numbers,  in- 
deed, imitate  pretty  closely  those  of  Pope, 
and  therefore  cannot  fail  to  be  musical ; 
but  he  is  chiefly  to  be  commended  for  the 
animation  with  which  he  writes,  and  which 
rather  increases  as  he  proceeds,  than  suffer 
any  abatement.  .  .  .  The  composi- 
tion, however,  is  not  without  a  fault ;  and 
as  we  have  candidly  praised,  we  will  cen- 
sure with  fidelity.  By  the  motto  which  the 
author  has  chosen,  we  are  led  to  suspect 
that  he  is  young,  and  the  chief  blemish  of 
his  poem  is  one  into  which  hardly  anything 
but  youth  could  have  betrayed  him.  A 
little  mature  consideration  would  have 
taught  him,  that  a  sub-ject  nearly  four 
thousand  years  old  could  not  afford  him  a 
very  fair  opportunity  for  the  celebration 
of  his  contemporaries. — Cowper,  W^il- 
liam,  1788,  The  Conquest  of  Canaan,  Ana- 
lytical Review ;  Works,  ed.  Southey,  vol.  iv, 
pp.  355,  356. 

Of  Dr.  Dwight  we  would  speak  with  all 
the  respect  due  to  talents,  to  learning,  to 
piety,  and  a  long  life  of  virtuous  useful- 
ness, but  we  must  be  excused  from  feeling 
any  high  admiration  of  his  poetry.  It 
seems  to  us  modelled  upon  a  manner 
altogether  too  artificial  and  mechanical. 
There  is  something  strained,  violent,  and 
out  of  nature  in  all  his  attempts.  His 


TIMOTHY  D WIGHT 


627 


"Conquest  of  Canaan"  will  not  secure 
immortality  to  its  author.  In  his  work  he 
has  been  considered  by  some  critics  as  by 
no  means  happy  in  the  choice  of  his  fable. 
However  this  may  be,  he  has  certainly 
failed  to  avail  himself  of  the  advantages 
it  offered  him ;  his  epic  wants  the  creations 
and  colorings  of  an  inventive  and  poetical 
fancy — the  charm  which,  in  the  hands  of 
a  genius,  communicates  an  interest  to  the 
simplest  incidents,  and  something  of  the 
illusion  of  reality  to  the  most  improbable 
fictions.  The  versification  is  remarkable 
for  its  unbroken  monotony.  Yet  it  con- 
tains splendid  passages,  which,  separated 
from  the  body  of  the  work,  might  be  ad- 
mired, but  a  few  pages  pall  both  on  the 
ear  and  the  imagination.  It  has  been 
urged  in  its  favor  that  the  writer  was 
young.  The  poetry  of  his  maturer  years 
does  not,  however,  seem  to  possess  greater 
beauties  or  fewer  faults. — Bryant,  Wil- 
liam CuLLEN,  1818-84,  Early  American 
Verse,  Prose  Writings^  ed,  Godwin^  vol,  L 
p.  49. 

Corresponding  with  the  laws  which  the 
author  prescribed  to  himself,  in  his  "Con- 
quest of  Canaan,"  he  made  every  thing 
too  common.  There  is  little  that  is  really 
distinctive,  little  that  is  truly  oriental 
about  any  of  his  persons  or  scenes.  A 
certain  equable  current  of  unexception- 
able, and  oftentimes  pleasing  thoughts  and 
expressions,  flows  through  the  poem.  It 
is  occasionally  animated,  and  in  descrip- 
tion, sometimes  picturesque  and  poetical. 
The  versification,  though  generally  monot- 
onous, having  too  little  variety  in  the 
pauses,  is  for  the  most  part  uncommonly 
smooth.  In  the  expression  of  strong  emo- 
tion, there  is  an  avoidance  of  all  offensive 
extravagance,  if  it  do  not  reach  the  genu- 
ine ardour  or  pathos  of  the  highest  order 
of  poetry.  Having  said  thus  much,  we 
fear  we  have  said  all  that  is  due  to  this 
poetical  work ;  nor  do  we  say  this  to  deduct 
any  thing  from  the  high  and  well-deserved 
reputation  of  President  Dwight.  It  is  not 
the  lot  of  a  single  man  to  excel  in  every 
thing ;  and  it  is  often  our  misfortune  to 
make  a  false  estimate  of  our  own  powers, 
and  to  stake  too  much  of  our  intellectual 
wealth  on  the  race,  in  which  we  are  unable 
to  reach  the  goal. — Willard,  S.,  1818, 
Life  and  Writings  of  President  Dwight, 
North  American  Review,  vol.  7,  p.  352. 

The  work  before  us  [''Travels"]  though 


the  humblest  in  its  pretences,  is  the  most 
important  of  his  writings,  and  will  derive 
additional  value  from  time,  whatever  may 
become  of  his  poetry  and  of  his  sermons. 
.  .  .  A  wish  to  gratify  those  who,  a 
hundred  years  hence,  might  feel  curiosity 
concerning  his  native  country,  made  him  re- 
solve to  prepare  a  faithful  description  of  its 
existing  state.  He  made  notes,  therefore, 
and  collected  information  on  the  spot.  .  .  . 
The  remarks  upon  natural  history  are  those 
of  an  observant  and  sagacious  man  who 
makes  no  pretentions  to  science ;  they  are 
more  interesting,  therefore,  than  those  of 
a  merely  scientific  traveller ;  and,  indeed, 
science  is  not  less  indebted  to  such  observ- 
ers, than  history  to  the  faithful  chroni- 
clers and  humbler  annalists  of  former 
times. — SouTHEY,  Robert,  1823,  Quar- 
terly Review,  vol.  30,  pp.  1,  2. 

No  production  of  the  transatlantic  press 
has  met  with  so  favourable  a  reception  in 
this  country,  and  experienced  so  extensive 
a  circulation,  as  this  work  ["Theology 
Explained" ]  of  President  Dwight.  Nor  is 
its  popularity  likely  to  be  ephemeral.  It 
bears  the  impress  of  a  most  powerful 
mind,  and  will  pass  down  to  posterity,  both 
in  the  Old  and  New  World,  as  the  work  of 
one  of  the  master-spirits  of  the  Christian 
Church.— Orme,  Robert,  1824,  Bibli- 
otheca  Biblica. 

In  Dwight's  early  poems  we  see  a  heat 
of  honest  enthusiasm  sufficient  to  warm  the 
faculties  through  life.  These  productions 
have  been  hardly  dealt  with.  They  are 
worth  something  more  than  to  furnish  a 
dull  jest  at  epic  failures.  The  "Conquest 
of  Canaan,"  it  should  be  remembered,  was 
the  production  of  a  youth  hardly  out  of 
college,  and  should  be  looked  at  as  a  series 
of  poetic  sketches,  not  over  nice  in  rhet- 
orical treatment  or  obedience  to  the  laws 
of  Aristotle.  In  that  view  it  contains 
much  pleasing  writing,  but  the  word  epic 
should  never  be  brought  in  contact  with 
it.  .  .  .  "Greenfield  Hill"  is  an  idyllic 
poem  of  rare  merit.  A  little  more  nicety 
of  execution  and  a  better  comprehension 
of  the  design  at  the  outset,  would  doubt- 
less have  improved  it;  but  the  spirit  is 
there.  —  Duyckinck,  Evert  A.,  and 
George  L.,  1855-65-75,  Cyclopcedia  of 
American  Literature,  ed.  Simons,  vol.  i, 
pp.  373,  375. 

Dr.  Dwight  was  a  well-meaning,  amiable, 
indefatigable  man,  of  remarkable  talent, 


628 


DWIGHT— HORNER 


but  distinctly  falling  short  of  genius. — 
NiCHOL,  John,  1880-85,  American  Liter- 
ature, p.  93. 

He  wrote  America,'*  **The  Conquest 
of  Canaan"  (an  epic),  Greenfield  Hill,*' 
and  "The  Triumph  of  Infidelity."  These 
poems  are  not  properly  subjects  of  critic- 
ism, because  they  are  hopelessly  forgotten, 
and  no  critical  resurrectionist  can  give 
them  that  slight  appearance  of  vitality 
which  would  justify  an  examination  of 
their  merits  and  demerits.  Yet  they  are 
reasonably  good  of  their  kind,  and  ''Green- 
field Hill,"  especially,  contains  some  de- 
scriptions which  are  almost  worthy  to  be 
called  charming.  Dwight,  as  a  Latin 
scholar,  occasionally  felt  called  upon  to 
show  his  learning  in  his  rhymes.  Thus  in 
one  of  his  poems  he  characterizes  one  of 
the  most  delightful  of  Roman  lyrists  as 
*  *  desipient "  Horace.  After  a  diligent  ex- 
ploration of  the  dictionary  the  reader  finds 
that  desipient  comes  from  a  Latin  word 
signifying  "to  be  wise, "  and  that  its  Eng- 
lish meaning  is  "trifling,  foolish,  playful." 
It  might  be  supposed  that  in  the  whole 
range  of  English  poetry  there  was  no 
descriptive  epithet  so  ludicrously  pedantic. 
— Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  1886,  Amer- 
ican Literature  and  Other  Papers,  ed. 
Whittier,  p.  21. 

Surely,  "The  Conquest  of  Canaan, "  with 
its  eleven  dreadful  books  of  conventional 
rhymed  pentameters, — all  tending  more  or 
less  to  disarrange  and  confuse  the  familiar 
facts  of  Biblical  history,  as  well  as  to 
dilute,  to  render  garrulous,  and  to  cheapen, 
the  noble  reticence,  the  graphic  simplicity, 
of  the  antique  chronicle, — is  such  an  epic 
as  can  be  grappled  with,  in  these  degener- 
ate days,  by  no  man  who  is  not  himself  as 
heroic  as  this  verse  assumes  to  be.  .  .  . 
A  satire  in  verse,  entitled  "The  Triumph 
of  Infidelity."  .  .  .  From  title-page 
to  colophon,  the  intended  method  of  the 
satire  is  irony, — a  method  calling,  of 


course,  for  delicacy  of  movement,  for  arch 
and  mocking  sprightliness,  for  grace  and 
levity  of  stroke,  and  obviously  beyond  the 
quality  of  one  who  being,  in  the  first  place, 
always  dead-in-earnest,  emphatic,  and  even 
ponderous,  and  secondly  quite  guiltless  of 
humor,  was  above  all  things  an  intellectual 
gladiator,  and  could  hardly  think  of  any 
other  way  of  dealing  with  an  antagonist 
than  by  the  good  old-fashioned  one  of 
felling  him  to  the  fioor.  Probably  there 
can  now  be  left  for  us  on  this  planet  few 
spectacles  more  provocative  of  the  melan- 
choly and  pallid  form  of  mirth,  than  that 
presented  by  these  laborious  efforts  of  the 
Reverend  Doctor  Timothy  Dwight  to  be 
facetious  at  the  expense  of  David  Hume, 
or  to  slay  the  dreadful  Monsieur  de  Voltaire 
in  a  duel  of  irony.  .  .  .  "Greenfield 
Hill, " — that  one  of  his  larger  poems  which 
almost  attained  to  popular  favor,  and  fairly 
deserved  to  do  so.— Tyler,  Moses  Coit, 
1895,  Three  Men  of  Letters,  pp.  86,  91,  92. 

In  scholarship  and  force  of  character, 
Dwight  has  had  few  superiors  since 
Edwards.— Pattee,  Fred  Lewis,  1896, 
A  History  of  American  Literature,  p.  96. 

"The  Conquest  of  Canaan"  is  an  honest, 
respectable  piece  of  work,  but  of  genius 
or  even  of  high  talent  it  has  not  a  glimmer. 
The  worst  defect  of  this  poem,  next  to  its 
hopeless  mediocrity,  is  the  incongruity 
between  the  early,  rude  times  depicted  and 
the  conventional  eighteenth-century  man- 
ner throughout. — Bronson,  Walter  C, 
1900,  A  Short  History  of  American  Litera- 
ture,  p.  61. 

Dwight  also  wrote  a  poem  called 
"Greenfield  Hill,"  of  which  the  name  is 
remembered.  It  is  long,  tedious,  formal, 
and  turgid ;  but  it  indicates,  like  the  good 
President's  travels,  that  he  was  touched 
by  a  sense  of  the  beauties  of  nature  in  his 
native  country.  —  Wendell,  Barrett, 
1900,  A  Literary  History  of  Americay 
p.  123. 


Francis  Horner 

1778-1817 

Francis  Horner  was  born  at  Edinburgh,  29th  August  1778,  a  merchant's  son  of 
mixed  English  and  Scottish  ancestry.  From  the  High  School  he  passed  at  fourteen  to 
the  university;  and,  after  three  years  there,  spent  two  more  with  a  clergyman  in 
Middlesex,  to  "unlearn"  his  broad  native  dialect.  On  his  return  (1797)  he  was  called 
to  the  Scottish  bar,  from  which  in  1802  he  removed  to  the  English ;  in  1806  he  became 
Whig  member  for  St.  Ives.  He  had  made  his  mark  in  the  House  as  a  political  econo- 
mist, when,  at  thirty-eight,  he  died  of  consumption  at  Pisa,  8th  February  1817.  He 


FRANCIS  HORNER 


629 


left  little  to  preserve  his  name,  beyond  some  contributions  to  the**  Edinburgh  Review," 
of  which  he  was  one  of  the  founders.  Yet,  in  Lord  Cockburn's  words,  he  ^as  *' pos- 
sessed of  greater  public  influence  than  any  other  private  man."  See  his  "Memoir  and 
Correspondence"  (1843).— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.^  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical 
Dictionary^  p.  504. 


PERSONAL 

Horner — the  Horner,  an  Edinburgh  Re- 
viewer, an  excellent  speaker  in  the  **  Hon- 
ourable House,"  very  pleasing,  too,  and 
gentlemanly  in  company,  as  far  as  I  have 
seen.— Byron,  Lord,  1813,  Journal,  Nov. 
30;  Life,  Letters  and  Journals  of  Lord 
Byron,  ed.  Moore. 

He  had,  indeed,  qualifications  eminently 
calculated  to  obtain  and  to  deserve  suc- 
cess. His  sound  principles — his  enlarged 
views — his  various  and  accurate  knowl- 
edge— the  even  tenour  of  his  manly  and 
temperate  eloquence — the  genuineness  of 
his  warmth,  when  into  warmth  he  was 
betrayed— and,  above  all,  the  singular 
modesty  with  which  he  bore  his  faculties, 
and  which  shed  a  grace  and  lustre  over 
them,  all ;  these  qualifications,  added  to  the 
known  blamelessness  and  purity  of  his 
private  character,  did  not  more  endear 
him  to  his  friends,  than  they  commanded 
the  respect  of  those  to  whom  he  was 
opposed  in  adverse  politics ;  they  ensured 
to  every  effort  of  his  abilities  an  attentive 
and  favouring  audience ;  and  secured  for 
him,  as  the  result  of  all,  a  solid  and  un- 
envied  reputation. — Canning,  George, 
1817,  Proceedings  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, March  3. 

The  only  event  which  now  appears  inter- 
esting to  me,  is  the  scene  in  the  House  of 
Commons  on  Monday.  Lord  Morpeth 
opened  it  in  a  speech  so  perfect,  that  it 
might  have  been  well  placed  as  a  passage 
.in  the  most  elegant  English  writer ;  it  was 
full  of  feeling;  every  topic  was  skillfully 
presented,  and  contained,  by  a  sort  of 
prudence  which  is  a  part  of  taste,  within 
safe  limits ;  he  slid  over  the  thinnest  ice 
without  cracking  it.  Canning  filled  well 
what  would  have  been  the  vacant  place  of 
a  calm  observer  of  Horner's  public  life  and 
talents.  Manners  Sutton's  most  affecting 
speech  was  a  tribute  of  affection  from  a 
private  friend  become  a  political  enemy ; 
Lord  Lascelles,  at  the  head  of  the  country 
gentlemen  of  England,  closing  this  affect- 
ing, improving,  and  most  memorable  scene 
by  declaring,  ''that  if  the  sense  of  the 
House  could  have  been  taken  on  this 
occasion,  it  would  have  been  unanimous." 


I  may  say  without  exaggeration,  that 
never  were  so  many  words  uttered  without 
the  least  suspicion  of  exaggeration ;  and 
that  never  was  so  much  honour  paid  in  any 
age  or  nation  to  intrinsic  claims  alone.  A 
Howard  introduced,  and  an  English  House 
of  Commons  adopted,  the  proposition  of 
thus  honouring  the  memory  of  a  man  of 
thirty-eight,  [?]  the  son  of  a  shopkeeper, 
who  never  filled  an  office,  or  had  the  power 
of  obliging  a  living  creature,  and  whose 
grand  title  to  this  distinction  was  the 
belief  of  his  virtue.  How  honourable  to 
the  age  and  to  the  House!  A  country 
where  such  sentiments  prevail  is  not  ripe 
for  destruction. — Mackintosh,  Sir  James, 
1817,  Journal,  March  6;  Memoirs,  ed. 
Mackintosh,  vol.  ii,  p.  343. 

Nor  do  I  believe  that  there  is  or  ever 
was,  a  great  divided  political  assembly 
where  so  generous  and  just  a  testimony 
would  have  been  borne  unanimously  "to 
personal  merit,  joined  especially  as  it  was 
in  that  individual,  with  a  stern  and  unac- 
commodating disdain  of  all  sorts  of  base- 
ness or  falsehood. — Jeffrey,  Francis 
Lord,  181 7,  Letter  to  John  Allen,  March  14. 

I  thought  his  knowledge  various,  cor- 
rect, and  ready  for  use.  In  his  language, 
he  united  the  precision  of  a  philosopher 
with  the  elegance  of  a  scholar.  He  had 
cheerfulness  without  levity,  and  serious- 
ness without  austerity.  He  was  sincere 
in  his  principles  and  steady  in  his  attach- 
ments. But  his  manners  were  mild,  his 
temper  was  benevolent,  and,  with  a  becom- 
ing zeal  in  the  support  of  his  own  opinions, 
he  was  perfectly  exempt  from  intolerance 
to  those  who  thought  differently  from  him- 
self.—Parr,  Samuel,  1817,  Letter  to  Mr. 
L.  Horner,  July  25. 

Francis  Horner  was  a  rising  speaker, 
when  he  was  taken  off  in  the  flower  of  his 
age.  He  was  calm,  rational,  strong,  and 
so  argumentative  and  clear,  as  to  fix  the 
attention,  and  carry  with  him  very  fre- 
quently the  conviction  of  a  part  of  his 
audience  against  their  will ;  yet  he  never 
rose  to  eloquence,  and  had  always  some- 
thing of  a  professional  manner. — Brydges, 
Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1824,  Recollections 
of  Foreign  Travel,  July  23. 


630 


FRANCIS  HORNER 


It  was  the  force  of  his  character  that 
raised  him;  and  this  character  not  im- 
pressed upon  him  by  nature,  but  formed, 
out  of  no  peculiarly  fine  elements,  by  him- 
self. There  were  many  in  the  House  of 
Commons  of  far  greater  ability  and  elo- 
quence. But  no  one  surpassed  him  in  the 
combination  of  an  adequate  portion  of 
these  w  ith  moral  worth.  Horner  was  born 
to  show  what  moderate  powers,  unaided 
by  any  thing  whatever  except  culture  and 
goodness,  may  achieve,  even  when  these 
powers  are  displayed  amidst  the  competi- 
tion and  jealousy  of  public  life. — Cock- 
burn,  Henry  Lord,  1830-54,  Memorials 
of  His  Time,  p.  296. 

There  was  something  very  remarkable 
in  his  countenance — the  commandments 
were  written  on  his  face,  and  I  have  often 
told  him  there  was  not  a  crime  he  might 
not  commit  with  impunity,  as  no  judge  or 
jury  who  saw  him,  would  give  the  smallest 
degree  of  credit  to  any  evidence  against 
him :  there  was  in  his  look  a  calm  settled 
love  of  all  that  was  honourable  and  good 
— an  air  of  wisdom  and  of  sweetness ;  you 
saw  at  once  that  he  was  a  great  man, 
whom  nature  had  intended  for  a  leader  of 
human  beings;  you  ranged  yourself  wil- 
lingly under  his  banners,  and  cheerfully 
submitted  to  his  sway. — Smith,  Sydney, 
1842,  Letter  to  Mr,  L.  Horner,  Aug.  26. 

Francis  Horner's  was  a  short  and 
singular  life.  He  was  the  son  of  an  Edin- 
burgh shopkeeper;  he  died  at  thirty- 
nine  :  and  when  he  died,  from  all  sides  of 
the  usually  cold  House  of  Commons  great 
statesmen  and  thorough  gentlemen  got  up 
to  deplore  his  loss.  Tears  are  rarely 
parliamentary ;  all  men  are  arid  towards 
young  Scotchmen :  yet  it  was  one  of  that 
inclement  nation  whom  statesmen  of  the 
species  Castlereagh  and  statesmen  of  the 
species  Whitbread — with  all  the  many 
kinds  and  species  that  lie  between  the 
two — rose  in  succession  to  lament.  The 
fortunes  and  superficial  aspect  of  the  man 
make  it  more  singular.  He  had  no  wealth, 
was  a  briefless  barrister,  never  held  an 
office,  was  a  conspicuous  member  of  the 
most  unpopular  of  all  Oppositions, — the 
opposition  to  a  glorious  and  successful 
war.  He  never  had  the  means  of  obliging 
any  one.  He  was  destitute  of  showy 
abilities :  he  had  not  the  intense  eloquence 
or  overwhelming  ardor  which  enthrall  and 
captivate  popular  assemblies ;  his  powers 


of  administration  were  little  tried,  and 
may  possibly  be  slightly  questioned.  In 
his  youthful  reading  he  was  remarkable 
for  laying  down,  for  a  few  months  of 
study,  enormous  plans,  such  as  many  years 
would  scarcely  complete;  and  not  espe- 
cially remarkable  for  doing  anything  won- 
derful towards  accomplishing  those  plans. 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  who,  though  not  illiberal 
in  his  essential  intellect,  was  a  keen  par- 
tisan on  superficial  matters,  and  no  lenient 
critic  on  actual  Edinburgh  Whigs,  used  to 
observe,  "I  will  not  admire  your  Horner  : 
he  always  put  me  in  mind  of  Obadiah's 
bull,  who,  though  he  never  produced  a 
calf,  went  through  his  business  with  such 
a  grave  demeanor  that  he  always  main- 
tained his  credit  in  the  parish.''  It  is 
no  explanation  of  the  universal  regret, 
that  he  was  a  considerable  political  econo- 
mist: no  real  English  gentleman,  in  his 
secret  soul,  was  ever  sorry  for  the  death 
of  a  political  economist.  ...  He  may 
be  useful,  as  drying  machines  are  useful, 
but  the  notion  of  crying  about  him  is 
absurd.  The  economical  loss  might  be 
great,  but  it  will  not  explain  the  mourning 
for  Francis  Horner.  The  fact  is,  that 
Horner  is  a  striking  example  of  the  ad- 
vantage of  keeping  an  atmosphere. — 
Bagehot,  Walter,  1855-89,  The  First 
Edinburgh  Reviewers,  Works,  ed.  Morgan, 
vol.  I,  pp.  21,  22. 

The  plodding  assiduity  and  eminent  re- 
spectability of  Horner  enabled  him  to 
carry  away  from  Edinburgh  a  well-earned 
esteem,  although  even  his  friends  were 
obliged  to  admit  that  he  owed  nothing  to 
talent  or  genius,  and  we  are  painfully 
struck  by  the  truth  of  Scott's  passing  jibe, 
which  found  in  Horner's  solemn  earnest- 
ness a  certain  reminiscence  of  Obadiah's 
bull. — Craik,  Sir  Henry,  1901,  A  Cen- 
tury of  Scottish  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  252. 

GENERAL 

I  cannot  say  that  I  thought  Mr.  Horner 
a  man  of  genius.  He  seemed  to  me  to  be 
one  of  those  men  who  have  not  very  ex- 
tended minds,  but  who  know  what  they 
know  very  well — shallow  streams,  and 
clear  because  they  are  shallow. — Cole- 
ridge, Samuel  Taylor,  1832,  Table-Talk, 
ed.  Ashe,  May  2,  p.  162. 

His  object  was  not  to  acquire  fame  for 
himself,  but  to  confer  benefits  on  his  fellow- 
men;  and  his  journals  and  correspond- 
ence not  only  afford  evidence  the  most 


HORNER— LEWIS 


631 


conclusive  of  his  abilities,  his  public 
services,  and  his  virtues,  but  as  it  were 
revive  and  continue,  even  after  death,  the 
exercise  of  his  active  duties.  They  in- 
struct and  benefit  mankind,  and  more 
especially  that  country  which  he  ever 
warmly  loved. — Monteagle,  Lord,  1843, 
Memoirs  and  Correspondence  of  Francis 
Horner,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  78,  p.  299. 

Mr.  Horner  is  entitled  to  a  high  rank 
as  a  political  economist.  But  he  was  more 
than  this;  he  was  a  diligent  student  of 
intellectual  philosophy,  a  man  of  great 
elevation  of  character,  and  unblemished 
purity  in  private  life. — Allibone,  S. 
Austin,  1854-58,  A  Critical  Dictionary 
of  English  Literature,  vol,  i,  p.  892. 

He  was  a  correct  and  forcible  speaker, 


and  though  without  the  gift  of  eloquence 
or  humour,  exercised  a  remarkable  influ- 
ence in  the  House  of  Commons,  owing  to 
his  personal  character.  Few  men,  with 
such  small  advantages  at  the  outset  of 
their  career,  ever  acquired  in  such  a  short 
space  of  time  so  great  a  reputation  among 
their  contemporaries.  As  a  political 
economist  Horner  ranks  deservedly  high, 
and  though  the  bullion  report,  with  which 
his  name  is  identified,  produced  no  im- 
mediate legislative  results,  its  effect  upon 
public  opinion  was  so  great  that  Peel  was 
enabled  to  pass  his  bill  for  the  gradual 
resumption  of  cash  payments  by  the  bank 
a  few  years  afterwards.— Barker,  G. 
P.  Russell,  1891,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  xxvii,  p.  370. 


Matthew  Gregory  Lewis 

1775-1818 

Born,  in  London,  9  July  1775.  At  Westminster  School,  June  1783  to  1790.  Matric, 
Ch.  Ch.,  Oxford,  27  April  1790;  B.  A.,  1794;  M.  A.,  1797.  Visit  to  Paris,  1791 ;  to 
Weimar,  autumn  1792-93.  Attache  to  British  Embassy  at  the  Hague,  1794.  M.  P., 
for  Hindon,  1796-1802.  Play,  ''The  Castle  Spectre,"  produced  at  Drury  Lane,  14 
Dec.  1797;  "The  East  Indian"  (afterwards  called ;  ''Rich  and  Poor"),  Drury  Lane, 
24  April  1799;  "Adelmorn,"  Drury  Lane,  4  May  1801;  "Alphonso,"  Covent  Garden, 
15  Jan.  1802;  "The  Captive,"  Covent  Garden,  1803;  "The  Harper's  Daughter," 
Covent  Garden,  4  May  1803;  "Rugantino,"  Covent  Garden,  1805;  "Adelgitha," 
Drury  Lane,  1807;  "The  Wood  Demon"  (afterwards  called  "One  o'clock"),  Covent 
Garden,  1807;  "Venoni,"  Drury  Lane,  1  Dec.  1808;  "Timour  the  Tartar,"  Covent 
Garden,  29  April,  1811.  In  West  Indies,  Jan.  to  March  1816.  In  Italy,  May  1816  to 
Dec.  1817.  In  West  Indies,  Feb.  to  May  1818.  Sailed  for  England,  4  May;  died  at 
sea,  14  Mavl818.  Works:  "The  Monk,"  (anon.),  1796:  "Village  Virtues"  (anon.), 
1796;  "The  Castle  Spectre,"  1798;  "Tales  of  Terror,"  1799  [?J;  "The  Love  of 
Gain"  (from  Juvenal),  1799;  "The  East  Indian,"  1799;  "Adelmorn,"  1801  (2nd 
edn.  same  year) ;  "Alfonso,  King  of  Castile,"  1801 ;  "Tales  of  Wonder"  (with  Scott 
and  Southey),  1801 ;  "Adelgitha,"  1806;  "Feudal  Tyrants,"  1806 ;  "Romantic  Tales" 
1808;  "Venoni,"  1809;  "Oneo'clock,"  1811;  "Timour  the  Tartar,"  1812 ;  "Poems," 
1812;  "Koenigsmark  the  Robber"  [1815]?.  Posthumous:  "Raymond  and  Agnes" 
[1820?];  "The  Isle  of  Devils,"  1827;  "Journal  of  a  West  Indian  Proprietor,"  1834; 
"My  Uncle's  Garret  Window,"  1841.  He  translated:  Schiller's  "The  Minister" 
("Kabale  and  Liebe"),  1798;  Kotzebue's  "Rolla,"  1799;  Zschokke's  "The  Bravo  of 
Venice"  (Abellino),  1805.  Life ;  "Life  and  Correspondence"  (2  vols.),  1839.— Sharp, 
R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  168. 

PERSONAL 

Talked  of  poor  Monk  Lewis :  his  death 
was  occasioned  by  taking  emetics  for  sea- 
sickness, in  spite  of  the  advice  of  those 
about  him.  He  died  lying  on  the  deck. 
When  he  was  told  all  hope  was  over,  he 
sent  his  man  down  below  for  pen,  ink,  and 
paper ;  asked  him  to  lend  him  his  hat ;  and 
upon  that,  as  he  lay,  wrote  a  codicil  to 
his  will.  Few  men,  once  so  talked  of, 
have  ever  produced  so  little  sensation  by 


their  death.  He  was  ruining  his  Negroes 
in  Jamaica,  they  say,  by  indulgence,  for 
which  they  suffered  severely  as  soon  as  his 
back  was  turned ;  but  he  has  enjoined  it 
to  his  heirs,  as  one  of  the  conditions  of 
holding  his  estate,  that  the  Negroes  were  to 
have  three  additional  holidays  in  the  year. 
— Moore,  Thomas,  1818,  Diary,  Sept.  7 ; 
Memoirs,  Journal  and  Correspondence,  ed. 
Russell,  vol.  11,  p.  183. 

Lewis  was  a  good  man,  a  clever  man, 


632 


MATTHEW  GREGORY  LEWIS 


but  a  bore.  ...  My  only  revenge  or  con- 
solation used  to  be,  setting  him  by  the  ears 
with  some  vivacious  person  who  hated 
bores,  especially,  de  Stael  or  Hobhouse, 
for  example.  But  I  liked  Lewis:  he 
was  a  jewel  of  a  man  had  he  been  better 
set.  1  don't  mean  personally,  but  less 
tiresome,  for  he  was  tedious,  as  well  as 
contradictory  to  every  thing  and  every 
body. — Byron,  Lord,  1821,  Detached 
Thoughts. 

He  did  much  good  by  stealth,  and  was 
a  most  generous  creature.  .  .  .  Lewis 
was  fonder  of  great  people  than  he  ought 
to  have  been,  either  as  a  man  of  talent  or 
as  a  man  of  fashion.  He  had  always  dukes 
and  duchesses  in  his  mouth,  and  was 
pathetically  fond  of  any  one  who  had  a 
title.  You  would  have  sworn  he  had  been 
a  parvenu  of  yesterday,  yet  he  had  lived 
all  his  life  in  good  society.  .  .  .  Mat 
had  queerish  eyes — they  projected  like 
those  of  some  insects,  and  were  flattish  on 
the  orbit.  His  person  was  extremely 
small  and  boyish — he  was  indeed  the  least 
man  I  ever  saw,  to  be  strickly  well  and 
neatly  made.  .  .  .  This  boyishness 
went  through  life  with  him.  He  was  a 
child,  and  a  spoilt  child,  but  a  child  of 
high  imagination ;  and  so  he  wasted  himself 
on  ghost-stories  and  German  romances.' 
He  had  the  finest  ear  for  rhythm  I  ever 
met  with — finer  than  Byron's. — Scott, 
Sir  Walter,  1825,  Lockharfs  Life  of 
Scott,  ch.  ix. 

This  good-natured  fopling,  the  pet  and 
plaything  of  certain  fashionable  circles. — 
LocKHART,  John  Gibson,  1836,  Life  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  ch.  ix. 

A  very  odd  fellow !  One  of  the  best  of 
men,  if  he  had  not  had  a  trick  of  writing 
profane  and  indecent  books.  Excellent 
son;  excellent  master;  and  in  the  most 
trying  circumstances ;  for  he  was  the  son 
of  a  vile  brace  of  parents,  and  the  master 
of  a  stupid,  ungrateful  gang  of  negroes. — 
Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1854, 
Journal,  Feb.  16;  Life  and  Letters,  ed. 
Trevelyan. 

Monk  Lewis  was  a  great  favourite  at 
Oaklands.  One  day  after  dinner,  as  the 
Duchess  was  leaving  the  room,  she  whis- 
pered something  into  Lewis's  ear.  He 
was  much  affected,  his  eyes  filling  with 
tears.  We  asked  what  was  the  mat- 
ter. '*0h,"  replied  Lewis,  *'the  Duchess 
spoke  so  very  kindly  to  me!" — **My  dear 


fellow,"  said  Colonel  Armstrong,  **pray 
don't  cry;  I  daresay  she  didn't  mean  it." 
—Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections 
of  Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce. 

In  poetry  he  is  a  good  imitator  of  the 
worst  style  of  a  very  ingenious  but  fan- 
tastic school  of  Germans.  To  many  even 
then  it  was  a  matter  of  astonishment  how 
a  ludicrously  little  and  overdressed  manni- 
kin  (the  fac-simile  of  Lovel  in  Evelina"), 
**with  eyes  projecting  like  those  of  some 
insects,  and  flattish  in  the  orbits,"  should 
be  the  lion  of  London  literary  society,  and 
how  the  Prince  of  Dandies  should  have  a 
taste  for  the  weird  and  wonderful,  and  be 
the  first  to  transfer  to  English  the  spirit 
of  some  of  the  early  German  bards. — 
Gilfillan,  George,  1870,  Life  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  p.  45. 

When  he  was  still  a  schoolboy,  quarrels 
arose  in  his  home,  which  resulted  in  a 
separation  between  his  parents,  and  the 
pretty,  proud,  frivolous  mother,  left  her 
husband's  house.  Henceforward,  the 
precocious  boy  became  her  affectionate 
friend,  protector,  and  champion,  dividing 
his  schoolboy  means  with  her,  when  her 
thoughtless  expenditure  had  exhausted  her 
own,  writing  her  long  tender  letters  about 
all  that  was  going  on,  sympathising,  guid- 
ing, deferring  to  her  opinion,  confiding  all 
his  plans,  literary  and  otherwise,  to  her. 
A  more  touching  picture  could  not  be  than 
that  of  this  curious  pair,  in  themselves  so 
imperfect,  the  faded,  extravagant,  foolish, 
but  loving  mother,  and  her  fat  little  under- 
graduate, so  sensible,  so  tender,  so  con- 
stant, so  anxious  to  anticipate  all  her 
wants,  scarcely  betraying  the  conscious- 
ness that  these  wants  are  sometimes  un- 
reasonable, and  while  he  pours  out  all  his 
heart  to  her,  still  remaining  loyally  just 
and  faithful  to  the  father,  whose  liberality 
he  will  not  hear,  impugned. — Oliphant, 
Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History 
of  England,  XVUI-XIX  Century y  vol.  ill, 
V.  136. 

THE  MONK 

There  is  one  publication  at  the  time  too 
peculiar,  and  too  important  to  be  passed 
over  in  a  general  reprehension.  There  is 
nothing  with  which  it  may  be  compared. 
A  legislator  in  our  own  parliament,  a 
member  of  the  House  of  Commons  of  Great 
Britain,  an  elected  guardian  and  defender 
of  the  laws,  the  religion,  and  the  good  man- 
ners of  the  country,  has  neither  scrupled 


MATTHEW  GREGORY  LEWIS 


633 


nor  blushed  to  depict,  and  to  publish  to 
the  world,  the  arts  of  lewd  and  system- 
atick  seduction,  and  to  thrust  upon  the 
nation  the  most  open  and  unqualified  blas- 
phemy against  the  very  code  and  volume  of 
our  religion.  And  all  this,  with  his  name, 
style,  and  title,  prefixed  to  the  novel  or 
romance  called  ''The  Monk.''  And  one 
of  our  publick  theatres  has  allured  the 
publick  attention  still  more  to  this  novel, 
by  a  scenick  representation  of  an  Episode 
in  it. — Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1797,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  Eighth  ed.,  v.  239. 

Himself  (Lewis)  a  poet  of  no  mean  cali- 
bre. The  ballads  and  little  pieces,  scattered 
throughout  his  novel  of  the  ''Monk,"  were, 
in  their  day,  the  most  popular  things 
known.  They  were  chanted  in  the  street 
and  in  the  drawing-room ;  while  the  sub- 
ject of  the  most  terrific  ("Alonzo  and 
Imogene"), and  many  episodes  in  the  novel, 
were  represented  on  the  stage. — Dibdin, 
Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The  Library 
Companion,  p.  746,  note. 

The  brushwood  splendour  of  *'The 
Monk's"  fame. — Lockhart,  John  Gib- 
son, 1836,  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  ch.  ix. 

We  should  be  disposed  to  say  now  that  it 
is  hardly  up  to  the  mark  of  a  "penny 
dreadful, "  even  in  point  of  literary  merit. 
The  horrors  are  of  the  crudest  descrip- 
tion, and  there  is  neither  character  nor 
force  of  writing  to  redeem  them.  Mrs. 
Radcliff e  is  incomparably  superior.  There 
must  have  been  something  in  the  contrast 
between  the  fat  little  boyish  person,  blub- 
ber lips  and  beady  eyes,  of  the  author  and 
the  atrocites  he  lisped  forth  so  innocently, 
which  tickled  Society.  It  is  scarcely  pos- 
sible to  conceive  any  more  serious  reason 
for  his  fame.  —  Oliphant,  Margaret 
0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History  of  England, 
XVni-XIX  Century,  vol  ni,  p.  138. 

Lewis's  acquaintance  with  literature, 
and  especially  with  the  German  resuscita- 
tions of  feudalism,  monasticism,  ghosts, 
and  hobgoblins,  enabled  him  to  fill  his 
museum  of  atrocities  with  a  large  variety 
of  articles  of  vertu,  including  the  Inquisi- 
tion, the  wandering  Jew,  and  the  bleeding 
nun .  But  his  imagination  is  gross,  boyish, 
and  vulgar,  and  his  horrors  rests  mainly 
on  a  physical  basis.  He  was  foolish  enough 
to  throw  over  all  the  restraints  that  Mrs. 
Radcliffe  had  observed,  and  to  attempt 
explicit  climax.  — Raleigh,  Walter,  1884, 
The  English  Novel,  p.  234. 


"The  Monk"  used,  and  abused,  the  now 
familiar  apparat.us  of  Gothic  romance.  It 
had  Spanish  grandees,  heroines  of  dazzling 
beauty,  bravoes  and  forest  banditti,  foolish 
duennas  and  gabbling  domestics,  monks, 
nuns,  inquisitors,  magic  mirrors,  enchanted 
wands,  midnight  incantations,  sorcerers, 
ghosts,  demons ;  haunted  chambers,  wain- 
scoted in  dark  oak ;  moonlit  castles  with 
ruined  towers  and  ivied  battlements,  whose 
galleries  rang  with  the  shrieks  and  blas- 
phemies of  guilty  spirits,  and  from  whose 
portals  issued,  when  the  castle  clock  tolled 
one,  the  spectre  of  a  bleeding  nun,  with 
dagger  and  lamp  in  hand.  There  were 
poisonings,  stabbings,  and  ministrations  of 
sleeping  portions ;  beauties  who  masquer- 
aded as  pages,  and  pages  who  masqueraded 
as  wandering  harpers ;  secret  springs  that 
gave  admittance  to  winding  stairs  leading 
down  into  the  charnel  vaults  of  convents, 
where  erring  sistes  were  immured  by  cruel 
prioresses  and  fed  on  bread  and  water 
among  the  loathsome  relics  of  the  dead. 
With  all  this,  "The  Monk"  is  a  not  wholly 
contemptible  work.  There  is  a  certain 
narrative  power  about  it  which  puts  it 
much  above  the  level  of  "The  Castle  of 
Otranto. ' '  And  though  it  partakes  of  the 
stilted  dialogue  and  false  conception  of 
character  that  abound  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
romances,  it  has  neither  the  excess  of 
scenery  nor  of  sentiment  which  distin- 
guishes that  very  prolix  narrator. — Beers, 
Henry  A.,  1898,  A  History  of  English 
Romanticism  in  the  Eighteenth  Century, 
p.  410. 

GENERAL 
O!  wonder-working  Lewis  !  Monk  or  Bard, 
Who  fain  would 'st  make  Parnassus  a  church- 
yard; 

Lo!  \vreaths  of  yew,  not  laurel,  bind  thy 
brow, 

Thy  muse  a  sprite,  Apollo's  sexton  thou; 
Whether  on  ancient  tombs  thou  tak'st  thy 
stand, 

By  gibbering  spectres  hailed,  thy  kindred 
band, 

Or  tracest  chaste  descriptions  on  thy  page, 
To  please  the  females  of  our  modest  age ; 
All  hail,  M.  P. ,  from  whose  infernal  brain 
Thin-sheeted  phantoms  glide,  a  grisly  train; 
At  whose  command  "grim  women"  throng 
in  crowds, 

And  kings  of  fire,  of  water  and  of  clouds. 
With  "small  gray  men,"  "wild  yagers"  and 
what  not, 

To  crown  with  honor  thee  and  Walter  Scott ! 
— Byron,  Lord,  1809,  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers, 


634 


LEWIS— ROMILLY 


As  a  man  of  truly  original  powers, 
.M.  G.  Lewis  was  far  behind  either  Godwin 
or  Coleridge,  and  stood  much  on  the  level 
of  his  successor  Maturin :  but  what  his 
imagination  lacked  in  grandeur  was  made 
up  by  energy :  he  was  a  high-priest  of  the 
intense  school.  Monstrous  and  absurd  in 
many  things,  as  were  the  writings  of 
Lewis,  no  one  could  say  that  they  were 
deficient  in  interest.  Truth  and  nature, 
to  be  sure,  he  held  utterly  at  arm's-length  ; 
but,  instead,  he  had  a  lif  e-in-death  vigour, 
a  spasmodic  energy,  which  answered  well 
for  all  purposes  of  astonishment. — Mom, 
D.  M.,  1850-51,  Sketches  of  the  Poetical 
Literature  of  the  Past  Half-Century,  p.  18. 

One  of  his  best  novels  was  "The  Bravo 
of  Venice,"  published  in  1804.  .  .  . 
He  contrives  to  make  this  hero  respected, 
even  admired  to  a  degree ;  and  artfully  em- 
ploys the  poetry  and  witchery  of  Venice, 
that  unique  city  in  the  world, — half  land, 
half  sea, — to  give  a  tinge  of  appropriate- 
ness and  even  congruity  to  his  wild 
romance.  The ' '  Bravo' '  is  as  good  a  speci- 
men of  the  improbable  and  yet  conceivable 
as  any  work  of  fiction  earlier  than  Scott. 
— SiMONDS,  William  Edward,  1894,  An 
Introduction  to  the  Study  of  English  Fiction. 


As  Crabbe  may  serve  to  represent  the 
extreme  of  naturalism  in  art,  so  ''Monk" 
Lewis  may  serve  to  represent  the  other 
extreme,  the  extravagance  of  the  romantic 
tendency.— Do WDEN,  Edward,  1895, iVcw; 
Studies  in  Literature,  p.  337. 

Nothing  can  be  worse  in  kind,  and 
nothing,  of  its  kind,  can  well  be  better 
than  "  Alonso  the  Brave. "  It  was  Lewis's 
role  to  fling  the  orts  and  refuse  of  German 
Romanticism  about  the  soil  of  England. 
It  was  his  luck  rather  than  merit  to  have 
once  or  twice  thrown  them  where  they 
nourished  good  seed,  and  now  and  then  to 
have  grasped  a  flower  among  his  handfuls 
of  treasured  weeds.  His  false  ballads 
helped  to  elicit  the  true  ones  of  Scott, 
and  the  respectable  ones  of  Southey,  and 
he  introduced  to  the  author  of  "Manfred" 
what  he  doubtless  regarded  as  that  capital 
"Tale  of  Wonder,"  Goethe's  "Faust."— 
Herford,  C.  H.,  1897,  The  Age  of  IVords- 
worth,  p.  94. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  irony  of  things  that 
so  robust  a  muse  as  Walter  Scott's  should 
have  been  nursed  in  infancy  by  a  little 
creature  like  Lewis. — Beers,  Henry  A., 
1898,  A  History  of  English  Romanticism 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  404. 


Sir  Samuel  Romilly 

1757-1818 

Born  at  London,  March  1,  1757 :  committed  suicide  Nov.  2,  1818.  An  English  lawyer 
and  philanthropist,  of  Huguenot  descent.  At  21  years  of  age  he  entered  Gray's  Inn. 
In  1806  he  was  appointed  solicitor-general  of  the  Grenville  administration.  He  is 
famous  from  his  labors  for  the  reform  of  the  criminal  law,  commencing  in  1807.  His 
plans  were  not  realized  during  his  lifetime.  His  speeches  were  published  in  1820,  and 
his  autobiography  in  1840. — Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia 
of  Names,  p.  865. 

PERSONAL 
Some  women  use  their  tongues — she  look 'd  a 
lecture, 

Each  eye  a  sermon  and  her  brow  a  homily. 
An  all -in -all -sufficient  self-director, 

Like  the  lamented  late  Sir  Samuel  Romilly. 
The  Law's  expounder,  and  the  State's  cor- 
rector, 

Whose  suicide  was  almost  an  anomaly — 
One  sad  example  more  that,  "All  is  vanity," 
(The  jury  brought  their  verdict  in  "In- 
sanity.") 

—  Byron,  Lord,  1818-24,  Don  Juan, 
Canto  L 

In  person.  Sir  Samuel  Romilly  was  tall 
and  justly  proportioned,  with  a  counte- 
nance regular  and  pleasing;  but  tinged 


with  deep  shades  of  thought,  and  suscept- 
ible of  the  greatest  or  tenderest  emotions. 
His  manners  were  distinguished  by  singular 
modesty,  unaffected  simplicity,  and  the 
kindest  attention  and  regard  to  the  wishes 
and  feelings  of  others.  His  habits  were 
temperate,  studious,  and  domestic.  No 
man  ever  indulged  less  in  those  pursuits 
which  the  world  calls  pleasure.  He  rose 
regularly  at  six  o'clock;  and  was  oc- 
cupied, during  the  greater  part  of  the 
day,  and  frequently  to  a  late  hour  at  night, 
either  in  study  or  laborious  attendance  to 
his  professional  and  parliamentary  duties. 
What  little  intervals  of  leisure  could  be 
snatched  from   his  toils  he  anxiously 


SIR  SAMUEL  ROMILLY 


635 


devoted  to  domestic  intercourse  and  enjoy- 
ments. Moderate  in  his  own  expences,  he 
was  generous,  without  ostentation,  to  the 
want  of  others ;  and  the  exquisite  sensibil- 
ity of  his  nature  was  never  more  strik- 
ingly displayed  than  in  the  fervent  zeal 
with  which  his  professional  knowledge 
was  always  ready  to  be  exerted  for  the 
destitute  and  oppressed,  for  those  who 
might  seem,  in  their  poverty,  to  have  been 
left  without  a  friend.  Even  to  the  last, 
when  sinking  under  the  weight  of  domestic 
affliction,  when  anticipating  as  its  probable 
result  a  wretched  life  of  mental  malady 
and  darkness,  he  was  still  intent  on  the 
welfare  and  happiness  of  those  around 
him.  The  religion  of  Sir  Samuel  Romilly 
was,  like  his  life,  pure,  fervent,  and  en- 
lightened. Unclouded  by  superstition  or 
intolerance,  it  shone  forth  in  pious  grati- 
tude to  God,  and  in  charity  to  all  man- 
kind— Peter,  William,  1820,  Memoirs  of 
the  Life  of  Sir  Samuel  Romilly. 

Sir  Samuel  Romilly  was  a  very  effective 
speaker  on  the  topics  which  he  handled :  he 
was  a  most  acute  reasoner, — of  extraor- 
dinary penetration  and  subtlety, — with 
occasional  appeals  to  sentiment,  and  ad- 
dresses to  the  heart ;  but  still  his  manner 
was  strictly  professional  (which  is  never 
a  popular  manner  in  parliament),  and  it 
had  also  something  of  a  Puritan  tone, 
which,  with  a  grave,  warm,  pallid,  puri- 
tanic visage  and  attitude,  took  off  from 
the  impression  of  a  perfect  orator,  though 
it  never  operated  to  diminish  the  great 
attention  and  respect  with  which  he  was 
heard.  The  veneration  for  his  character, 
the  admiration  of  him  as  a  profound 
lawyer,  the  confidence  in  the  integrity  of 
his  principles,  and  his  enlightened,  as  well 
as  conscientious  study  of  the  principles  of 
the  constitution  of  his  country,  procured 
for  all  he  said  the  most  submissive  atten- 
tion ;  and  they  who  thought  him  in  politics 
a  stern  and  bigoted  republican,  whose 
opinions  were  uncongenial  to  the  mixed 
government  of  Great  Britain,  and  there- 
fore dissented  toto  corde  from  his  positions, 
deductions,  and  general  views  of  legisla- 
tion and  of  state,  never  dared  to  treat 
lightly  whatever  came  from  his  lips.  He 
had  a  cold  reserved  manner,  which  repelled 
intimacy  and  familiarity ;  and,  therefore, 
whatever  he  did,  he  did  by  his  own  sole 
strength. — Brydges,  Sir  S.  E.,  1824,  Rec- 
ollection of  Foreign  Travel^  July  23. 


He  was,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word,  a  philanthropist,  loving  mankind  with 
wise  and  constant  affection,  not  misled  by 
any  false  sensibility,  yet  trembling  alive 
to  their  best  and  truest  interests.  With- 
out displacing  for  a  moment  the  beautiful 
affections  of  domestic  life,  the  welfare  of 
his  fellow  creatures  ever  lay  next  to  the 
heart  of  Sir  Samuel  Romilly ;  and  the  feel- 
ings which  in  weaker  and  meaner  minds 
extend  only  round  the  small  circle  which 
blood  or  friendship  draws,  were  in  him 
diffused  with  undiminished  warmth  over 
the  wide  orbit  of  human  existence. — Ros- 
COE,  Henry,  1830,  Eminent  British  Law- 
yers ;  The  Cabinet  Cyclopcedia,  Biography, 
p,  404. 

It  is  fit  that  no  occasion  on  which  Sir 
Samuel  Romilly  is  named  should  ever  be 
passed  over  without  an  attempt  to  record 
the  virtues  and  endowments  of  so  great 
and  so  good  a  man,  for  the  instruction  of 
after-ages.  Few  persons  have  ever  at- 
tained celebrity  of  name  and  exalted 
station,  in  any  country,  or  in  any  age,  with 
such  unsullied  purity  of  character,  as  this 
equally  eminent  and  excellent  person. — 
Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1839-43, 
Lives  of  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George 
III  vol  I,  p.  363. 

There  are  circumstances  in  Sir  Samuel's 
history  that  render  the  state  of  his  mind 
on  the  subject  of  religion  so  important — 
particularly  as  the  editors  profess  to  pub- 
lish this  work  for  the  purposes  of  "example 
and  instruction" — that  we  feel  ourselves 
reluctantly  obliged  to  say  that,  with  our 
best  diligence,  we  have  not  been  able  to 
discover  throughout  these  volumes — his 
own  share  written,  he  says,  for  the  in- 
struction of  his  children — any  distinct 
evidence  that  he  was  a  Christian  though 
there  is  abundant  proof  that  he  was  a  man 
of  the  kindest  social  and  domestic  feel- 
ings, and  of  the  purest  morality,  that  he 
believed  in  a  future  state  of  retribution, 
and  had  a  full  and  well-reasoned  conviction 
of  the  existence  and  transcendent  at- 
tributes of  the  Deity.  ...  In  all 
other  respects  we  willingly  offer  our 
testimony — valeat  quantum — to  his  great 
talents,  large  acquirements,  and  deserved 
success — to  his  social  and  domestic  virtues 
— to  his  integrity,  benevolence,  and 
honour — and,  in  short,  to  the  most  essential 
qualities  that  constitute  the  character  of 
a  virtuous  man. — Croker,  John  Wilson, 


636 


SIR  SAMUEL  ROMILLY 


1840,  Life  of  Sir  Samuel  Romilly,  Quar- 
terly Review,  vol.  66,  pp.  574,  626. 

SPEECHES 

As  Saturday  drew  near,  my  anxiety  for 
Romilly's  first  public  appearance  had 
swallowed  up  every  other  concern.  .  .  . 
Romilly's  success  was  as  great  as  his 
friends  predicted.  He  spoke  for  three 
hours  and  a  half,  and  his  speech  might  be 
named  as  the  model  of  the  simple  style. 
.  .  .  The  fact  is,  he  kept  every  one 
chained  in  attention,  and  made  the  whole 
case  (impeachment  of  Lord  Melville)  dis- 
tinct to  the  dullest. — Horner,  Francis, 
1806,  Memoirs  and  Correspondence,  May 
12,  13. 

From  the  tenderness  of  his  feelings,  and 
from  an  anger  never  roused  but  by  cruelty 
and  baseness,  as  much  as  from  his  genius 
and  his  pure  taste,  sprung  that  original 
and  characteristic  eloquence  which  was 
the  hope  of  the  afflicted  as  well  as  the 
terror  of  the  oppressor.  If  his  oratory 
had  not  flowed  so  largely  from  this  moral 
source,  which  years  do  not  dry  up,  he 
would  not  perhaps  have  been  the  only 
example  of  an  orator  who,  after  the  age 
of  sixty,  daily  increased  in  polish,  in 
vigour,  and  in  splendour. — Mackintosh, 
Sir  James,  1830,  Second  Preliminary 
Dissertation,  Encyclopcedia  Britannica. 

As  a  speaker,  Romilly  habitually  ad- 
dressed himself  rather  to  the  reason  than 
the  passions,  though  he  by  no  means  lacked 
eloquence.  He  marshalled  his  premises, 
and  deduced  his  conclusions  with  mathe- 
matical precision,  and  his  diction  was  as 
chaste  as .  his  logic  was  cogent.  The 
unerring  instinct  with  which  he  detected 
and  the  unfailing  felicity  with  which  he 
exposed  a  fallacy,  united  to  no  small  powers 
of  sarcasm  and  invective,  made  him  formid- 
able in  reply,  while  the  effect  of  his  easy 
and  impressive  elocution  was  enhanced  by 
a  tall  and  graceful  figure,  a  melodious 
voice,  and  features  of  classical  regularity. 
As  an  adept  not  only  in  the  art  of  the  advo- 
cate, but  in  the  whole  mystery  of  law  and 
equity,  he  was  without  a  superior,  perhaps 
without  a  rival,  in  his  day.  He  was  also 
throughout  life  a  voracious  and  omnivor- 
ous reader,  and  seized  and  retained  the 
substance  of  what  he  read  with  unusual 
rapidity  and  tenacity.  He  was  an  inde- 
fatigable worker,  rising  very  early  and 
going  to  bed  late.  His  favourite  relaxa- 
tion was  a  long  walk.    From  intensity  of 


conviction,  aided  perhaps  by  the  melan- 
choly of  his  temperament,  he  carried 
political  antagonism  to  extreme  lengths, 
even  to  the  abandonment  of  a  friendship 
with  Perceval,  which  had  been  formed  on 
circuit,  and  cemented  by  constant  and 
confidential  intercourse. — RiGG,  J.  M. 
1897,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
vol.  XLix,  p.  190. 

GENERAL 

A  charm,  too,  is  spread  over  the  whole 
work,  and  it  leaves  in  the  mind  a  feeling 
of  afl!ection  for  the  author;  and  this 
because  he  displays  himself  without  pre- 
tention, and  because  the  picture  he  draws 
relates  only  to  those  moral  feelings,  those 
private  virtues,  which  every  one  can  imi- 
tate, and  to  that  domestic  life,  the  happi- 
ness of  which,  as  it  is  derived  from  the 
purest  and  most  amiable  feelings,  creates 
■  jealousy  in  the  breast  of  no  one.  Mere 
men  of  the  world  will  probably  disbelieve 
it :  in  their  eyes  it  will  appear  a  romance, 
but  one  that  will  not  offend  them ;  and, 
by  the  middling  ranks,  the  most  numerous 
class  of  society,  these  memoirs  will  be  read 
with  the  same  feeling  as  that  which  dic- 
tated their  composition.  ...  To  me, 
these  Memoirs  appear  a  precious  monu- 
ment :  and  when  I  reflect  that  this  labori- 
ous undertaking  was  the  work  of  a  man 
always  occupied  to  the  utmost  extent,  who 
gave  up  to  it,  as  well  as  to  all  his  legisla- 
tive labours,  that  time  from  whence  he 
might  have  derived  very  considerable  pro- 
fessional advantages,  it  seems  to  me  that 
it  cannot  fail  to  produce  a  lasting  effect 
upon  'those  who  know  how  to  profit  by  a 
great  example,  and  to  reflect  upon  what 
may  be  done  with  life  by  him  who  chooses 
to  employ  it.— Dumont,  Pierre  Etienne 
Louis,  1829,  Letter  in  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  of  Sir  Samuel  Romilly,  ed.  by  His 
Sons,  Preface,  vol.  I,  pp.  xi,  xii. 

Romilly  is  one  of  the  few  lawyers 
who  have  left  any  thing  like  an  autobiog- 
raphy. His  sketch  of  his  life  is  slight, 
designed  only  for  his  children,  but  suffices 
to  disclose  his  modesty,  his  candor,  his 
sincerity,  his  self  scrutiny  and  the  purity 
of  his  motives.  ...  It  has  always 
been  conceded  that  Romilly  was  the  leader 
of  the  equity  bar  in  his  day.  .  .  . 
Romilly's  fame  mainly  depends  on  his 
efforts  to  reform  the  criminal  code. — 
Browne,  Irving,  1878,  Short  Studies  of 
Great  Lawyers,  pp.  121,  122,  124. 


ROMILL  Y— FRANCIS 


637 


At  this  period  of  his  life,  Romilly^s 
ambition  was  to  follow  his  profession  just 
as  far  as  was  necessary  for  his  subsistence, 
and  to  aspire  to  fame  by  his  literary  pur- 
suits. Accordingly,  he  began  to  exercise 
himself  in  prose  composition,  and,  judging 
translation  to  be  the  most  useful  exercise 
for  forming  a  style,  he  rendered  into  Eng- 
lish the  finest  models  of  writing  that  the 
Latin  language  afforded.  With  the  same 
view  of  improving  his  style,  he  read  and 


studied  the  best  English  writers — Addison, 
Swift,  Bolingbroke,  Robertson,  and  Hume 
— noting  down  every  peculiar  propriety 
and  happiness  of  expression  which  he  met 
with,  and  which  he  was  conscious  he 
would  not  have  used  himself.  Komilly's 
method  of  improving  himself  in  English 
composition  bears  a  very  close  resem- 
blance to  that  adopted  by  Buckle,  the  his- 
torian.— NicoLL,  Henry  J.,  1881,  Great 
Movements  and  Those  Who  Achieved  Them. 


Sir  Philip  Francis 

1740-1818 

Sir  Philip  Francis,  was  born  in  Dublin,  22d  October  1740.  Leaving  Ireland  at 
twelve,  he  entered  St.  Paul's  School  in  London,  and  at  sixteen  became  a  junior  clerk 
in  the  secretary  of  state's  office.  In  1758  he  was  a  secretary  in  the  expedition  against 
Cherbourg;  in  1760  he  was  secretary  on  a  mission  to  Portugal;  in  1761  he  acted  as 
amanuensis  to  the  elder  Pitt ;  and  in  1762  he  was  made  first-clerk  in  the  War  Office. 
In  1773  Lord  North  made  him  a  member  of  the  Council  of  Bengal ;  in  1780  he  fought 
a  duel  with  Warren  Hastings  (with  whom  he  was  always  at  enmity),  and  was  seriously 
wounded.  In  1781  he  returned  home  with  a  fortune  largely  acquired  by  playing  whist. 
He  entered  parliament  in  1784.  He  was  energetic  in  the  proceedings  against  Hastings, 
wrote  many  pamphlets,  was  eager  to  be  governor-general  of  India,  and  was  made  a 
K.  C.  B.  in  1806.  He  was  devoted  to  the  prince-regent  and  a  warm  supporter  of  the 
Friends  of  the  People."  In  1816  Mr.  John  Taylor  wrote  a  book  identifying  Francis 
with  "Junius,"  but  Francis  never  acknowledged  having  written  the  seventy  "Letters," 
which  appeared  in  the  "Public  Advertiser"  (21st  Jan.  1769— 21st  Jan.  1772),  and 
were  reprinted  in  1812  with  113  additional  letters.  His  young  second  wife,  whom  he 
married  when  seventy-four,  was  convinced  that  he  must  be  Junius. — Patrick  and 
Groome,  eds.f  1897,  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionary,  p,  379. 


PERSONAL 
Nature  had  conferred  on  Francis  talents 
such  as  are  rarely  dispensed  to  any  individ- 
ual— a  vast  range  of  ideas,  a  retentive 
memory,  a  classic  mind,  considerable  com- 
mand of  language,  energy  of  thought  and 
expression,  matured  by  age,  and  actuated 
by  an  inextinguishable  animosity  to  Hast- 
ings. Francis  indeed  uniformly  dis- 
claimed any  personal  enmity  to  the  man, 
only  reprobating  the  measures  of  the 
ruler  of  India;  and  perhaps  he  might 
sincerely  believe  his  assertion.  But  he 
always  appeared  to  me,  like  the  son  of 
Livia,  to  deposit  his  resentments  deep  in 
his  own  breast ;  from  which  he  drew  them 
forth,  if  not  augmented  by  time,  at  least 
in  all  their  original  vigour  and  freshness. 
Acrimony  distinguished  and  characterized 
him  in  everything.  Even  his  person,  tall, 
thin,  and  scantily  covered  with  flesh ;  his 
countenance,  the  lines  of  which  were  acute, 
intelligent,  and  yet  full  of  meaning ;  the 
tones  of  his  voice,  sharp,  distinct  and  son- 
orous; his  very  gestures,  impatient,  and 


irregular — eloquently  bespoke  the  forma- 
tion of  his  intellect.  I  believe  I  never  saw 
him  smile.  .  .  .  Bursting  with  bile,  which 
tinged  and  pervaded  all  his  speeches  in 
Parliament,  yet  his  irascibility  never 
overcame  his  reason;  nor  compelled  his 
friends,  like  those  of  Burke,  to  mingle  re- 
gret with  their  admiration,  and  to  condemn 
or  to  pity  the  individual  whom  they  ap- 
plauded as  an  orator.  Francis,  however 
inferior  he  was  to  Burke  in  all  the  flowers 
of  diction,  in  exuberance  of  ideas  borrowed 
from  antiquity,  and  in  the  magic  of  elo- 
quence, more  than  once  electrified  the 
house,  by  passages  of  pathos  or  of  interest 
which  arrested  every  hearer. — Wraxall, 
Sir  Nathaniel,  1784-90,  Posthumous 
Memoirs  of  his  own  Time,  p.  49. 

I  was  alone  with  him  in  his  last  moments. 
.  .  .  Never  was  a  death  so  worthy  of 
such  a  life :  his  spirits  composed,  tranquil, 
and  even  cheerful,  his  mind  apparently  as 
strong  as  ever  and  his  perception  as  quick. 
He  expressed  his  gratitude  for  all  my 
little  attentions  and  cares  during  the  last 


638 


FRANCIS— JUNIUS 


sad,  solemn  night,  in  the  most  touching 
manner.  I  was  not  aware  at  the  time, 
though  I  now  am,  that  he  knew  how  short 
his  time  was.  He  showed  great  anxiety 
that  I  should  not  leave  him  for  a  moment, 
no  doubt  he  anticipated  my  future  regrets 
had  I  done  so ;  but  he  never  expressed  fear 
or  anxiety  on  any  other  subject.  Towards 
morning  he  fell  into  a  trance,  from  which 
he  revived  and  spoke  to  me,  and  took  some 
refreshment.  About  ten  he  fell  into  a 
deep  sleep,  which  lasted  four  hours.  I 
was  flattering  myself  with  the  hope  of  his 
waking  much  restored ;  Mrs.  Cholmondeley 
had  just  left  me,  when,  on  a  sudden,  the 
breathing  I  had  been  listening  to  so  con- 
tentedly stopped.  I  undrew  the  curtain 
.  .  .  not  a  sigh,  not  a  motion,  not  a 
change  of  countenance.  Heart,  pulses  and 
breath  stopped  at  once  without  an  effort. 
— Francis,  Lady,  1818,  Letter  to  a 
Friend,  Francis  Letters,  vol.  ii,  p.  691. 

Sir  Philip  Francis  is  best  known  to  the 
public  as  the  supposed  author  of  the  let- 
ters signed  Junius.  Whether  he  would 
deserve  notice  or  respect  if  he  were  the 
real  Junius,  is  a  question  which  any  one 
can  answer  who  is  intimately  acquainted 
with  Francis's  career.  .  .  .  Yet, 
irrespective  of  the  assumed  connexion 
between  Francis  and  Junius,  there  is  much 


in  Francis's  life  which  deserves  more  at- 
tention than  many  readers  may  suppose. 
Though  not  one  of  the  great  men  whose 
names  shine  in  the  annals  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  and  though  his  place  is  in 
the  second  rank,  yet  Francis's  career  was 
as  varied  and  interesting  as  that  of  many 
whose  names  precede  and  overshadow  his 
on  the  roll  of  fame. — Rae,  W.  Fraser, 
1889,  Sir  Philip  Francis^  Temple  Bar,  vol. 
87,  p.  171. 

Francis,  whether  Junius  or  not,  was  a 
man  of  great  ability  and  unflagging  in- 
dustry ;  arrogant  and  vindictive  in  the  ex- 
treme; unscrupulous  in  gratifying  his 
enmities  by  covert  insinuations  and  false 
assercions,  yet  courageous  in  attacking 
great  men ;  rigid  and  even  pedantic  in  his 
adherence  to  a  set  of  principles  which  had 
their  generous  side;  really  scornful  of 
meanness  and  corruption  in  others ;  and 
certainly  doing  much  to  vindicate  the  power 
of  public  opinion,  although  from  motives 
which  were  not  free  from  selfishness  and 
the  narrowest  personal  ambition.  There 
may  have  been  two  such  men,  whose  careers 
closely  coincided  during  Francis's  most 
vigorous  period;  but  it  seems  more  prob- 
able that  there  was  only  one. — Stephen, 
Leslie,  1889,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XX,  p.  179. 


Junius 

The  signature  appended  to  a  famous  series  of  letters  on  political  subjects,  which 
appeared  in The  Public  Advertiser,"  at  various  intervals  between  1769  and  1772. 
They  were  44  in  number;  to  which  must  be  added  15  signed  Philo-Junius,  113  under 
various  signatures,  and  72  privately  addressed  to  Woodfall,  the  publisher  of  the* 'Ad- 
vertiser," and  to  Wilkes.  The  first  of  those  signed  Junius  appeared  on  January  21, 
1769. — Adams,  W.  Davenport,  1877,  Dictionary  of  English  Literature,  p.  356. 


AUTHORSHIP. 
The  following  list  of  51  names,  embraces 
the  personages  to  whom  these  celebrated 
letters  have  been  attributed : 

Adair f  James,  M.  P.;  Allen,  Captain;  Barre, 
Lieut. -Col.  Isaac,  M.  P  ;  Bentinck,  William 
Henry  Cavendish;  Bickerton,  Mr.;  Boyd,  Hugh 
M'Aulay;  Burke,  Rt.  Hon.  Edmund;  Burke^ 
William  ;  Butler,  John;  Camden,  Charles,  I^ord; 
De  Lolme,  John  Lewis;  Dunning,  John,  after- 
wards Lord  Ashburton;  Dyer,  Samuel;  Flood, 
Henry;  Francis,  Sir  Philip ;  George  III. ; 
Gibbon,  Edioard ;  Glover,  Richard  ;  Grattan, 
Henry;  Greatrakes,  William;  Grenville,  George; 
Grenville,  James;  Hamilton,  William  Gerard ; 
Hollis,  James  ;  Hollis,  Thomas ;  Jackson,  Sir 
George  ;  Jones,  Sir  William  ;  Kent,  JoJtn  ;  Lee, 


Maj.-Gen.  Charles;  Lloyd,  Charles;  Lyttleton, 
Thomas  ;  Maclean,  Laughlin ;  Marshall,  Rev. 
Edmund;  Paine,  Thomas;  Pitt,  William;  Port- 
land, William,  Duke  of ;  Pownall,  Thomas;  Rich, 
Lieut. -Col.  Sir  Robert ;  Roberts,  John;  Rosen- 
hagen.  Rev.  Philip  ;  Sackville,  George,  Viscount ; 
Shelburne,  Earl  of;  Stanhope,  Philip  Dormer; 
Sueit,  Richard  ;  Temple,  Richard,  Earl ;  Tooke, 
John  Home ;  Walpole,  Horatio ;  Wedderburn, 
Alexander;  Wilkes,  John;  Wilmot,  James,  D.D.; 
Wray,  Daniel. 

— Frey,  Albert  R.,  1885,  Initials  and 
Pseudonyms  by  William  Gushing. 

Boswell:  ''Supposing  the  person  who 
wrote  Junius  were  asked  whether  he  was 
theauthour,  might  he  deny  it?"  Johnson: 
"I  don't  know  what  to  say  to  this.    If  you 


JUNIUS 


639 


were  sure  that  he  wrote  Junius^  would  you, 
if  he  denied  it,  think  as  well  of  him  after- 
wards ?  Yet  it  may  be  urged,  that  what 
a  man  has  no  right  to  ask,  you  may  refuse 
to  communicate;  and  there  is  no  other 
effectual  mode  of  preserving  a  secret  and 
an  important  secret,  the  discovery  of 
which  may  be  very  hurtful  to  you,  but  a  flat 
denial ;  for  if  you  are  silent,  or  hesitate, 
or  evade,  it  will  be  held  equivalent  to  a 
confession.  But  stay,  Sir,  here  is  another 
case.  Supposing  the  authour  had  told  me 
confidentially  that  he  had  written  Junius, 
and  I  were  asked  if  he  had,  I  should  hold 
myself  at  liberty  to  deny  it,  as  being  under 
a  previous  promise,  express  or  implied,  to 
conceal  it.  Now  what  I  ought  to  do  for 
the  authour,  may  I  not  do  for  myself?— 
JoHx\soN,  Samuel,  1784,  Life  by  Boswell, 
ed.  Hill,  vol.  iv.,  p.  353. 

It  has  long  been  a  question  who  was  the 
author  of  the  letters  which  appeared  under 
the  signature  of  * 'Junius"  in  1769  and 
1770.  Many  have  ascribed  them  to  Mr. 
Wm.  Gerard  Hamilton,  who  is  certainly 
capable  of  having  written  them,  but  his 
style  is  very  different.  He  would  have  had 
still  more  point  than  they  exhibit,  and  cer- 
tainly more  Johnsonian  energy.  Besides, 
he  has  all  his  life  been  distinguished 
for  political  timidity  and  indecision. 
Neither  would  he,  even  under  a  mask,  have 
entered  into  such  decided  warfare  with 
many  persons  whom  it  might  be  necessary 
afterwards  to  have  as  colleagues.  What 
is  still  more  decisive,  he  could  not  have 
divested  himself  of  the  apprehension  of  a 
discovery,  having  long  accustomed  his 
mind  to  too  refined  a  policy,  and  being 
very  apt  to  suppose  that  many  things  are 
brought  about  by  scheme  and  machination 
which  are  merely  the  offspring  of  chance. 
He  would  have  suspected  that  even  the 
penny  post  could  not  be  safe ;  and  that  Sir 
W.  Draper  or  any  other  antagonist  would 
have  managed  so  as  to  command  every  one 
of  those  offices  within  the  bills  of  mortality. 
Many  have  supposed'' Junius"  to  have  been 
written  by  Mr.  Hamilton's  old  friend,  the 
well-known  and  deservedly  celebrated 
Edmund  Burke.  Dr.  Johnson  being  once 
asked  whether  he  thought  Burke  capable 
of  writing  "Junius,"  said  he  thought  him 
fully  equal  to  it;  but  that  he  did  not 
believe  him  the  author  because  he  himself 
had  told  him  so ;  and  he  did  not  believe  he 
would  deliberately  assert  a  falsehood. 


Mr.  Burke,  however,  it  is  extremely  prob- 
able, had  a  considerable  share  in  the  pro- 
duction of  those  papers  in  furnishing 
materials,  suggesting  hints,  constructing 
and  amending  sentences,  &c.,  &c.  He 
has  'acknowledged  to  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
that  he  knew  the  author.  Sir  Joshua  with 
very  great  probabilty  thinks  that  the 
late  Mr.  Samuel  Dyer  was  the  author, 
assisted  by  Mr.  Burke  and  by  Mr.  Wil- 
liam Burke,  his  cousin,  now  in  India. — 
Malone,  Edmond,  1791,  Maloniana,  ed. 
Prior,  p.  419. 

Sir, — I  frankly  assure  you  that  I  know 
nothing  of  Junius,  except  that  I  am  not 
the  author.  When  Junius  began  I  was  a 
boy,  and  knew  nothing  of  politics  or  the 
persons  concerned  in  them.  I  am.  Sir, 
not  Junius,  but  your  very  good  wisher  and 
obedient  servant.  —  Grattan,  Henry, 
1805,  Letter  to  Mr.  Almon,  Nov.  4. 

The  question  respecting  the  author  of 
Junius' s  Letters,  is  thought,  we  believe, 
by  philosophers,  to  be  one  of  more  curios- 
ity than  importance.  We  are  very  far 
from  pretending  that  the  happiness  of 
mankind  is  materially  interested  in  its 
determination;  or  that  it  involves  any 
great  and  fundamental  scientific  truths. 
But  it  must  be  viewed  as  a  point  of  literary 
history;  and,  among  discussions  of  this 
description,  it  ranks  very  high.  After  all, 
are  there  many  points  of  civil  or  military 
history  really  more  interesting  to  persons 
living  in  the  present  times?  Is  the  guilt 
of  Queen  Mary — the  character  of  Richard 
III. — or  the  story  of  the  Man  in  the  Iron 
Mask,  very  nearly  connected  with  the 
welfare  of  the  existing  generation? 
Indeed,  we  would  rather  caution,  even  the 
most  profound  of  philosophers,  against 
making  too  nice  an  inquiry  into  the  prac- 
tical importance  of  scientific  truths ;  for 
assuredly  there  are  numberless  proposi- 
tions, of  which  the  curiosity  is  more 
easily  described  than  the  utility,  in  all  the 
branches  of  science,  and  especially  in  the 
severer  ones — the  professors  of  which 
are  the  most  prone  to  deride  an  inquiry 
like  that  about  Junius.  .  .  .  That 
it  proves  Sir  Philip  to  be  Junius,  we 
will  not  affirm ;  but  this  we  can  safely 
assert,  that  it  accumulates  such  a  mass 
of  circumstantial  evidence  as  renders  it 
extremely  difficult  to  believe  he  is  not; 
and  that,  if  so,  many  coincidences  shall 
be  found  to  have  misled  us  in  this  case. 


640 


JUNIUS 


our  faith  in  all  conclusions  drawn  from 
proofs  of  a  similiar  kind  may  henceforth 
be  shaken. —  Brougham,  Henry  Lord? 
1817,  Junius f  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  29, 
pp.  94,  96. 

xA.  cause,  however  ingeniously  pleaded,  is 
not  therefore  gained.  You  may  remember 
the  neatly-wrought  chain  of  circumstantial 
evidence  so  artificially  brought  forward  to 
prove  Sir  Philip  Francis's  title  to  the 
Letters  of  Junius"  seemed  at  first  irre- 
fragable ;  yet  the  influence  of  the  reasoning 
has  pased  away,  and  Junius,  in  the  general 
opinion,  is  as  much  unknown  as  ever. — 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1822,  Fortunes  of 
Nigel,  Introductory,  Epistle. 
And  several  people  swore,  from  out  the  press, 
They  knew  him  perfectly;  and  one  could 
swear 

He  was  his  father :  upon  which  another 
Was  sure  he  was  his   mother's  cousin's 
brother. 


I've  an  hypothesis — 'tis  quite  my  own ; 

I  never  let  it  out  till  now,  for  fear 

Of  doing  people  harm  about  the  throne, 

And  injuring  some  minister  or  peer, 

On  whom  the  stigma  might  perhaps  be  blown ; 

It  is — my  gentle  public,  lend  thine  ear! 

'Tis  that  what  Junius  we  are  wont  to  call 

Was  really,  truly,  nobody  ai;  all. 

— Byron,  Lord,  1824,  The  Vision  of 

Judgment 

I  will  just  state  here,  en  passant,  that  I 
have  strong  reason  to  suspect  that  Lord 
George  Sackville  was  the  author  of 
Junius."  He  may  have  had  a  literary 
assistant,  but  I  am  convinced  by  a  great 
variety  of  reasons,  that  he  v;as  substan- 
tially Junius.— Croker,  John  Wilson, 
1824,  Letter  to  Lord  Liverpool,  Oct.  13 ; 
Correspondence,  ed.  Jennings,  vol.  i, 
p.  273. 

I  persist  in  thinking  that  neither  Mr. 
Burke  nor  Philip  Francis  was  the  author 
of  the  letter  under  the  signature  of 
Junius.  I  think  the  mind  of  the  first  so 
superior,  and  the  mind  of  the  latter  so  in- 
ferior, to  that  of  Junius,  as  to  put  the  sup- 
position that  either  of  them  was  Junius 
wholly  out  of  the  question. — Butler, 
Charles,  1828,  Letter  to  E.  H.  Barker, 
June  14. 

A  new  knight  entered  the  lists  with  his 
vizor  down,  and  with  unreal  devices  on  his 
shield,  but  whose  arm  was  nerved  with  in- 
born vigour,  and  whose  lance  was  poised 
with  most  malignant  skill.    Even  now  the 


dark  shadow  of  Junius  looms  across  that 
period  of  our  annals  with  a  grandeur  no 
doubt  much  enhanced  and  heightened  by 
the  mystery.  To  solve  that  mystery  has 
since  employed  the  most  patient  industry, 
and  aroused  the  most  varied  conjectures. 
.  .  .  Strong  as  this,  the ''Franciscan," 
theory  appears  when  separately  viewed,  it 
becomes,  I  think,  far  stronger  still  when 
compared  with  the  other  claims  that  have 
been  urged.  In  no  other  can  many 
strained  inferences  and  many  gratuitous 
assumptions  fail  to  be  observed.  In  no 
other  do  the  feelings  and  the  circumstances 
which  must  be  ascribed  to  Junius,  or  the 
dates  applying  to  the  cessation  of  his  let- 
ters, admit  on  all  points,  or  even  on  most 
points,  of  simple  explanations  from  the 
theory  adduced.  Even  the  claim  on  behalf 
of  Lord  George  Sackville,  which  at  first 
sight  has  dazzled  many  acute  observers, 
will  not,  as  I  conceive,  endure  the  light  of 
a  close  and  critical  examination. — Stan- 
hope, Philip  Henry  Earl  (Lord  Mahon), 
1836-54,  History  of  England  from  the  Peace 
of  Utrecht  to  the  Peace  of  Versailles,  vol.  V, 
pp.  211,  225. 

Before  your  last  volume  is  published,  I 
am  desirous  of  stating  to  you  some  of  the 
considerations  which,  more  than  seventeen 
years  ago,  led  me  to  the  belief  I  still 
entertain,  that  Walpole  had  a  principal 
share  in  the  composition  and  publication 
of  the  Letters  of  Junius :  though  I  think 
it  likely  that  Mason,  or  some  other  friend 
corrected  the  style,  and  gave  precision  and 
force  to  the  most  striking  passages.  .  .  . 
If  we  turn  from  a  recollection  of  the  words 
to  a  consideration  of  the  peculiarities  of 
the  style  of  Junius,  I  think  it  will  be 
agreed  that  the  most  remarkable  of  all  is 
that  species  of  irony  which  consists  in 
equivocal  compliment.  Walpole  also  ex- 
celled in  this ;  and  prided  himself  upon  do- 
ing so.  Are  we  not  justified  in  saying,  that 
of  all  who,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  cast 
their  thoughts  on  public  occurrences  into 
the  form  of  letters,  Junius  and  Walpole 
are  the  most  distinguished?  That  the 
works  of  no  other  prose  writer  of 
their'  time  exhibit  a  zest  for  political 
satire  equal  to  that  which  is  displayed  in 
the  Letters  of  Junius,  and  the  Memories 
and  Political  Letters  of  Walpole  ?  and  that 
the  sarcasm  of  equivocal  praise  was  the 
favourite  weapon  in  the  armoury  of  each, 
though  it  certainly  appears  to  have  been 


JUNIUS 


641 


tempered,  and  sharpened,  and  polished 
with  additional  care  for  the  hand  of 
Junius? — Grey,  Charles  Edward,  1840, 
To  the  Editor  of  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole. 

The  external  evidence  is,  we  think,  such 
as  would  support  a  verdict  in  a  civil,  nay, 
in  a  criminal  proceeding.  The  hand-writ- 
ing of  Junius  is  the  very  peculiar  hand- 
writing of  Francis,  slightly  disguised.  As 
to  the  position,  pursuits,  and  connexions  of 
Junius,  the  following  are  the  most  impor- 
tant facts  which  can  be  considered  as 
clearly  proved :  first,  that  he  was  acquainted 
with  the  technical  forms  of  the  Secretary 
of  State's  office;  secondly,  that  he  was 
intimately  acquainted  with  the  business  of 
the  war-office ;  thirdly,  that  he,  during  the 
year  1770,  attended  debates  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  took  notes  of  speeches, 
particularly  of  the  speeches  of  Lord 
Chatham;  fourthly,  that  he  bitterly 
resented  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Chamier 
to  the  place  of  Deputy  Secretary  at  War ; 
fifthly,  that  he  was  bound  by  some  strong 
tie  to  the  first  Lord  Holland.  Now, 
Francis  passed  some  years  in  the  Secretary 
of  State's  office.  He  was  subsequently 
chief  clerk  of  the  war -office.  He  repeat- 
edly mentioned  that  he  had  himself,  in 
1770,  heard  speeches  of  Lord  Chatham; 
and  some  of  those  speeches  were  actually 
printed  from  his  notes.  He  resigned  his 
clerkship  at  the  war-office  from  resent- 
ment at  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Chamier. 
It  was  by  Lord  Holland  that  he  was  first 
introduced  into  the  public  service.  Now 
here  are  five  marks,  all  of  which  ought  to 
be  found  in  Junius.  They  are  all  five  found 
in  Francis.  We  do  not  believe  that  more 
than  two  of  them  can  be  found  in  any  other 
person  whatever.  If  this  argument  does 
not  settle  the  question,  there  is  an  end  of 
all  reasoning  on  circumstantial  evidence. 
The  internal  evidence  seems  to  us  to  point 
the  same  way.  The  style  of  Francis  bears 
a  strong  resemblance  to  that  of  Junius ;  nor 
are  we  disposed  to  admit,  what  is  generally 
taken  for  granted,  that  the  acknowledged 
compositions  of  Francis  are  very  decidedly 
inferior  to  the  anonymous  letters.  The 
argument  from  inferiority,  at  all  events, 
is  only  which  may  be  urged  with  at  least 
equal  force  against  every  claimant  that  has 
ever  been  mentioned  with  the  single  ex- 
ception of  Burke,  who  certainly  was  not 
Junius.  ...  To  go  no  further  than  the  let- 
ters which  bear  the  signature  of  Junius ; — 

41  c 


the  letter  to  the  king  and  the  letters  to 
Horne  Tooke  have  little  in  common, except 
the  asperity ;  and  asperity  was  an  ingredi- 
ent seldom  wanting  either  in  the  writings 
or  in  the  speeches  of  Francis. — Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1841,  Warren  Hast- 
ings, Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

It  is  here  proper  to  remark  that  so  far 
from  having  any  theory  of  our  own  on 
Junius's  identity,  we  are  as  entirely  free 
from  bias  on  the  subject,  and  confess  our- 
selves as  profoundly  ignorant  of  the  au- 
thorship of  those  celebrated  Letters,  as 
if,  instead  of  having  for  many  years  con- 
stantly had  the  question  in  our  mind,  and 
having  read,  we  believe,  nearly  everything 
that  has  been  written  on  the  point,  we  had 
never  bestowed  a  thought  on  the  matter. 
We  have  indeed  a  strong  impression  that 
Junius  was  not  any  one  of  the  numerous 
persons  heretofore  so  confidently  brought 
forward. — Nicolas,  Sir  Harris,  1843, 
Junius  and  His  Works. 

It  is  my  firm  and  deliberate  conviction, 
that  if  Lord  Temple  were  not  the  author  of 
Junius,  then  the  author  has  never  yet  been 
publicly  named,  and  that  he  will  still  re- 
main that  mysterious  Umbra  sine  Xomine, 
to  exercise  the  ingenuity  of  some  more  suc- 
cessful inquirer. — Smith,  William  James, 
1852,  ed.y  The  Grenville  Papers. 

If  not  a  member  of  the  peerage,  Junius 
must  have  had  men  of  rank  and  station  as 
his  allies,  and,  as  he  himself  confesses, 
persons  about  him  who  supplied  him  with 
the  information  he  required,  and  whose 
importunities  he  was  bound  to  obey. 
Among  the  political  writers  who  may  be 
considered  as  having  played  the  principal 
part  in  this  combination,  Sir  Philip  Francis 
and  Colonel  Lachlan  Macleane  have  the 
highest  claims.  We  leave  it  to  a  jury  of 
our  readers  to  decide  between  them  from 
the  evidence  which  is  now  within  their 
reach. — Brewster,  Sir  David,  1853,  The 
Grenville  Papers,  North  British  Review, 
vol.  19,  p.  517. 

We  think  more  highly  of  Lord  Temple 
than  Mr.  Smith  does.  He  was  a  man  of 
humour,  energy,  sense,  and  we  think  of 
sound  judgment, — but  no  genius.  There 
never  was  a  Grenville  who  had  a  particle 
of  genius : — not  even  my  Lord,  the  most 
plausible  of  the  family,  nor  Thomas  Gren- 
ville, the  best  of  them.  Lord  Temple 
would  not  if  he  could,  and  could  not  if  he 
would,  have  written  the  Letters  of  Junius. 


642 


JUNIUS 


Junius,  with  twenty  times  the  ability  of 
Temple,  wanted  his  nobleness  and  gener- 
osity. —  DiLKE,  Charles  Wentworth, 
1853,  Junius,  Papers  of  a  Critic^  vol.  ii, 
p.  219. 

My  own  impression  is,  that  the  ''Letters 
of  Junius"  were  written  by  Sir  Philip 
Francis.  In  a  speech,  which  I  once  heard 
him  deliver,  at  the  Mansion  House,  con- 
cerning the  Partition  of  Poland,  I  had  a 
striking  proof  that  Francis  possessed  no 
ordinary  powers  of  eloquence. — Rogers, 
Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of  Table-Talk, 
ed.  Dyce. 

Wonder  has  been  expressed  at  the 
manner  in  which  the  secret  has  been  kept. 
But  has  it  been  so  closely  kept  ?  May  not 
an  accurate  guess,  or  a  genuine  betrayal, 
have  been  too  hastily  disregarded  ?  Burke 
told  Reynolds  that  he  knew  Junius.  Boyd, 
according  to  Almon,  as  good  as  let  out 
the  secret  to  him.  Lord  Grenville  and  Mr. 
Thomas  Grenville  knew,  or  believed  that 
they  knew,  Junius,  and  declared  that  he  was 
neither  of  the  persons  to  whom  the  letters 
have  been  popularly  ascribed.  The  tradi- 
tion in  the  Woodfall  family  is  decidedly 
anti-Franciscan.  Dr.  Parr  invariably 
stood  out  for  Lloyd.  Rosenhagen  claimed 
the  authorship.  Burke  has  always  been  a 
favourite.  .  .  .  The  name  of  Francis 
was  never  so  much  as  suggested  for  the 
authorship  for  forty  years.  It  is  not 
mentioned  by  Almon,  who,  in  his  edition 
of  1806,  passes  seventeen  claimants  in 
review.  It  only  occurs  incidentally  in 
Woodfa^l's  complete  edition  of  1812,  in 
the  letter  of  ''Veteran,"  March  23,1772, 
publicly  calling  on  D'Oyly  and  Francis  to 
"declare  their  reasons  for  quitting  the 
War  Office,"  to  which  (we  now  know) 
Francis  would  have  been  the  last  to  direct 
public  attention  at  the  time.  This  edition 
revived  inquiry,  and  led  eventually  to  the 
"Junius  Identified"  of  1814.  The  credit 
of  first  starting  the  Franciscan  theory  is 
certainly  due  to  Mr.  Taylor,  but  its  general 
acceptance  to  this  hour  is  owing  to  its 
unhesitating  adoption  and  eager  advocacy 
by  Earl  Stanhope  and  Lord  Macaulay,  who 
agree  in  resting  their  case  on  similarity  of 
handwriting  and  style.— Hayward,  Abra- 
ham, 1867,  More  About  Junius,  Frasefs 
Magazine,  vol.  76,  pp.  809,  810. 

As  to  the  Junius  question  in  general, 
there  is  a  little  bit  of  the  philosophy 
of  horse-racing  which  may  be  usefully 


applied.  A  man  who  is  so  confident  of  his 
horse  that  he  places  him  far  above  any 
other,  may  nevertheless,  and  does,  refuse 
to  give  odds  against  all  the  field :  for  many 
small  adverse  chances  united  make  a  big 
chance  for  one  or  other  of  the  opponents. 
I  suspect  Mr.  Taylor  has  made  it  at  least 
20  to  1  for  Francis  against  any  one  com- 
petitor who  has  been  named :  but  what  the 
odds  may  be  against  the  whole  field  is  more 
diflScult  to  settle.  What  if  the  real  Junius 
should  be  some  person  not  yet  named  ? — 
De  Morgan,  Augustus,  1871,  A  Budget 
of  Paradoxes,  p.  312. 

During  the  whole  of  the  present  century 
the  public  mind  of  England  has  been  con- 
stantly inquiring  by  whom  the  Junius  let- 
ters were  written.  The  claims  of  all  the 
competitors,  with  one  exception,  have  been 
disproved.  However  strong  the  circum- 
stantial evidence  has  borne  at  different 
times  in  favor  of  different  aspirants,  some 
fatal  fact  would  thrust  itself  forward  to 
overthrow  the  claimants  one  by  one,  until 
all  have  dropped  out  of  the  controversy. 
.  .  .  If  Sir  Philip  Francis  were  now 
living,  and  on  trial  for  libelling  the  Duke 
of  Grafton,  and  all  the  facts  and  circum- 
stances that  sixty  years  of  earnest  and 
enlightened  scrutiny  had  developed  had 
been  given  to  an  intelligent  jury,  the 
probabilities  are  that  that  jury  would  be 
unable  to  agree  upon  a  verdict  which 
pronounced  Francis  guilty  of  writing  the 
libel.  No  jury  would  hesitate  to  find  that 
the  libel  itself  was  the  most  scorching 
and  atrocious  to  be  found  in  any  language 
in  the  world's  history. —Weed,  Thurlow, 
1873,  The  Letters  of  Junius,  The  Galaxy, 
vol.  15,  p.  609. 

Probably  no  English  book,  except  the 
plays  of  Shakespeare,  has  been  submitted 
to  such  a  minute  and  exhaustive  criticism 
as  the  "Letters  of  Junius;"  and  although 
the  sufl[iciency  of  the  evidence  tracing 
them  to  Francis  is  still  much  disputed,  it 
may,  I  think,  be  truly  said  that  rival 
candidates  have  almost  disappeared  from 
the  field. — Lecky,  William  Edward 
Hartpole,  1882,  A  History  of  England  in 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  vol.  iii,  ch.x\,p.2Ql. 

England  has  hitherto  had  her  mystery  in 
"Junius;"  but  she  will  enjoy  it  no  more, 
for  there  can  be  no  longer  any  shadow  of 
doubt  that  the  "Letters"  were  written  by 
Sir  Philip  Francis. — Smith,  Goldwin, 
1894,  Junius  Revealed,  Sketch,  May  16. 


JUNIUS 


643 


I  do  not  venture  to  identify  Amyand 
with  Junius;  but  the  facts  which  I  am 
about  to  set  forth  deserve  consideration. 
.  .  .  I  have  written  more  than  once 
that  I  do  not  know  who  Junius  was ;  as 
my  ignorance  still  continues,  I  will  not 
affirm  that  Claudius  Amyand  ever  used 
''Junius"  as  a  signature.  In  six  articles 
on  ''The  Franciscan  Myth,"  the  first  of 
which  appeared  in  the  Athenceum  for 
December  25th,  1897,  I  have  proved  that 
Francis  could  not  be  Junius,  unless  he 
were  the  same  man  who  denounced  George 
III.  and  Lord  Mansfield  as  Junius,  and 
defended  them  in  his  own  person  as 
Britannicus  in  the  Public  Advertiser, 
I  am  unable  to  admit  that  when  Henry 
Sampson  Woodfall,  William  Pitt,  and  Lord 
Grenville  stated,  from  personal  knowledge, 
that  Junius  was  not  Francis,  they  are  un- 
worthy of  belief.  ...  It  certainly 
requires  no  ordinary  courage  or  the  excuse 
of  invincible  ignorance  to  reject  conclu- 
sions at  which  Macaulay,  Mr.  Leslie 
Stephen,  and  Mr.  Lecky  have  arrived ;  yet 
the  critic  who  is  neither  over-weighted  nor 
misled  by  prepossessions  or  forgone  con- 
clusions may  decline  to  admit  the  infalli- 
bility of  any  writer. — Rae,  W.  Fraser, 
1899,  JwTims,  Athenceum,  pt.  i,  pp.  434,435. 

GENERAL 

How  comes  this  Junius  to  have  broke 
through  the  cobwebs  of  the  law,  and  to 
range  uncontrolled,  unpunished,  through 
the  land?  The  myrmidons  of  the  Court 
have  been  long,  and  are  still,  pursuing  him 
in  vain.  They  will  not  spend  their  time 
upon  me,  or  you,  or  you :  no ;  they  disdain 
such  vermin,  when  the  mighty  boar  of  the 
forest,  that  has  broke  througR  all  their 
toils,  is  before  them.  But,  what  will  all 
their  efforts  avail?  No  sooner  has  he 
wounded  one,  than  he  lays  down  another 
dead  at  his  feet.  For  my  part,  when  I  saw 
his  attack  upon  the  King,  I  own  my  blood 
ran  cold.  ...  In  short,  after  carrying 
away  our  Royal  Eagle  in  his  pounces,  and 
dashing  him  against  a  rock,  he  has  laid 
you  prostrate.  King,  Lords,  and  Com- 
mons are  but  the  sport  of  his  fury.  Were 
he  a  member  of  this  house,  what  might 
not  be  expected  from  his  knowledge,  his 
firmness,  and  integrity !  He  would  be  easily 
known  by  his  contempt  of  all  danger,  by 
his  penetration,  by  his  vigour.  Nothing 
would  escape  his  vigilance  and  activity. 
Bad  ministers  could  conceal  nothing  from 


his  sagacity;  nor  could  promises  nor 
threats  induce  him  to  conceal  any  thing 
from  the  public— Burke,  Edmund,  1770, 
Speech  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Nov.  27. 

Junius  bursts  into  notice  with  a  blaze  of 
impudence  which  has  rarely  glared  upon 
the  world  before,  and  drew  the  rabble 
after  him  as  a  monster  makes  a  shov/. 
When  he  had  once  provided  for  his  safety 
by  impenetrable  secrecy,  he  had  nothing 
to  combat  but  truth  and  justice,  enemies 
whom  he  knows  to  be  feeble  in  the  dark. 
Being  then  at  liberty  to  indulge  himself  in 
all  the  immunities  of  invisibility,  out  of 
the  reach  of  danger,  he  has  been  bold; 
out  of  the  reach  of  shame  he  has  been 
confident.  As  a  rhetorician,  he  has  the 
art  of  persuading  when  he  seconded  desire  ; 
as  a  reasoner,  he  has  convinced  those  who 
had  no  doubt  before ;  as  a  moralist,  he  has 
taught  that  virtue  may  disgrace ;  and  as  a 
patriot,  he  has  gratified  the  mean  by  in- 
sults on  the  high.  .  .  .  It  is  not  by  his 
liveliness  of  imagery,  his  pungency  of 
periods,  or  his  fertility  of  allusion,  that 
he  detains  the  cits  of  London  and  the  boors 
of  Middlesex.  Of  style  and  sentiment  they 
take  no  cognizance. — Johnson,  Samuel, 
1771,  Thoughts  on  the  Late  Transactions 
Respecting  Falkland's  Islands. 

1  dedicate  to  you  a  collection  of  letters, 
written  by  one  of  yourselves  for  the  com- 
mon benefit  of  us  all.  They  would  never 
have  grown  to  this  size,  without  your  con- 
tinued encouragement  and  applause.  To 
me  they  originally  owe  nothing,  but  a 
healthy  sanguine  constitution.  Under 
your  care  they  have  thriven.  To  you  they 
are  indebted  for  whatever  strength  or 
beauty  they  possess.  When  kings  and 
ministers  are  forgotten,  when  the  force 
and  direction  of  personal  satire  is  no 
longer  understood,  and  when  measures  are 
only  felt  in  their  remotest  consequences, 
this  book  will,  I  believe,  be  found  to  con- 
tain principles  worthy  to  be  transmitted 
to  posterity.  When  you  leave  the  unim- 
paired, hereditary  freehold  to  your  chil- 
dren, you  do  but  half  your  duty.  Both 
liberty  and  property  are  precarious,  unless 
the  possessors  have  sense  and  spirit 
enough  to  defend  them.  This  is  not  the 
language  of  vanity.  If  I  am  a  vain  man, 
my  gratification  lies  within  a  narrow  circle. 
I  am  the  sole  depositary  of  my  own  secret, 
and  it  shall  perish  with  me. — Junius,  1772, 
Letters,  Dedication  to  the  English  Nation. 


644 


JUNIUS 


The  classic  purity  of  their  language,  the 
exquisite  force  and  perspicuity  of  their 
argument,  the  keen  severity  of  their  re- 
proach, the  extensive  information  they 
evince,  their  fearless  and  decisive  tone, 
and,  above  all,  their  stern  and  steady  at- 
tachment to  the  purest  principles  of  the 
constitution,  acquired  for  them,  with  an 
almost  electric  speed,  a  popularity  which 
no  series  of  letters  have  since  possessed, 
nor,  perhaps,  ever  will;  and,  what  is  of 
far  greater  consequence,  diffused  among 
the  body  of  the  people  a  clearer  knowledge 
of  their  constitutional  rights  than  they 
had  ever  before  attained,  and  animated 
them  with  a  more  determined  spirit  to 
maintain  them  inviolate.  Enveloped  in 
the  cloud  of  a  fictitious  name,  the  writer 
of  these  philippics,  unseen  himself,  beheld 
with  secret  satisfaction  the  vast  influence 
of  his  labours,  and  enjoyed,  though,  as  we 
shall  afterwards  observe,  not  always  with- 
out apprehension,  the  universal  hunt  that 
was  made  to  detect  him  in  his  disguise. 
He  beheld  the  people  extolling  him,  the 
court  execrating  him,  and  ministers  and 
more  than  ministers  trembling  beneath  the 
lash  of  his  invisible  hand. — Good,  John 
Mason,  1812,  Essay  on  Junius  and  His 
Writings. 

It  is  a  signal  testimony  to  the  eminence 
of  the  powers  displayed  in  these  Letters, 
that,  at  the  distance  of  nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury from  their  first  coming  forth — that 
after  a  great  number  of  subsequent 
political  censors  had  each  had  his  share  of 
attention,  and  perhaps  admiration,  and  are 
now  in  a  great  measure  forgotten — and 
that  in  times  like  the  present,  superabound- 
ing  with  strange  events,  and  fiagrant  ex- 
amples of  political  depravity  of  their  own 
— they  should  still  hold  such  a  place  in 
public  estimation,  that  the  appearance  of 
an  edition  enlarged  and  illustrated  from 
the  store  of  materials  left  by  the  original 
publisher,  will  be  regarded  as  an  interest- 
ing event  in  the  course  of  our  literature. 
An  interest  that  has  thus  continued  to 
subsist  in  vigour  after  the  loss  of  all 
temporary  stimulants,  and  that  is  capable 
of  so  lively  an  excitement  at  this  distant 
period,  by  a  circumstance  tending  to  make 
us  a  little  better  acquainted  with  the 
author's  character,  and  to  put  us  in 
more  complete  possession  of  his  writings, 
gives  assurance  that  this  memorable  work 
may  maintain  its  fame  to  an  indefinite 


period,  and  will  go  down  with  that  portion 
of  our  literature,  which,  in  the  language 
of  pride  and  poetry,  we  call  immortal. — 
Foster,  John,  1813,  Junius,  Critical  Es- 
says, ed.  Ryland,  vol.  ii,  p.  72. 

The  author  is  now  considered  as  an  Eng- 
lish classic :  yet,  if  we  reflect  on  his  very 
intemperate  language,  the  virulence  of  his 
abuse,  and  the  unsupported  nature  of  some 
of  the  charges  which  he  has  adduced,  we 
should  rather  be  disposed  to  exclude  him 
from  ordinary  perusal,  as  one  who  would 
mislead  his  admirers.  He  certainly  writes 
with  animation,  frequently  with  elegance, 
generally  with  force  and  perspicuity.  He 
argues  plausibly,  but  does  not  always  im- 
press conviction :  he  evinces  a  knowledge 
of  the  constitution,  though  he  sometimes 
misrepresents  its  principles :  he  is  an  ad- 
vocate for  liberty,  but  occasionally  carries 
it  to  the  verge  of  licentiousness.  A  minis- 
terial author  says,  *'If  w^e  allow  him  only 
his  merit,  where  will  be  his  praise  ?' '  We 
answer,  that  his  praise  will  be  that  of  an 
ingenious  and  able  writer,  and  an  intelli- 
gent politician.  At  the  same  time  he  de- 
serves severe  censure  for  his  seditious 
spirit,  the  foulness  of  his  reproaches,  and 
his  transgression  of  the  bounds  of  truth. 
— CooTE,  Charles,  1823,  Goldsmith's 
History  of  England,  Continuation,  vol.  ni, 
p.  190. 

The  style  of  Junius  is  a  sort  of  metre, 
the  law  of  which  is  a  balance  of  thesis  and 
antithesis.  When  he  gets  out  of  this 
aphorismic  metre  into  a  sentence  of  five  or 
six  lines  long,  nothing  can  exceed  the 
slovenliness  of  the  English.  Horne  Tooke 
and  a  long  sentence  seem  the  only  two 
antagonists  that  were  too  much  for  him. 
Still  the  antithesis  of  Junius  is  a  real 
antithesis  of  images  or  thought,  but  the 
antithesis  of  Johnson  is  rarely  more  than 
verbal. — Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor, 
1833,  Table  Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  July  3,  p.  238. 

The  style  of  this  writer,  it  is  true,  has 
many  faults,  and  grave  ones.  It  has  point 
without  aim,  and  vigour  without  agility. 
Wit  alone  can  long  bear  up  the  shafts  of 
sarcasm ;  and  the  wit  of  Junius  had  only 
one  leg  to  stand  on,  a  stiff  and  swollen 
one.  His  flashy  and  figured  invectives, 
like  court-dresses,  would  fit  half  the  court 
as  well  as  they  fitted  the  person  they  were 
made  for;  if,  indeed,  like  the  prefaces 
of  Sallust  and  Cicero,  they  were  not 
kept  ready  until  the  author  had  found  or 


JUNIUS 


645 


contrived  a  place  for  their  exhibition. — 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1839,  The  Exam- 
iner, June  30 ;  Letters,  ed.  Wheeler,  p.  250. 

No  man  can  read  a  page  of  any  letter 
without  perceiving  that  the  writer  has 
but  one  way  of  handling  every  sub- 
ject, and  that  he  constructs  his  sentences 
with  the  sole  design  of  saying  the  most 
bitter  things  he  can  in  the  most  strik- 
ing way,  without  ever  regarding  in  the 
least  degree  their  being  applicable  or 
inapplicable  to  the  object  of  the  attack. 
The  consequence  is,  that  the  greater  part 
of  this  invective  will  just  suit  one  bad  man 
or  wicked  minister  as  well  as  another.  It  is 
highly  probable  that  whoever  he  may  be, 
he  had  often  attacked  those  with  whom  he 
lived  on  intimate  terms,  or  to  whom  he 
was  under  obligations.  This  alfords  an 
additional  reason  for  his  dying  unrevealed. 
That  he  was  neither  Lord  Asburton,  nor 
any  other  lawyer,  is  proved  by  what  we 
have  said  of  his  gross  ignorance  of  law. 
To  hold  that  he  was  Mr.  Francis  is  libelling 
that  gentlemen's  memory;  and  although 
much  external  evidence  concurs  in  point- 
ing towards  him,  he  certainly  never  wrote 
anything  of  the  same  kind  in  his  own 
character. — Brougham,  Henry  Lord, 
1839-43,  Lives  of  Statesmen  of  the  Time 
of  George  III,  vol.  i,  p.  207. 

The  passage  of  time  has  had  no  very 
favorable  effect  upon  the  reputation  of 
that  writer,  particularly  since  it  has  given 
to  anothefr  and  impartial  generation  the 
opportunity  to  estimate  the  value  of  his 
patriotism,  and  to  weigh  the  motives  of 
his  censures.  It  may  be  doubted,  whether 
the  same  sort  of  papers,  if  written  at  the 
present  day,  would  produce  one  half  of  the 
effect  they  did  when  the  novelty  and  bold- 
ness of  the  manner  contributed  so  large  a 
share  to  their  success. — Adams,  Charles 
Francis,  1842,  The  Elder  Pitt,  North 
American  Review,  vol.  55,  p.  419. 

As  Wilkes  was  one  of  the  worst  speci- 
mens of  a  popular  leader,  so  was  Junius  of 
a  popular  political  writer.  One  is  ashamed 
to  think  of  the  celebrity  so  long  enjoyed 
by  a  publication  so  worthless.  No  great 
question  of  principle  is  discussed  in  it ;  it 
is  remarkable  that  on  the  subject  of  the 
impressment  of  seamen,  which  is  a  real 
evil  of  the  most  serious  kind,  and  allowed 
to  be  so  even  by  those  who  do  not  believe 
that  it  is  altogether  remediable,  Junius 
strongly  defends  the  existing  practice. 


All  the  favourite  topics  of  his  letters  are 
purely  personal  or  particular ;  his  appeals 
are  never  to  the  best  part  of  our  nature, 
often  to  the  vilest.  If  I  wished  to  prej- 
udice a  good  man  against  popular  princi- 
ples, I  could  not  do  better  than  to  put  into 
his  hands  the  letters  of  Junius. — Arnold, 
Thomas,  1842,  Introductory  Lectures  on 
Modern  History,  p.  333. 

At  last ''the  great  boar  of  the  forest,'* 
who  had  gored  the  King  and  almost  all  his 
Court,  and  seemed  to  be  more  formidable 
than  any  "blatant  beast,"  was  conquered, 
—not  by  the  spear  of  a  knight-errant,  but 
by  a  little  provender  held  out  to  him,  and  he 
was  sent  to  whet  his  tusks  in  a  distant  land. 
This  certainly  was  a  very  great  deliverance 
for  Lord  Mansfield,  who  had  long  been 
afraid  at  breakfast  to  look  into  the  Daily 
Advertiser,  less  he  should  find  in  it  some 
new  accusation,  which  he  could  neither 
passively  submit  to  nor  resent  without  dis- 
credit; and  although  he  might  call  the 
mixture  of  bad  law  and  tumid  language 
poured  out  upon  him  ribaldry  it  had  an 
evident  effect  in  encouraging  his  oppo- 
nents in  parliament,  and  in  causing  shakes 
of  the  head,  shrugs  of  the  shoulders, 
smiles  and  whispers  in  private  society, 
which  could  not  escape  his  notice. — 
Campbell,  John  Lord,  1849,  Lives  of  the 
Chief  Justices  of  England,  vol.  ii,  p.  492. 

That  Junius  can  only  be  described  with 
truth  as  a  political  adventurer  there  is  no 
doubt.  It  is  plain  enough  that  his  own 
personal  success  in  life  was  involved  in 
that  of  the  party  whose  cause  he  adopted, 
or,  to  speak  still  more  accurately,  in  the 
fall  of  the  party  which  he  attacked.  And 
it  is  equally  true  that  he  was  utterly  un- 
scrupulous in  his  use  of  means ;  that  his 
sincerity,  even  when  he  was  sincere,  was 
apt  to  assume  the  form  of  the  most  ignoble 
rancor,  and  that  no  ties  of  friendship,  or 
party,  or  connection,  seem  to  have  re- 
strained his  virulence.  All  this  is  but  too 
deducible  from  the  published  anonymous 
writings  only.  .  .  .  But  when  all  this 
has  been  said,  there  remains  a  residue  of 
a  higher  order,  which  must  in  justice  to 
him  be  fairly  weighed  in  the  balance. 
Notwithstanding  all  his  sins  against 
justice  and  truth,  Junius  was  assuredly 
actuated  at  bottom  by  a  strong  and 
ardent  public  spirit.  He  was  throughout 
a  genuine  lover  of  his  country.  He  was 
earnest  in  behalf  of  her  honor  and  of  her 


646 


JUNIUS 


liberties.  He  saw  clearly  that  her  road 
to  the  accomplishment  of  a  higher  destiny 
lay  through  the  maintenance  of  that  honor 
and  the  extension  of  those  liberties.  He 
hated  with  an  honest  hatred  the  meanness 
of  principle  and  venality  of  conduct  which 
characterized  but  too  strongly  the  govern- 
ments against  which  he  fought,  and  tar- 
nished the  political  genius  of  his  time. 
And  very  remarkable  v/as  the  success 
which  attended  his  struggle  against  them. 
Great  indeed  were  the  practical  victories 
achieved  by  the  efforts  of  this  nameless, 
obscure  agitator.  Freedom  of  the  press 
and  the  personal  freedom  of  the  subject 
owe  probably  more  to  the  writings  of 
Junius  than  to  the  eloquence  of  Chatham 
or  Burke,  the  law  of  Camden  and  Dunning. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  after  the 
appearance  of  those  writings,  a  new  tone 
on  these  great  subjects  is  found  to  prevail 
in  our  political  literature. — Parkes,  J., 
AND  Merivale,  H.,  1852-67,  Memoirs  of 
Sir  Philip  Francis, 

Sir  Philip  Francis,  who,  under  his  early 
disguise  of  Junius,  had  such  a  success  as 
no  writer  of  libels  ever  will  have  again. 
It  is  our  private  opinion  that  this  success 
rested  upon  a  great  delusion  which  has 
never  been  exposed.  The  general  belief  is 
that  Junius  was  read  for  his  elegance ;  we 
believe  no  such  thing.  The  pen  of  an 
angel  would  not,  upon  such  a  theme  as 
personal  politics,  have  upheld  the  interest 
attached  to  Junius,  had  there  been  no  other 
cause  in  co-operation.  Language,  after 
all,  is  a  limited  instrument ;  and  it  must 
be  remembered  that  Junius,  by  the  ex- 
treme narrowness  of  his  range,  which  went 
entirely  upon  matters  of  fact  and  personal 
interests,  still  further  limited  the  compass 
of  that  limited  instrument.  For  it  is  only 
in  the  expression  and  management  of  gen- 
eral ideas  that  any  room  arises  for  con- 
spicuous elegance.  The  real  truth  is  this : 
the  interest  in  Junius  travelled  down- 
wards ;  he  was  read  in  the  lower  ranks, 
because  in  London  it  speedily  became 
known  that  he  was  read  with  peculiar  in- 
terest in  the  highest.  This  was  already  a 
marvel ;  for  newspaper  patriots,  under  the 
signatures  of  Publicola,  Brutus,  and  so 
forth,  had  become  a  jest  and  a  byword  to 
the  real  practical  statesman  ;  and  any  man 
at  leisure  to  write  for  so  disinterested  a 
purpose  as ''his  country's  good"  was  pre- 
sumed of  course  to  write  in  a  garret.  But 


here  for  the  first  time  a  pretended  patriot, 
a  Junius  Brutus,  was  read  even  by  states- 
men, and  read  with  agitation.  Is  any  man 
simple  enough  to  believe  that  such  a  con- 
tagion could  extend  to  cabinet  ministers 
and  official  persons  overladen  with  public 
business  on  so  feeble  an  excitement  as  a 
little  reputation  in  the  art  of  constructing 
sentences  with  elegance, — an  elegance 
which,  after  all,  excluded  eloquence  and 
every  other  positive  quality  of  excellence  ? 
That  this  can  have  been  believed  shows  the 
readiness  with  which  men  swallow  marvels. 
The  real  secret  was  this : — Junius  was  read 
with  the  profoundest  interest  by  members 
of  the  cabinet,  who  would  not  have  paid 
half-a-crown  for  all  the  wit  and  elegance 
of  this  world,  simply  because  it  was  most 
evident  that  some  traitor  was  amongst 
them,  and  that,  either  directly  by  one  of 
themselves,  or  through  some  abuse  of  his 
confidence  by  a  servant,  the  secrets  of 
office  were  betrayed.  —  De  Quincey, 
Thomas,  1859,  Rhetoric,  Collected  Writ- 
ings, ed.  Masson,  vol.  X,  p.  117. 

Attacked  the  Government  in  letters 
which,  rancorous  and  unscrupulous  as  was 
their  tone,  gave  a  new  power  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  Press  by  their  clearness  and 
terseness  of  statement,  the  finish  of  their 
style,  and  the  terrible  vigor  of  their  in- 
vective.—Green,  John  Richard,  1874, 
A  Short  History  of  the  English  People, 
p.  738. 

Though  containing  occasional  passages 
of  weighty  invective  and  of  brilliant  epi- 
gram, these  early  letters  are,  I  think,  of 
very  little  value,  and  it  was  only  by  slow 
degrees  that  the  writer  learnt  the  secret 
of  true  dignity  of  style,  and  exchanged  the 
tone  of  simple  scurrility  for  that  measured 
malignity  of  slander  in  which  he  after- 
wards excelled.  ...  As  a  popular 
political  reasoner  he  was  truly  admirable. 
He  introduced,  indeed,  little  or  nothing 
new  or  original  into  controversy,  but  he 
possessed  to  supreme  perfection  the  art  of 
giving  the  arguments  on  his  side  their 
simplest,  clearest,  and  strongest  expres- 
sion ;  disengaging  them  from  all  extraneous 
matter,  making  them  transparently  evident 
to  the  most  cursory  reader.  In  this,  as 
in  most  other  respects,  he  is  a  curious 
contrast  to  Burke,  who  is  always  re- 
dundant, and  who  delights  in  episodes, 
illustrations,  ramifications,  general  reflec- 
tions, various  lights,  remote  and  indirect 


JUNIUS— WOLCOT 


647 


consequences.  Junius  never  for  a  moment 
loses  sight  of  the  immediate  issue,  and  he 
flies  swift  and  direct  as  an  arrow  to  its 
heart.  The  rapid  march  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  is  apparent  in  his  style, 
and  it  is  admirably  suited  for  a  class 
of  literature  which,  if  it  impresses  at 
all,  must  impress  at  a  glance.  He  pos- 
sessed the  easy  air  of  good  society, 
and  his  letters,  if  not  those  of  a  great 
statesman,  are  at  least  unquestionably 
those  of  a  man  who  had  a  real  and  experi- 
mental knowledge  of  public  business,  who 
had  mixed  with  active  politicians,  who 
knew  the  anecdotes  which  circulated  in 
political  society.  ...  A  reader  who  knows 
Junius  as  we  know  him  now,  must  indeed 
have  an  extraordinary  estimate  of  the  value 
of  a  brilliant  style  if  he  can  regard  him 
with  the  smallest  respect.  He  wisely  at- 
tacked for  the  most  part  men  whose  rank 
and  position  prevented  them  from  descend- 
ing into  the  arena,  and  who  were  at  th« 
same  time  intensely  and  often  deservedly 
unpopular.  His  encounter  with  Horne  was 
the  one  instance  in  which  he  met  a  really 
able  and  practised  writer;  and  although 
the  character  of  Horne  was  a  very  vulner- 
able one,  he  appears  to  me  to  have  had  in 
this  controversy  a  great  advantage  over 
his  opponent. — Lecky,  William  Edward 
Hartpole,  1882,  A  History  of  England  in 
the  Eighteenth  Century^  vol.  ill,  ch.  xi,  pp. 
253,  257,  264. 

The  Letters  of  Junius,"  with  which 
he  is  credited,  are  perhaps  more  famous 
than  excellent,  but  still  excellent. — ■ 
Saintsbury,  George,  1886,  Specimens  of 
English  Prose  Style,  p.  242. 

If  Junius  could  have  exercised  a  greater 
command  of  his  feelings,  he  might  have 
provided  a  still  better  feast  of  malignity. 


This  he  could  have  done  by  well-contrived 
admissions,  palliations  and  excuses;  and 
by  keeping  within  the  ordinary  limits  of 
human  nature  in  his  attributing  of  vices. 
In  that  case,  we  might  have  had  no  com- 
punctions in  going  along  with  him ;  our 
pleasure  of  malignity  would  have  been  un- 
alloyed.—Bain,  Alexander,  1888,  Eng- 
lish Composition  and  Rhetoric,  Part  Sec- 
ond, p.  251. 

The  literary  value  of  Junius  seems  to 
have  been  absurdly  overrated.  The  letters 
are  vigorous,  of  course,  but  their  malignity 
is  atoned  for  or  relieved  by  no  philosoph- 
ical enthusiasm,  while  the  indignation 
itself  appears  to  be  personal  first  and 
patriotic  afterwards.  It  is  an  instance  of 
the  difficulty  which  attends  contemporary 
criticism  that  Johnson,  so  eminent  a  judge 
of  language,  thought  that  Junius  was 
Burke.  To  us  it  seems  amazing  that  brass 
should  thus  be  mistaken  for  gold.  At  the 
same  time  the  Letters  have  "polish,"  a 
quality  for  which  Francis  preserved  an 
exaggerated  affection;  the  balance  and 
modulation  of  their  merciless  sentences 
may  still  please  the  ear.— GossE,  Edmund, 
1888,  A  History  of  Eighteenth  Century 
Literature,  p.  363. 

They  are  the  work  of  a  man  who  was  a 
practical  politician  first  and  a  man  of 
letters  afterwards,  and  his  writings  are 
distinguished  by  a  political  sagacity  and 
precision  of  criticism  which  only  a  close 
acquaintance  with  the  practice  of  politics 
can  give.  His  motives  indeed  were  not  of 
a  high  order;  personal  spite  entered 
largely  into  them,  and  many  of  his  letters 
were  written  merely  to  revenge  real  or 
fancied  wrongs. —Pollard,  A.  F.,  1897, 
ed..  Political  Pamphlets,  Introduction, 
p.  22. 


John  Wolcot 

Peter  Pindar 
1738-1819 

Born,  at  Dodbrooke,  Devonshire,  1738 ;  baptized,  9  May.  Educated  at  Kingsbridge 
Free  School ;  at  Bodmin  Grammar  School,  and  in  France.  For  seven  years  assistant 
to  his  uncle,  an  apothecary  in  practice  in  Cornwall.  M.  D.,  Aberdeen,  1767.  In 
Jamaica,  practising  as  surgeon  and  physician,  1767-69.  Returned  to  England,  1769. 
Ordained  Deacon  and  Priest,  1769 ;  returned  to  Jamaica.  Vicar  of  Vere,  Jamaica, 
1772.  Returned  to  England,  Dec.  1772.  Practised  medicine  in  Truro,  1773-79. 
Settled  in  London,  1781.  Prolific  writer  of  satires,  under  pseudonym  Peter  Pindar." 
Died,  in  London,  14  Jan.  1819.  Buried  in  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden.  Works:  ''Per- 
sian Love  Elegies,"  1773;  [the  following  all  pubd.  under  pseud.  ''Peter  Pindar:'']  "A 


648 


JOHN  WOLCOT 


Poetical  .  .  .  Epistle  to  the  Reviewers,"  1778;  Poems  on  various  Subjects, " 
1778;  ''Lyric  Odes  to  the  Royal  Academicians,"  1782;  "Lyric  Odes  for  the  Year," 
1785;  ''The  Louisad,"  1785-95;  "Farewell  Odes,"  1786;  "APoetical  and  Congratu- 
latory Epistle  to  James Boswell,"  1786;  "Bozzy  and  Piozzi,"  1786;  "Ode  upon  Ode," 
1787;  "An  Apologetic  Postscript  to  'Ode upon  Ode,'  "  1787;  "Congratulatory Epistle 
to  Peter  Pindar, "  1787 ;  "  Instructions  to  a  Celebrated  Laureat, "  1787 ;  "  Brother  Peter 
to  Brother  Tom,"  1788;  "Peter's  Pension,"  1788;  "Sir  Joseph  Banks  and  the  Emperor 
of  Morocco,"  1788;  "Epistle  to  his  pretended  Cousin  Peter,"  1788;  "The  King's 
Ode,"(anon.),  1788;  "Peter's  Prophecy,"  1788;  "Lyric  Odestotlie  Academicians," 
1789;  "Subjects  for  Painters,"  1789;  "A  Poetical  Epistle  to  a  Falling  Minister, " 
1789;  "Expostulatory  Odes,"  1789;  "Works"  (2  vols.),  1789-92;  "A  Benevolent 
Epistle  to  Sylvanus  Urban,"  1790;  "Advice  to  the  Future  Laureat,"  1790;  "Letter 
to  the  Most  Insolent  Man  alive, "  1790 ;  "Complimentary  Epistle  to  James  Bruce,  1790 ; 
"The  Rights  of  Kings,"  1791;  "Odes  to  Mr.  Paine,"  1791;  "The  Remonstrance," 
1791;  "A  Commiserating  Epistle  to  G.  Lowther, "  1791 ;  "More  Money,"  1792;  "The 
Tears  of  St.  Margaret,"  1792;  "Odes  of  Importance,"  1792;  "Odes  to  Kien  Long," 
1792 ;  "  A  Pair  of  Lvric  Epistles, "  1792 ;  "  A  Poetical  .  .  .  Epistle  to  the  Pope, " 
1793;  "Pathetic  Odes,"  1794;  "Pindariana,"  1794;  "Celebration;  or,  the  Academic 
Procession  to  St.  James's,"  1794 ;  "Works"  (4  vols.),  1794-96 ;  "Hair-Powder,"  1795 ; 
^'The  Convention  Bill,"  1795;  "The  Cap,"  1795;  "The  Royal  Visit  to  Exeter,"  1795; 
"Liberty's  Last  Squeak,"  1795;  "The  Royal  Tom,"  1795;  "An  Admirable  Satire  on 
Burke's  Defence  of  his  Pension,"  1796;  "One  Thousand,  Seven  Hundred,  and  Ninety- 
six"  1797;  "An  Ode  to  the  Livery  of  London,"  1797;  "Tales  of  the  Hoy"  [1798]; 
"Nil  Admirari,"  1799;  "Lord  Auckland's  Triumph,"  1800;  "Out  at  Last,"  1801; 
"Odes  to  Inns  and  Outs,"  1801;  "A  Poetical  Epistle  to  Benjamin,  Count  Rumford," 
1801;  "Tears  and  Smiles,"  1801;  "The  Island  of  Innocence,"  1802;  "Pitt  and  his 
Statute,"  1802;  "The  Middlesex  Election,"  1802;  "The  Horrors  of  Bribery,"  1802; 
"Great  Cry  and  Little  Wool,"  1804;  "An  Instructive  Epistle  to  the  Lord  Mayor," 
1804;  "Tristia,"1806;  "One  More  Peep  at  the  Royal  Academy, "  1808;  "The  Fall  of 
Portugal, "1808;  "Works"  (4  vols.),  1809;  "Carlton  House  Fete,"  1811;  "Works" 
(5  vols.),  1812;  "An  Address  to  be  spoken  at  the  Opening  of  Drury-Lane  Theatre" 
(anon.),  1813;  "Royalty  Fog-bound,"  1814;  "The  Regent  and  the  King,"  1814; 
"Midnight  Dreams,"  1814;  "Tom  Halliard,"  [1815?J.  He  edited:  Pilkington's 
"Dictionary  of  Painters,"  1799;  "The  Beauties  of  English  Poetry,"  1804.— Sharp, 
R.  Farquh ARSON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  302. 

PERSONAL  And  dare  the  utmost  of  thy  tongue  and  hand ; 

The  concealed  author  of ' '  Lyrick  Odes, ' '  Prepared  each  threat  to  baffle  or  to  spurn, 
by  Peter  Pindar,  Esquire,  is  one  Woolcot,  ^^^^  ^^^^  with  tenfold  vigour  to  return, 
a  clergyman,  who  abjured  the  gown,  and  William,  1800,  Epistle  to 

now  lives  in  Great  Queen  Street,  Lincoln's    ^^^^^  ^mdar. 

Inn  Fields,  under  the  character  of  a  Dined  with  Thelwall.  A  large  party, 
physician.  He  is  likewise  author  of  a  The  man  whom  we  went  to  see,  and,  if  we 
scurrilous  epistle  lately  published,  ad-  could,  admire,  was  Dr.  Wolcott,  better 
dressed  to  James  Boswell,  Esq.,  March  known  as  Peter  Pindar.  He  talked  about 
4th,  1786.  He  is  noted  for  impudence,  the  artists,  said  that  West  could  paint 
lewdness,  and  almost  every  species  of  neither  ideal  beauty  nor  from  nature, 
profligacy.  —  Malone,  Edmond,  1783,  called  Opie  the  Michael  Angelo  of  old  age, 
Maloniana,  ed.  Prior,  p.  364.  complained  of  the  ingratitude  of  certain 

A  bloated  mass,  a  gross,  blood -boltered  clod,  artists  who  owed  everything  to  himself, 
A  foe  to  man,  a  renegade  from  God,  spoke  contemptuously  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 

From  noxious  childhood  to  pernicious  age,  who,  he  said,  owed  his  popularity  to  hard 
Separate  to  infamy  in  every  stage.  .  .  .  ^ames.  He  also  declaimed  against  rhyme 
Come,  then,  all  filth  all  venom,  as  thou  art,  general,  which  he  said  was  fit  only  for 
Rage  m  tliy  eye,  and  rancour  m  thy  heart ;        hiir le^nue  A^  Peter  Pindar  was 

Come  with  thy  boasted  arms,  spite,  malice,      burlesque.    .    .    .    As  1  eter  1  maar  \\  as 
lies,  blmd,  I  was  requested  to  help  him  to  his 

Smut,  scandal,  execrations,  blasphemies:  wine,  which  was  in  a  separate  pint  bottle, 
I  brave  them  all!  Lo,  here  I  fix  my  stand,         and  was  not  wine  at  all,  but  brandy.  .  .  . 


JOHN  WOLCOT 


649 


I  referred  to  his  own  writings.  He  said 
he  recollected  them  with  no  pleasure. 
"Satire  is  a  bad  trade." — Robinson, 
Henry  Crabb,  1811,  Diary,  May  9,  pp. 
210,  211. 

He  always  sat  in  a  room  facing  the 
south.  Behind  the  door  stood  a  square 
piano-forte,  on  which  there  generally  lay 
his  favourite  Cremona  violin ;  on  the  left, 
a  mahogany  table  with  writing  materials. 
Everything  was  in  perfect  order.  .  .  . 
Facing  him,  over  the  mantlepiece,  hung  a 
fine  landscape  by  Richard  Wilson.  .  .  . 
In  writing,  except  a  few  lines  haphazard, 
the  Doctor  was  obliged  to  employ  an 
amanuensis.  Of  all  his  acquisitions,  music 
to  him  remained  alone  unaltered.  .  .  . 
He  even  composed  light  airs  for  amuse- 
ment. —  Redding,  Cyrus,  1856,  Fifty 
Fears'  Recollections. 

He  was  as  little  fitted  for  a  doctor  of 
medicine  as  for  a  doctor  of  divinity.  He 
could  better  epigrammatize  than  pre- 
scribe, preferred  ridiculing  to  healing, 
and  had  a  keener  eye  for  mental  or 
personal  obliquities  than  for  corporal  in- 
firmities. .  .  .  Woicot's  vanity  is 
irrepressible.  Peter  is  always  the  promi- 
nent picture.  He  writes  to  everybody 
about  himself,  and  he  is  the  central  orb 
round  which  kings  and  subjects,  and  indeed 
the  whole  creation,  move.  His  pension, 
his  prophecy,  his  paintings,  his  praise,  his 
censure,  and  his  criticisms  are  to  annihilate 
all  other  topics.  The  desire  to  silence 
such  a  critic  was  quite  natural.  Nobody 
likes  to  be  laughed  at,  and  it  is  not  all 
laughter,  for  he  sometimes  uses  a  whip  of 
scorpions,  and  lashes  sore  places  with  the 
delight  of  a  Mephistopheles.  That  in 
those  libel-hunting  days  he  should  have 
escaped  unscathed  can  only  be  attributed 
to  the  fear  of  giving  wider  circulation  to 
his  incisive  jokes,  many  of  which  remain 
indelibly  associated  with  the  blunderings 
and  stutterings  of  the  ''Good  King 
George."— Bo  wring,  Sir  John,  1872, 
Autobiographical  Recollections,  pp.  360,363. 

Wolcot  was  buried  in  the  Church  of  St. 
Paul,  Covent  Garden,  at  his  own  request 
that  he  might  ''lie  as  near  as  possible  to 
the  bones  of  old  Hudibras  Butler."  His 
grave  is  believed  to  be  under  the  floor  of 
the  vestry-room ;  but  there  is  no  tablet  to 
his  memory. — Hutton,  Laurence,  1885, 
Literary  Landmarks  of  London,  p.  321. 

In  appearance  Wolcot  was  "a  thick  squat 


man  with  a  large  dark  and  flat  face,  and 

no  speculation  in  his  eye. "  He  possessed 
considerable  accomplishments,  being  a  fair 
artist  and  good  musician,  and,  despite  the 
character  of  his  compositions,  his  friends 
described  him  as  of  a  "kind  and  hearty 
disposition. ' '  He  was  probably  influenced 
in  his  writings  by  no  real  animosity 
towards  royalty,  and  himself  confessed 
that  "the  king  had  been  a  good  subject 
to  him,  and  he  a  bad  one  to  the  king." — 
Carr,  William,  1900,  Dictionary  of  Na- 
tional Biography,  vol.  LXli,  p.  292. 

GENERAL 

There  is  an  obscure  person,  stiling  him- 
self Peter  Pindar,  of  whom  I  shall  say  a 
few  words.  This  man  certainly  possesses 
a  mind  by  no  means  uninformed,  and  a 
species  of  humour ;  but  it  is  exhausted  by 
a  repetition  of  the  same  manner,  and  nearly 
the  same  ideas,  even  to  disgust.  He  has 
the  power  of  rhyming  ludicrously,  and  is 
sometimes  even  gifted  with  poetry;  and 
finally,  he  is  puffed  up  with  a  vanity  and 
self-conceited  importance,  almost  without 
a  parallel.  This  obscure  man  has  con- 
trived, by  these  qualifications,  to  thrust 
himself  upon  the  publick  notice,  and 
become  the  scorn  of  every  man  of  char- 
acter and  of  virtue.  Such  is  the  blas- 
phemy, such  is  the  impiety,  the  obscenity, 
the  impudence  and  the  contempt  of  all 
decent  respect,  which  pervade  his  numer- 
ous pamphlets  in  verse,  that  the  reader  is 
ill  repaid  by  the  lively  sallies  of  humour 
which  frequently  animate  this  mass  of 
crudities.  I  form  my  judgment  from  his 
works,  and  not  from  any  acquaintance 
whatever  with  the  man.  .  .  .  Posterity 
(if  it  can  be  supposed  that  such  trash 
should  exist)  will  be  astonished,  that  the 
present  age  could  look  with  patience 
on  such  malignant  ribaldry. — Mathias, 
Thomas  James,  1794-96,  The  Pursuits  of 
Literature,  pp.  51,  52. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  I  admire 
and  despise  Peter ;  he  is  every  way  origi- 
nal, and  most  original  in  this  respect,  that 
I  know  not  that  ever  any  other  object  at 
once  excited  my  contempt  and  admiration. 
His  humour  is  most  peculiar,  most  un- 
afltected,  most  irresistible.  Yet,  for  what 
end  Providence  intrusted  a  weapon  so 
dangerous  in  the  hands  of  one  who  avows 
his  disregard  of  everything  sacred  and 
venerable,  is  very  difficult  for  us  to  con- 
jecture.   I  am  the  more  fully  convinced 


650 


JOHN  WOLCOT 


of  the  bad  tendency  of  his  writings,  from 
the  amusement  I  derive  from  them,  fore- 
armed as  I  am  by  a  disgust  at  his  want 
of  principle  and  decency.  *'Bozzy  and 
Piozzi,"  however,  is  above  praise  and  be- 
yond censure :  there  the  satire  is  so  just, 
so  pointed,  so  characteristic,  that  one 
can  laugh  without  self-reproach.  The 
"Lousiad,"  however,  I  regard  with  a 
mixture  of  contempt  and  disgust. — Grant, 
Anne,  1802,  To  Miss  Dunbar,  May  4 ;  Let- 
ters from  the  Mountains,  ed.  Grant,  vol.  II. 

The  most  unsparing  calumniator  of  his 
time. — Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1827,  Diary, 
Jan.  17,  Memoirs,  ed.  Lockhart,  ch.  Ixxiii. 

There  are  a  few  fables  of  Peter  Pindar 
in  the  exact  style  of  La  Fontaine,  and  I 
think  them  among  the  best  in  the  language. 
— Adams,  John  Quincy,  1829,  Memoirs, 
vol.  8,  p.  133. 

Wolcot  had  an  eye  for  little  that  was 
grave  in  life,  except  the  face-makings  of 
absurdity  and  pretension;  but  these  he 
could  mimic  admirably,  putting  on  at  one 
and  the  same  time  their  most  nonchalant 
and  matter-of-course  airs,  while  he  fetched 
out  into  his  countenance  the  secret  non- 
sense. He  echoes  their  words,  with  some 
little  comment  of  approval,  or  change  in 
their  position;  some  classical  inversion, 
or  exaltation,  which  exposes  the  preten- 
sion in  the  very  act  of  admitting  it,  and  has 
an  irresistibly  ludicrous  effect. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  1846,  Wit  and  Humour,  p. 

Dr.  Wolcot  was  certainly  one  of  the 
most  original  poets  England  has  produced ; 
his  production  displaying  not  merely  wit 
and  smartness,  but  a  profound  knowledge 
of  the  world  and  of  the  human  heart, 
combined  with  a  sound  and  cultivated  un- 
derstanding. His  serious  poems  evince 
the  same  command  of  language  and 
originality  of  ideas  as  are  displayed  in  his 
satires,  though  he  excelled  in  the  latter. — 
Cleveland,  Charles  D.,  1853,  English 
Literature  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  p.lll. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  do  not  prefer  Wol- 
cot (Peter  Pindar)  to  Churchill. — Rogers, 
Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of  Tahle-Talk. 

The  most  voluminous,  and  one  of  the 
best,  of  the  humourous  poets  who  have 
written  in  the  English  language. — Par- 
ton,  James,  1856,  ed..  The  Humorous 
Poetry  of  the  English  Language,  p.  687. 

Wolcot  was  equal  to  Churchill  as  a 
satirist,  as  ready  and  versatile  in  his 
powers,  and  possessed  of  a  quick  sense  of 


the  ludicrous,  as  well  as  a  rich  vein  of 
fancy  and  humour.  Some  of  his  songs  and 
serious  effusions  are  tender  and  pleasing ; 
but  he  could  not  write  long  without  sliding 
into  the  ludicrous  and  burlesque.  His 
critical  acuteness  is  evinced  in  his  "Odes 
to  the  Royal  Academicians,''  in  various 
passages  scattered  throughout  his  works ; 
while  his  ease  and  felicity,  both  of  expres- 
sion and  illustration,  are  remarkable. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of 
English  Literature,  ed.  Carruthers. 

At  this  distance  the  fun  and  sport  and 
spontaneous  overflowing  laughter  of  the 
satirist,  and  the  perfect  and  laughable 
distinctness  of  the  figure  he  sets  before 
us,  are  far  more  conspicuous  than  any 
political  mischief  that  could  have  been  in 
them.  The  story  of  the  Dumpling,  over 
which  the  inquisitive  king  puzzled  his 
brains  to  know  how  the  apples  got  into  it, 
and  the  visit  of  his  Majesty  to  Whitbread's 
brewery,  are  still  as  amusing  as  when  they 
were  written ;  and  few  of  the  personages 
in  grave  historical  biography  stand  out 
with  half  the  force  which  characterises 
this  careless  lighthearted  picture,  in  which 
the  fun  is  so  much  more  prominent  than 
the  satire. — Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W., 
1882,  The  Literary  History  of  England, 
XVnith—XIXth  Century,  vol.  ii,  p.  184. 

Neither  Charles  the  Second  at  the  hands 
of  Marvell,  nor  George  the  Fourth  at  the 
hands  of  Moore,  received  anything  like  the 
steady  fire  of  lampoon  which  Wolcot  for 
years  poured  upon  the  most  harmless  and 
respectable  of  English  monarchs.  George 
the  Third  had  indeed  no  vices, — unless  a 
certain  parsimony  may  be  dignified  by  that 
name, — but  he  had  many  foibles  of  the 
kind  that  is  more  useful  to  the  satirist 
than  even  vice.  Wolcot's  extreme  coarse- 
ness, his  triviality  of  subject,  and  a 
vulgarity  of  thought  which  is  quite  a 
difl^erent  thing  from  either,  are  undeniable. 
But  ''The  Lousiad"  (a  perfect  triumph  of 
cleverness  expended  on  what  the  Greeks 
called  rhyparography),  the  famous  pieces 
on  George  and  the  Apple  Dumplings  and 
on  the  King's  visit  to  Whitbread's  Brew- 
ery, with  scores  of  other  things  of  the 
same  kind  (the  best  of  all,  perhaps,  being 
the  record  of  the  Devonshire  Progress), 
exhibit  incredible  felicity  and  fertility 
in  the  lower  kinds  of  saty:e. — Saintsbury, 
George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  p.  22. 


651 


William  Hayley 

1745-1820 

The  friend  and  biographer  of  Cowper,  and  grandson  of  William  Hayley,  dean  of 
Chichester,  was  born  in  that  city  on  the  9th  November,  1745.  .  .  .  After  some 
years'  private  tuition  he  pursued  his  studies  at  Eton  and  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge. In  1766  he  procured  a  certificate  of  admission  to  the  Middle  Temple,  London, 
but  a  short  trial  of  legal  studies  was  sufficient  to  dissipate  the  unexperienced  prefer- 
ence which  he  had  cherished  for  the  profession  of  law.  After  his  marriage  in  1769, 
he  stayed  for  some  years  chiefly  in  London,  but  in  1774  he  retired  to  his  patrimonial 
estate  of  Eartham  in  Sussex,  resolved  to  spend  the  remainder  of  his  days  in  rural  quiet, 
with  only  such  an  amount  of  literary  activity  as  might  defy  ennui  and  give  a  zest  to 
life.  Hayley  made  more  than  one  attempt  to  succeed  as  a  dramatic  author,  but  first 
won  fame  by  his  poetical  "Essays  on  Painting,"  "History  and  Epic  Poetry,"  and  by  his 
poem  the  "Triumph  of  Temper."  ...  On  the  death  of  Warton,  Hayley  was 
offered  the  laureateship,  but  declined  it.  In  1792  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  the 
poet  Cowper ;  and  this  acquaintance  ripened  into  a  friendship  which  remained  unbroken 
until  Cowper' s  death  in  1800.  This  bereavement  was  separated  by  only  a  week  from 
that  caused  by  the  death  of  Hayley's  natural  son  Thomas  Alphonso,  who  had  given 
great  promise  of  excellence  as  a  sculptor ;  and,  shrinking  from  the  associations  now 
connected  with  Eartham,  Hayley  retired  to  what  he  called  a  "marine  hermitage," 
which  he  had  built  at  Feltham,  and  there  resided  till  his  death,  November  20,  1820. 
Besides  the  "life  of  Cowper,"  published  in  1803,  Hayley  was  the  author  of  a  number 
of  works  in  prose,  which  were  not,  however,  so  successful  as  his  early  poetical  pro- 
ductions. .  .  .  The  "Memoirs  of  Hayley,"  2  vols.,  for  writing  which,  to  be  pub- 
lished posthumously,  he  received  a  considerable  allowance  during  the  last  twelve  years 
of  his  life,  appeared  in  1823. — Baynes,  Thomas  Spencer,  ed.,  1880,  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  Ninth  edition,  vol.  xi,  p.  484. 


PERSONAL 

He  was  considerably  above  the  middle 
stature,  had  a  countenance  remarkably 
expressive  of  intellect  and  feeling,  and  a 
commanding  air  and  deportment  that  re- 
minded the  beholder  rather  of  a  military 
oflScer,  than  of  the  character  he  assumes 
in  the  close  of  his  epistolary  addresses  (he 
used  to  sign  himself  the  Hermit).  The 
deplorable  infirmity,  however,  of  his  early 
years,  had  left  a  perceptible  lameness, 
which  attended  him  through  life,  and  in- 
duced a  necessity  of  adventitious  aid, 
towards  procuring  him  the  advantage  of  a 
tolerably  even  walk.  As  to  his  personal 
qualities,  of  a  higher  order,  these  were 
cheerfulness  and  sympathy  in  a  very 
eminent  degree ;  so  eminent,  indeed,  that 
as  no  afflictions  of  his  own  could  divest 
him  of  the  former,  so  neither  could  the 
afflictions  of  others  find  him  destitute  of 
the  latter.  His  temper  also  was  singularly 
sweet  and  amiable,  being  not  only  free 
from  ebullitions  of  anger,  but  from  all 
those  minor  defects  which  it  is  needless  to 
enumerate,  and  to  which  social  peace  and 
harmony  are  so  repeatedly  sacrificed.— 
Johnson,  John,  1823,  ed..  Memoirs  of  the 
Life  and  Writings  of  William  Hayley. 


The  book  [Hayley's  "Memoirs"]  itself 
is  to  me  the  most  miserable,  meagre, 
affected,  ill-arranged  string  of  common- 
places I  ever  yawned  over.  You  are  more 
tenderhearted  and  indulgent  than  I  am. 
I  cannot  give  Hayley  credit  for  all  the 
feeling  he  pretends  to.  Feeling  does  not 
thrust  itself  into  notice  so  perpetually: 
feeling  does  not  flow  into  verse,  or  even 
words,  at  the  first  moment  of  excitement, 
though  I  know  that,  when  it  subsides  into 
calm  melancholy,  poetry  is  its  natural 
language.  Hayley  wrote  epitaphs  upon 
his  dearest  friends  before  their  eyes  were 
well  closed — a  sort  of  poetical  carrion 
crow !  I  never  could  have  endured  that 
man,  with  all  his  tender  epitaphs.  I  dare- 
say he  helped  to  drive  his  poor  wife  mad 
— ' '  his  pitiably  irritable  Eliza. ' '  There  is 
something  very  unsatisfactory  even  in  his 
attention  to  the  poor  youth,  his  son.  How 
strange  that  he  should  choose  only  to  visit 
him  in  the  day-time,  making  Felpham  his 
own  residence.  But  all  the  particulars 
of  Hayley's  life  did  not  bear  telling. — 
Bowles,  Caroline  A.,  1824,  To  Robert 
Southey,  June  20;  The  Correspondence  of 
Robert  Southey  with  Caroline  Bowles,  ed. 
Dowden,  p.  64. 


652 


WILLIAM  HAYLEY 


He  made  this  residence  a  delightful  spot. 
Gibbon  called  it  the  little  Paradise  of 
Eartham.  **His  place  (said  the  historian) 
though  small,  is  as  elegant  as  his  mind, 
which  I  value  much  more  highly and 
communicating  to  Lord  Sheffield  a  wish 
which  Hayley  had  expressed  to  become 
acquainted  with  him;  he  adds,  that  this 
was  ''no  vulgar  compliment."  Hayley  is 
now  estimated  only  by  his  writings,  and 
these,  because  they  were  greatly  overrated 
in  their  day,  have  perhaps,  been  depre- 
ciated since  in  proportion.  But  the  per- 
son of  whom  Gibbon  could  speak  thus, 
must  have  been  no  ordinary  man.  Liter- 
ary acquirements  like  his  were  rare  at 
that  time,  and  are  not  common  now ;  and 
these  were  not  his  only  accomplishments. 
All  who  knew  him,  concur  in  describing 
his  manners  as  in  the  highest  degree  win- 
ning, and  his  conversation  as  delightful. 
It  is  said  that  few  men  have  ever  ren- 
dered so  many  essential  acts  of  kind- 
ness to  those  who  stood  in  need  of  them. 
His  errors  were  neither  few  nor  trifling ; 
but  his  good  qualtities  greatly  pre- 
ponderated. He  was  a  most  affection- 
ate father,  a  most  warm  and  constant 
friend ;  and  his  latter  days  of  infirmity  and 
pain  were  distinguished  by  no  common 
degree  of  cheerful  fortitude  and  Christian 
resignation.— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1836-7, 
The  Life  of  William  Cowper^  vol.  ii,  p.  45. 

If  Hayley  was  always  romancing,  as  it 
were,  which  his  position  in  life  allowed ; 
always  living  in  a  fool's  paradise  of  ever- 
dispelled,  ever-renewed  self-deceptions 
about  the  commonest  trifles;  seeing  all 
men  and  things  athwart  a  fog  of  amiabil- 
ity ;  it  was  not  in  the  main  a  worse  world 
than  common,  and  sometimes  it  was  a  use- 
ful life  to  others.  The  pension  his  bustling 
energy  obtained  for  Cowper  outweighs 
many  an  absurdity  and  inanity.  He  was 
surely  an  endurable  specimen,  for  variety 
sake,  among  corn-law  and  game-preserving 
squires.  A  sincere,  if  conventional  love 
of  literature,  independence  of  the  great 
world,  and  indifference  to  worldly  distinc- 
tions, are,  after  all,  not  criminal  foibles. 
Pertinacious,  wrongheaded,  and  often 
foolish  in  his  actions ;  weakly,  greedy  of 
applause,  as  ready  to  lavish  it ;  prone  to 
exaggeration  of  word  and  thought ;  with- 
out reticence ;  he  was  also  an  agreeable 
companion,  really  kind-hearted  and  gener- 
ous ;  though  vanity  mixed  itself  with  all 


he  did ;  for  ever  going  out  of  his  way  to 
befriend  some  one,  to  set  in  motion  some 
well-intended,  ill-considered  scheme.  For 
Blake, — let  us  remember,  to  the  hermit's 
honour, — Hayley  continued  to  entertain 
unfeigned  respect.  And  the  self-tutored, 
willful  visionary  must  have  been  a  startling 
phenomenon  to  so  conventional  a  mind. 
During  the  artist's  residence  at  Felpham 
his  literary  friend  was  constantly  on  the 
alert  to  advance  his  fortunes. — Gilchrist, 
Alexander,  1861-63,  Life  of  William 
Blake,  vol.  I,  p.  156. 

Hayley  was  a  mediocre  poet,  who  had 
for  a  time  obtained  distinction  above  his 
merits.  Afterwards  his  star  had  decl  ined, 
but  having  an  excellent  heart,  he  had  not 
been  in  the  least  soured  by  the  downfall  of 
his  reputation.  He  was  addicted  to  a 
pompous  rotundity  of  style;  perhaps  he 
was  rather  absurd ;  but  he  was  thoroughly 
good-natured,  very  anxious  to  make  him- 
self useful,  and  devoted  to  Cowper,  to 
whom,  as  a  poet,  he  looked  up  with  an  ad- 
miration unalloyed  by  any  other  feeling. 
—Smith,  Goldwin,  1880,  Cowper  {Eng- 
lish Men  of  Letters),  p.  120. 

Hayley,  though  a  bad  poet,  was  a  good 
friend. — Stephen,  Leslie,  1887,  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography,  vol.  xii,  p.  400. 

GENERAL 

There  are  just  appeared  three  new 
**Epistles  on  History,"  addressed  to  Mr. 
Gibbon  by  Mr.  Hayley.  They  are  good 
poems,  I  believe,  weight  and  measure,  but, 
except  some  handsome  new  similes,  have 
little  poetry  and  less  spirit.  In  short, 
they  are  written  by  Judgment,  who  has  set 
up  for  herself,  forgetting  that  her  business 
is  to  correct  verses,  and  not  to  write  them. 
— Walpole,  Horace,  1780,  To  Rev.  Wil- 
liam Mason,  May;  Letters,  ed,  Cunnnig- 
ham,  vol.  vii,  p.  361. 

Who  is  this  Mr.  Hayley?  His  poetry 
has  more  merit  than  that  of  most  of  his 
contemporaries;  but  his  whiggism  is  so 
bigoted,  and  his  Christianity  so  fierce,  that 
he  almost  disgusts  one  with  two  very  good 
things.— Robertson,  William,  1781, Lef- 
ter  to  Gibbon. 

I  hope  you  like  Mr.  Hayley 's  poem ;  he 
'  rises  with  the  subject,  and  since  Pope's 
death,  I  am  satisfied  that  England  has  not 
seen  so  happy  a  mixture  of  strong  sense 
and  flowing  numbers.  Are  you  not  de- 
lighted with  his  address  to  his  mother  ?  I 


WILLIAM  HAYLEY 


653 


understand  that  she  was,  m  plain  prose, 
every  thing  that  he  speaks  her  inverse. — 
Gibbon,  Edward,  1782,  To  his  Stepmother , 
Private  Letters,  ed.  Prothero,  vol.  ii,  p.  17. 

The  epistles  of  Mr.  Hayley  on  Painting, 
History,  and  Epic  Poetry,  would  perhaps 
more  properly  have  been  thrown  under  the 
title  Historical,  had  I  thought  it  worth 
while  thus  to  designate  a  column  for  the 
admission  of  a  single  writer.  They  in- 
culcate however  so  much  elegant  and 
judicious  criticism,  and  diffuse  so  much 
light  over  their  respective  subjects,  that 
they  may  not  unaptly  find  a  place  in  the 
didactic  compartment.  The  versification 
of  these  pieces  is  peculiarly  smooth,  cor- 
rect, and  flowing,  but  not  unfrequently 
deficient  in  energy  and  compression.  The 
characters  are  in  general  justly  drawn,  and 
several  display  a  warmth  of  fancy  and  ctf 
beauty  in  illustration  highly  worthy  of 
applause. — Drake,  Nathan,  1798-1820, 
Literary  Hours,  vol.  Ii,  No.  xxix,  p.  114. 
Behold! — ye  tarts!  one  moment  spare  the 
text — 

Hayley's  last  work,  and  worst — until  his 
next; 

Whether  he  spin  poor  couplets  into  plays, 
Or  damn  the  dead  with  purgatorial  praise, 
His  style  in  youth  or  age  is  still  the  same, 
For  ever  feeble  and  for  ever  tame. 
Triumphant  first  see  "Temper's  Triumphs" 
shine ! 

At  leasi  I'm  sure  they  triumph'd  over  mine. 
Of  "Music's  Triumphs,"  all  who  read  may 
swear 

That  luckless  music  never  triumph'd  there. 
— Byron,  Lord,  1809,  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers. 

As  Hayley  was  too  much  extolled  at  the 
beginning  of  his  poetical  course,  so  was  he 
undeservedly  neglected  or  ridiculed  at  the 
close  of  it.  The  excessive  admiration  he 
at  first  met  with,  joined  to  that  flattering 
self-opinion  which  a  solitary  life  is  apt  to 
engender,  made  him  too  easily  satisfied 
with  what  he  had  done.  Perhaps  he  wrote 
worse  after  his  acquaintance  with  Cowper ; 
for,  aiming  at  a  simplicity  which  he  had 
not  power  to  support,  he  became  flat  and 
insipid.  He  had  at  no  time  much  force  of 
conception  or  language.  Yet  if  he  never 
elevates  he  frequently  amuses  his  reader. 
His  chief  attraction  consists  in  setting  off 
some  plain  and  natural  thought  or  observa- 
tion, by  a  sparkling  and  ingenious  simili- 
tude, such  as  we  commonly  find  in  the 
Persian  poets.  To  this  may  be  added  a 
certain  sweetness  of  numbers  peculiar  to 


himself,  without  the  spirit  and  edge  of 
Pope,  or  the  boldness  of  Dryden,  and 
fashioned  as  1  think  to  his  own  recitation, 
which  though  musical,  was  somewhat  too 
pompous  and  monotonous.  He  was  desir- 
ous that  all  his  rhymes  should  be  exact ; 
but  they  are  sometimes  so  only  according 
to  his  own  manner  of  pronouncing  thenL 
He  holds  about  the  same  rank  among  our 
poets  that  Bertaut  does  among  the  French ; 
but  differs  from  him  in  this ;  that,  whereas 
Bertaut  was  the  earliest  of  a  race  anal- 
ogous to  the  school  of  Dryden  and  Pope, 
so  Hayley  was  the* latest  of  the  corre- 
spondent class  among  ourselves. — Gary, 
Henry  Francis,  1821-24-45,  Lives  of 
English  Poets,  p.  344. 

The  vain  and  silly  egotism,  and  the  tire- 
some load  of  epithets  which  clogs  his  style 
with  sickly  affectation,  revolt  me  so  much, 
that  I  have  barely  candour  enough  left  to 
give  Hayley  credit  for  kindness  of  heart, 
and  steadiness  of  attachment. — Grant, 
Anne,  1823,  Letters,  Sept.  2 ;  Memoir  and 
Correspondence,  ed.  Grant,  vol.  ill,  p.  16. 

On  the  18th  of  the  month,  the  tragedy 
of  '*Lord  Russel,"  by  Mr.  Hayley,  was 
also  represented  at  this  theatre.  He  had 
written  this,  and  one  other  tragedy, 
"Marcella,"  for  a  private  theatre,  and  it 
remained  to  be  tried  how  compositions,  so 
very  sober  and  regular,  would  gratify  the 
taste  of  a  public  auditory.  I  believe  it 
answered  the  most  sanguine  expectations. 
The  characters  interested  by  their  virtue : 
but  the  muse  of  Hayley  was  not,  I  think, 
vigorous  enough  for  tragedy ;  his  verses 
were  too  uniform  in  their  structure,  and 
his  diction  rather  feeble  and  flat. — Boa- 
den,  James,  1825,  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of 
John  Philip  Kemble,  vol.  i,  p,  182. 

If  Hayley  had  not  a  high  invention  and 
forcible  intellect,  his  mind  was  copiously 
enriched  with  multifarious  acquisitions 
from  study,  a  retentive  memory,  and  a 
susceptible  heart.  He  wanted  compres- 
sion ;  but  his  moral  sentiments  were  always 
amiable  and  abundant,  though  languid ;  and 
surely  the  range  of  literature  he  had 
mastered,  alone  entitled  him  not  only  to 
respect  but  to  distinction. — Brydges,  Sir 
Samuel  Egerton,  1834,  Autobiography, 
vol.  I,  p.  131. 

Whether  or  not  any  of  Hayley's 
' ' Essay s"have  had  the  specific  effect  which 
he  hoped  to  produce,  they  imparted,  by 
help  of  the  copious  notes  wherewith  he 


654 


HAYLEY— YOUNG 


elucidated  them,  much  information  in  an 
agreeable  form :  his  translated  specimens 
of  Dante,  which  were  introduced  in  these 
notes,  revived  among  us  a  taste  for  the 
Italian  poets ;  and  Spanish  literature  had 
been  so  long  and  so  utterly  neglected  in 
this  country,  that  he  may  be  truly  said  to 
have  introduced  the  knowledge  of  it  to  his 
contemporaries.  .  .  .  Perhaps  the 
"Essays"  were  read  more  for  the  sake  of 
the  notes  than  of  the  poetry;  but  the 
poetry  was  praised  in  the  highest  terms. 
— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1836-7,  The  Life  of 
William  Cowper,  vol.  ii,  p.  25. 

If  Hayley  was  formerly  over-rated,  he 
is  now  under- valued. — Rogers,  Samuel, 
1855,  Recollections  of  Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce. 

Hayley's  masterpiece,  "The  Triumphs 
of  Temper,"  published  in  1781,  was  the 
"hit"  of  the  day.  Its  author  was  a  man 
of  considerable  culture  and  intellectual 
refinement,  and,  as  his  "Epistle  to 
Romney"  shows,  of  no  contemptible 
artistic  taste.  It  is  impossible  to  read 
his  warblings,  with  whatever  amount  of 
critical  disdain  for  the  warbler,  without 
conceiving  a  genuine  liking  for  the  man. 
His  nature  had  all  the  simplicity  in  which 
his  art  was  so  lamentably  to  seek,  and  his 
disposition  was  as  modest  as  his  Muse  was 
pretentious.  His  geniality  and  good 
nature  break  out  irresistibly  even  in  his 


metrical  attack  upon  Hume,  and  even  in 
his  letters  to  the  egregious  Miss  Anna 
Seward  he  cannot  heartily  abuse  even  his 
rough  Johnson,  but  is  continually  slipping 
in  admiring  epithets  which  his  fair  but 
fiercer  correspondent  amusingly  entreats 
him  to  recall.  But  Johnson,  omnivorous 
reader  though  he  was,  declared  himself 
unable  to  get  beyond  the  first  two  pages 
of  "The  Triumphs  of  Temper,"  and  pos- 
terity perhaps  has  never  got  so  far.  Its 
readability  even  to  a  seasoned  critic  is 
strictly  limited  to  its  interest  as  a  deliber- 
ate imitation,  sometimes  declining  into  a 
downright  parody,  of  its  illustrious  model. 
.  .  .  Hayley  is  always  faultlessly  smooth 
in  his  versification,  and  careful  in  his 
workmanship,  never  slovenly,  never  in- 
elegant. The  errors  of  his  poetic  creed 
stand  therefore  conclusively  proved  in  the 
hopeless  reprobation  of  one,  who,  if  poets 
could  be  saved  by  "correctness"  alone, 
would  occupy  a  high  position  among  the 
blest. — Traill,  Henry  Duff,  1896,  Social 
England,  vol.  v,  pp.  440,  441. 

His  verse  itself  is  impossible  and  in- 
tolerable to  any  but  the  student  of  literary 
history,  who  knows  that  all  things  are 
possible,  and  finds  the  realisation  of  all  in 
its  measure  interesting. —  Saintsbury, 
George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  p.  18. 


Arthur  Young 

1741-1820 

Writer  on  agriculture,  was  born  at  Whitehall,  but  spent  his  boyhood,  as  indeed  most 
of  his  life,  at  Bradfield  near  Bury  St.  Edmunds,  his  father  being  rector  and  a  prebendary 
of  Canterbury.  In  1763  he  rented  a  small  farm  of  his  mother's,  on  which  he  made 
3,000  unsuccessful  experiments;  during  1766-71  held  a  good-sized  farm  in  Essex  (ruin 
the  result) ;  from  1776  to  1778  was  in  Ireland ;  resumed  farming  at  Bradfield ;  and  in 
1793  was  appointed  secretary  to  the  Board  of  Agriculture,  with  a  salary  of  £600. 
Blind  from  1811,  he  died  in  London,  and  was  buried  at  Bradfield.  Young,  by  his 
writings,  was  one  of  the  first  to  elevate  agriculture  to  a  science.  They  include  "A 
Tour  through  the  Southern  Counties"  (1768), "A  Tour  through  the  North  of  England" 
(1771),  "The  Farmer's  Tour  through  the  East  of  England"  (1770-71),  "Tour  in  Ire- 
land" (1780),  "Travels  in  France  during  1787-88-89-90"  (a  very  memorable 
view  of  the  state  of  France  just  before  the  Revolution,  1792-94),  "The  Farmer's 
Kalendar"  (215th  ed.  1862),  and  "Agricultural  Surveys"  of  eight  English  counties, 
besides  many  papers  in  "The  Annals  of  Agriculture,"  which  he  edited.  See  A.  W. 
Hutton's  edition  of  the  "Tour  in  Ireland"  with  bibliography  by  J.  P.  Anderson  (1892) ; 
M.  Betham-Edwards's  edition  of  the  "Travels  in  France"  (1890);  and  her  edition 
of  his  "Autobiography"  (1897).— Patrick  and  Groome,  eds.,  1897,  Chambers's 
Biographical  Dictionary,  p.  990. 

PERSONAL  and  affectionate  man  of  flesh  and  blood. 

He  was  not  a  walking  blue-book,  but  a  whose  acquaintance  one  would  have  been 
highly  sensitive,  enthusiastic,  impulsive,    glad  to  cultivate.  .  .  .  Young's  devoted 


ARTHUR  YOUNG 


655 


and  unflagging  zeal,  and  his  sanguine  con- 
fidence in  his  principles  is  equally  attract- 
ive, whatever  the  inconsistencies  or  rash- 
ness of  his  speculations. — Stephen,  Les- 
lie, 1896,  Arthur  Young,  National  Re- 
view, vol.  27,  pp.  489,  499. 

Whilst  Arthur  Young's  famous  Travels 
in  France"  have  become  a  classic,  little  is 
known  of  the  author's  life,  a  life  singularly 
interesting  and  singularly  sad.  Whether 
regarded  as  the  untiring  experimentalist 
and  dreamer  of  economic  dreams,  as  the 
brilliant  man  of  society  and  the  world,  or 
as  the  blind,  solitary  victim  of  religious 
melancholia,  the  figure  before  us  remains 
unique  and  impressive.  .  .  .  The 
religious  melancholia  of  his  later  years  is 
explicable  on  several  grounds :  to  the  in- 
fluence of  his  friend,  the  great  Wilber- 
force ;  to  the  crushing  sorrow  of  his  be- 
loved little  daughter  Bobbin's"  death; 
lastly,  perhaps,  to  exaggerated  self-con- 
demnation for  foibles  of  his  youth.  Few 
lives  have  been  more  many-sided,  more 
varied;  few,  indeed  have  been  more 
fortunate  and .  unfortunate  at  the  same 
time. — Betham-Edwards,  M.,  1898,  ed., 
The  Autobiography  of  Arthur  Young,  In- 
troductory Note. 

Young  was  a  great  favourite  in  society. 
Vivacious,  high-spirited,  and  well  in- 
formed, he  was  an  agreeable  companion. 
His  characteristics  are  abundantly  mani- 
fested in  his  writings,  and  there  is  no  lack 
of  material  for  forming  a  mental  picture 
of  his  personality.  .  .  .  His  tall  slim 
figure,  thin  features,  aquiline  nose,  and 
hawk  eyes  are  in  keeping  with  the  restless 
activity  of  his  character.  He  rose  at 
5  A.  M.,  bathed  in  the  open  air;  on  one 
occasion — undaunted  experimentalist — he 
broke  the  ice  in  the  pond  to  bathe,  and 
rolled  his  body  in  the  snow  to  test  the 
effect. — HiGGS,  Henry,  1900,  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography,  vol.  LXiii,  p.  362. 

GENERAL 

To  the  works  of  Arthur  Young  the  world 
is  more  indebted  for  the  diffusion  of  agri- 
culturial  knowledge  than  to  any  writer  who 
has  yet  appeared.  If  great  zeal,  inde- 
fatigable exertions,  and  an  unsparing  ex- 
pense in  making  experiments  can  give  a 
man  a  claim  to  the  gratitude  of  agricul- 
turists, Arthur  Young  deserves  it  more 
than  most  men.  We  will  not  assert  that 
in  all  cases  his  conclusions  were  correct, 
or  his  judgment  unimpeachable ;  but  even 


his  blunders,  if  he  committed  any,  have 
tended  to  the  benefit  of  agriculture,  by 
exciting  discussion  and  criticism. — Kir- 
wan,  Richard,  1808  ?  Transactions  of  the 
Irish  Academy. 

The  works  of  Arthur  Young  did  incom- 
parably more  than  those  of  any  other  in- 
dividual to  introduce  a  taste  for  agricul- 
ture and  to  diffuse  a  knov/ledge  of  the  art 
in  this  and  other  countries.  They  are 
written  in  an  animated,  forcible,  pure 
English  style,  and  are  at  once  highly 
entertaining  and  instructive.  Though 
sometimes  rash  and  prejudiced,  his  state- 
ments and  inferences  may  in  general  be 
depended  upon.  His  activity,  persever- 
ance, and  devotedness  to  agriculture  were 
unequalled.  His  Tours,  especially  those 
in  Ireland  and  in  France,  w^hich  are  both 
excellent,  are  his  most  valuable  publica- 
tions.—McCulloch,  John  Ramsay,  1845, 
Literature  of  Political  Economy. 

I  am  a  worshipper  of  Arthur  Young's, 
and  from  me  you  will  hear  only  his  praises. 
I  think  him  the  most  truthful  writer  and 
fuller  of  information  upon  any  subject 
than  any  other  author.  In  his  150  volumes 
that  he  wrote  and  edited,  like  Shakes- 
peare, and  another  book,  you  find  every- 
thing, or  something  d  propos  to  every  sub- 
ject. He  is  the  only  man  of  eminence  of 
my  time  that  I  unfortunately  w^as  not 
acquainted  with ;  I  did  not  then  appreciate 
his  merits.  Since  I  have  turned  my  at- 
tention to  agriculture,  I  look  upon  him  as 
the  real  source  of  information  upon  all 
matters ;  his  correctness,  his  accuracy,  has 
never  been  impunged.  I  have  a  duplicate 
of  his  works,  one  at  Lowther  and  another 
in  London,  and  some  odd  ones  both  at 
Barnes  and  Whitehaven.  His  agricultural 
tours  in  France  and  Italy  I  consider  the 
only  works  that  give  an  intelligible  account 
of  those  countries.  His  tour  in  Ireland 
has  given  me  the  idea  that  his  views  of 
Ireland  were  nearer  the  truth  than  any 
other  work. — Lonsdale,  Earl  of,  1849, 
Letter  to  Mr.  Croker,  Sept.  4 ;  Correspond- 
ence and  Diaries  of  John  Wilson  Croker, 
ed.  Jennings,  vol.  ill,  p.  201. 

He  projected  nothing  new  or  original, 
nor  devised  any  different  scheme  of  agri- 
culture in  any  point;  but  he  collected  a 
huge  mass  of  miscellaneous  information, 
which  had  no  small  efliect  on  the  progress 
of  agriculture.— Donaldson,  John,  1854, 
Agricultural  Biography. 


656 


ARTHUR  YOUNG 


It  is  a  somewhat  remarkable  fact,  that 
a  man  so  distinguished  in  agriculture,  so 
full  of  information,  so  earnest  in  advocacy 
of  improved  methods  of  culture,  so 
doggedly  industrious,  should  yet  never 
have  undertaken  farming  on  his  own 
account  save  at  a  loss.  I  attribute  this 
very  much  to  his  zeal  for  experiments.  If 
he  could  establish,  or  controvert,  some 
popular  theory  by  the  loss  of  his  crop,  he 
counted  it  no  loss,  but  a  gain  to  husbandry. 
Such  men  are  benefactors ;  such  men  need 
salaries ;  and  if  any  such  are  afloat  with 
us,  unprovided  for,  I  beg  to  recommend 
them  for  clerkships  in  the  Agricultural 
Bureau  at  Washington;  and  if  the  Com- 
missioner shall  hit  upon  one  Arthur  Young 
among  the  score  of  his  proteges,  the  coun- 
try will  be  better  repaid  than  it  usually  is. 
— Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1864,  Wet  Day^ 
at  Edgewoody  p.  254. 

But  the  substantial  and  decisive  reply 
to  Burke  came  from  his  former  corres- 
pondent, the  farmer  at  Bradfield  in  Suffolk. 
Arthur  Young  published  his  "Travells  in 
France"  some  eighteen  months  after  the 
Reflections''  (1792),  and  the  pages  of  the 
twenty-first  chapter  in  which  he  closes  his 
performance,  as  a  luminous  criticism  of 
the  most  important  side  of  the  Revolution, 
are  worth  a  hundred  times  more  than 
Burke,  Mackintosh,  and  Paine  all  put 
together.  Young  afterwards  became  panic- 
stricken,  but  his  book  remained.  There 
the  writer  plainly  enumerates  without 
trope  or  invective  the  intolerable  burdens 
under  which  the  great  mass  of  the  French 
people  had  for  long  years  been  groaning. 
MoRLEY,  John,  1888  Burke  (English  Men 
of  Letters),  p.  236. 

It  is  as  a  social  and  political  observer  that 
Young  is  now  best  known  to  the  reading 
public,  and  the  books  which  have  established 
his  reputation  in  these  departments — his 
''Tour  in  Ireland"  and  ''Travels  in 
France" — are  still  full  of  interest  and  in- 
struction. .  .  .  His  master  passion 
was  the  devotion  of  agriculture,  which 
constantly  showed  itself.  He  strongly 
condemned  the  metayer  system  then  widely 
prevalent  in  France,  as  "perpetuating 
poverty  and  excluding  instruction, "  as,  in 
fact,  the  curse  and  ruin  of  the  country. 
Some  of  his  phrases  have  been  often  quoted 
by  the  advocates  of  peasant  proprietorship 
as  favoring  their  view.  "The  magic  of 
property  turns  sand  to  gold. "    Give  a  man 


the  secure  possession  of  a  bleak  rock,  asd 
he  will  turn  it  into  a  garden ;  give  him  a 
nine  years'  lease  of  a  garden,  and  he  will 
convert  it  into  a  desert.  But  these 
sentences,  in  which  the  epigrammatic  form 
exaggerates  a  truth,  and  which  might 
seem  to  represent  the  possession  of  capital 
as  of  no  importance  in  agriculture,  must 
not  be  taken  as  conveying  his  approbation 
of  the  system  of  small  properties  in  gen- 
eral. He  approved  it  only  when  the  subdi- 
vision was  strictly  limited,  and  even  then 
with  great  reserves ;  and  he  remained  to 
the  end  what  J.  S.  Mill  calls  him,  "the 
apostle  of  la  grande  culture." — Ingram, 
John  Kells,  1889,  Encyclopaedia  Britan- 
nica,  vol.  xxiv,  pp.  793,  794. 

His  "Survey  of  France"  has  permanent 
attraction  for  its  picture  of  the  state  of 
that  country  just  before,  and  in  the 
earliest  days  of  the  Revolution.  And 
though  his  writing  is  extremely  incorrect 
and  unequal,  though  its  literary  effect  is 
much  injured  by  the  insertion  of  statistical 
details  which  sometimes  turn  it  for  pages 
together  into  a  mere  set  of  tables,  he  has 
constant  racy  phrases,  some  of  which  have 
passed  into  the  most  honourable  state  of 
all — that  of  unidentified  quotation — while 
more  deserve  it. — Saintsbury,  George, 
1896,^  History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Lit- 
erature, p.  28. 

A«  a  writer  Young  contributed  nothing 
of  permanent  importance  towards  the  ad- 
vancement of  political  economy;  but  he 
remains  the  greatest  of  English  writers  on 
agriculture.  ...  He  was  indefatigable 
in  observation,  inquiries,  researches,  and 
experiments,  collecting  by  hand  the  seeds 
of  artificial  grasses  and  sowing  them  him- 
self, pointing  out  to  the  country  as  a  whole 
practices  which  were  successful  in  particu- 
lar neighbourhoods  at  home  and  abroad, 
endeavouring,  with  the  aid  of  Priestley,  to 
discover  the  chemistry  of  soils  and  to 
apply  science  to  practice,  incessantly  at- 
tempting new  methods,  new  rotations  of 
crops,  and  stirring  up  a  widespread  and 
intelligent  interest  in  the  development  of 
agricultural  science.  He  thought  the 
most  useful  feature  of  his  tours  was  his 
teaching  upon  the  correct  courses  of 
crops.  His  works  were  much  esteemed  at 
home  and  abroad,  and  especially  in  the  two 
great  agricultural  countries  of  Europe — 
France  and  Russia.— HiGGS,  Henry,  1900, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 


657 


Thomas  Brown 

1778-1820 

Born  at  Kilmabreck,  Kirkcubrightshire,  Scotland,  Jan.  9,  1778 :  died  at  Brompton, 
near  London,  April  2,  1820.  A  noted  Scottish  physician,  philosopher,  and  poet,  col- 
league of  Dugald  Stewart  from  1810.  His  works  include  "An  Inquiry  into  the  Relation 
of  Cause  and  Effect"  (1818),  ''Lectures  on  the  Physiology  of  the  Human  xMind"  (1820), 
"Poems"  (1804),  "Paradise  of  Coquettes"  (1814),  "The  War-fiend"  (1817),  "Agnes" 
(1818),  "Emily"  (1819),  etc.  He  is  chiefly  notable  from  his  support  of  Hume's  theory 
of  causation.— Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.y  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names, 
p.  187. 

PERSONAL 

I  see  Dr.  Thomas  Brown  now  and  then, 
who  is  as  witty,  amusing,  and  metaphy- 
sical, and  as  good  a  son  and  brother,  as 
ever. — Grant,  Anne,  1813,  To  Mrs. 
Lowell,  May  23;  Memoirs  and  Corre- 
spondence, ed.  Grant,  vol.  ii,  p.  18. 

He  seldom  began  to  prepare  any  of  his 
lectures  till  the  evening  of  the  day  before 
it  was  delivered  He  was  often  writing  at 
his  desk,  when  he  heard  the  hour  of 
twelve.  When  he  hurried  off  to  deliver 
what  he  had  written.  When  his  lecture 
was  over,  if  the  day  was  favourable,  he 
generally  took  a  walk,  or  employed  his 
time  in  light  reading,  till  his  favorite 
beverage,  tea,  restored  him  again  to  a 
capacity  for  exertion. — Welsh,  David, 
1825,  Account  of  the  Life  and  Writings  of 
Thomas  Brown,  p.  194. 

Even  those  who  have  never  seen  him  can 
form  a  pretty  lively  image  of  him  at  this 
time,  when  his  talents  have  reached  all  the 
maturity  of  which  they  are  capable,  and 
his  reputation  is  at  its  height.  In  person, 
he  is  about  the  middle  size ;  his  features 
are  regular,  and  in  the  expression  of  his 
countenance,  and  especially  of  his  eye, 
there  is  a  combination  of  sweetness  and 
calm  reflection.  His  manner  and  address 
are  somewhat  too  fastidious,  not  to  say 
finical  and  feminine,  for  a  philosopher ;  but 
the  youths  who  wait  on  his  lectures  are 
disposed  to  overlook  this,  when  they  fall 
under  the  influence  of  his  gentleness,  so 
fitted  to  win,  and  of  the  authority  which 
he  has  to  command.  Expectation  was  on 
the  tip-toe,  and  he  fully  met  and  gratified 
it.  His  amiable  look,  his  fine  elocution, 
his  acuteness  and  ingenuity,  his  skill  in 
reducing  a  complex  subject  into  a  few 
elements,  his  show  of  originality  and 
independence,  the  seeming  comprehensive- 
ness of  his  system,  and,  above  all,  his 
fertility  of  illustration,  and  the  glow,  like 
that  of  stained  glass,  in  which  he  set  forth 

42  c 


his  refined  speculations,  did  more  than 
delight  his  youthful  audience, — it  en- 
tranced them ;  and,  in  their  ecstasies,  they 
declared  that  he  was  superior  to  all  the 
philosophers  who  had  gone  before  him, 
and,  in  particular,  that  he  had  completely 
superseded  Reid,  and  they  gave  him  great 
credit,  in  that  he  generously  refrained 
from  attacking  and  overwhelming  Stewart. 
He  had  every  quality  fitted  to  make  him  a 
favourite  with  students.  His  eloquence 
would  have  been  felt  to  be  too  elaborate 
by  a  younger  audience,  and  regarded 
as  too  artificial  and  sentimental  by  an 
older  audience,  but  exactly  suited  the 
tastes  of  youths  between  sixteen  and 
twenty.— McCosH,  James,  1874,  The  Scot- 
tish Philosophy,  p.  322. 

GENERAL 

We  must  ackowledge  that,  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Dr.  Brown,  there  are  too  many 
obscure  and  difficult  passages.  After 
making  due  allowance  for  the  imperfect 
state  in  which  his  manuscripts  may  have 
been  left,  for  the  abstruse  and  shadowy 
nature  of  many  of  his  topics,  and  even  for 
an  occasional  mysticism  and  unattainable 
aim  in  some  of  his  thoughts,  there  still 
remain  too  many  sentences  to  remind  us, 
by  contrast,  of  the  unabating  transparency 
of  Mr.  Stewart's  elocution.  On  the  whole, 
we  must  allow,  that  our  author's  is  often 
a  hard  style  to  read,  and,  as  we  should 
have  thought,  a  much  harder  one  to  hear. 
He  seems  frequently  not  to  have  adapted 
his  sentences  to  the  capacity  of  the  ear. 
The  attention  is  stormed  and  borne  along, 
rather  by  the  force  and  brilliancy  of  the 
expressions,  by  the  earnest  energy  of  the 
writer,  and  by  the  novelty,  splendour,  and 
importance,  of  his  well  selected  topics, 
than  by  the  clearness  and  distinctness  of 
each  successive  position,  and  a  certain 
smooth  and  resistless  current  of  diction, 
of  which  Adam  Smith,  Paley,  and  Godwin 
in  his  philosophical  works,  occur  to  us  just 


658 


THOMAS  BROWN 


now  as  three  of  the  most  remarkable  in- 
stances.— GiLMAN,  S.,  1825,  Character 
and  Writings  of  Dr.  Brown,  North  Amer- 
ican Review,  vol.  21,  p.  45. 

His  first  tract  on  Causation  appeared  to 
me  the  finest  model  of  discussion  in  Mental 
Philosophy  since  Berkeley  and  Hume :  with 
this  superiority  over  the  latter,  that  its 
aim  is  that  of  a  philosopher  who  seeks  to 
enlarge  knowledge,  not  that  of  a  skeptic, 
the  most  illustrious  of  whom  have  no 
better  end  than  that  of  displaying  their 
powers  in  confounding  and  darkening  every 
truth ;  so  that  their  very  happiest  efforts 
cannot  be  more  leniently  described  than 
as  brilliant  fits  of  debauchery. — Mackin- 
tosh, Sir  J AMESylSSOy Second  Preliminary 
Dissertation  Encyclopcedia  Britannica. 

Thomas  Brown  was  an  intimate  friend 
of  mine,  and  used  to  dine  with  me  regularly 
every  Sunday  in  Edinburgh.  He  was  a 
Lake  poet,  a  profound  metaphysician, 
and  one  of  the  most  virtuous  men 
that  lived.  As  a  metaphysician,  Dugald 
Stewart  was  a  humbug  to  him.  Brown 
had  real  talents  for  the  thing.  You  must 
recognize  in  reading  Brown,  many  of 
those  arguments  with  which  I  have  so  often 
reduced  you  to  silence  in  metaphysical  dis- 
cussions. Your  discovery  of  Brown  is 
amusing.  Go  on !  You  will  detect  Dryden 
if  you  persevere;  bring  to  light  John 
Milton,  and  drag  William  Shakspeare  from 
his  ill-deserved  obscurity! — Smith,  Syd- 
ney, 1836,  Letter  to  Sir  George  Philips, 
Feb.  28 ;  Memoir,  ed.  Lady  Holland. 

Neither  his  poetry  nor  his  lectures, 
however,  are  destined  to  any  permanent 
fame ;  and  the  latter,  as  might  have  been 
anticipated  from  his  hasty  preparations, 
have  already  lost  the  place  they  for  a  short 
time  obtained  among  the  text-books  of  our 
colleges  and  universities. — Parkman,  F., 
1840,  Life  and  Writings  of  Thomas  Brown, 
Christian  Examiner,  vol.  29,  p.  217. 

As  a  writer,  Brown  must  be  regarded 
as  eminently  successful.  Inferior  to 
Stewart  in  classic  chasteness  of  diction, 
and  philosophic  elegance  of  style,  yet  his 
mind  was  of  that  poetic  order  which  can 
throw  a  luxuriance,  perhaps  we  might  say 
a  redundancy  of  imagery  and  illustration, 
around  every  subject  that  it  undertakes. 
From  this,  mainly,  has  arisen  the  great 
popularity  of  his  lectures,  which  have  not 
only  passed  through  many  editions,  but  are 
now,  after  more  than  twenty  years,  in 


almost  as  great  request  as  they  were  at 
first.  .  .  .  That  Brown  possessed 
splendid  abilities,  and  that  his  writings 
generally  are  marked  with  superior  excel- 
lence, every  candid  reader  must  admit. 
The  most  distinctive  feature  of  his  mind  is 
generally  allowed  to  have  been  the  power 
ofanalysis,m  which  he  greatly  transcended 
all  philosophers  of  the  Scottish  school  who 
preceded  him. — Morell,  J.  D.,  1846-53, 
An  Historical  and  Critical  View  of  Spec- 
ulative Philosophy  of  Europe  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century. 

Brown,  in  his  great  work,  Cause  and 
Effect"] — one  of  the  greatest  which  this 
century  has  produced. — Buckle,  Henry 
Thomas.  1862-66,  History  of  Civilization 
in  England,  vol.  iii,  p.  333,  note. 

The  psychology  of  Brown  may  be  sum- 
marily described  as  a  combination  of  the 
Scottish  philosophy  of  Reid  and  Stewart, 
and  of  the  analyses  by  Condillac,  Destutt 
de  Tracy,  and  the  higher  philosophers  of 
the  sensational  school  of  France,  together 
with  views  of  the  association  of  ideas 
derived  from  a  prevailing  British  school. 
To  Reid  and  Stewart  he  was  indebted  more 
than  he  was  willing  to  allow,  and  it  would 
have  been  better  for  his  ultimate  reputa- 
tion had  he  imbibed  more  of  their  spirit, 
and  adhered  more  closely  to  their  princi- 
ples. He  admits  everywhere  with  them 
the  existence  of  principles  of  irresistible 
belief ;  for  example,  he  comes  to  such  a 
principle  when  he  is  discussing  the  beliefs 
in  our  personal  identity,  and  in  the  invari- 
ability of  the  relation  between  cause  and 
effect.  But  acknowledging,  as  he  does, 
the  existence  of  intuitive  principles,  he 
makes  no  inquiry  into  their  nature  and 
laws  and  force,  or  the  relation  in  which 
they  stand  to  the  faculties.  In  this  respect 
so  far  from  being  an  advance  on  Reid  and 
Stewart,  he  is  rather  a  retrogression. 
His  method  is  as  much  that  of  Condillac, 
Destutt  de  Tracy,  and  the  ideologists  of 
France,  as  that  of  Reid  and  Stewart. — 
McCosh,  James,  1874,  The  Scottish  Phi- 
losophy, p.  325. 

The  fame  achieved  by  the  Lectures  when 
published  surpassed  even  what  they  had 
attained  when  delivered.  It  is  no  exag- 
geration to  say  that  never  before  or  since 
ihas  a  work  of  metaphysics  been  so  popular. 
In  1851  the  book  had  reached  its  19th 
edition  in  England,  and  in  America  its 
success  was  perhaps  greater.    Since  that 


BROWN— DRAKE 


659 


time,  however,  its  popularity  has  declined 
with  almost  equal  rapidity,  judgments  on 
its  merits  are  now  as  severe  as  they  were 
formerly  favorable,  and  the  name  of 
Brown  may  be  said  to  be  a  dead  letter  in 
the  annals  of  philosophy.  ...  On 
the  whole,  it  will  be  seen  from  this  brief 
statement  of  what  was  new  in  Brown's 
philosophy  that  it  occupies  an  intermediate 
place  between  the  earlier  Scottish  school 
and  the  later  analytical  or  associational 
psychology.  To  the  latter  Brown  really 
belonged,  but  he  had  preserved  certain 
doctrines  of  the  older  school  which  were 
out  of  harmony  with  his  fundamental  view. 
He  still  retained  a  small  quantum  of  in- 
tuitive beliefs,  and  did  not  appear  to  see 
that  the  very  existence  of  these  could  not 
be  explained  by  his  theory  of  mental 
action.  This  intermediate  or  wavering 
position  accounts  for  the  comparative 
neglect  into  which  his  works  have  now 
fallen.  They  did  much  to  excite  thinking, 
and  advanced  many  problems  by  more  than 
one  step,  but  they  did  not  furnish  a  coher- 
ent system,  and  the  doctrines  which  were 
then  new  have  since  been  worked  out  with 
greater  consistency  and  clearness. — Ad- 
AMSON,  Robert,  1876,  Encyclopcedia  Brit- 
annica,  Ninth  edition^  vol.  iv,  pp.  348,  349. 

That  he  should  have  accomplished  the 
amount  of  literary  work  that  he  did  during 
his  short  life  is  amazing.    Little  of  it  can 


be  said  now  to  live,  with  the  exception, 
perhaps,  of  his  Lectures  on  the  Philos- 
ophy of  the  Human  Mind,"  which  are  not 
only  to  be  valued  as  an  elucidation  of 
mental  science,  but  also  as  an  interesting 
monument  of  the  brilliant  genius  and 
indefatigable  industry  of  a  most  amiable 
and  deserving  man.  The  fault  of  the 
work  is  its  prolixity,  and  that  the  same 
ground  is  traced  over  and  over  again,  in 
lecture  after  lecture,  with  tedious  itera- 
tion. However,  the  defect,  so  to  call  it, 
has  certainly  this  counterbalancing  ad- 
vantage, that  it  impresses  what  the  writer 
has  to  teach  on  the  mind  of  the  reader 
with  such  singular  clearness,  that  it  is 
well-nigh  impossible  to  mistake  his  sense. 
It  should,  too,  in  fairness  be  remembered 
that  the  lectures  were  prepared  merely  for 
oral  delivery.  They  were  never  corrected 
by  the  author  for  the  press;  but  were 
printed  off  from  his  manuscripts  after  his 
death,  with  all  their  blemishes  and  mis- 
takes, and  published  precisely  as  he  wrote 
them. — CoPNER,  James,  1885,  Sketches  of 
Celibate  Worthies,  p.  272. 

In  spite  of  his  original  and  suggestive 
work  in  detail.  Brown  thus  failed  to  create 
a  perfectly  coherent  system  of  thought. 
This  defect  impaired,  and  within  a  genera- 
tion totally  destroyed,  his  influence  upon 
the  course  of  speculation. — Herford,  C. 
H.,  1897,  The  Age  of  Wordsworth,  p.  b,note. 


Joseph  Rodman  Drake 

1795-1820 

A  native  of  New  York,  began  to  contribute  poetical  compositions  to  the  periodicals 
at  a  very  early  age.  The  first  four  of  the  Croaker  Pieces  (published  in  New  York 
Evening  Post,  March  10-20,  1819),  were  written  by  him ;  after  the  fourth  number, 
Fitz-Greene  Halleck  was  admitted  as  a  partner,  and  the  literary  firm  was  henceforth 
Croaker  &  Co.  The  lively  satire  of  these  sallies  gave  them  a  great  reputation  at  the 
time  of  their  publication.  Drake's  longest  poem  is  ''The  Culprit  Fay his  best-known 
composition,  ''The  American  Flag.''  Their  poetical  merit  is  unquestionably  of  a  high 
order.  In  1836  a  collection  of  Drake's  poetical  pieces  was  published  by  Commodore 
Dekay,  son-in-law  of  the  author. — Allibone,  S.  Austin,  1854-58,  A  Critical  Diction- 
ary of  English  Literature,  vol.  I,  p.  519. 


PERSONAL 

I  officiated  as  groomsman,  though  much 
against  my  will.  ...  He  is,  perhaps,  the 
handsomest  man  in  New  York— a  face  like 
an  angel,  a  form  like  an  Apollo,  and,  as  I  well 
knew  that  his  person  was  the  true  index  of 
his  mind,  I  felt  myself  during  the  ceremony 
as  committing  a  crime  in  aiding  and  assist- 
ing in  such  a  sacrifice. — Halleck,  Fitz- 
Greene,  1817,  Life  and  Letters. 


Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 
Friend  of  my  better  days ! 

None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 
Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise. 


While  memory  bids  me  weep  thee, 
Nor  thoughts  nor  words  are  free, 

The  grief  is  fixed  too  deeply 
That  mourns  a  man  like  thee. 

—Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  1820,  On  the 
Death  of  Joseph  Rodman  Drake. 


660 


JOSEPH  RODMAN  DRAKE 


The  spirit,  force,  and  at  the  same  time 
simplicity  of  expression,  with  his  artless 
manner,  gained  him  many  friends.  He 
had  that  native  politeness  which  springs 
from  benevolence,  which  would  stop  to 
pick  up  the  hat  or  the  crutch  of  an  old 
servant,  or  walk  by  the  side  of  the  horse 
of  a  timid  lady.  When  he  was  lost  to  his 
friends  one  of  them  remarked  that  it  was 
not  so  much  his  social  qualities  which  en- 
gaged the  affections  as  a  certain  inner 
grace  or  dignity  of  mind,  of  which  they 
were  hardly  conscious  at  the  time.  .  .  . 
Drake's  person  was  well  formed  and 
attractive;  a  fine  head,  with  a  peculiar 
blue  eye,  pale  and  cold  in  repose,  but 
becoming  dark  and  brilliant  under  excite- 
ment. His  voice  was  full-toned  and 
musical ;  he  was  a  good  reader,  and  sang 
with  taste  and  feeling,  though  rarely. — 
Lawson,  James,  1855,  Duyckinck's  Cyclo- 
pcedia  of  American  Liter ature,  vol.  i, 
p.  929. 

There  may  be  poetry  as  well  as  propriety 
in  hiding  the  remains  of  a  departed  Poet, 
on  the  summit  of  a  barren  and  useless 
sandy  knoll,  in  the  midst  of  a  wide-spread 
salt  marsh,  with  a  lazy  stream  flowing  in 
the  distance,  and  it  may,  by  an  amazing 
stretch  of  imagination,  be  a  very  appro- 
priate continuation  of  the  imaginary  com- 
pliment, to  let  the  grave  which  such  a  spot 
contains,  thenceforward  take  care  of  itself 
and  become  obscured,  in  every  direction, 
by  the  bushes  and  weeds  which  surround 
it.— Dawson,  Henry  B.,  1865-72,  The 
Grave  of  J.  Rodman  Drake,  M.  D.,  Histor- 
ical Magazine,  Third  Series,  vol.  I,  p.  107. 

He  was  buried  at  Hunt's  Point ;  and  as 
Halleck  returned  from  the  funeral,  he  said 
to  DeKay,  "There  will  be  less  sunshine 
for  me  hereafter,  now  that  Joe  is 
gone.'*  A  low  monument  of  marble,  sur- 
mounted by  a  quadrangular  pyramid,  rises 
above  the  grave  where  the  poet's  remains 
have  reposed  for  sixty-five  years.  The 
inscription  is  on  one  side,  and  reads  thus : 
' '  Sacred  to  the  memory  of  Joseph R.  Drake, 
M.  D.,  who  died  September  21,  1820. 
"None  knew  him  but  to  love  him, 
None  named  him  but  to  praise." 
These  lines  were  afterward  slightly  varied 
and  improved  by  their  author. — Wilson, 
James  Grant,  1885,  Bryant  and  His 
Friends,  p.  305. 

For  many  years  Drake's  grave  was  waste 
and  neglected :  the  stone  was  overgrown, 


lichened,  disjointed,  broken ;  a  fallen  tree 
had  thrown  the  tapering  shaft  to  the 
ground.  Now  a  Catholic  club  of  the 
vicinage  has  beneficently  assumed  care  of 
it,  the  monument  is  cleansed  and  reno- 
vated, and  the  brush  is  cleared  away  from 
its  base.  The  steep  little  pathway  is 
evidently  trodden  by  many  pilgrim  feet, 
and  we  find  a  garland  of  myrtle  crowning 
the  obelisk,  while  fresh  field-flowers — 
gathered,  we  hope,  from  the  near-by 
fields  where  he  loved  to  roam — lie  upon 
the  pedestal  and  are  still  aglitter  with 
the  dew  of  the  morning.  The  poet's 
grave  is  fitly  placed  amid  the  scenes  he 
loved  and  sung.  Yonder  * '  his  own  roman- 
tic Bronx"  lazily  skirts  the  ''green  bank 
side"  where  he  wrote;  southward  stands 
the  venerable  mansion  he  so  often  visited, 
where  we  may  see  the  room  he  and  Halleck 
habitually  occupied ;  and  all  about  the  old 
place  lie  shores  and  scenes  which  inspired 
portions  of  his  charming  "Culprit  Fay" 
and  are  portrayed  in  its  imagery.  Even 
in  the  desolate  old  cemetery  we  realize 
some  of  his  poetic  phrases :  we  feel  the 
breeze  "fresh  springing  from  the  lips  of 
morn,"  we  see  the  hum-bird  with  "his 
sun-touched  wings,"  we  hear  the  carol  of 
the  finch  and  the  "winding  of  the  merry 
locust's  horn"  above  the  grave  whe^e  the 
poet  rests,  reckless  of  these  that  once 
thrilled  his  senses  and  stirred  his  soul  to 
song. — Wolfe,  Theodore  F.,  1898,  Lit- 
erary Haunts  and  Homes,  American 
Authors,  p.  102. 

THE  CULPRIT  FAY 
"The  Culprit  Fay"  was  written,  begun, 
and  finished  in  three  days.  The  copy  you 
have  is  from  the  original,  without  the 
least  alteration.  It  is  certainly  the  best 
thing  of  the  kind  in  the  English  language, 
and  is  more  strikingly  original  than  I  had 
supposed  it  possible  for  a  modern  poem  to 
be.— Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  1817,  Life 
and  Letters,  p.  183. 

It  is  a  well-versified  and  sufficiently 
fluent  composition,  without  high  merit  of 
any  kind.  Its  defects  are  gross  and  super- 
abundant. Its  plot  and  conduct,  con- 
sidered in  reference  to  its  scene,  are 
absurd.  Itsoriginality  isnone  at  all.  Its 
imagination  (and  this  was  the  great 
feature  insisted  upon  by  its  admirers)  is 
but  a  "counterfeit  presentment," — but 
the  shadow  of  the  shade  of  that  lofty 
quality  which  is,  in  fact,  the  soul  of  the 


JOSEPH  RODMAN  DRAKE 


661 


Poetic  Sentiment,  but  a  drivelling  effort  to 
he  fanciful,  an  effort  resulting  in  a  species 
of  hop-skip-and-go-merry  rodomontade, 
which  the  uninitiated  feel  it  a  duty  to  call 
ideality,  and  to  admire  as  such,  while 
lost  in  surprise  at  the  impossibility  of  per- 
forming at  least  the  latter  half  of  the  duty 
with  anything  like  satisfaction  to  them- 
selves. And  all  this  we  not  only  asserted, 
but  without  difficulty  proved.  Dr.  Drake 
has  written  some  beautiful  poems,  but  "The 
Culprit  Fay"  is  not  of  them.— PoE,  Ed- 
gar Allan,  1842,  Graham's  Magazine; 
Works,  eds.  Stedman  and  Woodherry,  vol, 
VIII,  p.  264. 

A  poem  of  more  exquisite  fancy — as 
happily  conceived  as  it  is  artistically 
executed — we  have  hardly  had  since  the 
days  of  Milton's  "Comus." — Cleveland, 
Charles  D.,  1859,  A  Compendium  of 
American  Literature,  p.  401. 

Discovers  exquisite  fancy  and  rare 
poetic  beauty. — Saunders,  Frederick, 
1865,  A  Festival  of  Song,  p.  124. 

It  does  not  by  any  labored  structure  re- 
veal that  its  origin  was  deliberate  and  not 
spontaneous.  No  poem  done  of  set  pur- 
pose ever  flowed  more  freely  and  more 
easily ;  and  as  we  read  its  tuneful  measures 
we  never  think  of  denying  the  right  of  the 
fairy  folk  to  dwell  on  the  beautiful  banks 
of  the  Hudson.— Matthews,  Brander, 
1896,  An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of 
American  Literature,  p.  89. 

GENERAL 

As  an  exercise  of  that  delicate  imagina- 
tion which  we  term  fancy,  ''The  Culprit 
Fay,"  although  the  work  of  a  youth 
schooled  in  fairy-lore  and  the  metres  of 
Coleridge,  Scott,  and  Moore,  boded  well 
for  his  future.  ''The  American  Flag"  is 
a  stirring  bit  of  eloquence  in  rhyme.  The 
death  of  this  spirited  and  promising  writer 
was  justly  deplored.  His  talent  was 
healthy;  had  he  lived,  American  author- 
ship might  not  so  readily  have  become,  in 
Griswold's  time,  a  vent  for  every  kind  of 
romantic  and  sentimental  absurdity. — 
Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  1885,  Poets 
of  America,  p,  40. 

Drake  is,  on  the  whole,  less  remembered 
by  his  own  poems  than  by  the  beautiful 
tribute  which  Halleck  made  to  his  memory. 
—Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  1886,  Amer- 
ican Literature  and  Other  Papers,  ed. 
Whittier,  p.  61. 


Drake's  services  to  nascent  American 
poetry  also  included  the  composition  of  a 
spirited  lyric  to  "The  American  Flag," 
familiar  in  the  anthologies,  and  long  a 
favorite  with  the  school-boys  of  the  nation. 
Its  tropes  are  somewhat  strained,  and  its 
sensational  scheme  narrowly  escapes  bom- 
bast; but  on  the  whole — like  a  greater 
poem,  Shelley's  "Cloud" — it  avoids  the 
pathetic  and  produces  an  honest  and 
stirring  effect  upon  the  reader. — Rich- 
ardson, Charles  F.,  1888,  American 
Literature,  1607-1888,  vol.  ii.  p.  26. 

A  commonplace  of  American  criticism 
is  to  compare  Keats  with  a  certain  Joseph 
Rodman  Drake.  They  both  died  at  twenty- 
five  and  they  both  wrote  verse.  The 
parallel  ends  there.  Keats  was  one  of 
the  great  writers  of  the  world.  Drake 
was  a  gentle  imitative  bard  of  the  fourth 
or  fifth  order,  whose  gifts  culminated  in 
a  piece  of  pretty  fancy  called  "The  Culprit 
Fay."  Every  principle  of  proportion  is 
outraged  in  a  conjunction  of  the  names  of 
Drake  and  Keats.  To  compare  them  is 
like  comparing  a  graceful  shrub  in  your 
garden  with  the  tallest  pine  that  fronts 
the  tempest  on  the  forehead  of  Rhodope. 
— Gosse,  Edmund,  1889,  Has  America 
Produced  a  Pott  ?  Questions  at  Issue,  p.  76. 

Drake's  poety  should  not  be  read  as  if 
it  had  been  written  in  our  day,  when  poets 
are  so  plentiful  that  every  versifier  has 
their  art  at  his  finger-ends :  it  should  be 
read  as  it  was  read  when  it  was  written, 
in  the  first  two  decades  of  the  century, 
when  poets  were  few  among  us,  and  their 
skill  so  limited  and  uncertain  as  to  dis- 
concert and  irritate  later  readers.  He 
had  no  American  models  whom  he  could 
study  to  advantage,  only  such  rude  work- 
men in  verse  as  Dwight,  Trumbull,  and 
Freneau;  and  the  only  English  models 
whom  he  knew,  or  for  whom  he  seemed  to 
care,  were  Moore  and  Scott.  He  could 
not  have  had  a  more  manly  master  than 
Scott,  though  he  might  have  found  a  more 
deliberate  one,  for  Scott  improvised  rather 
than  composed.  Like  Scott,  Drake  wrote 
too  rapidly,  and  too  carelessly ;  for  what- 
ever its  merits,  and  they  are  considerable, 
since  poetic  invention  is  one  of  them,  and 
spirited  metrical  movement  is  another, 
"The  Culprit  Fay"  is  an  improvisation  and 
nothing  more— an  improvisation  which 
needed  much,  but  never  had  any,  correc- 
tion.   It  is  charming,  however,  for  just 


662 


DRAKE— KEATS 


what  it  is,  being  one  of  the  pillars  upon 
which  the  reputation  of  Drake  rests,  the 
other  being  his  lyric,  **The  American 
Flag,"  which  is  still  the  standard  sheet  in 
our  Heaven  of  Song.  No  one  but  a  poet 
could  have  written  these  two  poems,  to 
remember  which  is  to  remember  Joseph 
Rodman  Drake.  —  Stoddard,  Richard 
Henry,  1895,  Joseph  Rodman  Drake,  The 
Critic,  vol.  27,  p.  84. 

He  wrote  several  pretty  things,  among 
them  a  poem  published  after  his  death, 
entitled  ^' The  Culprit  Fay. "  This  conven- 
tional tale  of  some  tiny  fairies,  supposed 
to  haunt  the  Hudson  River,  is  so  much  bet- 
ter than  American  poetry  had  previously 


been  that  one  is  at  first  disposed  to 
speak  of  it  enthusiastically.  An  obvious 
comparison  puts  it  in  true  perspective. 
Drake's  life  happened  nearly  to  coincide 
with  that  of  Keats.  Both  left  us  only 
broken  fragments  of  what  they  might  have 
done,  had  they  been  spared ;  but  the  con- 
trast between  these  fragments  tells  afresh 
the  story  of  American  letters.  Amid  the 
full  fervour  of  European  experience  Keats 
produced  immortal  work;  Drake,  whose 
whole  life  was  passed  amid  the  national 
inexperience  of  New  York,  produced  only 
pretty  fancies.  —  Wendell,  Barrett, 
1900,  A  Literary  History  of  America, 
p.  195. 


John  Keats 

1795-1821 

Born,  in  London  31  Oct.  1795.  At  school  at  Enfield,  at  irregular  periods  between 
1801  and  1810.  His  mother  removed  to  Edmonton,  1806.  Apprenticed  to  surgeon 
at  Edmonton,  1810.  To  London  1814.  Studied  medicine  at  St.  Thomas's  and  Guy's 
Hospitals.  Appointed  Dresser  at  Guy's,  March  1816.  Licentiate  of  Apothecaries' 
Hall,  25  July  1816.  Contrib.  to  ''The  Examiner,"  1816-17.  Friendship  with  Leigh 
Hunt  and  Haydon  begun  about  this  time.  Abandoned  medical  career,  1817.  Visit  to 
Oxford,  Sept.  to  Oct.  1817.  Contrib.  poems  to  *'The  Champion,"  1817;  wrote 
dramatic  criticism  for  it,  Dec.  1817  to  Jan.  1818.  At  this  period  resided  mainly  with 
his  brothers  at  Hampstead.  Walking  tour  with  Charles  Armitage  Brown  in  Northern 
England  and  Scotland,  June  to  Aug.  1818.  Engaged  to  Fanny  Brawne,  Dec.  1818. ,  One 
brother  married  and  went  to  America,  June  1818 ;  the  other  died,  Dec.  1818.  Lived 
at  Shanklin  and  Winchester  successively  during  early  part  of  1819 ;  settled  in  West- 
minster, Oct.  1819.  Contrib.  ''Ode  to  a  Nightingale"  to  "Annals  of  the  Fine  Arts," 
1819;  "La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci"  to  "The  Indicator,"  1820.  Consumption  set  in, 
Feb.  1820.  Sailed  with  Joseph  Severn  to  Italy,  Sept.  1820 ;  arrived  at  Naples  in  Oct. ; 
at  Rome  in  Nov.  Died,  in  Rome,  23  Feb.  1821.  Buried  in  Old  Protestant  Cemetery 
there.  Works:  "Poems,"  1817;  "Endymion,"  1818;  "Lamia;  Isabella;  the  Eve 
of  St.  Agnes,"  1820.  Posthumous:  "Life,  Letters  and  Literary  Remains,"  ed.  by 
R.  Monckton  Milnes,  1848;  "Letters  to  Fanny  Brawne,"  ed.  by  H.  Buxton  Forman, 
1878;  "Letters,"  ed.  by  H.  Buxton  Forman,  1895.  Collected  Works:  ed.  by  H.  Buxton 
Forman  (4vols.),  1883.  Life:  by  Lord  Houghton,  revised  edn.  1867;  by  W.  M. 
Rossetti,  1887;  by  Sidney  Colvin,  1887.— Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dic- 
tionary of  English  Authors,  p.  154. 


PERSONAL 

He  is  gone.  He  died  with  the  most  per- 
fect ease — he  seemed  to  go  to  sleep.  On 
the  23rd,  about  four,  the  approaches  of 
death  came  on..  "Severn  —  I  —  lift  me 
up.  I  am  dying — I  shall  die  easy.  Don't 
be  frightened :  be  firm,  and  thank  God  it 
has  come."  I  lifted  him  up  in  my  arms. 
The  phlegm  seemed  boiling  in  his  throat, 
and  increased  until  eleven,  when  he  gradu- 
ally sunk  into  death,  so  quiet  that  I  still 
thought  he  slept.  I  cannot  say  niore 
now.  I  am  broken  down  by  four  nights' 
watching,  no  sleep  since,  and  my  poor 


Keats  gone.  Three  days  since  the  body 
was  opened:  the  lungs  were  completely 
gone.  The  doctors  could  not  imagine 
how  he  had  lived  these  two  months.  I 
followed  his  dear  body  to  the  grave  on 
Monday  [February  26th],  with  many  Eng- 
lish. .  .  .  The  letters  I  placed  in  the 
coffin  with  my  own  hand.  —  Severn, 
Joseph,  1821,  Journal,  Feb.  27. 

The  genius  of  the  lamented  person  to 
whose  memory  I  have  dedicated  these  un- 
worthy verses  was  not  less  delicate  and 
fragile  than  it  was  beautiful ;  and  where 
canker-worms  abound,  what  wonder  if  its 


JOHN  KEATS 


663 


young  flower  was  blighted  in  the  bud? 
The  savage  criticism  on  his  "Endymion" 
which  appeared  in  the  ''Quarterly Review'' 
produced  the  most  violent  effect  on  his 
susceptible  mind;  the  agitation  thus 
originated  ended  in  a  rupture  of  a  blood- 
vessel in  the  lungs ;  a  rapid  consumption 
ensued ;  and  the  succeeding  acknowledg- 
ments from  more  candid  critics  of  the 
true  greatness  of  his  powers  were  in- 
effectual to  heal  the  wound  thus  wantonly 
inflicted.— Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,1821, 
AdonaiSy  Preface. 

But  now  thy  youngest,  dearest  one,  has  per- 
ish'd, 

The  nursling  of  thy  widowhood,  who  grew, 
Like  a  pale  flower  by  some  sad  maiden  cher- 
ish'd, 

And  fed  with  true  love  tears  instead  of  dew. 
Most  musical  of  mourners,  weep  anew  ! 
Thy  extreme  hope,  the  loveliest  and  the  last. 
The  bloom  whose  petals,  nipt  before  they 
blew. 

Died  on  the  promise  of  the  fruit,  is  waste ; 
The  broken  lily  lies— the  storm  is  overpast. 

—Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1S21/  Adon- 
ais,  An  Elegy  on  the  Death  cf  John  Keats. 

I  have  just  this  moment  heard  of  poor 
Keats's  death.  We  are  unlucky  in  our 
butts.  It  would  appear  very  cruel  if  any 
jokes  now  appeared  on  thepharmacopolical 
part  of  '^Endymion."  And  indeed  when 
I  heard  that  the  poor  devil  was  in  a  con- 
sumption, 1  was  something  sorry  that  I 
annoyed  him  at  all  of  late.  If  I  were  able 
I  should  write  a  dirge  over  him,  as  a  kind 
of  amende  honorable;  but  my  Muse,  I  am 
afraid,  does  not  run  in  the  mournful.  If 
you  print  my  hymn  strike  out  the  hemistich 
concerning  him,  substituting  anything  you 
like— such  as' Tale  is  the  cheek  of  Leigh 
Hunt,  the  tea-drinking  king  of  the 
Cockneys."  I  hope  I  am  in  time,  for  it 
would  annoy  me  if  it  appeared  that  we 
were  attacking  any  one  who  had  it  not  in 
his  power  to  reply — particularly  an  old 
enemy  after  his  death. — Maginn,  Wil- 
liam, 1821,  Letter  to  Blackwood,  April  10 ; 
William  Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  ed.  OH- 
phant,  vol.  i,  p.  375. 

Keats  was  a  victim  to  personal  abuse  and 
the  want  of  power  to  bear  it.  ...  He  be- 
gan life  full  of  hope.  ...  He  expected 
the  world  to  bow  at  once  to  his  talents,  as 
his  friends  had  done.  .  .  .  Goaded  by 
ridicule,  he  distrusted  himself  and  flew  to 
dissipation.  For  six  weeks  he  was  hardly 
ever  sober.  ...  He  told  me  that  he  once 


covered  his  tongue  and  throat,  as  far  as  he 
could  reach,  with  Cayenne  pepper,  in  order 
to  enjoy  "the  delicious  coolness  of  claret 
in  all  its  glory."  ...  He  had  great  en- 
thusiasm for  me,  and  so  had  I  for  him,  but 
he  grew  angry  latterly  because  1  shook  my 
head  at  his  proceedings.  I  told  him,  I 
begged  of  him  to  bend  his  genius  to  some 
definite  object.  I  remonstrated  on  his 
absurd  dissipation,  but  to  no  purpose.  The 
last  time  I  saw  him  was  at  Hampstead, 
lying  on  his  back  in  a  white  bed,  helpless, 
irritable,  and  hectic.  He  had  a  book,  and 
enraged  at  his  own  feebleness,  seemed  as 
if  he  were  going  out  of  the  world  with 
a  contempt  for  this,  and  no  hopes  of  a 
better.  He  muttered  as  I  stood  by  him' 
that  if  he  did  not  recover,  he  would  "cut 
his  throat."  I  tried  to  calm  him, but  to  no 
purpose.  .  .  .  Poor  dear  Keats ! — Haydon, 
Benjamin  Robert,  1821,  Letter  to  Miss 
Mitford,  Apr.  21 ;  Life,  Letters  and  Table 
Talk,  ed.  Stoddard,  pp.  207,  208,  209. 
John  Keats,  who  was  kill'd  off  by  one 
critique 

Just  as  he  really  promised  something  great. 
If  not  intelligible,  without  Greek 

Contrived  to  talk  about  the  gods  of  late. 
Much  as  they  might  have  been  supposed  to 
speak. 

Poor  fellow !  His  was  an  untoward  fate ; 
'Tis  strange  the  mind,  that  very  fiery  par- 
ticle. 

Should  let  itself  be  snuff 'd  out  by  an  article. 
—Byron,  Lord,  1823,  Don  Juan,  Canto,x\. 

It  was  nevertheless  on  the  same  day, 
sitting  on  the  bench  in  Well  Walk  at  Hemp- 
stead, nearest  the  heath  (the  one  against 
the  wall),  that  he  told  me,  with  unaccus- 
tomed tears  in  his  eyes,  that  his  "heart 
was  breaking." — Hunt,  Leigh,  1828,  Lord 
Byron  and  Some  of  his  Contemporaries,  vol. 
I,  p.  440. 

One  night  at  eleven  o'clock,  he  came 
into  the  house  in  a  state  that  looked  like 
fierce  intoxication.  Such  a  state  in  him, 
I  knew,  was  impossible ;  it  therefore  was 
the  more  fearful.  I  asked  hurriedly, 
"What  is  the  matter?  you  are  fevered." 
"Yes,  yes,"  he  answered,  "I  was  on  the 
outside  of  the  stage  this  bitter  day  till  I 
was  severely  chilled — but  now  I  don't  feel 
it.  Fevered! — of  course,  a  little."  He 
mildly  and  instantly  yielded,  a  property  in 
his  nature  towards  any  friend,  to  my  re- 
quest that  he  should  go  to  bed.  I  followed 
with  the  best  immediate  remedy  in  my 
power.    I  entered  his  chamber  as  he  leapt 


664 


JOHN  KEATS 


into  bed.  On  entering  the  cold  sheets, 
before  his  head  was  on  the  pillow,  he 
slightly  coughed,  an  I  heard  him  say, 
''That  is  blood  from  my  mouth."  I  went 
towards  him ;  he  was  examining  a  single 
drop  of  blood  upon  the  sheet.  *  *  Bring  me 
the  candle,  Brown,  and  let  me  see  this 
blood. ' '  After  regarding  it  steadfastly, 
he  looked  up  in  my  face  with  a  calmness 
of  countenance  that  I  can  never  forget, 
and  said,  ''I  know  the  colour  of  that  blood 
— it  is  arterial  blood — 1  cannot  be  deceived 
in  that  colour — that  drop  of  blood  is  my 
death-warrant — I  must  die." — Brown, 
Charles  Armitage,  1841  ?  Houghton  MSS. 

And  Keats  the  real 
Adonis  with  the  hymeneal 
Fresh  vernal  buds  half  sunk  between 
His  youthful  curls,  kissed  straight  and  sheen 
In  his  Rome -grave,  by  Venus  queen. 

— Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1844, 
A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Jean  Paul  says  that  some  souls  fall  from 
heaven  like  flowers,  but  that  ere  the  pure 
and  fresh  buds  have  had  time  to  open,  they 
are  trodden  in  the  dust  of  the  earth,  and 
lie  soiled  and  crushed  beneath  the  foul 
tread  of  some  brutal  hoof.  It  was  the  fate 
of  John  Keats  to  illustrate,  in  some  re- 
spects, this  truth.  He  experienced  more 
than  the  ordinary  share  of  the  world's' 
hardness  of  heart,  and  had  less  than  the 
ordinary  share  of  sturdy  strength  to  bear 
it.  In  him,  an  imagination  and  fancy  of 
much  natural  capacity,  were  lodged  in  a 
frame  too  weak  to  sustain  the  shocks  of 
life,  and  too  sensitive  for  the  development 
of  high  and  sturdy  thought.  The  great 
defect  of  his  nature  was  a  lack  of  force. 
— Whipple,  Edwin  P.,  1845,  English 
Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  American 
Review,  July ;  Essays  and  Reviews. 

He  had  a  soul  of  noble  integrity,  and 
his  common  sense  was  a  conspicuous  part 
of  his  character.  Indeed  his  character 
was,  in  the  best  sense,  manly.  .  .  . 
With  his  friends,  a  sweeter  tempered  man 
I  never  knew  than  was  John  Keats. 
Gentleness  was  indeed  his  proper  charac- 
teristic, without  one  particle  of  dulness, 
or  insipidity,  or  want  of  spirit.  .  .  . 
In  his  letters  he  talks  of  suspecting  everyy 
body.  It  appeared  not  in  his  conversa- 
tion. On  the  contrary,  he  was  uniformly 
the  apologist  for  poor  frail  human  nature, 
and  allowed  for  people's  faults  more  than 
any  man  I  every  knew,  and  especially  for 


the  faults  of  his  friends.  But  if  any  act 
of  wrong  or  oppression,  of  fraud  or  false- 
hood, was  the  topic,  he  rose  into  sudden 
and  animated  indignation. — Bailey,  Ben- 
jamin, 1848,  Letter  to  Lord  Houghton, 
Houghton  MSS. 

Keats,  when  he  died,  had  just  completed 
his  four-and-twentieth  year.  He  was 
under  the  middle  height ;  and  his  lower 
limbs  were  small  in  comparison  with  the 
upper,  but  neat  and  well-turned.  His 
shoulders  were  very  broad  for  his  size ;  he 
had  a  face  in  which  energy  and  sensibility 
were  remarkably  mixed  up;  and  eager 
power,  checked  and  made  patient  by  ill 
health.  Every  feature  was  at  once 
strongly  cut,  and  delicately  alive.  If 
there  was  any  faulty  expression  it  was  in 
the  mouth,  which  was  not  without  some- 
thing of  a  character  of  pugnacity.  The 
face  was  rather  long  than  otherwise ;  the 
upper  lip  projected  a  little  over  the  under ; 
the  chin  was  bold,  the  cheeks  sunken ;  the 
eyes  mellow  and  glowing ;  large,  dark,  and 
sensitive.  At  the  recital  of  a  noble  action, 
or  a  beautiful  thought,  they  would  suffuse 
with  tears,  and  his  mouth  trembled.  In 
this  there  was  ill  health  as  well  as  imagi- 
nation, for  he  did  not  like  these  betrayals 
of  emotion ;  and  he  had  great  personal  as 
well  as  moral  courage.  He  once  chastised 
a  butcher,  who  had  been  insolent,  by  a 
regular  stand-up  fight.  His  hair,  of  a 
brown  color,  was  fine,  and  hung  in  natural 
ringlets.  The  head  was  a  puzzle  for  the 
phrenologists,  being  remarkably  small  in 
the  skull ;  a  singularity  which  he  had  in 
common  with  Byron  and  Shelley,  whose 
hats  I  could  not  get  on.  Keats  was 
sensible  of  the  disproportion  above  noticed, 
between  his  upper  and  lower  extremities ; 
and  he  would  look  at  his  hand,  which  was 
faded  and  swollen  in  the  veins,  and  say 
that  it  was  the  hand  of  a  man  of  fifty. 
He  was  a  seven  months'  child. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  1850-60,  Autobiography,  vol.  ii, 
ch.  xvi. 

He  had  that  fine  compactness  of  person 
which  we  regard  as  the  promise  of  lon- 
gevity, and  no  mind  was  ever  more  exultant 
in  youthful  feeling.  I  cannot  summon  a 
sufficient  reason  why  in  one  short  year  he 
should  have  been  thus  cut  off,  ''with  all 
his  imperfections  on  his  head."  .  .  . 
Those  bright  falcon  eyes,  which  I  had 
known  only  in  joyous  intercourse,  while 
revelling  in  books  and  Nature,  or  while  he 


JOHN  KEATS 


665 


was  reciting  his  own  poetry,  now  beamed 
an  unearthly  brightness  and  a  penetrating 
steadfastness  that  could  not  be  looked  at. 
It  was  not  the  fear  of  death, — on  the  con- 
trary, he  earnestly  wished  to  die, — but  it 
was  the  fear  of  lingering  on  and  on,  that 
now  distressed  him ;  and  this  was  wholly 
on  my  account.  .  .  .  There  were  few 
Englishmen  at  Rome  who  knew  Keats's 
works,  and  I  could  scarcely  persuade  any 
one  to  make  the  effort  to  read  them,  such 
was  the  prejudice  against  him  as  a  poet ; 
but  when  his  gravestone  was  placed,  with 
his  own  expressive  line,  ''Here  lies  one 
whose  name  was  writ  in  water,"  then  a 
host  started  up,  not  of  admirers,  but  of 
scoffers,  and  a  silly  jest  was  often  repeated 
in  my  hearing,  "Here  lies  one  whose  name 
was  writ  in  water,  and  his  works  in  milk 
and  water  ; "  and  this  I  was  condemned  to 
hear  for  years  repeated,  as  though  it  had 
been  a  pasquinade. — Severn,  Joseph, 
1863,  On  the  Vicissitudes  of  Keats's  Fame, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  11,  pp.  401,402,404. 

A  lady,  whose  feminine  acuteness  of  per- 
ception is  only  equalled  by  the  vigour  of  her 
understanding,  thus  describes  Keats  as  he 
appeared  about  this  time  (1818)  at  Haz- 
litt's  lectures: — "His  eyes  were  large  and 
blue,  his  hair  auburn ;  he  wore  it  divided 
down  the  centre,  and  it  fell  in  rich  masses 
on  each  side  his  face ;  his  mouth  was  full, 
and  less  intellectual  than  his  other  feat- 
ures. His  countenance  lives  in  my  mind  as 
one  of  singular  beauty  and  brightness ;  it 
had  the  expression  as  if  he  had  been  look- 
ing on  some  glorious  sight.  The  shape  of 
his  face  had  not  the  squareness  of  a  man's, 
but  more  like  some  women's  faces  I  have 
seen — it  was  so  wide  over  the  forehead  and 
so  small  at  the  chin.  He  seemed  in  perfect 
health,  and  with  life  offering  all  things 
that  were  precious  to  him." — Milnes, 
Richard  Monckton,1869,  ed.,  The  Poetical 
Works  of  John  Keats,  Memoir,  p.  xxvii. 
The  young  Endymion  sleeps  Eudymion's 
sleep ; 

The  shepherd-boy  whose  tale  was  left  half 
told! 

The  solemn  grove  uplifts  its  shield  of  gold 
To  the  red  rising  moon,  and  loud  and  deep 
The  nightingale  is  singing  from  the  steep ; 
It  is  midsummer,  but  the  air  is  cold ; 
Can  it  be  death?  Alas,  beside  the  fold 
A  shepherd's  pipe  lies  shattered  near  his 
sheep. 

— Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth, 
1873,  Keats,  A  Book  of  Sonnets. 


In  the  early  part  of  his  school-life  John 

gave  no  extraordinary  indications  of  intel- 
lectual character;  but  it  was  remembered 
of  him  afterwards,  that  there  was  ever 
present  a  determined  and  steady  spirit  in 
all  his  undertakings:  I  never  knew  it 
misdirected  in  his  required  pursuit  of 
study.  He  was  a  most  orderly  scholar. 
.  .  .  Not  the  less  beloved  was  he  for 
having  a  highly  pugnacious  spirit,  which, 
when  roused,  was  one  of  the  most  pictur- 
esque exhibitions — off  the  stage — I  ever 
saw.  One  of  the  transports  of  that 
marvellous  actor,  Edmund  Kean — whom, 
by  the  way,  he  idolized — was  its  nearest 
resemblance ;  and  the  two  were  not  very 
dissimilar  in  face  and  figure.  .  .  .  His 
passion  at  times  was  almost  ungovernable ; 
and  his  brother  George,  being  considerably 
the  taller  and  stronger,  used  frequently  to 
hold  him  down  by  main  force,  laughing 
when  John  was  in  one  of  his  moods,  and 
was  endeavoring  to  beat  him.  It  was  all, 
however,  a  wisp-of-straw  conflagration; 
for  he  had  an  intensely  tender  affection 
for  his  brothers,  and  proved  it  upon  the 
most  trying  occasions.  He  was  not  merely 
the  "favorite  of  all,"  like  a  pet  prize- 
fighter, for  his  terrier  courage;  but  his 
high-mindedness,  his  utter  unconscious- 
ness of  a  mean  motive,  his  placability,  his 
generosity,  wrought  so  general  a  feeling 
in  his  behalf,  that  I  never  heard  a  word  of 
disapproval  from  any  one,  superior  or 
equal,  who  had  known  him.  .  .  .  The  char- 
acter and  expression  of  Keats's  features 
would  arrest  even  the  casual  passenger  in 
the  street.  .  .  .  Reader,  alter  in  your 
copy  of  the'*  Life  of  Keats,"  vol.  i.,  page 
103,  ''eyes"  light  hazel,  "hair"  lightish 
brown  and  wavy.  —  Clarke,  Charles 
Cowden,  1874-78,  Keats,  Recollections  of 
Writers,  pp.  122,  123,  133,  154. 

I  confess  there  is  something  in  the  per- 
sonality of  Keats,  some  sort  of  semi-phys- 
ical aroma  wafted  from  it,  which  I  cannot 
endure;  and  I  fear  these  letters  will  be 
very  redolent  of  this.  AYhat  a  curious 
thing  is  that  undefinable  flavour  of  person- 
ality— suggestion  of  physical  quality, 
odour  of  the  man  in  his  unconscious  and 
spontaneous  self-determination,  which  at- 
tracts or  repels  so  powerfull5%  and  is  the 
very  root  of  love  or  dislike.  ^ — Symonds, 
John  Addington,  1878,  Letter  to  Edmund 
Gosse,  Feb.  16;  Life  by  Brown,  vol.  n, 
p.  147. 


666 


JOHN  KEATS 


So  when  I  saw  beside  a  Roman  portal 

"In  this  house  died  John  Keats" — for  tears 

that  sprung 
I  could  no  further  read.    O  bard  immortal ! 
Not  for  thy  fame's  sake— but  so  young,  so 

young; 

Such  beauty  vanished,  spilled  such  heavenly 
wine, 

All  quenched  that  power  of  deathless  song 
divine ! 

—Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  1885,  An 
Inscription  in  Rome,  Lyrics  and  Other 
Poems,  p.  101. 

From  this  point  (1819)  forwards  noth- 
ing but  misery  remains  to  be  recorded 
of  John  Keats.  The  narrative  becomes 
depressing  to  write  and  depressing  to  read. 
The  sensation  is  like  that  of  being  confined 
in  a  dark  vault  at  noonday.  One  knows 
indeed,  that  the  sun  of  the  poet's  genius 
is  blazing  outside,  and  that,  on  emerging 
from  the  vault,  we  shall  be  restored  to 
light  and  warmth;  but  the  atmosphere 
within  is  not  the  less  dark  and  laden,  nor 
the  shades  the  less  murky.  In  tedious 
wretchedness,  racked  and  dogged  with  the 
pang  of  body  and  soul,  exasperated  and 
protesting,  raging  now,  and  now  ground 
down  into  patience  and  acceptance,  Keats 
gropes  through  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  death.— RossETTi,  William  Michael, 
1887,  Life  of  John  Keats  (Great  Writers), 
p.  40. 

Ah,  grave  of  graves !  what  pathos  round  it 
clings ! 

To  this  sad  bourne  from  coming  age  to  age. 
While  the  tired  earth  endures  its  sufferings, 
Will  wandering  feet  make  worship's  pil- 
grimage ! 
Thou,  hoary  Rome, 

In  bosoming  him  hast  higher  glory  won. 
Although  for  Pantheon 
Thou  gav'st  him  naught,  save  that  wherein 
the  sun 

Beams  morn  by  morn,  an  everlasting  dome. 
— ScoLLARD,  Clinton,  1888,  At  the  Grave 
of  Keats,  Old  and  New  World  Lyrics,  p.  5. 
The  new  Endymion  thou,  enamored  so 
Of  thy  supernal  themes,  some  goddess, 
proud 

And  jealous,  doomed  thee  to  a  deathless 
swoon. 

As  he  on  myrtled  Latmos  long  ago 
Wast  doomed.    I  will  not  think  thee  in 
thy  shroud. 
But  sleeping  quietly  and  waking  soon. 
— Blanden,  Charles  G.,  1889,  Thoughts 
of  Keats. 

Unluckily  Keats  died,  and  his  death  was 
absurdly  attributed  to  a  pair  of  reviews 


which  may  have  irritated  him,  and  which 
were  coarse  and  cruel  even  for  that  period 
of  robust  reviewing.  But  Keats  knew 
very  well  the  value  of  these  critiques,  and 
probably  resented  them  not  much  more 
than  a  foot-ball  player  resents  being 

hacked"  in  the  course  of  the  game.  He 
was  very  willing  to  see  Byron  and  Words- 
worth ''trounced,"  and  as  ready  as  Peter 
Corcoran  in  his  friend's  poem  to  ''take 
punishment"  himself.  The  character  of 
Keats  was  plucky,  and  his  estimate  of  his 
own  genius  was  perfectly  sane.  He  knew 
that  he  was  in  the  thick  of  a  literary 
"scrimmage,"  and  he  was  not  the  man  to 
flinch  or  to  repine  at  the  consequences. — 
Lang,  Andrew,  1889,  Letters  on  Litera- 
ture, p.  197. 

Although  the  legend  as  to  the  cause  of 
the  premature  death  of  Keats  has  thus  to 
be  dismissed  as  an  impassioned  hallucina- 
tion of  Shelley's,  perpetuated  by  Byron's 
epigrammatic  version  of  it,  those  two 
articles  on  Keats' s  "Endymion"  on  its  first 
appearance, — the  Blackwood  article  of 
August,  1818,  and  the  Quarterly  article 
of  September,  1818, — retain  an  infamous 
kind  of  interest  in  English  literary  history, 
and  cannot  be  allowed  to  be  forgotten. 
The  recollection  of  them  suggests  various 
reflections.  They  exemplify  for  us,  in  the 
first  place,  the  horrible  iniquity,  the  utter 
detestability,  of  the  practice  of  carrying 
the  rancour  of  party  politics  into  the 
business  of  literary  criticism.  Almost 
avowedly,  it  was  because  young  Keats  was 
a  friend  of  Leigh  Hunt,  and  was  supposed 
to  share  the  political  opinions  of  Hunt  and 
a  few  other  Londoners  of  prominent 
political  notoriety  at  the  time,  that  the 
two  periodicals  in  question  made  their 
simultaneous  onslaught  on  "Endymion." 
They  had  vowed  exterminating  war  against 
Hunt  and  his  political  associates,  and  were 
lying  in  wait  for  every  new  appearance  in 
the  field  of  a  straggler  from  that  camp ; 
and  what  did  it  matter  to  them  who 
emerged  next,  or  in  what  guise?  Keats 
had  emerged, — in  reality  no  party  politi- 
cian at  all,  but  in  very  fibre  of  his  nature 
a  poet  and  that  only, — Keats  had  emerged 
and  they  bludgeoned  him!  —  Masson, 
David,  1892,  The  Story  of  Gifford  and 
Keats,  The  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  31, 
p.  603. 

Of  no  other  English  poet  has  the  popular 
idea  been  so  wide  of  the  mark ;  about  no 


JOHN  KEATS 


667 


other  English  poet  have  so  many  clouds  of 
misunderstanding  gathered  and  hung  to 
the  lasting  concealment  of  the  man.  .  .  . 
Above  all  English  poets  Keats  has  been  the 
victim  of  his  feeble  brethren,  who  mitigate 
their  own  sense  of  baffled  ambition  with 
the  remembrance  of  his  woes  at  the  hands 
of  the  Philistine  reviewers,  and  of  those 
sentimental  hangers  on  at  the  court  of 
poetry  who  mistake  the  king's  robe  for  the 
king's  majesty,  and  whose  solemn  genu- 
flections are  the  very  mockery  of  homage. 
Instead  of  the  real  Keats,  virile,  manly, 
courageous,  well-poised,  and  full  of  noble 
ambitions,  the  world  has  fashioned  for 
itself  a  weakly  sentimental,  sensuous 
maker  of  ovier-ripe  verse,  without  large 
ideas  of  his  art,  and  sensitive  to  the  very 
death  under  the  lash  of  a  stupid  and  vulgar 
criticism.  It  was  no  small  offence  against 
the  memory  of  this  peculiarly  rich  and 
sane  nature  that  these  misconceptions  were 
permitted  to  become  traditions.  Although 
Lord  Houghton,  Mr.  Arnold,  Professor 
Colvin,  and  other  students  and  critics  of 
Keats  have  done  much  to  rescue  his  fame 
from  the  hands  of  those  who  have  accom- 
plished what  blundering  critics  were  unable 
to  effect,  there  is  still  much  to  be  done 
before  the  world,  which  takes  its  impres- 
sions, rapidly  and  at  second  hand,  is  set 
right  concerning  one  of  the  most  promis- 
ing men  of  the  age. — Mabie,  Hamilton 
Wright,  1892-93,  Essays  in  Literary  In- 
terpretationy  p.  138. 

Let  us  suppose  he  does  not  sleep,  but 
wakes — wakes,  and  harkens  to  what  sounds 
soever  of  earthly  detraction  or  praise  may 
reach  him,  throned  among  his  fellow 
inheritors  of  unfulfilled  renown,"  whose 
place  is ' '  far  in  the  unapparent. ' '  For  he 
died  full  of  thwarted  aims  and  balked 
ambitions,  his  life  a  splendid  fragment  like 
his  own  ''Hyperion ;"  and  perhaps  it  is  not 
wildly  fanciful  to  think  of  the  eager  spirit 
of  Adonais  as  taking  some  posthumous 
interest  in  the  progress  and  consummation 
of  his  own  terrestrial  fame.  He  will  have 
seen  that  fame  gradually  disentangled 
from  minor  accidents  and  incidents  which 
at  first  did  much  to  perplex  it  and  hinder 
it  from  having  free  way;  disentangled 
from  ''Cockney  Schools,"  real  or  imagi- 
nary; from  irrelevant  prejudices  arising 
out  of  political  and  personal  considera- 
tions; from  warring  theories  of  literary 
art.    He  will  have  seen  his  influence 


operating  as  a  potent  factor  in  the  artistic 
evolution  of  the  most  eminent  of  present 
day  poets.  He  will  have  seen  the  main 
and  essential  facts  of  his  life  laid  before 
the  world  by  a  distinguished  and  genial 
dilettante,  whose  biography  of  him  was  not 
indeed  a  work  of  high  talent,  but  was  in- 
spired by  sympathy  and  directed  by  good 
taste.  In  a  word,  he  will  have  seen  almost 
everything  come  to  pass  which,  living,  he 
could  have  hoped  for.  Unfortunately, 
however,  this  is  not  all ;  would  it  were ! 
He  will  have  seen  Haydon's  "Journal"  go 
forth  to  posterity,  perpetuating  a  slander 
which  went  unrebuked  and  undenied  till 
yesterday.  He  will  have  seen  the  passion- 
ate letters  to  his  somewhat  mundane  god- 
dess catalogued  in  sale  lists,  and  knocked 
down  under  the  auctioneer's  hammer.  He 
will  have  seen  the  eflfigy  of  his  warm  and 
palpitating  heart  held  up  to  the  stare  of  a 
world  that  with  gaping  mouth  and  craning 
neck  presses  forward  into  every  sanctuary 
where  there  is  a  secret  to  be  ravished  and 
a  veil  to  be  rent  in  twain.  He  will  have 
seen  the  yelping  pack  of  scandal,  never  so 
joyous  as  when  they  can  scent  some  fallen 
greatness,  or  run  down  any  noble  quarry. 
He  will  have  seen  the  yet  uncleaner  crea- 
ture, the  thing  of  teeth  and  claws,  that 
lives  by  scratching  up  the  soil  from  over 
the  bones  of  the  buried  and  laying  corrup- 
tion bare.  He  will  have  seen  the  injudi- 
cious and  uncritical  worshipper.  He  will 
have  seen  the  painstaking  modern  editor. 
—Watson,  William,  1893,  Excursions 
in  Criticism,  p.  25. 

FANNY  BRAWNE 
Mr.  Severn  tells  me  that  Mrs.  and  Miss 
Brawne  felt  the  keenest  regret  that  they 
had  not  followed  him  and  Keats  to  Rome ; 
and,  indeed,  I  understand  that  there  was 
some  talk  of  a  marriage  taking  place 
before  the  departure.  Even  twenty  years 
after  Keats's  death,  when  Mr.  Severn  re- 
turned to  England,  the  bereaved  lady  was 
unable  to  receive  him  on  account  of  the 
extreme  painfulness  of  the  associations 
connected  with  him. — Forman,  Harry 
Buxton,  1877,  Letters  of  John  Keats  to 
Fanny  Brawne,  Introduction,  p.  Ixii. 

Her  ways  and  presence  at  first  irritated 
and  after  a  little  while  completely  fasci- 
nated him.  From  his  first  sarcastic 
account  of  her  written  to  his  brother,  as 
well  as  from  Severn's  mention  of  her  like- 
ness to  the  draped  figure  in  Titian's  picture 


668 


JOHN  KEATS 


of  Sacred  and  Profane  Love,  and  from  the 
full-length  silhouette  of  her  that  has  been 
preserved,  it  is  not  difficult  to  realize  her 
aspect  and  presence.  A  brisk  and  bloom- 
ing very  young  beauty,  of  the  far  from 
uncommon  English  hawk  blonde  type,  with 
aquiline  nose  and  retreating  forehead, 
sharp-cut  nostril  and  gray-blue  eye,  a 
slight,  shapely  figure,  rather  short  than 
tall,  a  taking  smile,  and  good  hair,  car- 
riage and  complexion — such  was  Fanny 
Brawne  externally,  but  of  her  character 
we  have  little  means  of  judging.  She  was 
certainly  high-spirited,  inexperienced,  and 
self-confident;  as  certainly,  though  kind 
and  constant  to  her  lover,  in  spite  of  pros- 
pects that  before  long  grew  dai:k,  she  did 
not  fully  realise  what  mannei  or\man  he 
was.  Both  his  men  and  worsen  mends, 
without  thinking  unkindly  of  her,  were 
apparently  of  one  opinion  in  holding  her 
no  mate  for  him  either  in  heart  or  mind, 
and  in  regarding  the  attachment  as  un- 
lucky.—Colvin,  Sidney,  1887,  Keats  (Engi 
lish  Men  of  Letters),  p.  129. 

Though  she  was  inexperienced  and  self- 
confident,  she  was  constant  and  kind  to  her 
lover  in  spite  of  prospects  which  soon 
grew  very  dark.  She  never,  however, 
fully  realized  what  manner  of  man  he  was, 
though  some  of  the  things  said  by  his 
friends,  who  did  not  approve  of  her  or  of 
his  frenzy  of  passion  for  her,  were  most 
unkind  and  entirely  unjustified.  As  I  have 
been  guilty  in  previous  writings  of  repeat- 
ing at  least  one  such  unkind  remark,  I 
most  cheerfully  acknowledge  that  better 
evidence  has  convinced  me  that  she  loved 
Keats  dearly,  and  when  he  was  dead 
tenderly  cherished  his  memory. — Speed, 
John  Gilmer,*  1895,  The  RealJohn Keats, 
McClure^s  Magazine,  vol.  5,  p.  468. 

Fanny  Brawne  was  a  poor  creature  upon 
which  to  stake  love  and  life,  and  Keats 
knew  this  to  be  true  in  the  lucid  intervals 
of  his  infatuation.  .  .  .  These  terrible 
love-letters.  Each  is  a  drop  of  life-blood,  ^ 
and  their  leap  from  the  anguished  heart 
actually  appalls  us.  No  eyes  but  hers 
should  ever  have  rested  upon  the  pages.  • 
It  was  nothing  short  of  vivisection  for  her 
to  turn  them  over  to  public  examination 
and  judgment.  And  this  was  done,  in  effect, 
by  her  preservation  of  them,  aware  as  she 
was,  what  use  would  be  made  of  them 
when  they  escaped  from  her  keeping.  We 

*Grand'nephew  of  Keats. 


cannot,  and  we  do  not  care  to,  forgive 
her. — Herrick,  Mary  Virginia  Terhune 
(Marion  Harland),  1898,  Where  Ghosts 
Walk,  pp.  171,  179. 

LOVE  LETTERS 
The  thirty-seven  letters  of  Keats  to 
Fanny  Brawne  I  have  read  with  great  pain 
inasmuch  as  from  them  I  now  understand 
for  the  first  time  the  sufferings  and  death 
of  the  Poet. — He  did  not  confide  to  me  this 
serious  passion  and  it  now  seems  to  me 
but  for  this  cause  he  might  have  lived  many 
years — I  can  now  understand  his  want  of 
courage  to  speak  as  it  was  consuming  him 
in  body  and  mind.  .  .  .  Perhaps  I 
view  the  work  more  painfully  as  I  was  not 
aware  of  such  torment  existing  in  the 
Poet's  mind  and  as  I  saw  him  struck  down 
from  health  and  vigour  to  sickness  and 
death  you  will  not  wonder  at  my  emotion 
,iij^w  that  I  find  the  fatal  cause. — Severn, 
/Jo'SEPH,  1878,  Letter  to  Harry  Buxton 
Forman,  Feb.  5 ;  The  Poetical  Works  and 
Other  Writings  of  John  Keats,  vol.  iv,  pp. 
218,  219. 

The  character  of  the  letters  is  such  as 
obtains  in  similar  productions,  only  it  is 
intensified  a  thousand-fold.  I  know  of 
nothing  comparable  with  them  in  Eng- 
lish literature— know  nothing  that  is  so 
unselfish,  so  longing,  so  adoring — noth- 
ing that  is  so  mad,  so  pitiful,  so  ut- 
terly weak  and  wretched.  John  Keats 
was  a  great  genius,  but  he  had  not  one 
particle  of  common-sense — for  himself. 
Few  men  of  genius  ever  do  have ;  it  is  only 
the  Master  Shakespeare  and  the  Masters 
Milton  and  Wordsworth,  who  are  able  to 
cope  with  the  world.  Why,  a  boy  might 
have  told  Keats  that  the  way  to  woo  and 
win  a  woman  was  not  to  bare  his  heart 
before  her,  as  he  did  before  Fanny  Brawne, 
and  not  to  let  her  know,  as  he  did,  that  he 
was  her  captive.  If  he  had  had  the  least 
glimmer  of  common-sense,  he  never  would 
hafe  surrendered  at  discretion.  .  .  . 
Miss  Fanny  Brawne  made  John  Keats 
ridiculous  in  the  eyes  of  his  friends  in  his 
lifetime,  and  now  she  (through  her  repre- 
sentatives) makes  him  ridiculous  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world.  She  (and  they)  have 
had  fifty-seven  years  in  which  to  think 
about  it — she  forty-four  years  as  maid  and 
wife;  they  thirteen  years  as  her  children. 
Why  did  she  keep  his  letters  all  those 
years  ?  What  could  she  keep  them  for  but 
to  minister  to  her  vanity,  and  to  remind 


JOHN 

her  that  once  upon  a  time  a  crazy  young 
English  poet  was  desperately  in  love  with 
her,  was  her  captive  and  her  slave  ?  What 
else  could  she  keep  them  for?  She  re- 
vered the  memory  of  Keats,  did  she?  This 
is  how  she  revered  it ! — Stoddard,  Rich- 
ard Henry,  1878,  John  Keats  and  Fanny 
Brawne,  Appleton's  Journal,  vol.  19,  pp, 
381,  382. 

What!  shall  thy  heart's  rich  blood  poured 
out  so  deep 
Be  made  a  merchandise  without  redress, 
Nor  any  voice  the  world's  base  deed  confess 
Which  prints  and  sells  a  poet's  love  so  cheap? 
My  curse  upon  this  prying,  prurient  age ! 
And  curst  the  eyes  not  closed  in  angry 
shame ! 

For  him  whom  English  air  and  critic  pen 
Twice  baffled,  ere  his  splendid  youthful  gage 
Had  measured  lialf  the  heaven  of  love  and 
fame, 

This  shameless  book  has  murdered  once 
again ! 

— Albee,  John,  1878,  Keats'  Love- Letters, 

A  man  who  writes  love-letters  in  this 
strain  is  probably  predestined,  one  may 
observe,  to  misfortune  in  his  love-affairs ; 
but  that  is  nothing.  The  complete  enerva- 
tion of  the  writer  is  the  real  point  for  re- 
mark. We  have  the  tone,  or  rather  the 
entire  want  of  tone,  the  abandonment  of 
all  reticence  and  all  dignity,  of  the  merely 
sensuous  man,  of  the  man  who  ''is  pas- 
sion's slave. ' '  Nay,  we  have  them  in  such 
wise  that  one  is  tempted  to  speak  even 
as  Blackwood  or  the  Quarterly  were 
in  the  old  days  wont  to  speak,  one  is 
tempted  to  say  that  Keats's  love-letter  is 
the  love-letter  of  a  surgeon's  apprentice. 
It  has  in  its  relaxed  self-abandonment 
something  underbred  and  ignoble,  as  of  a 
youth  ill  brought  up,  without  the  training 
which  teaches  us  that  we  must  put  some 
constraint  upon  our  feelings,  and  upon 
the  expression  of  them.  It  is  the  sort  of 
love-letter  of  a  surgeon's  apprentice  which 
one  might  hear  read  out  in  a  breach  of 
promise  case,  or  in  the  Divorce  Court. 
The  sensuous  man  speaks  in  it,  and  the 
sensuous  man  of  a  badly  bred  and  badly 
trained  sort.  That  many  who  are  them- 
sleves,  also,  badly  bred  and  badly  trained 
should  enjoy  it,  and  should  even  think  it 
a  beautiful  and  characteristic  production 
of  him  whom  they  call  their  ''lovely  and 
beloved  Keats,"  does  not  make  it  better. 
— Arnold,  Matthew,  1880,  The  English 
Poets,  ed.  Ward,  vol.  iv,  p.  429. 


KEATS  669 

7^ 

'  While  admitting  that  neither  his  love- 
letters  nor  the  last  piteous  outcries  of  his 
wailing  and  shrieking  agony  would  ever 
have  been  made  public  by  merciful  or  re- 
spectful editors,  we  must  also  admit  that,  if 
they  ought  never  to  have  been  published, 
it  is  no  less  certain  that  they  ought  never 
to  have  been  written ;  that  a  manful  kind 
of  man  or  even  a  manly  sort  of  boy,  in  his 
love-making  or  in  his  suffering,  will  not 
howl  and  snivel  after  such  a  lament- 
able fashion.  —  Swinburne,  Algernon 
Charles,  1882-86,  Keats,  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica,  Miscellanies,  p.  212. 

Keats  seems  to  me,  throughout  his  love- 
letters,  unbalanced,  wayard,  and  profuse ; 
he  exhibts  great  fervour  of  temperament, 
and  abundant  caressingness,  without  the 
inner  depth  of  tenderness  and  regard. 
He  lives  in  his  mistress,  for  himself.  As  the 
letters  pass  further  and  further  into  the 
harsh  black  shadows  of  disease,  he  abandons 
all  self-restraint,  and  lashes  out  right  and 
left ;  he  wills  that  his  friends  should  have 
been  disloyal  to  him,  as  the  motive  of  his 
being  disloyal  to  them.  To  make  allow- 
ance for  all  this  is  possible,  and  even 
necessary ;  but  to  treat  it  as  not  needing 
that  any  allowance  should  be  made  would 
seem  to  me  futile. — Rossetti,  William 
Michael,  1887,  Life  of  John  Keats  {Great 
Writers),  p.  45. 

ENDYMION 
1818 

Knowing  within  myself  the  manner  in 
which  this  Poem  has  been  produced,  it  is 
not  without  a  feeling  of  regret  that  I  make 
it  public.  What  manner  I  mean,  will  be 
quite  clear  to  the  reader,  who  must  soon 
perceive  great  inexperience,  immaturity, 
and  every  error  denoting  a  feverish  at- 
tempt, rather  than  a  deed  accomplished. 
— Keats,  John,  1818,  Endymion,  Preface. 

Reviewers  have  been  sometimes  accused 
of  not  reading  the  works  which  they 
affected  to  criticise.  On  the  present 
occasion  we  shall  anticipate  the  author's 
complaint,  and  honestly  confess  that  we 
have  not  read  his  work.  Not  that  we 
have  been  wanting  in  our  duty — far 
from  it — indeed,  we  have  made  efforts 
almost  as  superhuman  as  the  story  itself 
appears  to  be,  to  get  through  it;  but 
with  the  fullest  stretch  of  our  persever- 
ance, we  are  forced  to  confess  that  we 
have  not  been  able  to  struggle  beyond  the 
first  of  the  four  books  of  which  this  Poetic 


670 


JOHN  KEATS 


Romance  consists.  We  should  extremely 
lament  this  want  of  energy,  or  whatever 
it  may  be,  on  our  parts,  were  it  not  for  one 
consolation — namely,  that  we  are  no  better 
acquainted  \^fith  the  meaning  of  the  book- 
through  which  we  have  so  painf  ully  toiled,  j 
than  we  are  with  that  ofjtlje  three  which- 
we  have  net  look^ed  into.  It  is  not  that^ 
Mr.  Keats  (if  that  be  his*  real  name,  for  we 
almost  doubt  that  any-^ian  in  his  senses 
would  put  his  real  name  to  such  a 
rhapsody)  it  is  not,  we  say,  that  the  author 
has  not.po^ers  of  language,  rays  of  fancy, 
and  gleams  of  genius : — he  has  all  these ; 
but  he  is  unhappily  a  disciple  of  the  new 
school  of  what  has  been  somewhere  called 
Cockney  poetry ;  which  may  be  defined  to 
consist  of  the  most  incongruous  ideas  in 
the  most  uncouth  language.  ...  Of 
the  story  we  have  been  able  to  make  out 
but  little ;  it  seems  to  be  mythological,  and 
probably  relates  to  the  loves  of  Diana  and 
Endy^on ;  but  of  this,  as  the  scope  of  the 
worE^s  altogether  escaped  us,  we  cannot 
speak  with  any  degree  of  certainty ;  and 
must  therefore  content  ourselves  with 
giving  some  instances  of  its  diction  and 
versification. — Gifford,  William,  1818, 
Keats' s  Endymion,  Quarterly  Review,  voL 
19,  pp.  204,  205. 

Warmly  as  I  admire  the  poetry  of  Keats, 
I  can  imagine  that  an  intelligent  man 
might  read  the  ''Endymion''  with  care,  yet 
think  that  it  was  not  genuine  poetry ;  that 
it  showed  a  sheer  misuse  of  abundant  fancy 
and  rhythmical  power.  For  its  range  is 
narrow ;  like  the  artificial  comedy  it  has 
a  world  of  its  own,  and  this  world  is  more 
harmonious  within  itself,  made  up  of  light 
rich  materials ;  but  it  is  not  deep  enough 
or  wide  enough  to  furnish  satisfac-. 
tion  for  the  general  heart  and  mind. 
— Coleridge,  Henry  Nelson,  1843  ?  ed^ 
S.  T.  Coleridge^s  Biographia  Literaria, 
Introduction. 

As  reasonably,  and  as  hopefully  in  re- 
gard to  human  sjmipathies,  might  a  man 
undertake  an  epic  poem  upon  the  loves  of 
two  butterflies.  The  modes  of  existence'' 
in  the  two  parties  to  the  love-fable  of  the 
**Endymion,  their  relations  to  each  other 
and  to  us,  their  prospects  finally,  and  the 
obstacles  to  the  instant  realisation  of  these 
prospects, — all  these  things  are  more 
vague  and  incomprehensible  than  the 
reveries  of  an  oyster.  Still,  the  unhappy 
subject,  and  its  unhappy  expansion,  must 


be  laid  to  the  account  of  childish  years 
and  childish  inexperience. — De  Quincey, 
Thomas,  1845-57,  Gilfillan's  Literary 
Portraits,  Works,  ed.  Masson,  vol.  xi, 
p.  392. 

Let  any  man  of  literary  accomplishment, 
though  without  the  habit  of  writing 
poetry,  or  even  much  taste  for  reading  it, 
open  ''Endymion"  at  random,  (to  say 
nothing  of  the  later  and  more  perfect 
poems),  and  examine  the  characteristics 
of  the  page  before  him,  and  I  shall  be  sur- 
prised if  he  does  not  feel  that  the  whole 
range  of  literature  hardly  supplies  a  par- 
allel phenomenon.  As  a  psychological 
curiosity,  perhaps  Chatterton  is  more 
wonderful;  but  in  him  the  immediate 
ability  displayed  is  rather  the  full  compre-  • 
hension  of  and  identification  with  the  old 
model,  than  the  effluence  of  creative 
genius.  In  Keats,  on  the  contrary,  the 
originality  in  the  use  of  his  scanty 
materials,  his  expansion  of  them  to  the 
proportions  of  his  own  imagination,  and 
above  all,  his  field  of  diction  and  ex- 
pression  extending  so  far  beyond  bis 
knowledge  of  literature,  is  quite  inexpli-  " 
cable  by  any  of  the  ordinary  processes  ef 
mental  education.  If  his  classical  learn- 
ing had  been  deeper^  his  seizure  of  the^  , 
full  spirit  of  Grecian  beauty  would  have 
been  less  surprising;  if  his  English  read-^ 
ing  had  been  more  extensive,  his  inex- 
haustible vocabulary  of  picturesque  and  . 
mimetic  words  could  more  easily  b6 
accounted  for;  but  here  is  a  surgeon's  j 
apprentice,  with  the  ordinary  culture  of 
the  middle  classes,  rivalling  in  aesthetic 
perceptions  of  antique  life  and  thought 
the  most  careful  scholars  of  his  time  and 
country,  and  reproducing  these  impres- 
sions in  a  phraseology  as  complete  and 
unconventional  as  if  he  had  mastered  the 
whole  history  and  the  frequent  variations 
of  the  English  tongue,  and  elaborated  a 
mode  of  utterance  commensurate  with  his 
vast  ideas.— MiLNES,  Richard  Monckton 
(Lord  Houghton),  1848-67,  Life  and 
Letters  of  John  Keats,  p.  330. 

**Endymion"  bears  us  along  in  a  whirl 
of  imaginative  creation ;  and  the  beauties 
with  which  it  is  lavishly  strewn  scarcely 
leave  time  for  the  thought  that  the  con- 
struction wants  perspicacity — a  thought 
which  will  intrude  at  last. — Forman, 
Harry  Buxton,  1883,  ed..  The  Poetical 
Works  and  other  Writings  of  John  Keats. 


JOHN  KEATS 


671 


Luscious  and  luxuriant  in  intention — 
for  I  cannot  suppose  that  Keats  aimed  at 
being  exalted  or  ideal — the  poem  becomes 
mawkish  in  result:  he  said  so  himself, 
and  we  need  not  hesitate  to  repeat  it. 
Affectations,  conceits,  and  puerilities, 
abound,  both  in  thought  and  in  diction: 
however  willing  to  be  pleased,  the  reader 
is  often  disconcerted  and  provoked.  The 
number  of  clever  things  said  cleverly,  of 
rich  things  richly,  and  of  fine  things 
finely,  is  however  abundant  and  super- 
abundant; and  no  one  who  peruses  "En- 
dymion"  with  a  true  sense  for  poetic  en- 
dowment and  handling  can  fail  to  see  that 
it  is  peculiarly  the  work  of  a  poet. — 
RossETTi,  William  Michael,  1887,  Life 
of  John  Keats  {Great  Writers),  p.  178. 

''Endymion"  discloses  to  the  reader  of 
to-day  the  strength  and  the  weakness 
which  Keats  saw  in  it  before  the  garish 
light  of  criticism  fell  upon  it.    It  has  the 
freshness  of  feeling  and  perception,  the 
glow  of  imagination,  the  profusion  and 
I  riot  of  imagery,  the  occasional  oVerripe- 
I'  ness,  the  occasional  perfection  of  expres- 
j  sion,  the  lack  of  sustained  and  cumulative 
'  power,  which  one"  would  expect  from  so 
immature  a  mind :  as  a  finished  product  it 
has  very  great  blemishes ;  as  the  work  of 
a  young  poet  it  overflows  with  promise. 
One  wonders  not  so  much  at  the  brutality 
of  the  critics  as  at  their  stupidity. — 
Mabie,  Hamilton  Wright,  1892-93,  Es- 
says in  Literary  Interpretation,  p.  159. 

LAMIA 

Perhaps  there  is  no  poet,  living  or  dead, 
except  Shakspeare,  who  can  pretend  to 
anything  like  the  felicity  of  epithet  which 
characterizes  Keats.  One  word  "or  phrase 
is  the  essence  of  a  whole  description  or 
sentiment.  It  is  like  the  dull  substance 
of  the  earth  struck  through  by  electric 
fires,  and  converted  into  veins  of  gold  and 
diamonds.  For  a  piece  of  perfect  and 
inventive  description,  that  passage  from 
''Lamia,"  where,  Lycius  gone  to  bid  the 
guests  to  his  wedding,  Lamia,  in  her  un- 
easy excitement,  employs  herself  and  her 
demon  powers  in  -adorning  her  palace,  is 
unrivaled.  —  Howitt,  William,  1846, 
Homes  and  Haunts  of  the  Most  Eminent 
British  Poets,  vol.  i,  p.  482. 

Is,  on  the  V  hole,  the  finest  of  his  longer 
poems.— Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  1896, 
English  Literature,  p.  242. 


No  one  can  deny  the  truth  of  Keats's 
own  criticism  on  "Lamia"  when  he  says, 
"1  am  certain  there  is  that  sort  of  fire  in 
it  which  must  take  hold  of  people  in  some 
way — give  them  either  pleasant  or  un- 
pleasant sensation."  There  is,  perhaps, 
nothing  in  all  his  writing  so  vivid,  or  that 
so  burns  itself  in  upon  the  mind,  as  the 
picture  of  the  serpent-woman  awaiting  the 
touch  of  Hermes  to  transform  her,  fol- 
lowed by  the  agonized  process  of  the 
transformation  itself.  .  .  .  This  thrilling 
vividness  of  narration  in  particular  points, 
and  the  fine  melodious  vigour  of  much  of 
the  verse,  have  caused  some  students  to 
give  *' Lamia"  almost  the  first,  if  not  the 
first,  place  among  Keats's  narrative 
poems.  But  surely  for  this  it  is  in  some 
parts  too  feverish  and  in  others  too 
unequal.  It  contains  descriptions  not 
entirely  successful,  as,  for  instance,  that 
of  the  palace  reared  by  Lamia's  magic, 
which  will  not  bear  comparison  with  other 
and  earlier  dream-palaces  of  the  poet's 
building.— CoLViN,  Sidney,  1887,  Keats 
{English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  166. 

EVE  OF  ST.  AGNES  ^ 

1820 

To  the  description  before  us,  it  would 
be  a  great  injury  either  to  add  or  di- 
minish. It  falls  at  once  gorgeously  and 
delicately  upon  us,  like  the  colours  of  the 
painted  glass.  Nor  is  Madeline  hurt  by 
all  her  encrusting  jewlery  and  rustling 
silks.  Her  gentle,  unsophisticated  heart 
is  in  the  midst,  and  turns  them  into  so 
many  ministrants  to  her  loveliness. — 
Hunt,  Leigh,  1820,  The  Indicator. 

The  glory  and  charm  of  the  poem  is  in 
the  description  of  the  fair  maiden's  antique 
chamber,  and  of  all  that  passes  in  that ' 
sweet  and  angel-guarded  sanctuary :  every 
part  of  which  is  touched  with  colours  at 
once  rich  and  delicate — and  the  whole 
chastened  and  harmonised,  in  the  midst  of 
its  gorgeous  distinctness,  by  a  pervading 
grace  and  purity,  that  indicate  not  less 
clearly  the  exaltation  than  the  refinement 
of  the  author's  fancy. — Jeffrey,  Fran- 
cis Lord,  1820-44,  Keats's  Poems,  Con- 
tributions to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  iii, 
p.  116. 

The  loose  versification  of  many  of  his 
works  has  induced  belief  that  he  lacked 
energy  proportionate  to  the  vividness  of 
his  conceptions ;  but  the  opinion  is  wrong. 
Many  of  his  sonnets  possess  a  Miltonic 


672 


JOHN  KEATS 


vigour,  and  his* 'Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  is  as 
highly  finishe'd,  almost,  as  the  masterpieces 
of  Pope.— Griswold,  Rufus  W.,  1844, 
The  Poets  and  Poetry  of  England  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  p.  302. 

What  a  gorgeous  gallery  of  poetic 
pictures  that  ''Eve  of  St.  Agnes"  forms, 
and  yet  how  slim  the  tissue  that  lies  below ! 
How  thin  the  canvas  on  which  the  whole 
is  painted !  For  vigorous  sense,  one  deep- 
thoughted  couplet  of  Dryden  would  make 
the  whole  kick  the  beam.  And  yet  what 
can  be  more  exquisite  in  their  way  than 
those  pictures  of  the  young  poet !  Even 
the  old  worn  out  gods  of  Grecian  mythology 
become  life-like  when  he  draws  them. 
They  revive  in  his  hands,  and  become  vital 
once  more. — Miller,  Hugh,  1856-62,  Es- 
says, p.  452. 

"The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  aiming  at  no 
doubtful  success,  succeeds  in  evading  all 
casual  difficulty  in  the  line  of  narrative ; 
with  no  shadow  of  pretence  to  such  interest 
as  may  be  derived  from  stress  of  incident 
or  depth  of  sentiment,  it  stands  out  among 
all  other  famous  poems  as  a  perfect  and 
unsurpassable  study  in  pure  color  and  clear 
melody — a  study  in  which  the  figure  of 
Madeline  brings  back  upon  the  mind's 
eye,  if  not  as  moonlight  recalls  a  sense 
of  sunshine,  the  nuptial  picture  of  Mar- 
low's  Hero,  and  the  sleeping  presence  of 
Shakespeare's  Imogen.  Besides  this  poem 
should  always  be  placed  the  less  famous 
but  not  less  precious  "Eve  of  St.  Mark" 
a  fragment  unexcelled  for  the  simple  per- 
fection of  its  perfect  simplicity,  exquisite 
alike  in  suggestion  and  in  accomplishment. 
— Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  1882- 
86,  Keats,  Encyclopcedia  Britannica,  Mis- 
cellanies, p.  213. 

"The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes"  is  par  excellence 
the  poem  of  "glamour."  It  means  next 
to  nothing ;  but  means  that  little  so  exqui- 
sitely, and  in  so  rapt  a  mood  of  musing  or 
of  trance,  that  it  tells  as  an  intellectual 
no  less  than  a  sensuous  restorative.  Per- 
haps no  reader  has  ever  risen  from  "The 
Eve  of  St.  Agnes"  dissatisfied.  After  a 
while  he  can  question  the  grounds  of  his 
satisfaction,  and  may  possibly  find  them 
wanting;  but  he  has  only  to  peruse  the 
poem  again,  and  the  same  spell  is  upon 
him.— RossETTi,  William  Michael,  1887, 
Life  of  John  Keats  (Great  Writers),  p.  183. 

Pure  and  passionate,  surprising  by  its 
fine  excess  of  color  and  melody,  sensuous 


in  every  line,  yet  free  from  the  slightest 
taint  of  sensuality,  is  unforgettable  and 
unsurpassable  as  the  dream  of  first  love. 
—Vandyke,  Henry,  1895,  The  Influ- 
ence of  Keats,  The  Century,  vol.  50,  p.  912. 

HYPERION 

1830 

His  fragment  of  "Hyperion"  seems 
actually  inspired  by  the  Titans,  and  is  as 
sublime  as  ^schylus.  —  Byron,  Lord, 
1821,  Observations  upon  an  Article  in 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  note. 

Keats 's  new  volume  has  arrived  to  us, 
and  the  fragment  called  "Hyperion" 
promises  for  him^  that  he  is  destined  to 
become  one  of  the  first  writers  of  the  age. 
— Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1820,  Corre- 
spondence of  Leigh  Hunt,  vol.  i,  p.  158. 

Though  there  are  passages  of  some  force 
and  grandeur.  It  is  sufficiently  obvious, 
from  the  specimen  before  us,  that  the  sub- 
ject is  too  far  removed  from  all  the  sources 
of  human  interest,  to  be  successfully 
treated  by  any  modern  author.  Mr.  Keats 
has  unquestionably  a  very  beautiful  im- 
agination, a  perfect  ear  for  harmony,  and 
a  great  familiarity  with  the  finest  diction 
of  English  poetry ;  but  he  must  learn  not 
to  misuse  or  misapply  these  advantages ; 
and  neither  to  waste  the  good  gifts  of  na- 
ture and  study  on  intractable  themes,  nor 
to  luxuriate  too  recklessly  on  such  as  are 
more  suitable.— Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord, 
1820-44,  Keats' s  Poems,  Contributions  to 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  ill,  p.  119. 

The  very  midsummer  madness  of  affecta- 
tion, of  false  vapoury  sentiment,  and  of 
fantastic  effeminacy,  seemed  to  me  com- 
bined in  Keats' s  "Endymion,"  when  I  first 
saw  it,  near  the  close  of  1821.  The 
Italian  poet  Marino  had  been  reputed  the 
•greatest  master  of  gossamery  affectation 
in  Europe.  But  his  conceits  showed  the 
palest  of  rosy  blushes  by  the  side  of 
Keats's  bloody  crimson.  Naturally  I  was 
discouraged  at  the  moment  from  looking 
further.  But  about  a  week  later,  by  pure 
accident,  my  eye  fell  upon  his  * '  Hyperion. ' ' 
The  first  feeling  was  that  of  incre'dulity 
that  the  two  poems  could,  under  change 
of  circumstances  or  lapse  of  time,  have 
emanated  from  the  same  mind.  The 
"Endymion"  trespasses  so  strongly gfgainst 
good  sense  and  just  feeling  that,  in  order 
to  secure  its  pardon,  we  need  the  whole 
weight  of  the  imperishable  'Hyperion;" 
which,  as  Mr.  Gilfillan  truly  says,  "is  the 


JOHN  KEATS 


673 


greatest  of  poetical  torsos."  The  first 
belongs  essentially  to  the  vilest  collec- 
tion of  waxwork  filigree  or  gilt  ginger- 
bread, the  other  presents  the  majesty,  the 
austere  beauty,  and  the  simplicity  of 
a  Grecian  temple  enriched  with  Grecian 
sculpture.— De  Quincey,  Thomas,  1845- 
57,  Gilfillan's  Literary  Portraits,  Works, 
ed.  Masson,  voL  xi,  p.  389. 

One  of  the  great  disappointments  in 
Literature  is  the  coming  upon  the  stars 
w'hich  show  that  the  ''Hyperion"  of 
Keats  is  a  fragment.— Calvert,  George 
H.,  1874,  Brief  Essays  and  Brevities, 
p.  217. 

As  a  story,  **Endymion"  deserves  all 
that  its  worst  enemies  ever  said  of  it. 
''Hyperion"  shows  a  remarkable  advance, 
but  it  is  well  that  Keats  left  it  a  fragment, 
for  it  is  plain  that,  wit'i  his  effeminate 
notion  of  Apollo,  he  could  never  have  in- 
vented any  kind  of  action  which  would 
have  interested  the  reader  in  learning  how 
the  old  Titan  Sun-God  was  turned  out 
of  his  kingdom.— Courthope,  William 
John,  1885,  The  Liberal  Movement  in 
English  Literature,  p.  184. 

But  though  Keats  sees  the  Greek  world 
from  afar,  he  sees  it  truly.  The  Greek 
touch  is  not  his,  but  in  his  own  rich  and 
decorated  English  way  he  writes  with  a 
sure  insight  into  the  vital  meaning  of 
Greek  ideas.  .  .  .  With  a  few  slips 
and  inequalities,  and  one  or  two  instances 
of  verbal  incorrectness,  "Hyperion,"  as 
far  as  it  was  written,  is  indeed  one  of  the 
grandest  poems  in  our  language,  and  in 
its  grandeur  seems  one  of  the  easiest 
,  and  most  spontaneous. — Colvin,  Sidney, 
1887,  Keats  (English  Men  of  Letters),  pp. 
153,  155. 

The  opening  promises  well ;  we  are 
conscious  at  once  of  a  new  musical  blank 
verse,  a  music  both  sweet  and  strong,  alive 
with  imagination  and  tenderness.  There 
and  throughout  the  poem  are  passages  in 
which  Keats,  without  losing  his  own  in- 
dividuality, is  as  good  as  Milton,  where 
Milton  is  as  good  as  Virgil;  and  such  pas- 
sages rank  with  the  best  things  that  Keats 
ever  did;  but  in  other  places  he  seems 
a  little  overshadowed  by  Milton,  while 
definite  passages  of  the  "Paradise  Lost" 
are  recalled,  and  in  some  places  the  imita- 
tion seemB  fpi^id. — Bridges,^  I^o^ert, 
1894,  Po^v  ■  John  Keats,  ed,  t)rury, 
•   IntroWt^ioi       .  I,  p.  xli. 

43  c 


ODES 

1820 

I  have  come  to  that  pass  of  admiration 
for  him  now,  that  I  dare  not  read  him,  so 
discontented  he  makes  me  with  my  own 
work ;  but  others  must  not  leave  unread, 
in  considering  the  influence  of  trees  upon 
the  human  soul,  that  marvellous  ode  to 
Psyche.— RusKiN,  John,  1860,  Modern 
Painters,  pt.  vi,  ch.  ix. 

If  one  may  say  a  word  obiter,  out  of  the 
fulness  of  one's  heart — I  am  often  inclined 
to  think  for  all-in-all, — that  is,  for 
thoughts  most  mortally  compacted,  for 
words  which  come  forth,  each  trembling 
and  giving  off  light  like  a  morning-star, 
and  for  the  pure  beauty  of  the  spirit  and 
strength  and  height  of  the  spirit, — which, 
I  say,  for  all-in-all,  I  am  often  inclined  to 
think  ["Ode  on  Melancholy"],  reaches  - 
the  highest  height  yet  touched  in  the  lyric 
line.— Lanier,  Sidney,  1881,  The  English 
Novel,  p.  95. 

The  "Ode  to  a  Nightingale,"  one  of  the 
finest  masterpieces  of  human  work  in  all 
time  and  for  all  ages.— Swinburne,  Al- 
gernon Charles,  1882-86,  Keats,  Ency- 
clopcedia  Britannica,  Miscellanies,  p.  211. 

I  make  bold  to  name  one  of  our  shorter 
English  lyrics  that  still  seems  to  me,  as  it 
seemed  to  me  ten  years  ago,  the  nearest  to 
perfection,  the  one  I  would  surrender  last 
of  all.  What  should  this  be  save  the 
"Ode  to  a  Nightingale,"  so  faultless  in  its 
.  varied  unity  and  in  the  cardinal  qualities 
of  language,  melody,  and  tone  ?  A  strain 
that  has  a  dying  fall;  music  wedded  to 
ethereal  passion,  to  the  yearning  that 
floods  all  nature.—  Stedman,  Edmund 
Clarence,  1884,  Keats,  The  Century,  vol 
27,  p.  600. 

The  "Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn"  wonder- 
fully enshrines  the  poet's  kinship  with 
Greece,  and  with  the  spirit  of  her  worship. 
There  is  all  the  Greek  measure  and  modera- 
tion about  it  also;  a  calm  and  classic 
grace,  with  severe  loveliness  of  outline. 
In  form  it  is  perfect.  There  is  an  exquis- 
iteness  of  expression — not  that  which  is 
often  mistakenly  so  designated,  but  a 
translucence,  as  of  silver  air,  or  limpid 
water,  that  both  reveals  and  glorifies  all 
fair  plants,  or  pebbles,  or  bathing  lights. 
— Noel,  Roden,  1886,  Keats,  Essays  on 
Poetry  and  Poets,  p.  169. 

In  the  five  odes  there  is  naturally  some 
'diversity  in  the  degrees  of  excellence. 


674 


JOHN  KEATS 


,  .  .  Considered  intellectually,  we  might 
form  a  kind  of  symphony  out  of  them,  and 
arrange  it  thus — 1,  ''Grecian  Urn;"  2, 
'Tsyche;"  3,  ''Autumn;"  4,  "Melan- 
choly;" 5,  "Nightingale;"  and,  if  Keats 
had  left  us  nothing  else,  we  should  have 
in  this  symphony  an  almost  complete 
picture  of  his  poetic  mind,  only  omitting, 
or  representing  deficiently,  that  more  in- 
stinctive sort  of  enjoyment  which  partakes 
of  gaiety.  Viewing  all  these  wondrous 
odes  together,  the  predominant  quality 
which  we  trace  in  them  is  an  extreme 
susceptibility  to  delight,  close-linked  with 
after  thought — pleasure  with  pang — or 
that  poignant  sense  of  ultimates,  a  sense 
delicious  and  harrowing,  which  clasps  the 
joy  in  sadness,  and  feasts  upon  the  very 
sadness  in  joy.  The  emotion  throughout 
is  the  emotion  of  beauty.  Beauty  intensely 
perceived,  intensely  loved,  questioned  of 
its  secret  like  the  sphinx,  imperishable  and 
eternal,  yet  haunted  (as  it  were)  by  its 
own  ghost,  the  mortal  throes  of  the  human 
soul.  As  no  poet  had  more  capacity  for 
enjoyment  than  Keats,  so  none  exceeded 
him  in  the  luxury  of  sorrow.  Few  also 
exceeded  him  in  the  sense  of  the  one 
moment  irretrievable ;  but  this  conception 
in  its  fulness  belongs  to  the  region  of 
morals  yet  more  than  of  sensation,  and  the 
spirit  of  Keats  was  almost  an  alien  in  the 
region  of  morals. — Rossetti,  William 
Michael,  1887,  Life  of  John  Keats  (Great 
Writers)^  p.  194. 

When  the  young  poet  wrought  so  unaware 
From  purest  Parian,  washed  by  Grecian  seas. 
And  stained  to  amber  softness  by  the  breeze 
Of  Attic  shores,  his  Urn,  antiquely  fair,— 
And  brimmed  it  at  the  sacred  fountain, where 
The  draughts  he  drew  were  sweet  as  Oast- 
aly's,— 

Had  he  foreseen  what  souls  would  there  ap- 
pease 

Their  purer  thirsts,  he  had  not  known  de- 
spair ! 

About  it  long  processions  move  and  wind, 
Held  by  its  grace, — a  chalice  choicely  fit 
For  Truth's  and  Beauty's  perfect  interfuse. 
Whose  effluence  the  exhaling  years  shall  find 
Unwasted:  for  the  poet's  name  is  writ 
(Firmer  than  marble)  in  Olympian  dews! 

—Preston,  Margaret  J.,  1887,  Keats' 
Greek  Urn,  The  Century,  vol.  33,  p,  586. 

SONNETS 
^'Nature's  Eremite:"  like  a  solitary 
thing  in  Nature. — This  beautiful  Sonnet 
was  the  last  word  of  a  poet  deserving  the 


title  "marvellous  boy"  in  a  much  higher 
sense  than  Chatterton.  If  the  fulfilment 
may  ever  safely  be  prophesied  from  the 
promise,  England  appears  to  have  lost  in 
Keats  one  whose  gifts  in  Poetry  have 
rarely  been  surpassed. — Palgrave,  Fran- 
cis Turner,  1861,  The  Golden  Treasury. 

Do  you  remember  that  last  sonnet  ?  Let 
us  repeat  it  solemnly,  and  let  the  words 
wander  down  with  the  waters  of  the  river 
to  the  sea.  .  .  .  How  the  star-sheen 
on  the  tremulous  tide,  and  that  white 
death-like ' '  mask, ' '  haunt  the  imagination ! 
Had  the  poet,  who  felt  the  grass  grow  over 
him  ere  he  was  five-and-twenty,  been 
crowned  with  a  hundred  summers,  could 
he  have  done  anything  more  consummate  ? 
I  doubt  it.— Skelton,  John  (Shirley), 
1862,  Nugce  Criticce,  p.  236. 

Though  Keats  has  never  been  and  prob- 
ably never  will  be  a  really  popular  poet, 
his  influence  on  other  poets  and  on  poetic 
temperaments  generally  has  been  quite 
incalculable.  Some  of  his  sonnets  are 
remarkable  for  their  power  and  beauty, 
while  others  are  indifferent  and  a  few  are 
poor.  With  all  his  love  for  the  beauty  of 
isolated  poetic  lines — music  condensed 
into  an  epigram  more  concise  than  the 
Greeks  ever  uttered — as,  for  example,  his 
own  splendid  verse,  ^  ^  ^' 
There  is  a  budding  morrow  in  mid-night — 
and  with  all  that  sense  of  verbal  melody 
which  he  manifested  so  remarkably  in  his 
odes,  it  is  strange  that  in  his  sonnets  he 
should  so  often  be  at  fault  in  true  harmony. 
— Sharp,  William,  1886,  Sonnets  of  this 
Century,  Introduction,  p.  Iv. 

The  sonnet  on  Chapman's  Homer  stands 
alone  in  its  perfection  among  boyish  pro- 
ductions and  high  up  among  the  great  son- 
nets of  the  language. — Lodge,  Henry 
Cabot,  1897,  Certain  Accepted  Heroes  and 
Other  Essays,  p.  130. 

As  well  rounded  and  compact  a  poetic 
unit  [''Chapman's  Homer"]  as  our  litera- 
ture can  show.— Johnson,  Charles  F., 
1898,  Elements  of  Literary  Criticism, 
p.  19. 

GENERAL 
Sir, — We  regret  that  your  brother  ever 
requested  us  to  publish  this  book,  or  that 
our  opinion  of  its  talent  should  have  led 
us  to  acquiesce  in  undertaking  it.  We 
are,  however,  much  obliged  to  you  for 
relieving  us  from  the  unpleap  ^nt  necessity 
of  declining  any  further  connexion  with 


JOHN  KEATS 


675 


it,  which  we  must  have  done,  as  we  think 
the  curiosity  is  satisfied,  and  the  sale  has 
dropped.  By  far  the  greater  number  of 
persons  who  have  purchased  it  from  us 
have  found  fault  with  it  in  such  plain 
terms,  that  we  have  in  many  cases  offered 
to  take  the  book  back  rather  than  be 
annoyed  with  the  ridicule  which  has,  time 
after  time,  been  showered  upon  it.  In 
fact,  it  was  only  on  Saturday  last  that  we 
were  under  the  mortification  of  having  our 
own  opinionof  its  merits  flatly  contradicted 
by  a  gentlem.an,  who  told  us  he  considered 
it  * '  no  better  than  a  take  in. ' '  These  are 
unpleasant  imputations  for  any  one  in 
business  to  labour  under,  but  we  should 
have  borne  them  and  concealed  their  exist- 
ence from  you  had  not  the  style  of  your 
note  shewn  us  that  such  delicacy  would  be 
quite  thrown  away.  We  shall  take  means 
without  delay  for  ascertaining  the  number 
of  copies  on  hand,  and  you  shall  be  in- 
formed accordingly.  Your  most,  &c. — 
Ollier,  C.  and  J.,  1817,  Letter  to  George 
Keats,  April  29. 

To  witness  the  disease  of  any  human 
understanding,  however  feeble,  is  distress- 
ing; but  the  spectacle  of  an  able  mind 
reduced  to  a  state  of  insanity  is  of  course 
ten  times  more  afflicting.  It  is  with  such 
sorrow  as  this  that  we  have  contemplated 
the  case  of  Mr.  John  Keats.  This  young 
man  appears  to  have  received  from  nature 
talents  of  an  excellent,  perhaps  even  of  a 
superior  order — talents  which,  devoted  to 
the  purposes  of  any  useful  profession, 
must  have  rendered  him  a  respectable  if 
not  an  eminent  citizen.  His  friends,  we 
understand,  destined  him  to  the  career  of 
medicine,  and  he  was  bound  apprentice 
some  years  ago  to  a  worthy  apothecary  in 
town.  But  all  has  been  undone  by  a  sudden 
attack  of  the  malady  to  which  we  have 
alluded.  .  .  .  We  venture  to  make 
one  small  prophecy,  that  his  bookseller 
will  not  a  second  time  venture  SOL  on 
anything  he  can  write.  It  is  a  better  and 
a  wiser  thing  to  be  a  starved  apothecary 
than  a  starved  poet ;  so  back  to  the  shop 
Mr.  John,  back  to  plasters,  pills,  and 
ointment-boxes,''  &c.  But,  for  Heaven's 
sake,  young  Sangrado,  be  a  little  more 
sparing  of  extenuatives  and  soporifics  in 
your  practice  than  you  have  been  in  your 
poetry.— LocKHART,  John  Gibson?  1818, 
The  Cockney  School  of  Poetry,  No.  4; 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol.  3,  pp.  519,  524. 


His  feelings  are  full,  earnest  and 
original,  as  those  of  the  olden  writers 
were  and  are ;  they  are  made  for  all  time, 
not  for  the  drawing-room  and  the  moment. 
Mr.  Keats  always  speaks  of,  and  describes 
nature,  with  an  awe  and  a  humility,  but 
with  a  deep  and  almost  breathless  affec- 
tion.— He  knows  that  Nature  is  better  and 
older  than  he  is,  and  he  does  not  put  him- 
self on  an  equality  with  her.  You  do  not 
see  him,  when  you  see  her.  The  moon  and 
the  mountainous  foliage  of  the  woods,  and 
the  azure  sky,  and  the  ruined  and  magic 
temple ;  the  rock,  the  desert,  and  the  sea ; 
the  leaf  of  the  forest,  and  the  embossed 
foam  off  the  most  living  ocean,  are  the 
spirits  of  his  poetry  ;  but  he  does  not  bring 
them  in  his  own  hand,  or  obtrude  his  person 
before  you,  when  you  are  looking  at  them. 
.  .  .  In  the  structure  of  his  verse,  and 
the  sinewy  quality  of  his  thoughts,  Mr. 
Keats  greatly  resembles  old  Chapman,  the 
nervous  translator  of  Homer.  His  mind 
has  "thews  and  limbs  like  to  its  ances- 
tors." Mr.  Gifford,  who  knows  something 
of  the  old  dramatists,  ought  to  have  paused 
before  he  sanctioned  the  abuse  of  a  spirit 
kindred  with  them.  If  he  could  not  feel,  he 
ought  to  know  better.— Reynolds,  John 
Hamilton,  1818,  West  of  England  Jour- 
nal and  General  Advertiser,  Oct.  6. 

No  more  Keats,  I  entreat: — flay  him 
alive ; — if  some  of  you  don't,  I  must  skin 
him  myself.  There  is  no  bearing  the 
drivelling  idiotism  of  the  manikin. — By- 
ron, Lord,  1820,  Letter  to  Mr.  Murray, 
Oct.  12. 

Mr.  Keats,  we  understand,  is  still  a  very 
young  man ;  and  his  whole  works,  indeed, 
bear  evidence  enough  of  the  fact.  They 
are  full  of  extravagance  and  irregularity, 
rash  attempts  at  originality,  interminable 
wanderings,  and  excessive  obscurity. 
They  manifestly  require,  therefore,  all  the 
indulgence  that  can  be  claimed  for  a  first 
attempt : — But  we  think  it  no  less  plain 
that  they  deserve  it :  For  they  are  flushed 
all  over  with  the  rich  lights  of  fancy  ;  and 
so  coloured  and  bestrewn  with  the  flowers 
of  poetry,  that  even  while  perplexed  and 
bewildered  in  their  labyrinths,  it  is  im- 
possible to  resist  the  intoxication  of  their 
sweetness,  or  to  shut  our  hearts  to  the 
enchantments  they  so  lavishly  present. 
—  Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1820-44, 
Keats's  Poems,  Contributions  to  the  Edin- 
burgh Review,  vol.  ill,  p.  102. 


676 


JOHN  KEATS 


.    .    .    till  the  Future  dares 
Forget  the  Past,  his  fate  and  fame  shall  be 
An  echo  and  a  light  unto  eternity !    .    .  . 
He  is  made  one  with  Nature:   there  is 
heard 

His  voice  in  all  her  music,  from  the  moan 
Of  thunder  to  the  song  of  night's  sweet 
bird; 

He  is  a  presence  to  be  felt  and  known 

In  darkness  and  in  light,  from  herb  and 

stone, 

Spreading  itself  where'er  that  Power  may- 
move 

Which  has  withdrawn  his  being  to  its  own ; 
Which  wields  the  world  with  never  wearied 
love. 

Sustains  it  from  beneath,  and  kindles  it 
above.    .    .  . 
.    .    .    burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of 
Heaven, 

The  soul  of  Adonais,  like  a  star, 
Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal 
are. 

—Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1821,  Adon- 
ais, An  Elegy  on  the  Death  of  John  Keats, 
st.  i,  xlii,  Iv. 

Mr.  Keats  is  also  dead.  He  gave  the 
greatest  promise  of  genius  of  any  poet  of 
his  day.  He  displayed  extreme  tender- 
ness, beauty,  originality  and  delicacy  of 
fancy ;  all  he  wanted  was  manly  strength 
and  fortitude  to  reject  the  temptations  of 
singularity  in  sentiment  and  expression. 
Some  of  his  shorter  and  later  pieces  are, 
however,  as  free  from  faults  as  they  are 
full  of  beauties. —  Hazlitt,  William, 
1824,  Select  British  Poets. 

Thy  clear,  strong  tones  will  oft  bring  sudden 
bloom 

Of  hope  secure,  to  him  who  lonely  cries, 
Wrestling  with  the  young  poet's  agonies. 
Neglect  and  scorn,  which  seem  a  certain 
doom : 

Yes!  the  few  words  which,  like  great  thun- 
der-drops. 

Thy  large  heart  down  to  earth  shook  doubt- 
fully. 

Thrilled  by  the  inward  lightening  of  its 
might, 

Serene  and  pure,  like  gushing  joy  of  light, 
Shall  track  the  eternal  chords  of  Destiny, 
After  the  moon-led  pulse  of  ocean  stops. 
—Lowell,  James  Russell,  1841,  To  the 
Spirit  of  Keats. 

Keats  was  born  a  poet  of  the  most  poet- 
ical kind.  All  his  feelings  came  to  him 
through  a  poetical  medium,  or  were 
speedily  coloured  by  it.  He  enjoyed  a 
jest  as  heartily  as  any  one,  and  sympathized 
with  the  lowliest  commonplace ;  but  the 
next  minute  his  thoughts  were  in  a  garden 


of  enchantment,  with  nymphs,  ^nd  fauns 
and  shapes  of  exalted  humanity :  ' 

Elysian  beauty,  melancholy  grace. 
It  might  be  said  of  him,  that  he  never  be- 
held an  oak-tree  without  seeing  the  Dryad. 
His  fame  may  now  forgive  the  critics  who 
disliked  his  politics,  and  did  not  under- 
stand his  poetry.  Repeated  editions  of 
him  in  England,  France,  and  America, 
attest  its  triumphant  survival  of  all 
obloquy ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
he  has  taken  a  permanent  station  among 
the  British  Poets,  of  a  very  high,  if  not 
thoroughly  mature,  description. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  184:4,  Imagination  and  Fancy,p.28S. 

Had  there  been  no  such  thing  as  litera- 
ture, Keats  would  have  dwindled  into  a 
cipher.  Shelley,  in  the  same  event,  would 
hardly  have  lost  one  plume  from  his  crest. 
It  is  in  relation  to  literature,  and  to  the 
boundless  questions  as  to  the  true  and  the 
false  arising  out  of  literature  and  poetry, 
that  Keats  challenges  a  fluctuating  inter- 
est,—sometimes  an  interest  of  strong 
disgust,  sometimes  of  deep  admiration. 
There  is  not,  I  believe,  a  case  on  record 
throughout  European  Literature  where 
feelings  so  repulsive  of  each  other  have 
centered  in  the  same  individual. —  De 
Quince Y,  Thomas,  1S45-57,' Gilfillan's  Lit- 
erary Portraits,  Works,  ed.  Masson,  vol, 
XI,  p.  388. 

By  the  by,  beg,  borrow,  steal,  or  buy 
Keats' Letters  and  Poems;''  most  won- 
derful bits  of  Poems,  writ^n  off  hand 
at  a  sitting,  most  of  them :  Aonly  wonder 
that  they  do  not  make  a  noise  in  the 
world.— Fitzgerald,  Edward,  1849,  Let- 
ters, vol.  I,  p.  195. 

What  was  his  record  of  himself,  ere  he 
Went  from  us?  "Here  lies  one  whose  name 
was  writ 

In  water."    While  the  chilly  shadows  flit 
Of  sweet  St.  Agnes'  Eve,  while  basil 
springs — 

His  name,  in  every  humble  heart  that  sings ^ 
Shall  be  a  fountain  of  love,  verily. 

— RossETTi,  Christina,  1849,  On  Keats, 
New  Poems,  p.  23. 

The  song  of  a  nightingale  sent  thro'  a  slum- 
brous valley, 

Low-lidded  with  twilight,  and  tranced  with 
the  dolorous  sound. 

Tranced  with  a  tender  enchantment;  the 
yeai-ning  of  passion 

That  wins  immortality  even  while  panting 
delirous  with  deatli. 

— Meredith,  George,  1851,  Works,  vol 

XXXI,  p.  140. 


JOHN  KEATS 


677 


Keats,  the  most  Grecian  of  all,  rejected  the 

metre  of  Grecians  ; 
Poesy  breathed  over  him,  breathed  constantly, 

tenderly,  freshly. 

— Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1853,  Eng- 
lish Hexameters. 

Every  one  of  Keats's  poems  was  a  sacri- 
fice of  vitality ;  a  virtue  went  away  from 
him  into  every  one  of  them ;  even  yet,  as 
we  turn  the  leaves,  they  seem  to  warm  and 
thrill  our  fingers  with  the  flush  of  his  fine 
senses,  and  the  flutter  of  his  electrical 
nerves,  and  we  do  not  wonder  he  felt  that 
what  he  did  was  to  be  done  swiftly.  .  .  . 
Keats  certainly  had  more  of  the  penetra- 
tive and  sympathetic  imagination  which 
belongs  to  the  poet,  of  that  imagination 
which  identifies  itself  with  the  momentary 
object  of  its  contemplation,  than  any  man 
of  these  later  days.  It  is  not  merely  that 
he  has  studied  the  Elizabethans  and  caught 
their  turn  of  thought,  but  that  he  really 
sees  things  with  their  sovereign  eye,  and 
feels  them  with  their  electrified  senses. 
His  imagination  was  his  bliss  and  bane. 
.  .  .  To  me  one  of  the  most  interesting 
aspects  of  Keats  is  that  in  him  we  have  an 
example  of  the  renaissance  going  on  almost 
under  our  eyes,  and  that  the  intellectual 
ferment  was  in  him  kindled  by  a  purely 
English  leaven.  He  had  properly  no 
scholarship,  any  more  than  Shakespeare 
had,  but  like  him  he  assimilated  at  a  touch 
whatever  could  serve  his  purpose.  His 
delicate  senses  absorbed  culture  at  every 
pore. — Lowell,  James  Russell,  1854- 
90,  Keats,  Prose  Writings,  Riverside  ed., 
vol.  I,  'pp.  232,  243,  244. 

.    .    .    The  man  who  never  stepped 
In  gradual  progress  like  another  man, 
But,  turning  grandly  on  his  central  self. 
Ensphered  himself  in  tv^enty  perfect  years 
And  died,  not  young  (the  life  of  a  long  life 
Distilled  to  a  mere  drop,  falling  like  a  tear 
Upon  the  world's  cold  cheek  to  make  it  burn 
For  ever). 

— Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1856, 
Aurora  Leigh,  hk.  i. 

Keats  drinks  the  beauty  of  nature 
violently ;  but  has  no  more  real  sympathy 
with  her  than  he  has  with  a  bottle  of 
claret.  His  palate  is  fine ;  but  he  * '  bursts 
joy's  grape  against  it,''  gets  nothing  but 
misery,  and  a  bitter  taste  of  dregs  out  of 
his  desperate  draught. — Ruskin,  John, 
1856,  Modern  Painters,  pt.  iv,  ch.  xvi. 

Keats,  both  in  verbal  form  and  in  the 
higher  qualities  of  poetry,  is  constantly 


reminding  us  of  the  more  imaginative 
works  of  Chaucer.— Marsh,  George  P., 
1859,  Lectures  on  the  English  Language, 
First  Series,  p.  23,  note, 

Spenser's  manner  is  no  more  Homeric 
than  is  the  manner  of  the  one  modern  in- 
heritor of  Spenser's  beautiful  gift;  the 
poet,  who  evidently  caught  from  Spenser 
his  sweet  and  easy-slipping  movement,  and 
who  has  exquisitely  employed  it;  a 
Spenserian  genius,  nay,  a  genius  by  natural 
endowment,  richer  probably  than  even 
Spenser ;  that  light  which  shines  so  unex- 
pected and  without  fellow  in  our  century, 
an  Elizabethan  born  too  late,  the  early 
lost  and  admirably  gifted  Keats. — Arnold, 
Matthew,  1861,  Lectures  on  Homer,  p,  68. 
While  I  sit  in  silence, 
Comes  from  mile  on  mile  hence. 
From  English  Keats's  Roman  grave,  a  voice 
that  lightens  toil. 

— Buchanan,  Robert,  1866,  To  David  in 
Heaven. 

Wrote  in  a  manner  which  carried  the 
reader  back  to  the  time  when  those  charm- 
ing passages  of  lyrical  enthusiasm  were 
produced  which  we  occasionally  find  in  the 
plays  of  Shakespeare,  in  those  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  and  in  Milton's  ''Comus." 
The  verses  of  Keats  are  occasionally  dis- 
figured, especially  in  his  *'Endymion,"  by 
a  flatness  almost  childish,  but  in  the  finer 
passages  they  clothe  the  thought  in  the 
richest  imagery  and  in  words  each  of 
which  is  a  poem.  Lowell  has  justly  called 
Keats  *'over-languaged,"  but  there  is 
scarce  a  word  that  we  should  be  willing  to 
part  with  in  his  *  *  Ode  to  the  Nightingale, ' ' 
and  that  on  a  Grecian  Urn,"  and  the 
same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  greater  part 
of  his  Hyperion.  "—Bryant,  William 
Cullen,  1870,  A  New  Library  of  Poetry 
and  Song,  Introduction,  vol.  l,  p.  43. 

Were  it  necessary,  in  this  place,  to 
characterize  Keats  as  a  writer,  I  should 
say  that  he  was  more  intensely  and  ex- 
clusively poetical  than  any  other.  No  one 
can  read  his  poems  (including  "Endymion" 
and  all  others  subsequently  published) 
without  feeling  at  once  that  he  is  com- 
muning with  a  great  poet.  There  can  be 
no  mistake  about  his  quality.  It  is  above 
all  doubt ;  and  if,  like  Lucifer,  he  has  not 
drawn  after  him  a  third  part  of  the 
heavens,  he  has  had  a  radiant  train  of 
followers,  comprising  (with  the  exception 
of  the  great  name  of  Wordsworth)  all  who 


678 


JOHN  KEATS 


have  since  succeeded  in  distinguishing 
themselves  in  the  same  sphere  of  art. — 
Procter,  Bryan  Waller,  1874,  Recollec- 
tions of  Men  of  Letters,  p.  202. 

He  hath  quaffed 
Glory  and  Death  in  one  immortal  draught ; 
Surely  among  the  undying  men  of  old 
Numbered  art  thou,  great  Heart. 

-De  Vere,  Aubrey,  1874,  To  Keats, 
Alexander  the  Great  and  Other  Poems, 
p.  402. 

Keats  died  at  twenty-five,  and  yet,  to 
men  past  sixty  he  is  fresh,  freshening. — 
Calvert,  George  H.,  1874,  Brief  Essays 
and  Brevities,  p.  216. 

No  one  regards  the  poet's  quivering  string, 
Since  thine  was  hushed,  who  brought  the 
myrtle  here 

From  perfect  Arcadie,  whose  verse 

Young  earth's  freshness  could  rehearse. 

No  eventide  was  thine, 
But  like  the  young  athlete  from  the  bath. 

For  one  brief  hour, 
You  stood  in  the  arena  yet  uncrowned, 
Doubtful,  although  beyond  all  venturers 
strong : 

Yes,  strong  to  guide  Hyperion's  coursers 
round 

The  love-inscribfed  zodiac  of  all  time : 
Thou  youth,  who  in  the  gardens  Athenine, 
The  noblest  sage  had  leant  upon  with  pride  > 
And  called  thee  Musagsetes,  and  thy  lyre 

Wreathed  with  the  bay 

Of  the  god  of  day. 
— Scott,  William  Bell,  1875,  To  the 
Memory  of  Keats. 

The  spirit  of  art  was  always  vividly  near 
and  precious  to  Keats.  He  fashioned  it 
exuberantly  into  a  thousand  shapes,  now  of 
gem-like  exquisiteness,  now  mere  sightly 
or  showy  trinkets;  and  of  these  the 
scrupulous  taste  will  even  pronounce  the 
cheapest,  and  rightly  pronounce  them,  to 
be  trumpery.  Still,  there  is  the  feeling 
of  art,  however  provoking  its  masquerade ; 
recognizable  here  as  clearly  as  it  is  in  the 
formative  fine  art,  wrought  by  a  cunning 
hand,  in  a  period  of  great  and  overblown 
development  and  impending  decadence — 
such  as  the  late  cinquecento  or  the  earlier 
French  rococo.  Not  indeed  that,  in  Keats's 
case,  there  is  any  taint  of  decadence — 
but  on  the  contrary  the  wanton  and  tan- 
gled wilfulnesses  of  a  beautiful  precocity, 
and  a  beautiful  immaturity.  Clearer  and 
clearer  did  the  true  and  high  promptings 
of  art  become  to  him  as  he  advanced,  and 
more  immediate  and  certain  his  response 


to  them.  He  might  have  said  at  the  last 
with  Nero  '^Qalis  artifex  pereo!'' — Ros- 

SETTI,  W^ILLIAM  MiCHAEL,  1878,  LiveS  of 

Famous  Poets,  p.  360. 
Yet  later,  lingering  briefly  among  men. 
He  dropt  before  the  world's  feet  those  few 
flowers 

Whose  color  and  odor  brave  all  blight 
of  years, 

And  the  rare  radiance  of  whose  bloom,  since 
then. 

Pathos,  their  sweet  attendant,  ever  dowers 
With  the  soft  silver  dews  of  pitying 
tears ! 

— Fawcett,  Edgar,  1878,  Fantasy  and 
Passion,  p.  186. 

His  faults  are  numerous  and  glaring. 
The  mythology  which  supplied  him  with 
his  miseen  scene  is  elementary  and  almost 
puerile.  His  stories  are  lacking  in  human 
interest.  In  fact,  he  does  hardly  anything 
but  describe,  and  he  describes  with  an 
exuberance  which  is  unluckily  not  incom- 
patible with  the  most  painful  monotony. 
The  enthusiasm  for  nature  which  is  the 
soul  of  his  verse  is  certainly  sincere,  and 
yet  Keats  writes  with  effort.  His  naivete 
is  not  feigned,  but  there  is  something  in  t 
it  of  deliberation,  and  therefore  of  ex-» 
aggeration.  In  short,  there  is  affectation  • 
in  him,  and  I  cannot  regard  as  wholly  un-» 
just  the  reproach  of  cockneyism  which 
critics  used  to  throw  at  this  poet  and  his 
friends.  Yet,  with  all  these  faults, Keats 
is  very  far  from  being  an  ordinary  person ; 
his  posthumous  popularity  is  very  far 
from  being  inexplicable,  and  the  influence 
which  he  still  exercises  is  very  far  from 
being  a  mere  matter  of  coterie  and  engoue- 
ment.  He  has  a  special  feeling,  a  feeling 
of  extraordinary  intensity,  for  nature  and 
for  beauty.  It  seems  as  though  he"  saw 
woods,  streams,  fields  for  the  first  time, 
so  full  of  novelty  and  of  the  marvellous  Is 
the  spectacle  to  him.  There  is  at  once  sen- 
suousness  and  religion  in  his  communion 
with  the  life  of  all  things.  There  would 
seem  to  be  a  perfume  which  gets  in  his 
head,  an  intoxication  to  which  he  gives 
himself  up,  a  ritual  into  whose  mysteries 
he  is  trying  to  break,  a  baptism,  a  whelm- 
ing in  the  eternal  natura  naturans. 
Wordsworth  himself,  as  we  shall  see,  can 
lay  claim  to  a  deeper  understanding  of 
nature :  but  it  is  easy  to  understand  that 
his  idyllic  piety,  his  patriarchal  philoso- 
phizing, must  have  at  last  seemed  terribly 
groveling  to  a  generation  which  had  drunk 


JOHN  KEATS 


679 


the  heady  philtres  of  Keats's  descriptive 
poetry.  —  Scherer,  Edmond,  1880-91, 
Wordsworth  and  Modern  Poetry  in  Eng- 
land, Essays  on  English  Literature,  tr. 
Saintsbury,  p.  192. 

O  pang-dowered  Poet,  whose  reverberant  lips 
And  heart-strung  lyre  awoke  the  Moon's 
eclipse, — 

Thou  whom  the  daisies  glory  in  growing 
o'er, — 

Their  fragrance  clings  around  thy  name,  not 
writ 

But  rumour 'd  in  water,  while  the  fame  of  it 
Along  Time's  flood  goes  echoing  evermore. 

— RossETTi,  Dante  Gabriel,  1881,  John 
Keats,  Five  English  Poets,  Ballads  and 
Sonnets. 

Among  the  poets  who  appeared  in  the 
first  two  decades  of  this  century,  as  among 
all  poets,  readers  will  choose  their  favour- 
ites according  to  their  sympathies.  But 
putting  aside  personal  preferences,  every 
one  must  allow  that  none  of  the  poets  of 
that  time  was  more ' '  radiant  with  genius, ' ' 
and  more  rich  in  promise,  than  the  short- 
lived Keats.— Shairp,  John  Campbell, 
1881,  Modern  English  Poetry,  Aspects  of 
Poetry,  p.  149. 

In  his  first  book  there  was  little  fore- 
taste of  anything  greatly  or  even  genuinely 
good ;  but  between  the  marshy  and  sandy 
flats  of  sterile  or  futile  verse  there  were 
undoubtedly  some  few  purple  patches  of 
floral  promise.  The  style  was  frequently 
detestable— a  mixture  of  sham  Spenserian 
and  mock  Wordsworthian,  alternately 
florid  and  arid.  His  second  book,  *'En- 
dymion,"  rises  in  its  best  passages  to  the 
highest  level  of  Barnfield  and  of  Lodge, 
the  two  previous  poets  with  whom,  had  he 
published  nothing  more  he  might  have 
probably  have  been  classed;  and  this, 
among  minor  minstrels,  is  no  unenviable 
place.  His  third  book  raised  him  at  once 
to  a  foremost  rank  in  the  highest  class  of 
English  poets.  Never  was  any  one  of  them 
but  Shelley  so  little  of  a  marvellous  boy 
and  so  suddenly  revealed  as  a  marvellous 
man.  Never  has  any  poet  suffered  so 
much  from  the  chaotic  misarrangement  of 
his  poems  in  every  collected  edition.  The 
rawest  and  the  rankest  rubbish  of  his  fitful 
spring  is  bound  up  in  one  sheaf  with  the 
ripest  ears,  flung  into  one  basket  with 
the  richest  fruits,  of  his  sudden  and 
splendid  summer. — Swinburne,  Algernon 
Charles,  1882-86,  Keats,  Encydopoedia 
Britannica ;  Miscellanies,  p.  210. 


He  would  have  been  among  the  very 
greatest  of  us  if  he  had  lived.  There  is 
something  of  the  innermost  soul  of  poetry 
in  almost  everything  he  ever  wrote. — 
Tennyson,  Alfred  Lord,  1883,  Criti- 
cisms on  Poets  and  Poetry,  Memoir,  ed. 
by  his  Son,  vol.  ii,  p.  286. 

The  sixth  to  come  was  like  unto  a  droop- 
ing flower,  or  a  spirit  among  men  that  went 
in  and  out  none  knew  how.  He,  too,  sang 
a  song,  whereof  no  man  could  say  certainly 
whether  it  were  his  or  the  lark's.  He 
went  forward  with  a  wand  in  his  hand,  but 
no  helmet  was  on  his  head,  and  over  his 
heart  no  breast-plate.  One  blow  from  the 
true-men  he  received,  and  it  went  in  about 
the  third  rib,  near  the  heart,  and  for 
awhile  he  fainted ;  but  presently  recover- 
ing himself  he  stood  up  and  turned  his  eyes 
wistfully  to  the  path,  and  in  a  moment 
disappearing  was  lost  in  a  thicket,  and  was 
seen  again  of  none  till  he  came  forth  at 
the  top.— Caine,  Hall,  1883,  The  Fable 
of  the  Critics,  Cobwebs  of  Criticism,  p.  ix. 

The  genius  of  Greek  poetry  was  alien  to 
the  English  mind  until  it  revealed  itself  to 
the  young  imagination  of  Keats,  who  wore 
it  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  not  because  he 
was  a  scholar, — for  a  scholar  he  was  not, 
— but  because  he  was  a  Greek.  There  are 
a  thousand  faults  in  "Endymion, "  but  the 
unpardonable  fault  of  falsehood  is  not  one 
of  them.  It  is  true,  everywhere  true  to 
the  spirit  of  Greek  pastoral  poetry,  of 
which  it  was  the  first,  and  is  the  last, 
example  in  English  song.  How  thoroughly 
the  genius  of  Keats  was  possessed  with 
the  beautiful  mythology  of  Greece,  and 
how  rapidly  it  matured  his  wonderful 
genius,  which  in  writing ''Endymion"  out- 
grew the  lush  luxuriance  of  manner  which 
is  the  worst  defect  of  that  poem,  we  see 
in  his  Odes  '*To  Psyche,"  and  ''On  a 
Grecian  Urn," — exquisite  productions  in 
the  purest  style  of  art,  —and  in  the  frag- 
ment of  Hyperion,"  wherein  magnifi- 
cence of  conception  and  severity  of  expres- 
sion are  alike  conspicuous,  and  where,  for 
the  first  time,  the  epical  height  of  the 
Greeks  is  attained  by  an  English  poet. 
The  secret  of  ''Hyperion"  and  "Endym- 
ion"  inhered  in  the  temperament  of 
Keats,  who  was  a  Greek,  as  one  of  his 
friends  declared. —  Stoddard,  Richard 
Henry,  1884,  Selections  from  the  Poetical 
Works  of  A.  C.  Swinburne,  Introduction, 
p.  ix. 


680 


JOHN  KEATS 


As  regards  verbal  expression,  a  close 
test  of  original  power,  he  certainly  out- 
ranks any  poet  since  Shakspere. — Sted- 
MAN,  Edmund  Clarence,  1884,  Keats,  The 
Century,  vol.  21  y  p.  600. 

So  far  as  the  general  reading  public  are 
concerned,  Hunt  was  the  discoverer  of 
Keats,  and  not  only  his  discoverer,  but  his 
faithful  interpreter,  pointing  out  lovingly, 
by  means  of  his  ''signpost  criticism," 
(as  it  has  been  called  somewhat  disparag- 
ingly by  those  who » profess  to  need  no 
guidance  the  along  byways  of  literature), 
those  magical  facilities  of  insight  and  ex- 
pression which  even  in  his  earliest  and 
crudest  work  testified  that  here  was  a  poet 
of  the  true  royal  line. — Noble,  James 
AsHCROFT,  1886,  The  Sonnet  in  England 
and  other  Essays,  p,  107. 

By  power,  as  well  as  by  temperament 
and  aim,  he  was  the  most  Shakspearean 
spirit  that  has  lived  since  Shakspeare. — 
CoLViN,  Sidney,  1887,  Keats  (English 
Men  of  Letters),  p,  215. 

In  no  poetry  is  the  personality  of  the 
writer  more  manifest  than  in  his :  in  none 
does  the  ideal  creation  spring  more 
eivdently  from  introspection  and  self-con- 
sciousness.  His  character  determined  his 
method  of  compositioin,  as  his  method  of 
composition  imposed  a  limitation  on  his 
genius.  A  certain  morbidness  of  fancy — ■ 
due,  probably  in  great  part,  to  physical 
causes — haunted  him,  which  did  not, 
indeed,  like  the  imagination  of  Shelley, 
force  him  to  take  ideas  for  facts,  but 
which,  producing  in  him  a  kind  of  incessant 
love-longing,  drove  him  to  shun  the  reali- 
ties of  life,  and  to  find  an  asylum  in  the  re- 
gions of  imagination. — Courthorpe,  Wil- 
LAM  John,  1887,  Keats'  Place  in  English 
Poetry,  The  National  Review,  vol,  10,p.l6. 
A  fair-formed  image  of  immortal  youth 

Breasting  the  steep  hillside  of  life's  en- 
deavor ; 

A  white -robed  herald  of  eternal  truth 

Shouting  a  message  from  the  gods  forever. 
—Wilson,  Robert  Burns,  1887,  Keats, 
The  Century,  vol.  84,  p.  110. 

Probably  the  ve-  linest  lyric  ["La  Belle 
Dame  san  Mer'  i.     in  the  English  la 
guage.— Patmore,  Coventry,  1889-98, 
Principle  in  Art,  p.  76. 

Keats,  *'the  Elizabethan  born  out  of  due 
time,"  as  he  has  been  called,  kept  him- 
self indeed  unspotted  from  the  contagion 
of  science.    Yet  his  passion  for  nature 


moving  though  it  did  on  u.ies  traced  by 
Spenser,  has  a  far  greater  intensity,  a  far 
more  fiery  self-abandonment  to  the  intoxi- 
cation of  earth,  than  would  have  been  pos- 
sible in  the  sixteenth  century. — Symonds, 
John  Addington,  IS90,  Essays  Speculative 
and  Suggestive,  vol.  ii,  p.  270. 

Thou  silent  singer  'neath  the  grass, 
Still  sing  to  me  those  sweeter  songs  unsung, 
"Pipe  to  the  spirit  ditties  of  no  tone," 
Caressing  thought  with  wonderments  of 
phrase 

Such  as  thy  springtide  rapture  knew  to  win. 
Ay,  sing  to  me  thy  unborn  summer  songs, 
And  the  ripe  autumn  lays  that  might  have 
been; 

Strong  wine  of  fruit  mature,  whose  flowers 

alone  we  know. 
— Mitchell,  S.  Weir,  1891,  The  Grave  of 
Keats,  Collected  Poems,  p.  307. 

It  was  on  the  trinity  of  truth,  beauty, 
and  pleasure  that  Keats  built,  and  built 
lastingly.— Cheney,  John  Vance,  1891, 
The  Golden  Guess,  p.  28. 

Probably  no  English  poet  who  has  used 
the  Spenserian  stanza,  first  assimilated  so 
fully  the  spirit  of  Spenser,  before  using 
the  stanza,  as  did  Keats ;  and  to  this  fact 
may  be  partly  attributed  his  efl^ective  use 
of  it  as  an  organ  for  his  imagination  in 
its  ''lingering,  loving,  particularizing 
mood.  "—Corson,  Hiram,  1892,^4  Primer 
of  English  Verse,  p,  124. 

Not  since  Spenser  had  there  been  a 
purer  gift  of  poetry  among  English-speak- 
ing peoples;  not  since  Milton  a  line  of 
nobler  balance  of  sound,  thought,  and 
cadence.  There  is  no  magic  of  colour  in 
written  speech  that  is  not  mixed  in  the 
diction  of  *'The  Eve  of  Saint  Agnes," — 
a  vision  of  beauty,  deep,  rich,  and  glow- 
ing as  one  of  those  dyed  windows  in  which 
the  heart  of  the  Middle  Ages  still  burns. 
While  of  the  odes,  so  perfect  in  form,  so 
ripe  with  thought,  so  informed  and  irradi- 
ated by  the  vision  and  the  insight  of  the 
imagination,  what  remains  to  be  said  save 
that  they  furnish  us  with  the  tests  and 
standards  of  poetry  itself  ?  They  mark  the 
complete  identification  of  thought  with 
form,  of  vision  with  faculty,  of  life  with 
art. — Mabie,  Hamilton  Wright,  1892-3, 
Essays  in  Literary  Interpretation,  p.  164. 

He  was  one  of  the  greatest  of  English 
poets ;  he  led  a  life  in  which  there  was  no 
doubt  a  vast  deal  of  keen  and  exquisite 
pleasure,  but  little  or  no  happiness ; 
thrown,  for  the  most  part,  among  a  set  of 


JOHN  KEATS 


681 


clever,  small  men,  he  towers  above  them, 
a  man  by  no  means  clever  but  very 
great;  though  not  unfortunate  in  the 
worst  and  bitterest  sense  of  the  word, 
though  he  had  no  struggles  with  immediate 
adversity  and  want,  he  yet  suffered  much ; 
he  lavished  the  strength  of  a  tender  and 
noble  heart  upon  a  rather  commonplace 
young  woman,  who  evidently  had  no 
suspicion  that  she  was  worshipped — she, 
ordinary  little  piece  of  pretty  Eve's  flesh 
— by  one  of  earth's  immortal  sons. 
Among  these  clever,  small  men.  Hunt, 
Reynolds,  and  the  rest,  by  whom  he  was 
surrounded,  and  with  whom  in  popular 
estimation  he  was  scarce  distinguishably 
merged,  he  held  before  his  eyes  a  lofty 
and  splendid  ideal  of  excellence  in  the  art 
which  he  had  chosen,  or  which  nature  had 
chosen  for  him.  He  saw  this  ideal  at  first 
with  blurred  and  faltering  vision,  but  ever 
more  clearly  as  his  eyes  were  purged  with 
the  euphrasy  and  rue  of  human  experience ; 
he  added  to  the  store  of  the  world's 
beauty,  he  increased  the  sum  of  man's 
happiness,  and  doing  this  was  rewarded 
with  contempt  and  ribald  mockery,  was 
condemned  to  read  things  written  about 
himself  which  if  uttered  in  oral  inter- 
course would  be  recognised  by  everybody 
as  gross  insult  and  brutal  outrage ;  spend- 
ing himself  in  the  service  of  man,  his  rec- 
ompense was  not  seldom  such  scorn  and 
contumely  as  might  appropriately  be  re- 
served for  an  enemy  of  one's  species. 
Worn  out  by  suffering  and  discouragement, 
and  perhaps  in  part  by  the  yet  more  shat- 
tering pangs  of  immoderate  joy,  he  sinks 
in  premature  death. — Watson,  William, 

1893,  Excursions  in  Criticism,  p.  23. 

We  honor  in  the  lad  who  passed  so  long 
unobserved  among  the  inhabitants  of 
Hampstead,  a  poet,  and  nothing  but  a  poet, 
but  one  of  the  very  greatest  poets  that  the 
modern  world  has  seen.  .  .  .  Keats 
lives,  as  he  modestly  assured  his  friends 
would  be  the  case,  among  the  English 
poets.  Nor  among  them,  merely,  but  in 
the  first  rank  of  them — among  the  very 
few  of  whom  we  instinctively  think  v^^hen- 
ever  the  characteristic  versemen  of  our 
race  are  spoken   of. — Gosse,  Edmund, 

1894,  Address  at  the  Keats  Monument, 
July  16. 

i  ,nn  inclined  to  think  that  Mr.  Matthew 
Ar/»'"iid.  a  critic  with  whose  judgments  I 
ra       find  myself  in  dissent,  makes  a 


somewhat  misleading  remark  when  he 
insists  that  Keats's  master  passion  was  not 
the  passion  of  the  sensuous  or  sentimental 
poet,  but  was  an  intellectual  or  spiritual 
passion.  If  the  words  sensuous  and  senti- 
mental were  intended  in  an  opprobrious 
sense,  the  remark  might  be  useful ;  but  if 
they  are  used  in  the  literal  meaning,  and 
then  contrasted  with  intellectual  and 
spiritual,  their  tendency  is  to  withdraw 
the  reader  of  Keats  from  the  main  char- 
acteristics of  his  poetry. — Minto,  Wil- 
liam, 1894,  The  Literature  of  the  Georgian 
Era,  ed.  Knight,  p.  304. 
Upon  thy  tomb  'tis  graven,  "Here  lies  one 
Whose  name  is  writ  in  water."  Could 
there  be 

A  flight  of  Fancy  fitlier  feigned  for  thee, 
A  fairer  motto  for  her  favorite  son? 
For,  as  the  wave,  thy  varying  numbers  run — 
Now  crested  proud  in  tidal  majesty. 
Now  tranquil  as  the  twilight  reverie 
Of  some  dim  lake  the  white  moon  looks  upon 
While  teems  the  world  with  silence.  Even 
there, 

In  each  Protean  rainbow-tint  that  stains 
The  breathing  canvas  of  the  atmosphere, 

We  read  an  exhalation  of  thy  strains. 
Thus,  on  the  scroll  of  Nature,  everywhere, 

Thy  name,  a  deathless  syllable,  remains. 
— Tabb,  John  B.,  1894,  Keats,  Poems. 

In  spite  of  this  earnestness  and  philos- 
ophy, it  is  certainly  true  that  Keats'  mind 
was  of  a  luxurious  habit ;  and  it  must  have 
been  partly  due  to  this  temperament  that 
he  showed  so  little  severity  towards  him- 
self in  the  castigation  of  his  poems,  though 
that  was,  as  I  said  before,  chiefly  caused 
by  the  prolific  activity  of  his  imagination, 
which  was  always  providing  him  with  fresh 
material  to  work  on.  In  this  respect  he 
is  above  all  poets  an  example  of  what  is 
meant  by  inspiration :  the  mood  which  all 
artists  require,  covet,  and  find  most  rare 
was  the  common  mood  with  him;  and  I 
should  say  that  being  amply  supplied  with 
this,  what  as  an  artist  he  most  lacked  was 
self-restraint  and  self-castigation,  — which 
was  indeed  foreign  tr  his  luxurious 
temperament,  unselfish  d  devoted  to  his 
art  as  he  was,  — the  p^  jnce  of  which  was 
most  needful  to  watc  '^hoose,and  reject 
tje  images  which  ci  n\u.d  on  him  as  he 
thought  or  wrote. — Bridges,  Robert, 
1894,  Poems  of  John  Keats,  ed.  Drury, 
Introduction,  vol.  I,  p.  ci. 

One  would  like  to  know  whether  a  first 
reading  in  the  letters  of  Keats  does  not 
generally  produce  something  akin  to  a 


682 


JOHN  KEATS 


severe  mental  shock.  It  is  a  sensation 
which  presently  becomes  agreeable,  being 
in  that  respect  like  a  plunge  into  cold 
water,  but  it  is  undeniably  a  shock.  Most 
readers  of  Keats,  knowing  him,  as  he 
should  be  known,  by  his  poetry,  have  not 
the  remotest  conception  of  him  as  he 
shows  himself  in  his  letters.  Hence  they 
are  unprepared  for  this  splendid  exhibi- 
tion of  virile  intellectual  health.  Not 
that  they  think  of  him  as  morbid, — his 
poetry  surely  could  not  make  this  impres- 
sion,— but  rather  that  the  popular  concep- 
tion of  him  is,  after  all  these  years,  a 
legendary  Keats,  the  poet  who  was  killed 
by  reviewers, the  Keats  of  Shelley's  pref- 
ace to  the  Adonais,  the  Keats  whose  story 
is  written  large  in  the  world's  book  of 
Pity  and  of  Death.  When  the  readers  are 
confronted  with  a  fair  portrait  of  the  real 
man,  it  makes  them  rub  their  eyes.  Nay, 
more,  it  embarrasses  them.  To  find  them- 
selves guilty  of  having  pitied  one  who 
stood  in  small  need  of  pity  is  mortifying. 
In  plain  terms,  they  have  systematically 
bestowed  (or  have  attempted  to  bestow) 
alms  on  a  man  whose  income  at  its  least 
was  bigger  than  any  his  patrons  could 
boast.  Small  wonder  that  now  and  then 
you  find  a  reader,  with  large  capacity  for 
the  sentimental,  who  looks  back  with 
terror  to  his  first  dip  into  the  letters. — 
Vincent,  Leon  H.,  1894,  A  Reading  in 
the  Letters  of  John  Keats,  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  14:,  p.  399. 

The  perfection  of  Keats's  art,  the  sure- 
ness  of  success  with  which  he  translated 
into  words,  feelings  that  but  for  him  those 
who  underwent  them  would  have  abandoned 
asinxepressible,make  rather  startling  the 
suggestion  that  there  was  anything  to 
which  he  was  inadequate  because  for  it 
*  *  he  was  not  ripe. ' '  Indeed  it  is  the  very 
ripeness  of  Keats's  art  at  its  best  that 
distinguishes  it  above  the  work  of  so  many 
generations  of  his  elders,  and  makes  it  so 
astonishing  as  the  work  of  a  youth,  so  far 
is  it  removed,  in  its  security  and  ease  of 
mastery,  from  the  struggles  for  expression 
of  immaturity,  from  the  mere  glibness  of 
precocity.  It  is  the  sense  rather  of  over- 
ripeness  than  of  unripeness  that  it  gives 
of  a  sensibility  hectic  and  excessive. — 
Schuyler,  Montgomery,  1895,  The  Cen- 
tenary of  Keats,  The  Forum,  vol.  20,  p. 
362. 

Setting  aside  his  rapid  progress,  Keats 


is  the  best  illustration  of  the  natural  de- 
velopment of  a  poet.  Beginning  and  end- 
ing his  intemperate  period  with  the  too 
ample  verge  and  room,  the  trailing  fringe 
and  sampler-like  embroidery  of  "Endym- 
ion,"  he  was  soon  writing  the  most  per- 
fect odes  in  the  language ;  he  elaborated 
in  a  few  months  a  style,  the  like  of  which 
greater  men  have  failed  to  achieve  even  in 
half  a  century  of  uninterrupted  work. — 
Davidson,  John,  1895,  Sentences  and 
Paragraphs,  p.  12. 

He  gave  to  that  end  the  best  that  he  had 
to  give,  freely,  generously,  joyously  pour- 
ing himself  into  the  ministry  of  his  art. 
He  did  not  dream  for  a  moment  that  the 
gift  was  perfect.  Flattery  could  not  blind 
him  to  the  limitations  and  defects  of  his 
early  work.  He  was  his  own  best  and 
clearest  critic.  But  he  knew  that  so  far 
as  it  went  his  poetic  inspiration  was  true. 
He  had  faithfully  followed  the  light  of  a 
pure  and  elevating  joy  in  the  opulent, 
manifold  beauty  of  nature,  and  in  the 
eloquent  significance  of  old-world  legends, 
and  he  believed  that  it  had  already  led  him 
to  a  place  among  the  poets  whose  verse 
would  bring  delight,  in  far-off'  years,  to 
the  sons  and  daughters  of  mankind.  .  .  . 
The  poetry  of  Keats,  small  in  bulk  and 
slight  in  body  as  it  seems  at  first  sight  to 
be,  endures,  and  will  endure,  in  English 
literature,  because  it  is  the  embodiment 
of  the  spirit  of  immortal  youth. — Van 
Dyke,  Henry,  1895,  The  Influence  of 

^  Keats,  The  Century,  vol.  50,  pp.  911,  912. 

His  landscape  seems  to  me  of  quite 
equal  importance  with  the  human  side  of 
his  work;  it  was,  indeed,  the  region  in 
which  he  felt  that  his  art,  as  yet  unquali- 

.  fied  through  youthful  inexperience  to  deal 
powerfully  with  human  character  and  in- 
terests, attained  the  highest  mastery. 
Keats,  sharing  with  Shelley  an  intense  ap- 
preciation of  Nature,  has  a  music  in  his 
verse  more  solemn,  if  less  aerial.  He 
neither  views  the  landscape  through  the 
colours  of  personal  feeling  like  Byron, 
nor  with  Wordsworth  thinks  of  it  as  allied 
with  human  sympathy,  or  as  penetrated  by 
spiritual  life,  nor,  with  Shelley,  wearies 
us  with  a  crude  pantheism.  Hence  his 
pictures  are  more  powerfully  true  to 
actuality;  he  grasps  the  scene  more 
vividly,  emblazons  it  more  richly :  the 
object,  seen  in  thought,  has  the  salience, 
the  relief,  of  Nature;  the  melody  never 


JOHN  KEATS 


683 


pausing,  and  the  word  the  inevitable'' 
word.  Hence,  what  Arnold  named  his 
"fascinating  felicity." — Palgrave,  Fran- 
cis Turner,  1896,  Landscape  in  Poetry, 
p.  210. 

Nothing  is  more  interesting,  even  in  the 
endless  and  delightful  task  of  literary  com- 
parison, than  to  contrast  the  work  of 
Shelley  and  Keats,  so  alike  and  yet  so  differ- 
ent. A  little  longer  space  of  work,  much 
greater  advantages  of  means  and  educa- 
tion, and  a  happier  though  less  blameless 
experience  of  passion,  enabled  Shelley  to 
produce  a  much  larger  body  of  work  than 
Keats  has  to  his  name,  even  when  this  is 
swollen  by  what  Mr.  Palgrave  has  justly 
stigmatised  as  ''the  incomplete  and  infe- 
rior work"  withheld  by  Keats  himself,  but 
made  public  by  the  cruel  kindness  of  ad- 
mirers. And  this  difference  in  bulk  prob- 
ably coincides  with  a  difference  in  the 
volume  of  genius  of  the  two  writers. 
Further,  while  it  is  not  at  all  improbable 
that  if  Shelley  had  lived  he  would  have 
gone  on  writing  better  and  better,  the 
same  probability  is,  I  think,  to  be  more 
sparingly  predicated  of  Keats. — Saints- 
bury,  George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nine- 
teenth Century  Literature,  p.  87. 

Short  as  was  the  life  of  John  Keats,  and 
small  as  was  the  actual  bulk  of  his  pro- 
duction, there  is  no  one  of  his  contempo- 
raries who  holds  more  distinctly  or  securely 
his  place  as  the  legitimate  successor  of  the 
greatest  among  the  English  poets  before 
him  and  as  the  necessary  precursor  of 
those  who  have  followed.  ...  He 
had  in  common  with  the  poets  of  Greece 
and  of  England  at  its  greatest  time  a 
certain  enchanting  directness  and  sim- 
plicity of  expression :  while  from  both  he 
differed  in  his  comparative  indifference  to 
humanity.  Keats  shared  with  the  Greeks 
that  pagan  sensuousness  which  revels  in 
the  delights  of  the  senses  untroubled  by 
moral  meaning  or  responsibility ;  like  the 
Elizabeth""^  possessed  the  perception 
and  appre  -i  t  ;  - 1  of  natural  beauty  entirely 
apart  fron  a  roinistry  to  man ;  while  from 
both  he  di  —and  in  so  far  fell  below 
both — by  t  )ability  to  rest  upon  a  pas- 
sionate sat  ion  in  sensuous  beauty  for 
its  own  sak  as  an  end  sufficient  in  it- 
self. .  .  re  is  no  stronger  link  be- 
tween the  of  the  Elizabethan  time 
and  that  o  Victorian  school  than 
John  Keatfe         the  more  closely  this 


statement  is  examined  the  more  suggestive 
and  the  more  accurate  in  substantial 
effect  it  is  found  to  be. — Bates,  Arlo, 
1896,  ed.,  Poems  by  John  Keats,  Intro- 
duction, pp.  xxii,  xxiv,  xxviii. 

I  might  cite  page  on  page  from  Keats, 
and  yet  hold  your  attention ;  there  is  some- 
thing so  beguiling  in  his  witching  words ; 
and  his  pictures  are  finished — with  only 
one  or  two  or  three  dashes  of  his  pencil. 
—Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  1897,  English 
Lands  Letters  and  Kings,  The  Later 
Georges  to  Victoria,  p.  231. 

Nearly  all  people  who  read  poetry  have 
a  favoritism  for  Keats;  he  is  in  many 
respects  the  popular  hero  of  English  litera- 
ture. He  was  young,  and  chivalrously 
devoted  to  his  art ;  he  has  a  mastery  of 
expression  almost  unparalleled;  he  is 
neither  obscure  nor  polemic ;  and  he  has 
had  from  the  first  a  most  fecundating  in- 
fluence on  other  minds :  in  Hood,  in  Tenny- 
son, in  Rossetti  and  Matthew  Arnold,  in 
Lanier  and  Lowell,  in  Yeats  and  Watson, 
one  feels  the  breath  and  touch  of  Keats 
like  an  incantation.  .  .  .  Now,  what 
is  the  outstanding  extraneous  feature  of 
Keats's  poetry  ?  It  is  perhaps  the  musical 
and  sculptural  effect  which  he  can  make 
with  words :  a  necromancy  which  he  exer- 
cises with  hardly  a  rival,  even  "among  the 
greatest and  among  these  he  justly  hoped 
to  stand.  Observe  that  a  facility  of  this 
sort  cannot  be  a  natural  endowment,  since 
we  must  still,  as  Sir  Philip  Sidney  bewails, 
"be  put  to  school  to  learn  our  mother- 
tongue;"  and  that  it  implies  ascetic  dili- 
gence in  the  artist  compassing  it.  More- 
over, Keats's  craftsmanship  is  no  menace 
to  him.  It  is  true  that  he  carries,  in 
general,  no  such  hindering  burden  of 
thought  along  his  lyre  as  Donne,  Dryden, 
Wordsworth,  Browning ;  but  neither,  once 
having  learned  his  strength,  does  he  ever 
fall  into  the  mere  teasing  ecstasy  of  sym- 
bolic sound,  as  Shelley  does  often,  as  Swin- 
burne does  more  often  than  not.  Keats, 
unlike  Shelley  or  a  cherub,  is  not  all 
wing;  he  "stands  foursquare"  when  he 
wills,  or  moves  like  the  men  of  the 
Parthenon  frieze,  with  a  health  and  joyous 
gravity  entirely  carnal. — Guiney,  Louise 
Imogen,  1897,  Library  of  the  World's 
Best  Literature,  ed.  Warner,  vol.  XV,  pp. 
8497,  8498. 

It  is  enough  for  me  that  we  find  in  Keats 
some  odes  of  exquisite  passion  and  charm, 


684 


KEATS— PIOZZI 


a  delight  in  glow  and  colour  that  touches 
us  like  a  canvas  by  Giorgione,  a  few  short 
lyrics  which  stand  in  the  everlasting 
lyrical  triumphs  of  our  tongue,  a  promise 
of  command  over  the  melody  of  verse,  a 
power  of  painting  in  winged  words  which 
(if  he  had  lived  another  twenty  or  thirty 
years)  might  have  placed  him  well  in  the 
rank  of  poets  somewhere  below  Milton  and 
Shakespeare.  Might  have  done  this,  if 
only  promise  were  always  followed  by  per- 
formance; if  we  could  be  sure  that  the 
nature  of  Keats  as  a  man,  his  brain,  and 
hold  on  truths  and  realities,  equalled  his 
mastery  over  language ;  if  we  did  not  too 
often  feel  (even  in  his  best  and  latest 
work)  that  the  instrument  wherefrom  he 
wrung  forth  such  luscious  music,  seemed 
endowed  with  magic  gifts  to  dash  itself 
free  from  the  hands  and  consciousness  of 
him  who  held  it. — Harrison,  Frederic, 
1899,  Lamb  and  Keats,  The  Contemporary 
Review,  vol,  76,  y,  67. 


''The  Cap  and  Bells"  is  a  melancholy 
example  of  what  a  great  poet  can  produce 
who  is  consumed  by  a  hopeless  passion  and 
wasted  by  disease.  ...  In  his  first 
sonnet  on  Fame,  Keats,  in  a  saner  mood, 
puts  by  the  temptation  which  would  with- 
draw him  from  the  high  serenity  of  con- 
scious worth.  In  the  second,  wherein  he 
seems  almost  to  be  seeing  Fanny  Brawne, 
mocking  behind  the  figure  of  Fame,  he 
shows  a  more  scornful  attitude.  There  is 
little  doubt  that  notwithstanding  his  close 
companionship  with  poets  living  and  dead 
Keats  never  could  long  escape  from  the 
allurements  of  this  ''wayward  girl,"  yet 
it  may  surely  be  said  that  his  escape  was 
most  complete  when  he  was  fulfilling  the 
highest  law  of  his  nature  and  creating  those 
images  of  beauty  which  have  given  him 
Fame  while  he  sleeps. — Scudder,  Horace 
E.,  1899,  The  Complete  Poetical  Works  and 
Letters  of  John  Keats,  Cambridge  ed.,  Bio- 
graphical Sketch,  pp.  xxiii,  xxiv. 


Hester  Lyncli  Piozzi 

Mrs.  Thrale 
1740-1821. 

Born  [Hester  Lynch  Salusbury],  at  Bodvel,  Carnarvonshire,  16  Jan.  1741.  Contrib. 
to  "St.  James's  Chronicle"  while  still  a  young  girl.  Married  to  Henry  Thrale,  11 
Oct.  1763.  Friendship  with  Johnson  begun,  1764.  Husband  died,  4  April  1781. 
Intimacy  with  Gabriel  Piozzi  begun,  1780;  married  to  him  in  London  (at  Roman 
Catholic  Church),  23  July,  in  Bath  (at  Anglican  Church),  25  July  1784.  In  Italy, 
1784-87.  Lived  at  Streatham,  1787-95 ;  in  Wales,  1795  to  1809.  Husband  died, 
March  1809 ;  after  that  she  resided  mainly  in  Bath.  Died,  2  May  1821.  Works : 
"Anecdotes  of  the  late  Samuel  Johnson, 1786;  "Letters  to  and  from  the  late  Samuel 
Johnson,"  1788;  "Observations  and  Reflections  made  in  the  course  of  a  Journey 
through  France,  Italy,  and  Germany"  (2  vols.  ),  1789  (another  edn.  same  vear) ; 
"British  Synonymy,"  1794;  "Retrospection"  (2  vols.),  1801.  Posthumous:  "Two 
Letters  .  .  .  to  W.  A.  Conway,"  1843;  "Autobiography,  Letters,  and  Literary 
Remains, "  ed.  by  A.  Hay  ward  (2  vols.),  1861  (2nd  edn.  same  year).  She  edited  : 
"The  Arno  Miscellany,"  1784.  Life:  by  L.  B.  Seeley,  1891.— Sharp,  R.  Far- 
QUH ARSON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  228. 


PERSONAL 
Madam, — If  I  interpret  your  letter 
aright,  you  are  ignominiously  married :  if 
it  is  yet  undone  let  us  once  more  talk  to- 
gether. If  you  have  abandoned  your 
children  and  your  religion,  God  for- 
give your  wickedness ;  if  you  have  for- 
feited your  fame  and  your  country,  may 
your  folly  do  no  further  mischief.  If  the 
last  act  is  yet  to  do,  I  who  have  loved 
you,  esteemed  you,  reverenced  you,  and 
served  you ;  I  who  long  thought  you  the 
first  of  womankind,  entreat  that,  before 
your  fate  is  irrevocable,  I  may  once  more 


see  you.  I  was,  I  once  was,  Madam,  most 
truly  yours. — Johnson,  Samuel,  1784, 
Letter  to  Mrs.  Thrale,  July  2. 

The  party  was  select  and  /ery  agreeable, 
but  rendered  especially  interesting  by  the 
announcement  m  the  evening  of  "Mrs. 
Piozzi. ' '  It  seemed  almost  as  if  a  portrait 
by  Sir  Joshua  had  stepped  out;  of  its  frame, 
when  the  little  old  lady,  dressed  point  de 
vice  in  black  satin,  with  dark  glossy  ring- 
lets under  her  neat  black  Jiat,  highly 
roughed,  not  the  end  of  a  ribDon  or  lace 
out  of  its  place,  with  an  unf  altering  step 
entered  the  room.    And  wap-  this  really 


HESTER  LYNCH  PIOZZI 


685 


"the  Mrs.  Thrale,"  the  stage  monitress 
of  "The  Three  Warnings,"  the  indefati- 
gable tea-maker  of  the  Great  Insatiable  ? 
She  was  instantly  the  center  on  which 
every  eye  was  fixed,  engrossing  the  atten- 
tion of  all.  I  had  the  satisfaction  of  a 
particular  introduction  to  her,  and  was 
surprised  and  delighted  with  her  vivacity 
and  good-humour.  The  request  that  she 
would  read  to  us  from  Milton  was  readily 
complied  with,  and  I  was  given  to  un- 
derstand she  piqued  herself  on  her  superi- 
ority in  giving  effect  to  the  great  poet's 
verse. — Macready,  W.  C,  1815-75,  Rem- 
iniscences, ed.  Pollock,  p.  82. 

She  was,  in  truth,  a  most  wonderful 
character  for  talents  and  eccentricity, 
for  wit,  genius,  generosity,  spirit,  and 
powers  of  entertainment.  She  had  a  great 
deal  both  of  good  and  not  good,  in  com- 
mon with  Madame  de  Stael  Holstein. 
They  had  the  same  sort  of  highly  superior 
intellect,  the  same  depth  of  learning,  the 
same  general  acquaintance  with  science, 
the  same  ardent  love  of  literature,  the 
same  thirst  for  universal  knowledge,  and 
the  same  buoyant  animal  spirits,  such  as 
neither  sickness,  sorrow,  nor  even  terror, 
could  subdue.  Their  conversation  was 
equally  luminous,  from  the  sources  of 
their  own  fertile  minds,  and  from  their 
splendid  acquisitions  from  the  works  and 
acquirements  of  others.  Both  were  zeal- 
ous to  serve,  liberal  to  bestow,  and  grace- 
ful to  oblige ;  and  both  were  truly  high- 
minded  in  prizing  and  praising  whatever 
was  admirable  that  came  in  their  way. 
Neither  of  them  was  delicate  nor  polished, 
though  each  was  flattering  and  caressing ; 
but  both  had  a  fund  inexhaustible  of  good 
humour,  and  of  sportive  gaiety,  that  made 
their  intercourse  with  those  they  wished 
to  please  attractive,  instructive,  and  de- 
lightful ;  and  though  not  either  of  them 
had  the  smallest  real  malevolence  in  their 
compositions,  neither  of  them  could  ever 
withstand  the  pleasure  of  uttering  a  re- 
partee, let  it  wound  whom  it  might,  even 
though  each  would  serve  the  very  person 
they  goaded  with  all  the  means  in  their 
power.  Both  were  kind,  charitable,  and 
munificent,  and  therefore  beloved;  both 
were  sarcastic,  careless,  and  daring,  and 
therefore  feared.  —  D'Arblay,  Mme 
(Fanny  Burney),  1821,  Diary  and 
LetterSy  ed.  Barrett,  vol.  iv,  p.  462. 

The  world  was  most  wrong  in  blaming 


Mrs.  Thrale  for  marrying  Piozzi ;  he  was  a 
very  handsome,  gentlemanly,  and  amiable 
person,  and  made  her  a  very  good  husband. 
In  the  evening  he  used  to  play  to  us  most 
beautifully  on  the  piano.  Her  daughters 
never  would  see  her  after  that  marriage ; 
and  (poor  woman)  when  she  was  at  a  very 
great  age,  I  have  heard  her  say  that  "she 
would  go  down  upon  her  knees  to  them, 
if  they  would  only  be  reconciled  to  her." 
—Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  p.  45. 

She  was  a  woman  of  great  vivacity  and 
independence  of  character.  She  had  a 
sensitive  and  passionate,  if  not  a  very 
tender  nature,  and  enough  literary  culture 
to  appreciate  Johnson's  intellectual  power, 
and  on  occasion  to  play  a  very  respectable 
part  in  conversation.  She  had  far  more 
Latin  and  English  scholarship  than  fell  to 
the  lot  of  most  ladies  of  her  day,  and  wit 
enough  to  preserve  her  from  degenerating 
like  some  of  the  "blues,"  into  that  most 
offensive  of  beings — a  feminine  prig. — 
Stephen,  Leslie,  1879,  Samuel  Johnson, 
(English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  81. 

The  public  sentiment  of  Great  Britain 
has  never  got  over  the  sense  of  out- 
rage it  experienced  when  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  widow  of  an  English 
brewer  had  actually  had  the  audacity  to 
take  for  her  second  husband  an  Italian 
music  master. — Lounsbury,  Thomas  R., 
1892,  The  Nation,  vol.  54,  p.  415. 

GENERAL 

Two  days  ago  appeared  Madame  Piozzi's 
"Anecdotes  of  Dr.  Johnson." — I  am 
lamentably  disappointed— in  her,  I  mean ; 
not  in  him.  I  had  conceived  a  favourable 
opinion  of  her  capacity.  But  this  new 
book  is  wretched ;  a  high-varnished  preface 
to  a  heap  of  rubbish,ina  very  vulgar  style, 
and  too  void  of  method  even  for  such  a 
farrago.  Her  panegyric  is  loud  in  praise 
of  her  hero;  and  almost  every  fact  she 
relates  disgraces  him. — Walpole,  Hor- 
ace, 1786,  To  Sir  Horace  Mann,  March  28 ; 
Letters,  ed.  Cunningham,  vol.  ix,  p.  46. 
See  Thrale's  grey  widow  withasatchel  roam 
And  bring  in  pomp  laborious  nothings  home. 

—GiFFORD,. William,  1797,  The  Baviad 
and  Mceviad. 

Read  the  first  volume  of  Mrs.  Piozzi 's 
''Travels  in  Italy."  Tolerably  amusing, 
but  for  a  pert  flippancy  and  ostentation 
of  learning. — Green,  Thomas,  1810, 
Diary  of  a  Lover  of  Literature. 


686 


PIOZZI—INCHBALD 


Her  mind,  despite  her  masculine  ac- 
quirements, was  thoroughly  feminine, 
she  had  more  tact  than  genius,  more 
sensibility  and  quickness  of  perception 
than  depth,  comprehensiveness,  or  con- 
tinuity of  thought.  But  her  very  discur- 
siveness prevented  her  from  becoming 
wearisome ;  her  varied  knowledge  supplied 
an  inexhaustible  store  of  topics  and  illus- 
trations ;  her  lively  fancy  placed  them  in 
attractive  lights ;  and  her  mind  has  been 
well  likened  to  a  kaleidoscope  which, 
whenever  its  glittering  and  heterogeneous 
contents  are  moved  or  shaken,  surprises 
by  some  new  combination  of  color  or  of 
form.  She  professed  to  write  as  she 
talked ;  but  her  conversation  was  doubt- 
less better  than  her  books ;  her  main  ad- 
vantages being  a  well-stored  memory, 
fertility  of  images,  aptness  of  allusion, 
and  apropos. — Hayward,  A.,  1861,  ed., 
Autobiography,  Letters  and  Literary  Re- 
mains of  Mrs.  Piozzi  {Thrale),  p.  155. 

There  were  no  morbid  sensibilities  in 
Mrs.  Piozzi's  composition.  She  can  tell 
all  her  sorrows  without  ever  a  tear.  A 
mark  of  exclamation  looks  better  than  a 
blot.  And  yet  she  had  suffered ;  but  it 
had  been  with  such  suffering  as  makes  the 
soul  hard  rather  than  tender.  The  pages 
with  which  she  ends  this  narrative  of  her 
life  are  curiously  characteristic. — Nor- 
ton, Charles  Eliot,  1861,  Original 
Memorials  of  Mrs.  Piozzi,  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  7,  p.  621. 

She  was  a  minute  and  clever  observer  of 
men  and  manners,  but  deficient  in  judg- 
ment, and  not  particular  as  to  the  accuracy 


of  her  relations.  —  Chambers,  Robert, 
1876,  Cyclopcedia  of  English  Literature, 
ed.  Carruthers. 

Of  Mrs.  Piozzi's  verses,  by  far  the  best- 
known  and  best-written  are  to  be  found  in 
**The  Three  Warnings,"  a  tale  so  neatly 
told  that  Johnson  was  credited  by  some 
with  a  share  in  its  production.  There 
never  was  any  real  reason  for  thus  robbing 
the  authoress  of  credit,  and  even  Boswell 
writes  that  he  ''cannot  withhold  from 
Mrs.  Thrale  the  praise  of  being  the  author 
of  that  admirable  poem,  'The  Three 
Warnings.'"  The  piece  first  appeared 
along  with  Johnson's  fairy-tale  called 
"The  Fountains,"  in  the  "Miscellanies" 
published  by  Mrs.  Williams  in  1766. — 
Robertson,  Eric  S.,  1883,  English  Poet- 
esses, p.  60. 

Mrs  Piozzi  wrote  wittily,  describing 
scenes  vividly,  relating  anecdotes  with 
humor  and  point,  never  allowing  her  Eng- 
lish prejudices  to  interfere  with  her  judg- 
ment or  to  spoil  her  enjoyment  of  the 
scenes  so  new  to  her.  Her  knowledge  of 
Italian  must  have  been  very  thorough, 
she  detected  so  readily  the  slightest  differ- 
ences in  the  dialect  of  each  of  the  cities 
she  visited.  Her  book  remains  a  most 
valuable  record  of  Italian  society  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  It  is  delightfully 
written,  and  leaves  an  impression  of  ex- 
treme accuracy.  It  still  remains  for  our 
nineteenth  century  to  produce  a  book 
which  will  read  as  well  a  hundred  years 
hence. —  Stillman,  M.  S.  ,  1892,  Mrs. 
Piozzi  in  Italy,  The  Nation,  vol.  54, 
p.  343. 


Mrs.  Elizabeth  Inchbald 

1753-1821. 

Born  [Elizabeth  Simpson],  at  Stanningfield,  Suffolk,  15  Oct.  1753.  Left  home  in 
April  1772,  with  intention  of  going  on  the  London  stage.  Married  to  Joseph  Inchbald, 
9  June  1772.  First  appeared  on  the  stage  at  Bristol,  4  Sept.  1772.  Acting  with  her 
husband  in  Scotland,  1772-76.  In  Paris,  July  to  Sept.  1776.  Acting  with  her 
husband  in  England,  1776-79;  he  died,  suddenly,  6  June  1779.  Friendship  with  Mrs. 
Siddons  and  J.  P.  Kemble.  Continued  to  act  at  York  till  1780.  At  Covent  Garden, 
Oct.  1780  to  July  1782 ;  at  Haymarket,  July  to  Sept,  1782 ;  in  Dublin,  Nov.  1782  to 
spring  of  1783 ;  returned  to  Covent  Garden,  i783.  Play,  ''The  Mogul  Tale, "  produced 
at  Haymarket,  1784.  Plays  produced  at  Haymarket,  Covent  Garden,  and  Drury  Lane, 
1784-1805.  Contrib.  to  "Edinburgh  Review."  Retired  from  stage,  1789.  Died, 
at  Kensington  House,  1  Aug  1821.  Buried  in  Kensington  Churchyard.  Works : 
"Appearance  is  against  them"  (anon.),  1785;  "I'll  Tell  you  What,"  1786;  "The 
Widow's  Vow"  (anon.),  1786;  "The  Mogul  Tale"  (anon.),  1788;  "Such  Things  Are," 
1788  (2nd  edn.  same  year) ;  "The  Midnight  Hour"  (from  the  French  of  Damaniant), 
1787;  "The  Child  of  Nature"  (from  the  French  of  Countess  de  Genlis),  1788;  "Animal 


MRS.  ELIZABETH  INCHBALD 


687 


Magnetism"  (anon.),  1788;  ''The  Married  Man"  (from  the  French  of  Nericault- 
Destouches),  1789;  ''Next  Door  Neighbours,"  1791;  "A  Simple  Story"  (4  vols),  1791; 
"Everyone  has  his  Fault,"  1793;  "The  Wedding  Day,"  1794;  "Nature  and  Art" 
(2  vols),  1796;  "Wives  as  they  Were,  and  Maids  as  they  Are,"  1797;  "Lovers' 
Vows"  (from  the  German  of  Kotzebue),  1798;  "The  Wise  Men  of  the  East"  (from 
the  German  of  Kotzebue),  1799;  "To  Marry  or  Not  to  Marry,"  1805.  She  edited: 
"The  British  Theatre"  (25  vols.),  1808;  "The  Modern  Theatre"  (10  vols),  1811; 
"A  Collection  of  Farces"  (7  vols.),  1815;  and  contributed  "remarks"  to  plays  by 
Addison,  Gibber,  Colman,  Lillo,  Machlin,  Norton,  Otway,  Ro we,  Shakespeare,  Southerne, 
Thomson.  Life:  "Memoirs,"  by  J.  Boaden  (2  vols.),  18e33.— Sharp,  K.  Farquhar- 
SON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  144. 


PERSONAL 
Gloria  in  Excelsis  Deo# 
Sacred  to  the  Memory 
of 

ELIZABETH  INCHBALD, 
Whose  writings  will  be  cherished 
While  truth,  simplicity  and  feeling 
Command  public  admiration  j 
And  whose  retired  and  exemplary  life 
Closed,  as  it  existed. 
In  acts  of  charity  and  benevolence. 
She  died  August  1st,  1821,  aged  68  years, 

Requiescat  in  Pace. 
— Inscription  on  Grave,  1821,  Kensing- 
ton Churchyard. 

She  was  in  truth  a  figure  that  could  not 
be  seen  without  astonishment  at  its  loveli- 
ness— tall,  slender,  straight,  of  the  purest 
complexion  and  most  beautiful  features. 
Her  hair  of  a  golden  auburn,  her  eyes  full 
at  once  of  spirit  and  sweetness ;  a  combi- 
nation of  delicacy  that  checked  presump- 
tion and  interest  that  captivated  the  fancy. 
— Boaden,  James,  1833,  ed..  Memoirs 
and  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Inchbald. 

At  all  times  Mrs.  Inchbald  seems  to 
have  determined  to  retain  her  perfect  in- 
dependence, and  to  have  chosen  to  have 
her  time  and  property  at  her  own  disposal. 
She  had  an  enthusiastic  love  of  home, 
although  that  home  was  often,  indeed 
generally,  only  a  single,  or  at  most  a 
couple  of  rooms  up  two  or  three  pairs  of 
stairs,  occasionally  in  the  attic,  where  she 
was  waited  on  by  the  servant  of  the  house, 
or  sometimes  not  waited  on  at  all,  for  she 
not  unfrequently  speaks  of  fetching  her 
own  water,  and  dressing  her  own  dinner ; 
and  she  once  kept  a  coroneted  carriage 
waiting  whilst  she  finished  scouring  her 
apartment.  ...  At  one  time  she 
took  up  her  abode  in  a  boarding-house ;  but 
she  could  not,  she  said,  when  there,  com- 
mand her  appetite  and  be  hungry  at  stated 
periods,  like  the  rest  of  the  boarders; 


so  she  generally  returned  to  her  attic, 
her  crust  of  bread,  and  liberty. — El- 
wood,  Mrs.  a.  K.,  1842,  Memoirs  of  the 
Literary  Ladies  of  England  from  the  Com- 
mencement of  the  Last  Century,  vol.  I. 

Living  in  mean  lodgings,  dressed  with 
an  economy  allied  to  penury,  without  con- 
nections, and  alone,  her  beauty,  her  tal- 
ents, and  the  charm  of  her  manners  gave 
her  entrance  into  a  delightful  circle  of 
society.  Apt  to  fall  in  love,  and  desirous 
to  marry,  she  continued  single,  because 
the  men  who  loved  and  admired  her  were 
too  worldly  to  take  an  actress  and  a  poor 
author,  however  lovely  and  charming  for 
a  wife.  Her  life  was  thus  spent  in  an  in- 
terchange of  hardship  and  amusement, 
privation  and  luxury.  Her  character 
partook  of  the  same  contrast:  fond  of 
pleasure,  she  was  prudent  in  her  conduct ; 
penurious  in  her  personal  expenditure,  she 
was  generous  to  others.  Vain  of  her 
beauty,  we  are  told  that  the  gown  she 
wore  was  not  worth  a  shilling,  it  was  so 
coarse  and  shabby.  Very  susceptible  to 
the  softer  feelings,  she  could  yet  guard 
herself  against  passion ;  and  though  she 
might  have  been  called  a  flirt,  her  char- 
acter was  unimpeached.  I  have  heard 
that  a  rival  beauty  of  her  day  pettishly 
complained  that  when  Mrs.  Inchbald  came 
into  a  room,  and  sat  in  a  chair  in  the 
middle  of  it  as  was  her  wont,  every  man 
gathered  round  it,  and  it  was  vain  for  any 
other  woman  to  attempt  to  gain  attention. 
Godwin  could  not  fail  to  admire  her :  she 
became  and  continued  to  be  a  favourite. 
Her  talents,  herbeaut}^  her  manners,  were 
all  delightful  to  him.  He  used  to  describe 
her  as  a  piquante  mixture  between  a  lady 
and  a  milkmaid,  and  added  that  Sheridan 
declared  she  was  the  only  authoress  whose 
society  pleased  him. — Shelley,  Mary 
WOLLSTONECRAFT,  1851,  Fragmentary 
Notes,  PauVs  Life  of  Goduin,  vol.  i,  p.  73. 

She  was  very  beautiful,  and  gifted  with 


688 


MRS,  ELIZABETH  INCHBALD 


original  genius,  as  her  plays  and  farces  and 
novels  (above  all, the  "Simple  Story")  tes- 
tify ;  she  was  not  an  actress  of  any  special 
merit,  but  of  respectable  mediocrity.  She 
stuttered  habitually,  but  her  delivery  was 
never  impeded  by  this  defect  on  the 
stage.  .  .  .  Mrs  Inchbald  was  a  per- 
son of  a  very  remarkable  character,  lovely, 
poor,  with  unusual  mental  powers,  and  of 
irreproachable  conduct.  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Inchbald  had  a  singular  uprightness  and 
unworldliness,  and  a  childlike  directness 
and  simplicity  of  manner,  which,  combined 
with  her  personal  loveliness,  and  halting, 
broken  utterance,  gave  to  her  conversa- 
tion, which  was  both  humorous  and  witty, 
a  most  peculiar  and  comical  charm. — 
Kemble,  Frances  Ann,  1879,  Records  of 
a  Girlhood,  pp.  212,  213. 

Elizabeth  Inchbald  was  an  admirable 
woman,  a  heroine  in  her  way,  not,  indeed, 
after  the  manner  of  Miss  Pinkerton,  the 
Semiramis  of  Hammersmith,  but  a  warm, 
human  personality,  all  the  more  lovable 
for  some  feminine  foibles.  She  was  an 
actress  and  authoress  of  no  mean  celebrity, 
she  attained  competency  and  fame,  but 
the  thought  that  remains  with  us,  as  we 
rise  from  the  perusal  of  her  diary  and 
Memoirs,'^  is  how  ill  fame  and  for- 
tune supply  the  want  of  love  in  a  woman's 
life, what  avoid  they  still  leave  unsatisfied ; 
yet  the  prevailing  note  in  her  life  is  of 
cheerfulness  and  bright  vivacity. — Man- 
son,  Edward,  1897,  Elizabeth  Inchbald, 
The  Westminster  Review,  vol.  148,  p.  346. 

A  SIMPLE  STORY 

1791 

But  there  were  no  ''Waverly  Novels'' 
in  those  days,  no  Jane  Austen,  no  Maria 
Edgeworth;  and  the  "Simple  Story"  was 
highly  prized  by  its  contemporaries.  .  .  . 
But  nobody  now-a-days  suggests  of  a  fe- 
male novelist  that  "it  is  as  if  Venus  had 
written  books."  The  reader  will  remem- 
ber how  this  Venus  wrote  to  Godwin  when 
his  wife  lay  yet  unburied. — Oliphant, 
Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  The  Literary 
History  of  England,  XVIIIth-XlXth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  II,  p.  227. 

The  "Simple  Story,"  appeared  in  Feb- 
ruary and  a  second  edition  was  ordered  in 
March.  It  has  become  a  classic,  and  noth- 
ing need  here  be  said  in  praise  of  its 
pathos,  its  knowledge  of  human  nature, 
and  the  epigrammatic  touches  in  whicK^  it 
abounds.    The  novel  brought  her  not  only 


money  and  fame,  but  a  flock  of  new 
friends.  .  .  .  In  literature,  as  in  life,  it  is 
not  always  the  most  famous  or  distin- 
guished persons  that  are  the  most  interest- 
ing. Elizabeth  Inchbald  cannot  claim  high 
rank  in  the  former  class,  but  her  char- 
acter, her  letters,  and  her  "Simple  Story" 
leave  her  with  few  rivals  in  the  latter. 
— Mayer,  Gertrude  Townshend,  1894, 
Women  of  Letters,  vol.  ii,  pp.  32,  58. 

Built  upon  the  unpromising  motive  of 
displaying  "the  improper  education  of  the 
unthinking  Miss  Milner"  is  a  powerful 
picture  of  passion,  even  prophetic  of 
"Jane  Eyre"  than  any  other  English  novel 
of  the  eighteenth  century. — Herford, 
C.  H.,  1897,  The  Age  of  Wordsworth, 
p.  101. 

Though  marred  by  the  author's  anxiety 
to  attribute  to  the  influence  of  early  edu- 
cation the  gradual  moral  decay  of  her 
heroine,  it  contains  the  strongest  situation 
that  had  yet  appeared  in  the  English 
novel — the  conflict  between  religious  prej- 
udice and  love,  such  as  we  have  on  a 
grander  scale  in  Charles  Reade's  "Cloister 
and  the  Hearth."— Cross,  Wilbur  L., 
1899,  The  Development  of  the  English 
Novel,  p.  87. 

GENERAL 

If  Mrs.  Radclilf e  touched  the  trembling 
chords  of  the  imagination,  making  wild 
music  there,  Mrs  Inchbald  has  no  less 
power  over  the  spring  of  the  heart.  She 
not  only  moves  the  affections,  but  melts 
us  into  "all  the  luxury  of  woe."  Her 
"Nature  and  Art"  is  one  of  the  most  pa- 
thetic and  interesting  stories  in  the  world. 
It  is  indeed  too  much  so ;  the  distress  is  too 
naked,  and  the  situation  hardly  to  be 
borne  with  patience. — Hazlitt,  William, 
1818,  Lecture  on  the  English  Novelists. 

As  a  dramatist,  she  is  distinguished  for 
a  certain  ingenuity  and  vivacity  of  dia- 
logue ;  her  wit  however  is  infrequent,  and 
the  intrigues  of  her  comedies  often  present 
the  unnatural  combinations  of  farce.  Her 
plays,  with  few  exceptions,  still  retain 
the  stage.  Her  talents  as  a  novelist  were 
by  no  means  inferior ;  and  had  she  devoted 
her  whole  attention  to  this  department  of 
literature  she  would  undoubtedly  have 
produced  works  of  lasting  celebrity. — 
Durivage,  F.  a.,  1833,  Memoirs  of  Mrs. 
Inchbald,  North  American  Review  vol.  37, 
p.  466. 

In  1789,  when  she  retired  from  the 


INCHB  ALB— SHELLEY 


689 


stage,  her  reputation  was  at  its  highest. 
She  had  published  an  edition  of  plays  with 
prefaces,  and  now  she  got  fifty  guineas 
by  merely  looking  over  a  catalogue  of  fifty 
farces,  drawing  her  pen  across  one  or  two, 
and  writing  the  names  of  others  in  their 
places.  The  catalogue  was  then  printed 
with  ''Selected  by  Mrs.  Inchbald''  on 
the  title-page. — Hamilton,  Catharine  J., 
1892,  Women  Writer Sy  First  Series^p.  41. 


The  scene  where  William  [in  ''Nature 
and  Art"],  as  a  judge,  condemns  to  death 
the  girl  he  had  deceived  and  deserted  is 
great,  not  from  the  boisterous  strength 
of  the  situation,  but  from  the  strength  of 
its  telling.  That  and  the  character  of  Miss 
Milner  in  "A  Simple  Story"  entitled  Mrs. 
Inchbald  to  a  very  high  place  among  the 
novelists  proper  of  her  day.  —Raleigh, 
Walter,  1894,  The  English  Novel,  p,  248. 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley 

1792-1822 

Born,  at  Field  Place,  near  Horsham,  Sussex,  4  Aug.  1792.  Educated  privately, 
1798-1802 ;  at  a  school  at  Brentford,  1802-04 ;  at  Eton,  July  1804  to  1809.  Wrote 
poetry  while  at  Eton.  Matric,  University  Coll.,  Oxford,  10  April  1810.  Expelled 
(with  Hogg)  from  Oxford  for  publication  of  "The  Necessity  of  Atheism,"  25  March 
1811.  Married  (i.)  Harriet  Westbrook,  28  Aug.  1811.  Lived  for  a  few  weeks  with 
Hoggin  Edinburgh;  thence  to  Keswick,  Nov.  1811.  Friendship  formed  there  with 
Southey.  Friendship  with  Godwin  begun,  Jan.  1812.  In  Dublin,  spring  of  1812 ;  at 
Lynmouth,  June  to  Sept.  1812 ;  in  Carnarvonshire,  Sept.  1812  to  Feb.  1813 ;  in  Ireland, 
Feb.  to  April  1813 ;  to  London,  April  1813.  Removed  to  Bracknell,  July  1813 ;  in 
Edinburgh,  winter  1813-14 ;  returned  to  Bracknell,  spring  of  1814.  On  account  of 
his  having  been  married  in  Scotland  as  a  minor,  he  remarried  his  wife  in  London,  24 
March  1814.  Estrangement  from  his  wife,  and  meeting  with  Mary  Godwin,  1814. 
To  Continent  with  Mary  Godwin,  28  July  1814 ;  returned  with  her  to  England,  Sept. 
1814.  Friendship  with  Byron  begun,  1816.  At  Geneva  with  him,  summer  of  1816. 
Mrs.  Shelley  committed  suicide,  Dec.  1816.  He  married  (ii.)  Mary  Godwin,  30  Dec. 
1816;  settled  with  her  at  Marlow,  spring  of  1817.  Friendship  with  Keats  begun, 
1817.  Removed  to  Italy,  March  1818.  Drowned,  8  July  1822.  His  body  cremated 
on  the  shore  near  Via  Reggio,  16  Aug.  1822.  His  ashes  buried  in  old  Protestant 
Cemetery,  Rome,  Dec.  1822.  Works:  "Zastrozzi"  (under  initials:  P.  B.  S.),  1810; 
^'Original  Poetry :  by  Victor  and  Cazire"  (no  copy  known  [  ?]  ),1810 ;  ''Posthumous  Frag- 
ments of  Margaret  Nicholson,"  1810  (priv.  ptd.,  ed.  by  H.  B.  Forman,  1877);  "St. 
Irvyne"  (anon.),  1811;  "Poetical  Essay  on  the  Existing  State  of  Things,"  1811; 
"The  Necessity  of  Atheism,"  1811 ;  "An  Address  to  the  Irish  People,"  1812;  "Pro- 
posals for  an  Association,"  1812;  "Declaration  of  Rights,"  1812;  "Letters  to  Lord 
Ellenborough"  [1812J ;  "The  Devil's  Walk,"  1812;  "Queen Mab,"  1813  ;"A  Vindica- 
tion  of  Natural  Diet"  (anon.),  1813;  "A  Refutation  of  Deism"  (anon.),  1814; 
"Alastor,"  1816;  "Proposal  for  putting  reform  to  the  Vote"  (anon.),  1817;  "History 
of  a  Six  Weeks'  Tour  through  a  Part  of  France"  (with  his  wife ;  anon.),  1817 ;  "Laon 
and  Cythna,"  1818  [1817]  (recalled;  and  reissued  as  "The  Revolt  of  Islam,"  1817) ; 
"Address  to  the  People  on  the  Death  of  Princess  Charlotte"  [1818];  "Rosalind  and 
Helen,"  1819;  "The  Cenci,"  1819;  "Prometheus  Unbound,"  1820;  "(Edipus 
Tyrannus"  (anon.),  1820;  "Epipsychidion"  (anon.),  1821;  "Adonais,"  1821; 
."Hellas,"  1822.  Posthumous:  "Posthumous  Poems,"  ed.  by  Mrs.  Shelley  [1824] ; 
"The  Masque  of  Anarchy,"  ed.  by  Leigh  Hunt,  1832;  "The  Shelley  Papers"  (from 
"Athenaeum")  1833;  "Essays,  etc.,"  ed.  by  Mrs.  Shelley,  1840;  "The  D^mon  of  the 
World,"  ed.  l3y  H.  B.  Forman  (priv.  ptd.),  1876;  "Notes  on  Sculptures  in  Rome 
and  Florence"  (ed.  by  H.  B.  Forman;  priv.  ptd.),  1879.  Collected  Works;  ed.  by 
H.  Buxton  Forman  (8  vols.),  1880  [1876-80].  Life:  by  Prof.  Dowden,  1886.— 
Sharp,  R.  Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  254. 

PERSONAL  particularly  in  his  voice,  raised  a  pleasing 

I  went  to  Godwin's.  Mr.  Shelley  was  impression,  which  was  not  altogether 
there  had  never  seen  him  before,  destroyed  by  his  conversation,  though  it 
His  y  >h    and  a  resemblance  to  Southey,    is  vehement,  and  arrogant,  and  intolerant. 

44C 


690 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


He  was  very  abusive  towards  Southey, 
whom  he  spoke  of  as  having  sold  himself 
to  the  Court.  And  this  he  maintained 
with  the  usual  party  slang.  .  .  .  Shelley 
spoke  of  Wordsworth  with  less  bitterness, 
but  with  an  insinuation  of  his  insincerity, 
etc. — Robinson,  Henry  Crabb,  1817, 
Diary,  Nov.  6. 

Midst  others  of  less  note,  came  one  frail 
Form, 

A  pliantom  among  men,  companionless 
As  the  last  cloud  of  an  expiring  storm 
Whose  thunder  is  its  knell;  he,  as  I  guess. 
Had  gazed  on  Nature's  naked  loveliness, 
Actseon-like,  and  now  he  fled  astray 
With  feeble  steps  o'er  the  world's  wilderness. 
And  his  own  thoughts,  along  that  rugged  way 
Pursued,  like  raging  hounds,  their  father 
and  their  prey. 

He  came  at  last,  neglected  and  apart ; 

A  herd-abandoned  deer  struck  by  the  hunter's 

dart, 
All  stood  aloof. 

—Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1821,  Adon- 
ais,  St.  xxxi,  xxxiii,  xxxiv. 

The  author  of  the  ''Prometheus  Un- 
bound," has  a  fire  in  his  eye,  a  fever  in  his 
blood,  a  maggot  in  his  brain,  a  hectic 
flutter  in  his  speech,  which  mark  out  the 
philosophic  fanatic.  He  is  sanguine  -com- 
plexioned,  and  shrill-voiced.  As  is  often 
observable  in  the  case  of  religious  enthu- 
siasts, there  is  a  slenderness  of  constitu- 
tional stamina,  which  renders  the  flesh  no 
match  for  the  spirit.  His  bending,  flexi- 
ble form  appears  to  take  no  strong  hold 
of  things,  does  not  grapple  with  the  world 
about  him,  but  slides  from  it  like  a  river, — 

"And  in  its  liquid  texture  mortal  wound 

Receives  no  more  than  can  the  fluid  air." 
— Hazlitt,  William,  1821,  On  Paradox 
and  the  Commonplace^  Table-Talk,  p.  355. 

I  cannot  grieve  for  you,  beloved  Shelley ! 
I  grieve  for  thy  friends — for  the  world — 
for  thy  child— most  for  myself,  enthroned 
in  thy  love,  growing  wiser  and  better 
beneath  thy  gentle  influence,  taught  by  you 
the  highest  philosophy — your  pupil,  friend, 
lover,  wife,  mother  of  your  children! 
The  glory  of  the  dream  is  gone.  I  am  a 
cloud  from  which  the  light  of  sunset  has 
passed.  Give  me  patience  in  the  present 
struggle.  Meum  codium  cor!  Good-night ! 

•'I  would  give 
All  that  I  am  to  be  as  thou  now  art ; 
But  I  am  chain 'd  to  time,  and  cannot  thence 
depart." 

— Shelley,  Mary  Godwin,  1823,  Jour- 
nal, May  31. 


Ten  years  ago  the  indiscretions  of 
Shelley  had  rendered  his  name  an  un- 
mentionable one  to  ears  polite. — Mad- 
den, R.  R.,  1833,  Infirmities  of  Genius, 
vol.  I,  p.  5. 

Jackson  talks  much  of  Shelley.  He 
knew  him  well ;  says  that  he  was  a  perfect 
child  in  his  habits.  He  remembers  Shelley 
telling  him  how  fine  a  death  he  thought  it 
would  be  to  be  shipwrecked  in  the  bay  of 
Spezzia.  Poor  lad !  He  learned  to  know 
too  well.— Appleton,  Thomas  Gold,  1834, 
Life  and  Letters,  p.  194. 

''You  should  have  known  Shelley, said 
Byron,  "to  feel  how  much  I  must  regret 
him.  He  was  the  most  gentle,  most 
amiable,  and  least  worldly-minded  person 
I  ever  met ;  full  of  delicacy,  disinterested 
beyond  all  other  men,  and  possessing  a 
degree  of  genius,  joined  to  a  simplicity  as 
rare  as  it  is  admirable.  He  had  formed  to 
himself  a  beau-ideal  of  all  that  is  fine, 
high-minded,  and  noble,  and  he  acted  up 
to  this  ideal  even  to  the  very  letter.  He 
had  a  most  brilliant  imagination,  but  a 
total  want  of  worldly  wisdom.  I  have 
seen  nothing  like  him,  and  never  shall 
again,  I  am  certain.  I  never  can  forget 
the  night  that  his  poor  wife  rushed  into 
my  room  at  Pisa,  with  a  face  as  pale  as 
marble,  and  terror  impressed  on  her  brow, 
demanding,  with  all  the  tragic  impetuosity 
of  grief  and  alarm,  where  was  her  husband  ? 
Vain  were  all  our  efforts  to  calm  her ;  a 
desperate  sort  of  courage  seemed  to  give 
her  energy  to  confront  the  horrible  truth 
that  awaited  her;  it  was  the  courage  pf 
despair.  I  have  seen  nothing  in  tragedy 
or  on  the  stage  so  powerful,  or  so  affect- 
ing, as  her  appearance ;  and  it  often,  pre- 
sents itself  to  my  memory.  I  knew  nothing 
then  of  the  catastrophe,  but  the  vividness 
of  her  terror  communicated  itself  to  me, 
and  I  feared  the  worst, — which  fears 
were,  alas!  too  soon  fearfully  realized.'' 
— Blessington,  Marguerite  Countess, 
1834,  Conversations  with  Lord  Byron, 
ch.  iv. 

The  qualities  that  struck  any  one  newly 
introduced  to  Shelley,  were,— First,  a 
gentle  and  cordial  goodness  that  animated 
his  intercourse  with  warm  affection  and 
helpful  sympathy.  The  other,  the  eager- 
ness and  ardour  with  which  he  was 
attached  to  the  cause  of  human  happiness 
and  improvement;  and  the  fervent 
quence  with  which  he  discussed  subjects. 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


691 


His  conversation  was  marked  by  its  happy 
abundance,  and  the  beautiful  language 
with  which  he  clothed  his  poetic  ideas  and 
philosophical  notions.  To  defecate  life  of 
its  misery  and  its  evil  was  the  ruling  pas- 
sion of  his  soul:  he  dedicated  to  it  every 
power  of  his  mind,  every  pulsation  of  his 
heart.  He  looked  on  political  freedom  as 
the  direct  agent  to  affect  the  happiness  of 
mankind ;  and  thus  any  new-sprung  hope 
of  liberty  inspired  a  joy  and  an  exultation 
more  intense  than  he  could  have  felt  for 
any  personal  advantage. — Shelley,  Mary 
Godwin,  1839,  Shelley's  Poetical  Works, 
Preface. 

Possessing  one  of  the  most  richly  gifted 
minds  ever  framed  by  Providence  to  adorn 
and  bless  the  world,  and  a  heart  whose 
sympathies  comprehended  all  nature  and 
mankind  in  the  broad  sphere  of  its  love,  he 
was  still  the  most  unpopular  poet  of  his 
time —although  he  indicated,  perhaps, 
more  than  any  other,  the  tendencies  of  its 
imaginative  literature,  and  expressed  with 
more  fulness,  precision,  and  beauty,  the 
subtle  spirituality  of  its  tone  of  thought. 
His  character  and  his  writings  were 
elaborately  misrepresented.  Persons  in- 
finitely inferior  to  him,  we  will  not  say  in 
genius,  but  in  honesty,  in  benevolence,  in 
virtue,  in  the  practice  of  those  duties  of 
love  and  self-sacrifice  which  religion  en- 
joins, still  contrived  to  experience  for  him 
a  mingled  feeling  of  pity  and  aversion, 
unexampled  even  in  the  annals  of  the 
Pharisees.  The  same  sympathizing  apolo- 
gists for  the  infirmities  of  ^genius,  who 
shed  tears  and  manufactured  palliatives  for 
Burns  and  Byron,  fell  back  on  the  rigor 
and  ice  of  their  morality  when  they 
mentioned  the  name  of  Shelley.  His  ad- 
versaries were  often  in  ludicrous  moral 
contrast  to  himself.  Venal  politicians, 
fattening  on  public  plunder,  represented 
themselves  as  shocked  by  his  theories  of 
government.  Roues  were  apprehensive 
that  his  refined  notions  of  marriage  would 
encourage  libertinism.  Smooth,  practical 
atheists  preached  morality  and  religion  to 
him  from  quarterly  reviews,  and  defamed 
r,;m  with  an  arrogant  stupidity,  and  a 

•  ^dng  injustice,  unparalleled  in  the 
i  teries  and  fooleries  of  criticism. 
1  )ure  and  pious  poet,  Thomas  Moore, 
Ci  ved  it  incumbent  on  himself  to  warn 
hi.'  naculate  friend  Lord  Byron,  from 
beirjg  led  astray  by  Shelley's  principles. 


.  .  .  Men  who  could  not  write  a  single 
sentence  unstained  with  malignity,  selfish- 
ness or  some  other  deadly  sin,  gravely 
rebuked  him  for  infidelity,  and  volunteered 
their  advice  as  to  the  manner  by  which  he 
might  become  a  bad  christian  and  a  good 
hypocrite.  But  Shelley  happened  to  be 
an  honest  man  as  well  as  a  poet,  and  was 
better  contented  with  proscription,  how- 
ever severe,  than  with  infamy,  however 
splendid.  This  was  a  peculiarity  of  his 
disposition  which  made  his  conduct  so 
enigmatical  to  the  majority  of  his  enemies. 
— Whipple,  Edwin  P.,  1845,  English 
Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Essays 
and  Reviews, 

Can  we  imagine  the  case  of  an  angel 
touched  by  lunacy  ?  Have  we  ever  seen 
the  spectacle  of  a  human  intellect,  ex- 
quisite by  its  functions  of  creation,  yet  in 
one  chamber  of  its  shadowy  house  already 
ruined  before  the  light  of  manhood  had 
cleansed  its  darkness?  Such  an  angel, 
such  a  man — if  ever  such  there  were — such 
a  lunatic  angel,  such  a  ruined  man,  was 
Shelley  whilst  yet  standing  on  the  earliest 
threshold  of  life.  .  .  .  Something  of 
a  similar  effect  arises  to  myself  w^hen  re- 
viewing the  general  abstract  of  Shelley's 
life — so  brief,  so  full  of  agitation,  so  full 
of  strife.  When  one  thinks  of  the  early 
misery  which  he  suffered,  and  of  the  inso- 
lent infidelity  which,  being  yet  so  young, 
he  wooed  with  a  lover's  passion,  then  the 
darkness  of  midnight  begins  to  form  a 
deep,  impenetrable  background,  upon 
which  the  phantasmagoria  of  all  that  is  to 
come  may  arrange  itself  in  troubled  phos- 
phoric streams,  and  in  sweeping  proces- 
sions of  woe.  Yet,  again,  when  one  recurs 
to  his  gracious  nature,  his  fearlessness, 
his  truth,  his  purity  from  all  fleshlinessof 
appetite,  his  freedom  from  vanity,  his 
diffusive  love  and  tenderness,  suddenly  out 
of  the  darkness  reveals  itself  a  morning  of 
May,  forests  and  thickets  of  roses  advance 
to  the  foreground,  and  from  the  midst  of 
them  looks  out  *'the  eternal  child," 
cleansed  from  his  sorrow,  radiant  with 
joy,  having  power  given  him  to  forget  the 
misery  which  he  suffered,  power  given  him 
to  forget  the  misery  which  he  caused,  and 
leaning  with  his  heart  upon  that  dove-like 
faith  against  which  his  erring  intellect  had 
rebelled. — De  Quincey,  Thomas,  1845- 
57,  Gilfillan's  Literary  Portraits,  Works, 
ed.  Masson,  vol.  xi,  pp.  358,  376. 


692 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


Innocent  and  careless  as  a  boy,  he  pos- 
sessed all  the  delicate  feelings  of  a  gentle- 
man, all  the  discrimination  of  a  scholar, 
and  united,  in  just  degrees,  the  ardor  of 
the  poet  with  the  patience  and  forbearance 
of  the  philosopher.  His  generosity  and 
charity  went  far  beyond  those  of  any  man 
(I  believe)  at  present  in  existence.  He 
was  never  known  to  speak  evil  of  any 
enemy,  unless  that  enemy  had  done  some 
grievous  injustice  to  another;  and  he 
divided  his  income  of  only  one  thousand 
pounds  with  the  fallen  and  the  afflicted. 
This  is  the  man  against  whom  such  clamors 
have  been  raised  by  the  religious  and  the 
loyal,  and  by  those  who  live  and  lap  under 
their  tables. — Landor,  Walter  Savage, 
1846,  Imaginary  Conversations. 

Shelley,  indeed,  was  a  good  and  noble 
creature.  He  had,  spite  of  his  skepticism, 
clearly  and  luminously  stamped  on  his 
front  the  highest  marks  of  a  Christian ;  for 
the  grand  distinction  appointed  by  Christ 
was — love.  Shdjey  was  a  Christian  in 
spite  of  himself?^  We  learn  from  all  who 
knew  him  that  'tne  Bible  was  his  most 
favorite  book.  He  venerated  the  charac- 
ter of  Christ,  and  no  man  more  fully  carried 
out  his  precepts.  His  delight  was  to  do 
good,  to  comfort  and  assist  the  poor.  It 
was  his  zeal  for  truth  and  for  the  good  of 
mankind  which  led  him,  in  his  indignation 
against  those  who  oppressed  them  and  im- 
posed upon  them,  to  leap  too  far  in  his 
attack  on  those  enemies,  and  pass  the 
borders  which  divide  truth  from  error. 
For  his  conscientious  opinion  he  sacrificed 
ease,  honor,  the  world's  esteem,  fortune, 
and  friendship.  Never  was  there  so  gener- 
ous a  friend,  so  truly  and  purely  poetical 
a  nature.  Others  are  poets  in  their  books 
and  closets ;  the  poet's  soul  in  him  was  the 
spirit  of  all  hours  and  all  occasions. — 
HowiTT,  William,  1846,  Homes  and 
Haunts  of  the  Most  Eminent  British  Poets. 

His  features  were  small — the  upper  part 
of  his  face  not  strictly  regular — the  eyes 
unusually  prominent,  too  much  so  for 
beauty.  His  mouth  was  moulded  after 
the  finest  modelling  of  Greek  art,  and  wore 
an  habitual  expression  of  benevolence,  and 
when  he  smiled,  his  smile  irradiated  his 
whole  countenance.  His  hands  were  thin, 
and  expressed  feeling  to  the  fingers'  ends ; 
.  .  .  his  hair,  profuse,  silken,  and 
naturally  curling,  was  at  a  very  early 
period  interspersed  with  gray.    .    .  . 


He  did  not  look  so  tall  as  he  was,  being 
nearly  five  feet  eleven,  for  his  shoulders 
were  a  little  bent  by  study.  .  . 
owing  to  his  being  near-sighted,  and  lean- 
ing over  his  books,  and  which  increased 
the  narrowness  of  his  chest. — Med  win, 
Thomas,  1847,  The  Life  of  Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley. 

Shelley,  v/hen  he  died,  was  in  his 
thirtieth  year.  His  figure  was  tall  and 
slight,  and  his  constitution  consumptive. 
He  was  subject  to  violent  spasmodic  pains, 
which  would  sometimes  force  him  to  lie  on 
the  ground  till  they  were  over ;  but  he  had 
always  a  kind  word  to  give  to  those  about 
him,  when  his  pangs  allowed  him  to  speak. 
.  .  .  Though  well-turned,  his  shoulders 
were  bent  a  little,  owing  to  premature 
thought  and  trouble.  The  same  causes 
had  touched  his  hair  with  gray;  and 
though  his  habits  of  temperance  and  exer- 
cise gave  him  a  remarkable  degree  of 
strength,  it  is  not  supposed  that  he  could 
have  lived  many  years.  .  .  .  His  eyes  were 
large  and  animated,  with  a  dash  of  wild- 
ness  in  them ;  his  face  small,  but  well- 
shaped,  particularly  his  mouth  and  chin,  the 
turn  of  which  was  very  sensitive  and  grace- 
ful. His  complexion  was  naturally  fair 
and  delicate,  with  a  color  in  the  cheeks. 
He  had  brown  hair  which,  though  tinged 
with  gray,  surmounted  his  face  well,  being 
inconsiderable  in  quantity,  and  tending  to 
a  curl.  His  side-face  upon  the  whole  was 
deficient  in  strength,  and  his  features 
would  not  have  told  well  in  a  bust ;  but 
when  fronting  and  looking  at  you  atten- 
tively, his  aspect  had  a  certain  seraphical 
character  that  would  have  suited  John  the 
Baptist,  or  the  angel  whom  Milton  de- 
scribes as  holding  a  reed  **tipt  with  fire." 
— Hunt,  Leigh,  1850,  Autobiography. 

Shelley's  figure  was  tall  and  almost  un- 
naturally attenuated,  so  as  to  bend  to  the 
earth  like  a  plant  that  had  been  deprived 
of  its  vital  air;  his  features  had  an  un- 
natural sharpness,  and  an  unhealthy  pale- 
ness, like  a  flower  that  has  been  kept  from 
the  light  of  day ;  his  eyes  had  an  almost 
superhuman  brightness,  and  his  voice  a 
preternatural  elevation  of  pitch  and  shrill- 
ness of  tone ; — all  which  peculiarities  prob- 
acy arose  from  some  accidental  circum- 
stances connected  with  his  early  nur- 
ture and  bringing  up. — Patmore,  Peter 
George,  1854,  My  Friends  and  Acquaint- 
ances. 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  693 


tiotii  in  appearance  and  in  manners 
Shelley  was  the  perfect  gentleman. — • 
Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recollections  of 
Table- Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  p.  236. 

Brown's  four  novels,  Schiller's  Rob- 
bers," and  Goethe's ''Faust,"  were,  of  all 
the  works  with  which  he  was  familiar, 
those  which  took  the  deepest  root  in  his 
mind,  and  had  the  strongest  influence  in 
the  formation  of  his  character.  He  was 
an  assiduous  student  of  the  great  classical 
poets,  and  among  these  his  favourite 
heroines  were  Nausicaa  and  Antigone.  I 
do  not  remember  that  he  greatly  admired 
any  of  our  old  English  poets,  excepting 
Shakspeare  and  Milton.  He  devotedly 
admired  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  and 
in  a  minor  degree  Southey:  these  had 
great  influence  on  his  style,  and  Coleridge 
especially  on  his  imagination ;  but  admira- 
tion is  one  thing  and  assimilation  is 
another ;  and  nothing  so  blended  itself 
with  the  structure  of  his  interior  mind  as 
the  creations  of  Brown.  Nothing  stood 
so  clearly  before  his  thoughts  as  a  perfect 
combination  of  the  purely  ideal  and  possibly 
real,  as  Constantia  Dudley.  .  .  .  He 
had  a  prejudice  against  theatres  which  I 
took  some  pains  to  overcome.  I  induced 
him  one  evening  to  accompany  me  to  a 
representation  of  the  ''School  for  Scan- 
dal." When,  after  the  scenes  which  ex- 
hibited Charles  Surface  in  his  jollity,  the 
scene  returned,  in  the  fourth  act,  to 
Joseph's  library,  Shelley  said  to  me, — "I 
see  the  purpose  of  this  comedy.  It  is  to 
associate  virtue  with  bottles  and  glasses, 
and  villainy  with  books."  I  had  great 
difficulty  to  make  him  stay  to  the  end. 
He  often  talked  of  "the  withering  and 
perverting  spirit  of  comedy."  I  do  not 
think  he  ever  went  to  another. — Pea- 
cock, Thomas  Love,  1858,  Memoirs  of 
Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  Frasefs  Magazine, 
vol.  57,  pp,  657,  658. 

After  the  fire  was  well  kindled  we  re- 
peated the  ceremony  of  the  previous  day ; 
and  more  wine  was  poured  over  Shelley's 
dead  body  than  he  had  consumed  during 
his  life.  This  with  the  oil  and  salt  made 
the  yellow  flames  glisten  and  quiver.  The 
heat  from  the  sun  and  fire  was  so  intense 
that  the  atmosphere  was  tremulous  and 
wavy.  The  corpse  fell  open  and  the  heart 
was  laid  bare.  The  frontal  bone  of  the 
skull,  where  it  had  been  struck  with  the 
mattock,  fell  off ;  and,  as  the  back  of  the 


head  rested  on  the  redhot  bottom  bars  of 
the  furnace,  the  brains  literally  seethed, 
bubbled,  and  boiled,  as  in  a  cauldron,  for 
a  very  long  time.  Byron  could  not  face 
this  scene,  he  withdrew  to  the  beach  and 
swam  off  to  the  Bolivar.  Leigh  Hunt  re- 
mained in  the  carriage.  The  fire  was  so 
fierce  as  to  produce  a  white  heat  on  the 
iron,  and  to  reduce  its  contents  co  grey 
ashes.  The  only  portions  that  were  not  con- 
sumed were  some  fragments  of  bones,  the 
jaw,  and  the  skull ;  but  what  surprised  us 
all  was  that  the  heart  remained  entire.  In 
snatching  this  relic  from  the  fiery  furnace, 
my  hand  was  severely  burnt ;  and  had  any 
one  seen  me  do  the  act  I  should  have  been 
put  into  quarantine.  —  Trelawny,  Ed- 
ward John,  1858-78,  Records  of  Shelley, 
Byron  and  the  Author,  p.  144. 

At  the  commencement  of  Michaelmas 
term,  that  is,  at  the  end  of  October,  in 
the  year  1810,  I  happened  one  day  to  sit 
next  to  a  freshman  at  dinner ;  it  was  his 
first  appearance  in  hall.  His  figure  was 
slight,  and  his  aspect  remarkably  youth- 
ful, even  at  our  table,  where  all  were  very 
young.  He  seemed  thoughtful  and  absent. 
He  ate  little,  and  had  no  acquaintance  with 
any  one.  .  .  .  His  figure  was  slight 
and  fragile,  and  yet  his  bones  and  joints 
were  large  and  strong.  He  was  tall,  but 
he  stooped  so  much,  that  he  seemed  of  a 
low  stature.  His  clothes  were  expensive, 
and  made  according  to  the  most  approved 
mode  of  the  day ;  but  they  were  tumbled, 
rumpled,  unbrushed.  His  gestures  were 
abrupt,  and  sometimes  violent,  occasion- 
ally even  awkward,  yet  more  frequently 
gentle  and  graceful.  His  complexion  was 
delicate  and  almost  feminine,  of  the  purest 
red  and  white;  yet  he  was  tanned  and 
freckled  by  exposure  to  the  sun,  having 
passed  the  autumn,  as  he  said,  in  shoot- 
ing. His  features,  his  whole  face,  and 
particularly  his  head,  were,  in  fact,  unusu- 
ally small ;  yet  the  last  appeared  of  a  re- 
markable bulk,  for  his  hair  was  long  and 
bushy,  and  in  fits  of  absence,  and  in  the 
agonies  (if  I  may  use  the  word)  of  anxious 
thought,  he  often  rubbed  it  fiercely  with 
his  hands,  or  passed  his  fingers  quickly 
through  his  locks  unconsciously,  so  that  it 
was  singularly  wild  and  rough.  .  .  . 
His  features  were  not  symmetrical  (the 
mouth,  perhaps,  excepted),  yet  was  the 
effect  of  the  whole  extremely  powerful. 
They  breathed  an  animation,  a  fire,  an 


694 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


enthusiasm,  a  vivid  and  preternatural  in- 
telligence, that  I  never  met  with  in  any 
other  countenance.  Nor  was  the  moral 
expression  less  beautiful  than  the  intel- 
lectual ;  for  there  was  a  softness,  a  deli- 
cacy, a  gentleness,  and  especially  (though 
this  will  surprise  many)  that  air  of  pro- 
found religious  veneration,  that  character- 
ises the  best  works,  and  chiefly  the  frescoes 
(and  into  these  they  infused  their  whole 
souls),  of  the  great  masters  of  Florence 
and  of  Rome.— Hogg,  Thomas  Jefferson, 
1858,  The  Life  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley, 
vol.  I,  pp.  51,  54,  55. 

The  ashes  of  Shelley  were  deposited  in 
the  Protestant  burial  ground  at  Rome,  by 
the  side  of  his  son  William,  and  of  his 
brother-poet  Keats.  An  inscription  in 
Latin,  simply  setting  forth  the  facts,  was 
written  by  Leigh  Hunt,  and  Mr.  Trelawny 
added  a  few  lines  from  Shakspeare's 

Tempest' *  (one  of  Shelley's  favorite 
plays)  :— 

"Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade, 
But  doth  suffer  a  sea-change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange." 
The  same  gentleman  also  planted  eight 
cypresses  round  the  spot,  of  which  seven 
were  flourishing  in  1844,  and  probably  are 
still.  And  so  the  sea  and  the  earth  closed 
over  one  who  was  great  as  a  poet,  and 
still  greater  as  a  philanthropist;  and  of 
whom  it  may  be  said,  that  his  wild,  spirit- 
ual character,  seems  to  have  fitted  him  for 
being  thus  snatched  from  life  under  cir- 
cumstances of  mingled  terror  and  beauty, 
while  his  powers  were  yet  in  their  spring 
freshness,  and  age  had  not  come  to  render 
the  ethereal  body  decrepit,  or  to  wither 
the  heart  which  could  not  be  consumed  by 
fire.— Shelley,  Lady,  1859,  ed.  Shelley 
Memorials  from  Authentic  Sources,  p.  219. 

Shelley  was  a  tall  man, — ^nearly,  if  not 
quite,  five  feet  ten  in  height.  He  was 
peculiarly  slender,  and  ...  his  chest 
had  palpably  enlarged  after  the  usual 
growing  period.  He  retained  the  same 
kind  of  straitness  in  the  perpendicular 
outline  on  each  side  of  him ;  his  shoulders 
were  the  reverse  of  broad,  but  yet  they 
were  not  sloping,  and  a  certain  squareness 
in  them  was  naturally  incompatible  with 
anything  feminine  in  his  appearance.  To 
his  last  days  he  still  sufl^ered  his  chest  to 
collapse ;  but  it  was  less  a  stoop  than  a 
peculiar  mode  of  holding  the  head  and 
shoulders,  —  the  face  thrown  a  little 


forward,  and  the  shoulders  slightly  ele- 
vated ;  though  the  whole  attitude  below 
the  shoulders,  when  standing,  was  unusu- 
ally upright,  and  had  the  appearance  of 
litheness  and  activity.  ...  He  had  an 
oval  face  and  delicate  features,  not  unlike 
those  given  to  him  in  the  w^ell  known 
miniature.  His  forehead  was  high.  His 
fine,  dark  brown  hair,  when  not  cut  close, 
disposed  itself  in  playful  and  very  beauti- 
ful curls  over  his  brows  and  round  the 
back  of  his  neck.  He  had  brown  eyes, 
with  a  color  in  his  cheek  ''like  a  girl's;" 
but  as  he  grew  older,  his  complexion 
bronzed.  So  far  the  reality  agrees  with 
the  current  descriptions;  nevertheless 
they  omit  material  facts.  The  outline  of 
the  features  and  face  possessed  a  firmness 
and  hardness  entirely  inconsistent  with  a 
feminine  character.  The  outline  was  sharp 
and  firm;  the  markings  distinct,  and 
indicating  an  energetic  physique.  The 
outline  of  the  bone  was  distinctly  percep- 
tible at  the  temples,  on  the  bridge  of  the 
nose,  at  the  back  portion  of  the  cheeks, 
and  in  the  jaw,  and  the  artist  could  trace 
the  principal  muscles  of  the  face.  The 
beard,  also,  although  the  reverse  of  strong, 
was  clearly  marked,  especially  about  the 
chin.— Hunt,  Thornton,  1863,  Shelley, 
Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  11,  pp.  202,  203. 

The  lovers  of  Shelley  as  a  man  and  a 
poet  have  done  what  they  could  to  palliate 
his  conduct  in  this  matter.  But  a  question 
of  morals,  as  between  man  and  society, 
cannot  be  reduced  to  any  individual 
standard  however  exalted.  Our  partiality 
for  the  man  only  heightens  our  detesta- 
tion of  the  error.  The  greater  Shelley's 
genius,  the  nobler  his  character  and  im- 
pulses, so  much  the  more  startling  is  the 
warning.  If  we  make  our  own  inclinations 
the  measure  of  what  is  right,  we  must  be 
the  sterner  in  curbing  them.  A  woman's 
heart  is  too  delicate  a  thing  to  serve  as  a 
fulcrum  for  the  lever  with  which  a  man 
would  overturn  any  system,  however  con- 
ventional. The  misery  of  the  elective- 
affinity  scheme  is  that  men  are  not  chemical 
substances,  and  that  in  nine  cases  in  ten 
the  force  of  the  attraction  works  more 
constantly  and  lasting  upon  the  woman 
than  the  man.— Norton,  Charles  Eliot, 
1865,  Shelley's  Poetical  Works,  Memoir. 

Poor  Shelley — gentle,  tender,  ethereal, 
and  aspiring,  sober  and  abstemious,  a 
pale  student,  an  abstract  and  highly 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


695 


metaphysical  thinker,  delicate  as  a  woman 
in  his  organization,  sensitive  as  a  woman 
'  in  his  sympathies,  loathing  all  that  was 
coarse  and  low  with  a  woman's  shrink- 
ing, detesting  all  field-sports  as  barbarous 
and  brutal.— Greg,  W.  R.,  1873,  Kings- 
ley  and  Carlyle,  Literary  and  Social  Judg- 
ments, p.  131. 

A  more  crystalline  heart  than  Shelley's 
has  rarely  throbbed  in  human  bosom.  He 
was  incapable  of  an  untruth,  or  of  deceit 
in  any  form.  .  .  .  Shelley's  figure 
was  a  little  above  the  middle  height, 
slender,  and  of  delicate  construction, 
which  appeared  the  rather  from  a  loung- 
ing or  waving  manner  in  his  gait,  as 
though  his  frame  was  compounded  barely 
of  muscle  and  tendon ;  and  that  the  power 
of  walking  was  an  achievement  with  him 
and  not  a  natural  habit.  Yet  I  should 
suppose  that  he  was  not  a  valetudinarian, 
although  that  has  been  said  of  him  on 
account  of  his  spare  and  vegetable  diet : 
for  I  have  the  remembrance  of  his  scamper- 
ing and  bounding  over  the  gorse-bushes  on 
Hampstead  Heath  late  one  night, — now 
close  upon  us,  and  now  shouting  from  the 
height  like  a  wild  school-boy.  He  was 
both  an  active  and  an  enduring  walker — ■ 
feats  which  do  not  accompany  an  ailing 
and  feeble  constitution.  His  face  was 
round,  flat,  pale,  with  small  features; 
mouth  beautifully  shaped;  hair  bright 
brown  and  wavy ;  and  such  a  pair  of  eyes 
as  are  rarely  in  the  human  or  any  other 
head, — intensely  blue,  with  a  gentle  and 
lambent  expression,  yet  wonderfully  alert 
and  engrossing;  nothing  appeared  to 
escape  his  knowledge.  Whatever  pecul- 
iarity there  might  have  been  in  Shelley's 
religions  faith,  I  have  the  best  authority 
for  believing  that  it  was  confined  to  the 
early  period  of  his  life.  The  practical 
result  of  its  course  of  action,  I  am  sure, 
had  its  source  from  the  ''Sermon  on  the 
Mount."  There  is  not  one  clause  in  that 
Divine  code  which  his  conduct  towards  his 
fellow  mortals  did  not  confirm  and  sub- 
stantiate him  to  be — in  action  a  follower  of 
Christ. — Clarke,  Charles  Cowden,  1874- 
78,  Recollections  of  Writers,  pp.  151,  152. 

Of  all  the  poets  who  have  illustrated 
the  Literature  of  England,  there  is  no  one 
whose  life  presents  so  many  difficulties  to 
the  biographer  as  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 
...  He  was  one  of  the  most  extraordi- 
nary men  that  ever  walked  the  earth,  so 


extraordinary,  I  think,  that  Shakespeare 
alone  could  have  plucked  out  the  heart  of 
his  mystery.  He  led  at  all  times  a  dual 
life,  and  at  most  times  a  life  of  contradic- 
tions. To  say  that  he  was  eccentric  is  to 
say  nothing.  He  was  as  much  out  of 
place  in  this  world  as  a  being  of  another 
world  would  be,  and  he  moved  among  its 
men  and  women  like  some  strange  creature 
of  the  elements.  He  neither  understood 
himself,  nor  was  understood  by  others,  or 
at  most  by  very  few.  The  saintly  Byron 
was  warned  against  him  by  the  clique  in 
Murray's  back  parlor ;  but  Byron  defended 
him — after  he  was  dead.  He  had  a  passion 
for  reforming  the  world,  and  the  world 
never  wants  to  be  reformed.  Of  course, 
it  was  too  strong  for  him — the  many  are 
always  too  strong  for  the  one.  He  learned 
the  lesson  which  he  states  so  tersely : 

"Most  wretched  men 
Are  cradled  into  poetry  by  wrong : 
They  learn  in  suffering  what  they  teach  in 
song." 

—Stoddard,  Richard  Henry,  1876,  ed., 
Anecdote  Biography  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shel- 
ley, Preface,  pp.  xiii,  xiv. 

We  must  learn  to  think  of  Shelley  not 
merely  as  gentle,  dreamy,  unworldly,  im- 
prudently disinterested,  and  ideally  opti- 
mistic— though  he  was  all  this — but  like- 
wise as  swift,  prompt,  resolute,  irascible, 
strong-limbed  and  hardy,  often  very  prac- 
tical in  his  views  of  politics,  and  endowed 
with  preternatural  keenness  of  observa- 
tion. There  is  but  one  formula  for  com- 
bining and  harmonizing  these  apparent 
discrepancies :  he  was  an  elemental  force 
whose  essence  is  simplicity  itself,  but 
whose  modes  of  operation  are  many  and 
various.  If  we  study  the  divers  ways  in 
which  those  who  shared  his  society  have 
striven  to  express  that  which  they  have 
felt  to  be  inexpressible,  w^e  shall  find  that 
in  the  last  analysis  all  amount  to  this. — 
Garnett,  Richard,  1878,  Shelley's  Last 
Days,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  2d,  p,  851. 
Hush !  From  the  grave  where  I  so  oft 

Have  stood,  'mid  ruined  Rome, 
I  seem  to  hear  a  whisper  soft 

Wafted  across  the  foam ; 

Bidding  justest  wrath  be  still, 

Good  feel  lovingly  for  ill, 
As  exiles  for  rough  paths  that  help  them  to 

their  home. 
— Austin,  Alfred,  1882,  Soliloquies  in 
Song,  p.  145. 

To  prove  that  Shelley  as  a  man  was 


696 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


deficient  in  passion  we  need  mention  one 
incident  only  in  his  life.  Some  time  after 
his  separation  from  Harriett,  he  proposed 
that  she  should  return  to  him  and  take  up 
a  place  as  a  member  of  his  household,  not 
as  his  wife,  but  side  by  side  with  the  friend 
for  whom  she  had  been  abandoned,  and 
who  still  shared  his  bed.  This  extraor- 
dinary proposal  arose  out  of  the  most 
self-oblivious  generosity,  but  what  a  com- 
mentary it  affords  on  Shelley's  masculinity ! 
The  man  who  had  no  more  acute  sense  than 
this  implies  of  the  beautiful  relation  of  the 
sexes  that  is  determined  by  healthy  nature 
may  have  had  the  noblest  heart,  but  he 
was  deficient  in  one  attribute.  And  the 
fractious  men  contemporary  with  him  felt 
this  in  some  uncertain  way,  though  they 
could  not  realize  it,  and  their  slanderous 
accusations  of  licentiousness  were  the 
inapt  and  shameful  speech  in  which  their 
vague  feeling  expressed  itself. — Caine, 
Hall,  1883,  Cobwebs  of  Criticism,  p.  229. 

Shelley,  however  free  his  theories, 
was  a  person  on  whose  imagination  a 
licentious  image  had  never  left  a  stain. — 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  1883,  A  Leaf 
from  the  Real  Life  of  Byron,  The  Nine- 
teenth Century,  vol.  14,  p,  232. 

Whilst  Field  Place  and  the  Enthusiasts 
have  committed  indiscretions,  that  provoke 
remonstrance  and  demand  correction,  the 
extreme  Shelleyan  Socialists  have  placed 
his  strongest  title  to  social  homage,  on  his 
courageous  avowal  of  sentiments,  that  are 
unutterably  distasteful  to  the  great  ma- 
jority of  conscientious  and  right-minded 
people.  When  a  man  is  taken  from  the 
long  roll  of  our  mighty  poets,  and  offered 
to  the  world's  admiration  as  a  rare  example 
of  all  the  human  virtues,  it  is  well  for 
people  to  examine  the  grounds  of  such 
extraordinary  commendation.  Now  that 
''Queen  Mab,"  with  its  anti-matrimonial 
note,  is  put  into  the  hands  of  our  boys ; 
now  that  ''Laon  and  Cythna,"  with  its 
monstrous  doctrine,  is  seen  on  our  draw- 
ing-room tables ;  now  that  the  author  of 
so  reprehensible  a  book  is  proclaimed  a 
being  of  unqualified  goodness,  who,  under 
auspicious  circumstances,  ''Might  have 
been  the  Saviour  of  the  World,"  it  is  time 
for  the  world  to  be  told,  that  the  recent 
efforts  to  win  for  Shelley  a  kind  of  regard, 
to  which  he  is  in  no  degree  whatever  en- 
titled, are  only  part  of  a  social  movement, 
that,  so  far  as  the  extreme  Shelleyan 


Socialists  are  concerned,  is  a  movement  for 
the  Abolition  of  Marriage, — in  accordance 
with  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  his  Social 
Philosophy. — Jeaffreson,  John  Cordy, 

1885,  The  Real  Shelley,  vol.  ii,  p.  478. 
Mary  Shelley  returned  to  England  in  the 

autumn  of  1823.  On  February  21,  1851, 
she  died.  Shelley's  son,  Percy  Florence, 
succeeded  to  the  baronetcy  on  the  death  of 
his  grandfather  in  April,  1844.  In  the 
monument,  by  Weekes,  which  Sir  Percy 
and  Lady  Shelley  have  erected  in  the 
noble  parish  church  of  Christchurch, 
Hants,  the  feeling  of  Mary's  heart,  con- 
fided to  the  pages  of  her  journal  after  her 
husband's  death,  is  translated  into  monu- 
mental marble.  In  Boscombe  Manor, 
Bournemouth,  in  an  alcove  devoted  to  that 
purpose,  the  portraits,  relics,  journals, 
note-books,  and  letters  of  Shelley  and 
Mary,  duly  ordered  by  Lady  Shelley's 
hands,  are  preserved  with  love  and  rever- 
ence. The  murmur  of  pine  woods,  and  the 
resonance  and  silvery  flash  of  the  waves  of 
our  English  sea,  are  near  to  solemnize  and 
to  gladden  the  heart. — Dowden,  Edward, 

1886,  Life  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  vol,  II, 
p.  538. 

*  *  Ariel ;""  The  Atheist *  *  Glowry  Scy- 
throp;"  "The  Poet  of  Poets;"  "The 
Snake."— Frey,  Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobri- 
quets and  Nicknames,  p.  463. 

What  a  set !  what  a  world !  is  the  ex- 
clamation that  breaks  from  us  as  we  come 
to  an  end  of  this  history  of  "the  occur- 
rences of  Shelley's  private  life."  I  used  the 
French  word  bete  for  a  letter  of  Shelley's; 
for  the  world  in  which  we  find  him  I  can 
only  use  another  French  word,  sale.  God- 
win's house  of  sordid  horror,  and  God- 
win preaching  and  holding  the  hat,  and  the 
green-spectacled  Mrs.  Godwin,  and  Hogg 
the  faithful  friend,  and  Hunt  the  Horace 
of  this  precious  world,  and,  to  go  up  higher. 
Sir  Timothy  Shelley,  a  great  country 
gentleman,  feeling  himself  safe  while 
"the  exalted  mind  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk 
[the  drinking  Duke]  protects  me  with  the 
world,"  and  Lord  Byron  with  his  deep 
grain  of  coarseness  and  commonness,  his 
affectation,  his  brutal  selfishness — what  a 
set !  .  .  .  Mrs.  Shelley,  after  her 
marriage  and  during  Shelley's  closing 
years,  becomes  attractive ;  up  to  her  mar- 
riage her  letters  and  journal  do  not  please. 
Her  ability  is  manifest,  but  she  is  not 
attractive.    In  the  world  discovered  to  us 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


697 


by  Professor  Dowden  as  surrounding 
Shelley  up  to  1817,  the  most  pleasing 
figure  is  poor  Fanny  Godwin ;  after  Fanny 
Godwin,  the  most  pleasing  figure  is  Harriet 
Shelley  herself.  —  Arnold,  Matthew, 
1888,  Shelley,  The  Nineteenth  Century, 
vol.  23,  p.  34,  Essays  in  Criticism,  vol.  ii. 

Shelley's  moral  character  was  really  no 
better  than  Byron's ;  but  one  was  a  cynic, 
and  the  other  a  sentimentalist  who  perhaps 
did  not  always  carry  his  feelings  into 
action.  Without  going  back  to  Shelley's 
former  life,  it  is  sufficient  to  study  his 
relations  to  Emilia  Viviani,  to  Jane  Wil- 
liams, and,  indeed,  to  all  the  women  whom 
he  met  frequently,  or  to  read  his  poem, 
''Epipsychidion,"  which  inculcates  the 
necessity  of  loving  more  than  one  woman 
in  the  interest  of  art  and  of  the  higher 
spiritual  culture.  —  Schuyler,  Eugene, 
1888-1901,  Italian  Influences,  p.  143.  ' 

What  Shelley  was  at  first  he  remained 
to  the  last :  a  beautiful,  effeminate,  arro- 
gant boy — constitutionally  indifferent  to 
money,  generous  by  impulse,  self-indulgent 
by  habit,  ignorant  to  the  end  of  all  that  it 
most  behooves  a  responsible  being  to 
know,  and  so  conceited  that  his  ignorance 
was  incurable ;  showing  at  every  turn  the 
most  infallible  sign  of  a  feeble  intellect,  a 
belief  in  human  perfectibility ;  and  rushing 
at  once  to  the  conclusion,  when  he  or 
others  met  with  suffering,  that  some  one, 
not  the  sufferer,  was  doing  grievous 
wrong.— Patmore,  Coventry,  1889-98, 
Principle  in  Art,  p.  87. 

He  never  could  clearly  realise  the  aspect 
which  his  relations  with  Mary  bore  to  the 
world,  who  merely  saw  in  him  a  married 
man  who  had  deserted  his  wife  and  eloped 
with  a  girl  of  sixteen.  He  thought  people 
should  understand  all  he  knew,  and  credit 
him  with  all  he  did  not  tell  them ;  that 
they  should  sympathise  and  fraternise 
with  him,  and  honour  Mary  the  more,  not 
the  less,  for  what  she  had  done  and  dared. 
Instead  of  this,  the  world  accepted  his 
family's  estimate  of  its  unfortunate  eldest 
son,  and  cut  him. — Marshall,  Mrs.  Jul- 
ian, 1889,  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  Shelley,  vol.  I,  p.  128. 

Few,  perhaps,  if  any,  think  of  Shelley  as 
often  as  I  do ;  and  to  me  his  whole  person- 
ality seems  the  most  spiritual  and  the  most 
sympathetic  of  the  age.  The  personality 
of  Byron  startles,  captivates,  entrances; 
he  flashes  by  us  like  a  meteor — lover, 


noble,  man  of  pleasure  and  of  the  world, 
solitary  and  soldier  by  turns,  and  a  great 
poet  always, let  the  poetasters  and  sciolists 
of  the  moment  say  what  they  will  in  their 
efforts  to  decry  and  to  deny  him.  Shelley's 
has  nothing  of  this  dazzling  and  gorgeous 
romance,  as  he  has  nothing  in  his  portraits 
of  that  haughty  and  fiery  challenge  which 
speaks  in  the  pose  of  the  head,  and  the 
glance  of  the  eyes  in  every  picture  of 
Byron.  Shelley's  eyes  gaze  outward  with 
wistful,  dreamy  tenderness ;  they  are  the 
eyes  of  contemplative  genius,  the  eyes 
which  behold  that  which  is  not  seen  by  the 
children  of  men.  That  sweetness  and 
spirituality  which  are  in  his  physiognomy 
characterize  the  fascination  which  his 
memory,  like  his  verse,  must  exercise  over 
any  who  can  understand  his  soul.  Nothing 
is  more  unfitting  to  him  than  those  wrang- 
lings  over  his  remains  which  are  called 
studies  of  his  life  and  letters.  The 
solemnity  and  beauty  of  his  death  and 
burial  should  surely  have  secured  him  re- 
pose in  his  grave. — Ramee,  Louise  de 
LA  (Quid a),  1890,  A  New  View  of  Shelley, 
North  American  Review,  vol.  150,  p.  247. 

He  cursed  his  father,  deceived  his 
friend,  and  deserted  his  wife ;  yet  every 
literary  critic  for  sixty  years  has  hesitated 
to  call  him  a  bad  man.  His  poetry  is  full 
of  a  more  subtle  and  perilous  poison  even 
than  Byron's;  yet  its  latest  editor  has 
declared  Shelley  one  who  possessed  the 
qualifications  necessary  for  a  saviour  of  the 
world.— Dawson,  W.  J.,  1892,  Quest  and 
Vision,  p.  21. 

Proper  critical  appreciation  of  Shelley's 
poetry,  for  example,  does  not  involve  any 
such  reckless  eulogy  of  Shelley's  character 
as  has  been  the  recent  vogue  in  America 
and  England.  Charity  covers  faults,  but 
it  never  lies  about  them  or  excuses  them. 
Ethics  draws  no  distinction  between  the 
wife-murderer  who  cleans  stables  or  keeps 
a  dive,  and  the  wife-murderer  who  writes 
a  "Prometheus  Unbound,"  or  an  '*Ode 
to  a  Skylark."  The  right  of  the  aristo- 
crat is  not  available  as  a  shield  against 
the  operation  of  moral  responsibility.  The 
glamour  of  genius  cannot  blind  the  eves 
of  God.— Thompson,  Maurice,  1893,  The 
Ethics  of  Literary  Art,  p.  10. 

At  Shelley's  birth, 
The  Lark,  dawn -spirit,  with  an  anthem  lond 

Rose  from  the  dusky  earth 

To  tell  it  to  the  Cloud, 


698 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


That,  like  a  flower  night-folded  in  the  gloom 

Burst  into  morning  bloom. 

At  Shelley's  death, 
The  Sea,  that  deemed  him  an  immortal,  saw 

A  god's  extinguished  breath, 

And  landward,  as  in  awe. 
Upbore  him  to  the  altar  whence  he  came, 

And  the  rekindling  flame. 
— Tabb,  John  B.,  ISM,  To  Shelley ^  Poems. 

Shelley  was  nineteen.  He  was  not  a 
youth,  but  a  man.  He  had  never  had  any 
youth.  He  was  an  erratic  and  fantastic 
child  during  eighteen  years,  then  he 
stepped  into  manhood,  as  one  steps  over 
a  door-sill.  He  was  curiously  mature  at 
nineteen  in  his  ability  to  do  independent 
thinking  on  the  deep  questions  of  life  and 
to  arrive  at  sharply  definite  decisions  re- 
garding them,  and  stick  to  them — stick  to 
them  and  stand  by  them  at  cost  of  bread, 
friendships,  esteem,  respect,  and  approba- 
tion. For  the  sake  of  his  opinions  he  was 
willing  to  sacrifice  all  these  valuable 
things,  and  did  sacrifice  them ;  and  went 
on  doing  it,  too,  when  he  could  at  any 
moment  have  made  himself  rich  and  sup- 
plied himself  with  friends  and  esteem  by 
compromising  with  his  father,  at  the 
moderate  expense  of  throwing  overboard 
one  or  two  indifferent  details  of  his  cargo 
of  principles.— Clemens,  Samuel  Lang- 
HORNE  (Mark  Twain),  1897,  In  Defence 
of  Harriet  Shelley^  How  to  Tell  a  Story 
and  Other  Essays,  p.  24. 

There  is  a  clique  which  had  made  what 
Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  would  term  * 'a  little 
tin  god"  of  Shelley;  and  the  members  of 
this  absurd  coterie,  in  affecting  to  raise 
their  idol  above  ordinary  human  nature, 
really  do  his  fame  nothing  but  great  dis- 
service in  depicting  him  as  what  that  very 
caustic  and  sarcastic  lady  Miss  Clairmont 
termed  *'an  insipid  idiot."  —  Graham, 
William,  1898,  Last  Links  with  Byron, 
Shelley,  and  Keats,  p,  xii. 

He  was,  in  the  obvious  sense  of  the  word, 
a  visionary,  and  his  violent  antagonisms 
were  far  more  caused  by  his  disgust  with 
the  contact  of  reality  than  by  any  genuine 
appreciation  of  the  relative  values  of  good 
and  evil.  He  made  no  sane  and  conscious 
effort  to  understand  things.  He  did  not 
know  how  to  strike  injustice  in  its  weakest 
part,  or  how  best  to  help  on  the  down- 
trodden. He  wasted  three-fourths  of  his 
energy  on  side-issues.  He  was  always 
taking  seriously  the  wrong  people  and  the 
wrong  ideas.   He  held  Harriet  Westbrook 


for  a  victim  of  social  oppression,  whereas 
she  was  merely  the  average  pretty  girl  in 
search  of  *'bread-and-cheese  and  kisses." 
He  accepted  Mary  Godwin  as  a  sort  of 
female  seraph,  and  this  essentially  vulgar- 
souled,  small  minded,  sentimental  poseuse 
exploited  him  fifty  times  more  ruthlessly 
than  the  poor  little  Methodist.  This  did 
not  in  the  least  prevent  him  from  a  still 
wider,  if  only  momentary,  aberration  over 
the  lovely  nullity  of  Emilia  Viviani,  the 
attitudinising  Italian  girl  from  whom  he 
was  inveigled  by  the  envious  Mary,  resolute 
to  retain  the  monopoly  of  exploitation 
which  she  had  won  by  the  ruin  of  a  better 
woman  than  herself.  Intellectually  or 
sexually — it  makes  little  difference  which 
— Shelley  was  the  born  child  of  illusion. 
To  the  very  last  he  looked  upon  Godwin — 
Godwin,  the  most  sordid  of  mediocrities — 
as  a  great  thinker,  and  his  conception  of 
Byron  as  a  supreme  artist  is  one  of  the 
gems  of  criticism.  Shelley's  true  brother 
is  Blake,  the  inspired  Cockney. — Adams, 
Francis,  1899,  Essays  in  Modernity , 
p.  171. 

NECESSITY  OF  ATHEISM 
1811 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Master  and  Fellows 
held  this  day,  it  was  determined  that 
Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg,  and  Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley,  commoners,  be  publicly  expelled 
for  contumaciously  refusing  to  answer 
questions  proposed  to  them,  and  for  also 
repeatedly  declining  to  disavow  a  publica- 
tion entitled  ''The Necessity  qf  Ath-eism." 
— Records,  University  of  Oxford,  1811. 

The  importance  of  "The  Necessity  of 
Atheism"  is  rather  biographical  and  illus- 
trative than  literary.  It  is  true  the  little 
tract  is  put  together  cleverly,  and  appar- 
ently with  perfect  good  faith ;  but  from 
a  strictly  literary  standpoint  it  could  not 
be  said  that  an  irreparable  loss  would  be 
sustained  by  its  destruction.  None  the 
less  its  recovery  seems  to  me  a  matter  for 
great  congratulation.  So  much  hung 
upon  this  tract, — Shelley's  expulsion  and 
all  its  momentous  issues,  ^ — so  much  has 
been  said  and  written  about  it, — that  to 
have  it  before  us  exactly  as  it  issued  from 
the  Press  at  Worthing  and  was  offered  to 
the  Oxford  worthies  and  undergraduates 
was  highly  desirable. — Forman,  Harry 
Buxton,  1880,  ed.,  The  Prose  Works  of 
Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  vol.  i,  p.  xviii. 

His  ** Essay  on  Christianity"  is  full  of 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


699 


noble  views,  some  of  which  are  held  at  the 
present  day  by  some  of  the  most  earnest 
believers.  At  what  time  of  his  life  it  was 
written  we  are  not  informed ;  but  it  seems 
such  as  would  insure  his  acceptance  with 
any  company  of  intelligent  and  devout 
Unitarians.— Macdonald,  George,  1882, 
The  Imagination  and  Other  Essays,  p. 
271,  note. 

QUEEN  MAB 
1813 

An  extravagant  expression  of  his  zeal 
for  the  improvement  of  the  world,  full  of 
vague  fantastic  notions,  but  also,  like  all 
his  poems,  replete  with  delicate,  lofty,  and 
brilliant  ideas.  The  book,  published  by  a 
treacherous  bookseller  against  the  poet's 
wish,  was  condemned.  Shelley  had  excited 
persecution  specially  by  the  notes  he  had 
added  to  the  text.  These  notes,  which 
contain  an  argument  against  Christianity, 
revealed  great  youthful  incompetence ;  he 
forgot  that  it  would  %.e  simple  folly  to 
deny  the  effects  of  Christianity  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  ...  It  does 
not  belong  to  a  particular  class ;  it  is  a 
series  of  sketches,  lyrical,  descriptive, 
polemic,  didactic,  in  changing  metres. — 
SCHERR,  J.,  1874,  A  History  of  English 
Literature,  tr.  M.  F.,  p.  246. 

We  cannot  include  Queen  Mab,*'  in 
spite  of  its  sonorous  rhetoric  and  fervid 
declamation,  in  the  canon  of  his  master- 
pieces. It  had  a  succes  de  scandale  on  its 
first  appearance,  and  fatally  injured  Shel- 
ley's reputation.  As  a  work  of  art  it  lacks 
maturity  and  permanent  vitality. — Sy- 
MONDS,  John  Addington,  1879,  Shelley 
(English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  69. 

The  poem  is  such  a  marvel  as  the  pro- 
duction of  youth  of  eighteen,  it  illustrates 
so  fully  the  starting  point  and  direction  of 
Shelley's  thought,  it  contains  so  many 
ideas  which  were  his  controlling  mental 
qualities,  it  is  on  the  whole  so  intensely 
Shelleyan,  that  I  do  not  see  why  it  cannot 
be  regarded  as  one  of  his  characteristic 
poems.— Johnson,  Charles  F.,  1885, 
Three  Americans  and  Three  Englishmen, 
p.  108. 

Ridiculed  in  so  far  as  it  was  not  ignored 
at  the  time  of  its  appearance,  it  has  in 
later  times  and  in  some  quarters  been 
absurdly  overpraised ;  but,  with  all  its  de- 
fects and  excesses  of  youth,  an  impartial 
criticism  can  hardly  hesitate  to  pronounce 
it  the  most  striking  and  powerful  work  of 


imagination,  and  by  far  the  richest  in 
promise,  that  has  ever  sprung  from  the 
brain  of  a  poet  who  had  not  yet  passed  his 
twentieth  year.— Traill,  Henry  Duff, 
1896,  Social  England,  vol.  v,  p.  586. 

Despite  the  metaphysical  speculations 
which  disfigure ''Queen  Mab, "  passages  of 
extraordinary  beauty  give  no  uncertain 
promise  of  the  coming  glories. — Lodge, 
Henry  Cabot,  1897,  Certain  Accepted 
Heroes  and  Other  Essays,  p.  130. 

By  it  Shelley  was  long  most  widely 
known,  and  it  remains  one  of  the  most 
striking  of  his  works  in  popular  apprehen- 
sion. .  .  .  The  radical  character  of 
Queen  Mab,"  which  was  made  a  part  of 
the  evidence  against  his  character,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  trial  which  resulted  in  his 
being  deprived  of  the  custody  of  his  chil- 
dren by  Lord  Eldon,  was  a  main  element  in 
the  contemporary  obloquy  in  which  his 
name  was  involved  in  England,  though 
very  few  persons  could  ever  have  read  the 
poem  then ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
in  the  end  it  did  not  help  his  fame  by  the 
fascination  it  exercises  over  a  certain  class 
of  minds  in  the  first  stages  of  social  and 
intellectual  revolt  or  angry  unrest  so  wide- 
spread in  this  century. — Woodberry, 
George  Edward,  1901,  ed..  Complete 
Poetical  Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley, 
Cambridge  ed.,  p.  2. 

ALASTOR 

1815 

In  "Alastor"  we  at  last  have  the  genu- 
ine, the  immortal  Shelley.  It  may  indeed 
be  said  that  the  poem,  though  singularly 
lovely  and  full— charged  with  meaning, 
has  a  certain  morbid  vagueness  of  tone,  a 
want  of  firm  human  body :  and  this  is  true 
enough.  Nevertheless,  ''Alastor"  is  pro- 
portionately worthy  of  the  author  of 
' '  Prometheus  Unbound' '  and ' '  The  Cenci, ' ' 
the  greatest  Englishman  of  his  age. — 

ROSSETTI,  WlLLL\M  MiCHAEL,  1870-78- 

86,  Memoir  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  p.  57. 

The  first  of  his  poems,  which  really  was 
worthy  of  his  powers — ''Alastor" — was 
written  in  the  first  year  of  this  union.  It 
is  the  first  real  indication  of  the  new  voice 
which  had  awakened  in  English  literature. 
It  was  like  nothing  else  then  existing.;  nor 
do  we  know  to  what  to  compare  it  in  the 
past.  Shelley  had  no  story  to  tell,  no 
character  to  disclose ;  his  was  pure  poetry, 
music  such  as  charmed  the  ear  and  filled 


700 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


the  mouth  with  sweetness.  Never  was 
poet  so  eager  to  teach,  or  with  so  many 
wild  assertions  to  make,  or  so  strong  a 
conviction  of  the  possibility  of  influencing 
humanity  and  changing  the  world;  but 
the  soul  of  his  poetry  was  the  same  as  that 
of  music,  not  definite,  scarcely  articulate, 
only  melodious,  ineffably  sweet. — Oli- 
PHANT,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  Literary 
History  of  England,  XVIH-XIX  Century y 
vol  III,  p.  46. 

THE  REVOLT  OF  ISLAM 
1817 

The  Poem  which  1  now  present  to  the 
world  is  an  attempt  from  which  I  scarcely 
dare  to  expect  success,  and  in  which  a 
writer  of  established  fame  might  fail  with- 
out disgrace.  It  is  an  experiment  on  the 
temper  of  the  public  mind  as  to  how  far  a 
thirst  for  a  happier  condition  of  moral  and 
political  society  survives,  among  the  en- 
lightened and  refined,  the  tempests  which 
have  shaken  the  age  in  which  we  live.  I 
have  sought  to  enlist  the  harmony  of 
metrical  language,  the  ethereal  combina- 
tions of  the  fancy,  the  rapid  and  subtle 
transitions  of  human  passion,  all  those  ele- 
ments which  essentially  compose  a  poem, 
in  the  cause  of  a  liberal  and  comprehensive 
morality;  and  in  the  view  of  kindling 
within  the  bosoms  of  my  readers  a  virtuous 
enthusiasm  for  those  doctrines  of  liberty 
and  justice,  that  faith  and  hope  in  some- 
thing good,  which  neither  violence,  nor 
misrepresentation,  nor  prejudice,  can  ever 
totally  extinguish  among  mankind. — 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1817,  The  Re- 
volt of  Islam,  Preface, 

Whatever  its  imperfections  of  plan  and 
execution,  it  is  not  alone  a  marvellous 
well-head  of  poetry,  but,  in  conception  and 
tone,  and  in  its  womanly  ideal  embodied 
in  Cythna,  a  remarkably  original  work :  it 
was  greatly  unlike  any  poem  that  had  pre- 
ceded (so  far  as  I  know),  and  even  the 
demon  of  imitation  has  left  it  solitary. — 
RossETTi,  William  Michael,  1870-78-86, 
Memoir  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  p.  77. 

Even  in  its  amended  form  it  probably 
presents  a  better  key  to  the  poet's  wild 
opinions  than  any  other  of  his  works.  It 
is  a  protest  against  the  ordinary  usages 
of  society,  which  Shelley  calls  custom. 
Cythna  and  Laon  declare  war  against  this 
custom.  The  reader  finds  some  difficulty 
in  following  the  fertile  imagination  of  the 
poet  through  the  phases  of  alternate 


suffering  and  victory  which  the  hero  and 
the  heroine  experience.  He  fi^ils  to  com- 
prehend the  means  whic 'i  »-niV>'ed  Cythna 
to  enthrone  herself  as  oddess  of 

Liberty,  or  to  appreciate  the  causes  which 
produced  the  sudden  downfall  of  her 
authority.  Her  flight  with  Laon  on  the 
black  Tartarian  steed  is  absurdly  un- 
natural; and  her  subsequent  conduct,  or 
the  narrative  of  it,  is  grossly  indecent. 
Custom,  in  short,  or,  to  speak  more  cor- 
rectly, the  custom  which  had  made  matri- 
mony a  necessity,  was  the  tyranny  against 
which  Shelley's  eloquence  is  directed,  and 
the  poem  is  thus  fitly  dedicated,  in  some 
of  the  most  beautiful  verses  Shelley  ever 
wrote,  to  the  lady  who,  for  his  sake,  had 
broken  the  bands  of  custom. — Walpole, 
Spencer,  1878,  A  History  of  England  from 
the  Conclusion  of  the  Great  War  in  1815, 
vol.  I,  p.  366. 

The  storms  are  even  better  than  the 
sunsets  and  dawns.  The  finest  is  at  the 
beginning  of  the  ''Revolt  of  Islam."  It 
might  be  a  description  of  one  of  Turner's 
storm-skies.  The  long  trains  of  tremulous 
mist  that  precede  the  tempest,  the  cleft 
in  the  storm-clouds,  and  seen  through  it, 
high  above,  the  space  of  blue  sky  fretted 
with  fair  clouds,  the  pallid  semicircle  of 
the  moon  with  mist  on  its  upper  horn,  the 
flying  rack  of  clouds  below  the  serene  spot 
— ^all  are  as  Turner  saw  them ;  but  paint- 
ing cannot  give  what  Shelley  gives— the 
growth  and  changes  of  the  storm. — 
Brooke,  Stopford  A.,  1880,  Some 
Thoughts  on  Shelley,  Macmillan^s  Maga- 
zine, vol.  42,  p.  129. 

As  a  poet,  in  richness  of  language, 
brilliancy  of  fancy,  and  natural  melody  of 
versification,  Shelley  stands  second  among 
English  poets  only  to  Shakespeare.  Yet 
so  wedded  was  he  to  the  wilfulness  of  his 
own  imagination,  so  negligent  to  the 
sympathies  of  his  readers,  and,  conse- 
quently, of  the  true  ends  of  the  art  of 
poetry,  that, beyond  the  circle  of  his  ardent 
admirers,  his  more  ambitious  compositions 
have  made  little  impression  on  the  miud  of 
the  nation.  For  one  reader  of ' ' The  Revolt 
of  Islam,"  there  are  ten  thousand  readers 
of  ''Marmion."  — CouRTHOPE,  William 
John,  1887,  Thoughts  on  Dowden's  "Life 
of  Shelley,''  National  Review,  vol.  8,  p.  619. 

' ' The  Revolt  of  Islam' '  is  more  genuinely 
and  intensely  lyrical  in  its  character  than 
is  any  other  poem  in  which  the  stanza  is 


PERCY  BYSSHE  ELLEY 


701 


used.  The  poem  is  the  expression  of  a 
lofty,  aspiring,  but  feverish  and  much- 
bewildered  spirit,  who,  at  times,  brings 
out  of  the  instrument  employed  all  its 
capabilitiesof  ''brilliancyand  magnificence 
of  sound."  But  the  reader  of  ''The  Re- 
volt of  Islam"  cannot  but  feel  that  the 
instrument  was  constructed  for  the  ex- 
pression of  other  states  and  attitudes  of 
mind  and  feeling  than  are  generally  ex- 
hibited in  this  poem. — Corson,  Hiram, 
1892,  A  Primer  of  English  Verse,  p.  111. 

JULIAN  AND  MADDALO 

1818 

Is  a  Conversation  or  Tale,  full  of  that 
thoughtful  and  romantic  humanity,  but 
rendered  perplexing  and  unattractive  by 
that  veil  of  shadowy  or  of  glittering  ob- 
scurity, which  distinguished  Mr.  Shelley's 
writings.  The  depth  and  tenderness  of 
his  feelings  seems  often  to  have  interfered 
with  the  expression  of  them,  as  the  sight 
becomes  blind  with  tears.  A  dull,  water- 
ish  vapour,  clouds  the  aspect  of  his  philo- 
sophical poetry,  like  that  mysterious  gloom 
which  he  has  himself  described  as  hanging 
over  the  Medusa's  Head  of  Leonardo  de 
Vinci. — Hazlitt,  William,  1824,  Shel- 
ley^ s  Posthumous  Poems,  Edinburgh  Review, 
vol.  40,  p.  499. 

The  familiarity  of  "Julian  andMaddalo" 
is  almost  as  foreign  to  that  of  *'Beppo" 
as  to  that  of  the  "Idiot  Boy."  It  is  a 
high-bred,  poetic  familiarity,  equally  re- 
mote from  the  cynicism  verging  on  vulgar- 
ity of  the  one,  and  from  the  rusticity 
verging  on  ugliness  of  the  other ;  a  manner 
happily  mediating  between  the  abstract 
intensity  of  Shelley's  ordinary  verse  and 
the  rich  concrete  talk  of  Byron,  under  the 
"intoxication"  of  which  it  arose. — Her- 
FORD,  C.  H.,  1897,  The  Age  of  Words- 
worth, p.  245. 

PROMETHEUS  UNBOUND 

1819 

PROMETHEUS  UNBOUND.  |  A  Lyrical 
Drama  |  in  four  acts  |  with  other  Poems  | 
by  1  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  |  Audisne  hasc 
amphiarae,sub  terram  abdite?  |  London  | 
C.  and  J.  Oilier  Vere  Street  Bond  Street  | 
1820.— Title  Page  to  First  Edition, 
1820. 

To  our  apprehensions,  Prometheus  is 
little  else  but  absolute  raving ;  and  were 
we  not  assured  to  the  contrary,  we  should 
take  it  for  granted  that  the  author  was  a 


lun«..c — as  his  principles  are  ludicrously 
wicked,  and  his  poetry  a  melange  of  non- 
sense, cockneyism,  poverty,  and  pedantry. 
— Anon,  1820,  Literary  Gazette,  Sept.  9. 
Shelley  styles  his  new  poem  "Prometheus 
Unbound," 

And  'tis  like  to  remain  so  while  time  circles 
round ; 

For  surely  an  age  would  be  spent  in  the 
finding 

A  reader  so  weak  as  to  pay  for  the  binding ! 
— Hook,  Theodore  Edward,  1820?  On 
Shelley's  ''Prometheus  Unbound" 

In  short,  it  is  quite  impossible  that  there 
shoud  exist  a  more  pestiferous  mixture  of 
blasphemy,  sedition,  and  sensuality,  than  is 
visible  in  the  whole  structure  and  strain  of 
this  poem— which,  nevertheless,  and  not- 
withstanding all  the  detestation  its  princi- 
ples excite,  must  and  will  be  considered 
by  all  that  read  it  attentively,  as  abound- 
ing in  poetical  beauties  of  the  highest 
order — as  presenting  many  specimens  not 
easily  to  be  surpassed,  of  the  moral  sublime 
of  eloquence — as  overflowing  with  pathos, 
and  most  magnificent  in  description. 
Where  can  be  found  a  spectacle  more 
worthy  of  sorrow  than  such  a  man  per- 
forming and  glorying  in  the  performance 
of  such  things  ?— Anon,  1820,  Prometheus 
Unbound,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol.  7, 
p.  680. 

In  Mr. "Shelley's poetry,  allis brilliance, 
vacuity,  and  confusion.  We  are  dazzled 
by  the  multitude  of  words  which  sound  as 
if  they  denoted  something  very  grand  or 
splendid :  fragments  of  images ,  pass  in 
crowds  before  us ;  but  when  the  proces- 
sion has  gone  by,  and  the  tumult  of  it  is 
over,  not  a  trace  of  it  remains  upon  the 
memory.  The  mind,  fatigued  and  per- 
plexed, is  mortified  by  the  consciousness 
that  its  labour  has  not  been  rewarded 
by  the  acquisition  of  a  single  distinct  con- 
ception ;  the  ear,  too,  is  dissatisfied ;  for 
the  rhythm  of  the  verse  is  often  harsh  and 
unmusical ;  and  both  the  ear  and  the  under- 
standing are  disgusted  by  new  and  uncouth 
words,  and  by  the  awkward  and  intricate 
construction  of  the  sentences.  The  pre- 
dominating characteristic  of  Mr.  Shelley's 
poetry,  however,  is  its  frequent  and  total 
want  of  meaning. — Anon,  1821,  Shelley, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  26,  p.  169. 

It  contains  passages  of  the  sublimest 
grandeur,  and  the  most  wonderful  richness 
of  imagination ;  but  the  efl^ect  of  the  whole 


702 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


is  so  vaporous  and  unsubstantial,  the  im- 
ages which  he  evokes  are  so  unsolid,  that 
not  even  the  unsurpassable  purity,  of  the 
diction,  and  the  unequalled  variety  of  the 
lyric  music,  can  preserve  us  from  weari- 
ness and  a  painful  sense  of  dreamy  con- 
fusion.— Shaw,  Thomas  B.,  1847,  Out- 
lines of  English  Literature,  p.  367. 

'Trometheus  Unbound"  is  the  most 
ambitious  of  his  poems.  But  it  was 
written  too  fast.  It  was  writen,  too,  in 
a  state  of  over-excitement,  produced  by 
the  intoxication  of  an  Italian  spring, 
operating  upon  a  morbid  system,  and 
causing  it  to  flush  over  with  hectic  and 
half -delirious  joy.  Above  all,  it  was  writ- 
ten twenty  years  too  soon,  ere  his  views 
had  consolidated,  and  ere  his  thought  and 
language  were  cast  in  their  final  mould. 
Hence,  on  the  whole,  it  is  a  strong  and 
beautiful  disease.  Its  language  is  loose 
and  luxuriant  as  a  "Moenad's  hair;"  its 
imagery  is  wilder  and  less  felicitous  than 
in  some  of  his  other  poems.  The  thought 
is  frequently  drowned  in  a  diarrhoea  of 
words ;  its  dialogue  is  heavy  and  prolix ; 
and  its  lyrics  have  more  flow  of  sound 
than  beauty  of  image  or  depth  of  senti- 
ment ; — it  is  a  false  gallop  rather  than  a 
great  kindling  race.  Compared  with  the 
'Trometheus"  of  ^schylus,  Shelley's 
poem  is  wordy  and  diffuse;  lacks  unity 
and  simplicity ;  above  all,  lacks  whatever 
human  interest  is  in  the  Grecian  work. 
Nor  has  it  the  massive  strength,  the  piled- 
up  gold  and  gems,  the  barbaric  but  kingly 
magnificence  of  Keats'  Hyperion." — 
GiLFiLLAN,  George,  1855,  A  Third  Gal- 
lery of  Portraits,  p.  431. 

The  greatest  and  most  attractive  of  all 
Shelley's  longer  poems.  That  dr^a  is 
from  beginning  to  end  a  great  lyrical 
poem,  or  I  should  rather  ^y  a  congeries 
of  lyrics,  in  which  perhaps  more  than  any- 
where else  Shelley's  lyrical  power  has 
highest  soared. — Shairp,  John  Camp- 
bell, 1881,  Shelley  as  a  Lyric  Poet,  As- 
pects of  Poetry,  p.  245. 

Of  all  Shelley's  works,  the  ''Prometheus 
Unbound"  is  that  which  combines  the 
greatest  amount  of  individual  power  and 
peculiarity.  There  is  an  airy  grandeur 
about  it,  reminding  one  of  the  vast  masses 
of  cloud  scattered  about  in  broken,  yet 
magnificently  suggestive  forms,  all  over 
the  summer  sky  after  a  thunderstorm. 
The  fundamental  ideas  are  grand,  the 


superstructure,  in  many  parts,  so  ethereal, 
that  one  hardly  knows  whether  he  is  gazing 
on  towers  of  solid  masonry,  rendered  dim 
and  unsubstantial  by  intervening  vapour, 
or  upon  the  golden  turrets  of  ^  cloudland, 
themselves  born  of  the  mist  which  sur- 
rounds them  with  a  halo  of  glory. — Mac- 
don  ald,  George,  1882,  The  Imagination 
and  other  Essays,  p.  278. 

The  "Prometheus  Unbound"  gives  per- 
haps the  most  perfect  expression  anywhere 
to  be  found  of  the  thought  and  passion  of 
a  great  period  of  English  poetry.  It  fully 
initiates  the  earnest  student  into  the 
ideals  of  the  Revolution — those  ideals 
which,  in  their  development,  are  determin- 
ing the  trend  of  our  modern  life.  There 
is  no  need  to  speak  of  the  imaginative 
fervor  and  pure  lyricism  of  the  drama: 
few  English  poems  can  be  more  effective 
to  quicken  and  train  aesthetic  sensitive- 
ness. So  far  as  difficulty  is  concerned,  the 
student  who  can  understand  the  "Faery 
Queene"  can  understand  the  "Prometheus 
Unbound."  .  .  .  The  supreme  aesthetic 
glory  of  the' "Prometheus  Unbound"  is 
not  its  nature-descriptions  nor  its  color- 
treatment,  but  its  music.  Never  did 
melody  so  enfold  the  spirit  of  a  poet.  The 
form  is  transparent  and  supple  as  clear 
flame.  Blank  verse  rises  into  the  long, 
passionate  swing  of  the  anapaest,  or  is 
broken  by  the  flute -like  notes  of  short 
trochaic  lines,  or  relieved  by  the  half- 
lyrical  effect  of  rhymed  endings.  The 
verse  lends  itself  with  equal  beauty  to  the 
grandeur  of  sustained  endurance,  to  the 
passionate  yearning  of  love,  to  severe  phil- 
osophic inquiry,  to  the  ethereal  notes  of 
spirit-voices  dying  on  the  wind.  The  va- 
riety of  metres  is  marvellous.  Thirty-six 
distinct  verse-forms  are  to  be  found, 
besides  the  blank  verse.  These  forms  are 
usually  simple ;  but  at  times  the  versifica- 
tion-scheme is  as  complex  as  that  of  the 
most  elaborate  odes  of  Dryden  or  Collins. 
Yet  the  artificial  and  labored  beauty  of 
the  eighteenth  century  verse  is  replaced 
in  Shelley  by  song  spontaneous  as  that  of 
his  own  skylark.  The  conventions,  the 
external  barriers  of  poetry,  are  completely 
swept  away  by  the  new  democracy. — 
SCUDDER,  ViDA  D.,  1892,  ed.,  Prometheus 
Unbound, Preface  and  Introduction,  pp. m,\. 

In  the  seventy-six  years  that  have 
passed  since  Shelley  conceived  his  "Prome- 
theus," as  he  sat  gazing  over  the  sombre 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


703 


ruins  of  the  Campagna,  no  one  has  ever 
ventured  into  that  seventh  heaven  of 
invention.— Harrison,  Frederic,  1894, 
English  Literature  of  the  Victorian  Age, 
The  Forum,  vol  16,  p.  710,  Early  Victo- 
rian Literature,  p.  21. 

"Prometheus  Unbound"  best  combines 
the  various  elements  of  Shelley's  genius 
in  their  most  complete  expression,  and 
unites  harmoniously  his  lyrically  creative 
power  of  imagination  and  his ''passion  for 
^--  reforming  the  world."  It  is  the  fruit  of 
an  outburst  of  poetic  energy  under  the 
double  stimulus  of  his  enthusiastic  Greek 
studies,  begun  under  Peacock's  influence, 
and  of  his  delight  in  the  beauty  of  Italy, 
whither  he  had  removed  for  health  and 
rest.  It  marks  his  full  mastery  of  his 
powers.— Woodberry,  George  Edward, 
1901,  ed.  Complete  Poetical  Works  of  Percy 
Bysshe  Shelley,  Cambridge  ed.,  p.  160. 

THE  CENCI 

1819 

THE  CENCI.  I  A  Tragedy,  |  in  five  acts. 
I  By  Percy  B.  Shelley.  |  Italy.  |  Printed 
for  C.  and  J.  Oilier  |  Vere  Street,  Bond 
Street.  |  London.  |  1819.— Title  Page 
OF  First  Edition,  1819. 

I  have  r-ead  the  tragedy  of '  *  Cenci, ' '  and 
am  glad  to  see  Shelley  at  last  descending 
to  what  really  passes  among  human  crea- 
tures. The  story  is  certainly  an  unfortu- 
nate one,  but  the  execution  gives  me  anew 
idea  of  Shelley's  powers.  There  are  pas- 
sages of  great  strength,  and  the  character 
of  Beatrice  is  certainly  excellent. — God- 
win, William,  1820,  Letter  to  Mrs.  Shelley, 
March  30 ;  PauVs  Godwin,  vol  ii,  p.  272. 

This  is  evidence  enough  that  if  Shelley 
had  lived  the  ''Cenci"  would  not  now  be 
the  one  great  play  written  in  the  great 
manner  of  Shakespeare's  men  that  our 
literature  has  seen  since  the  time  of  these. 
The  proof  of  power  is  here  as  sure  and  as 
clear  as  in  Shelley's  lyric  work ;  he  has 
shown  himself,  what  the  dramatist  must 
needs  be,  as  able  to  face  the  light  of  hell 
as  of  heaven,  to  handle  the  fires  of  evil  as 
to  brighten  the  beauties  of  things.  This 
latter  work  indeed  he  preferred,  and 
wrought  at  it  with  all  the  grace  and  force 
of  thought  and  word  which  give  to  all  his 
lyrics  the  light  of  a  divine  life ;  but  his 
tragic  truth  and  excellence  are  as  certain 
and  absolute  as  the  sweetness  and  the  glory 
of  his  songs.    The  mark  of  his  hand,  the 


trick  of  his  voice,  we  can  always  recognise 
in  their  clear  character  and  individual 
charm  ;  but  the  range  is  yarious  from  the 
starry  and  heavenly  heights  to  the  tender 
and  flowering  fields  of  the  world  wherein 
he  is  god  and  lord  :  with  here  such  a  flower 
to  gather  as  the  spinners'  song  of  Beatrice, 
and  here  such  a  heaven  to  ascend  as  the 
Prologue  to  Hellas,  which  the  zealous  love 
of  Mr.  Garnett  for  Shelley  has  opened  for 
us  to  enter  and  possess  for  ever ;  where 
the  pleadings  of  Christ  and  Satan  alternate 
as  the  rising  and  setting  of  stars  in  the 
abyss  of  luminous  sound  and  sonorous 
light.— Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles, 
1869,  Notes  on  the  Text  of  Shelley,  Fort- 
nightly Review,  vol.  11,  p.  561. 

Is  not  only  a  poem  of  great  beauty,  but 
a  drama  of  true  power,  abnormally  revolt- 
ing in  its  theme,  but  singularly  pure  and 
delicate  in  treatment. — Ward,  Adol- 
PHUS  William,  1878,  Drama,  Encyclopce- 
dia  Britannica,  Ninth  edition,  vol.  vii, 
p.  379. 

The  greatest  tragedy  composed  in  Eng- 
lish since  the  death  of  Shakespere. — 
Symonds,  John  Addington,  1879,  Shelley 
(English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  129. 

Admiration  is  often  expressed  of  his 
dramatic  ability,  and  "The  Cenci"  has 
been  spoken  of  as  the  greatest  English 
tragedy  since  Shakespeare.  In  truth  there 
seems  to  be  little  that  is  dramatic  in  it. 
It  is  a  nightmare  of  a  drama.  We  are 
plunged  at  once  into  the  deepest  gloom, 
and  kept  at  the  highest  pitch  of  excitement 
all  through  till  the  final  catastrophe. 
There  is  no  relief  except  in  the  very  last 
half-dozen  lines,  when  we  know  that  the 
women  are  to  be  executed.  In  rapidity  of 
action ' ' The  Cenci"  much  resembles ' '  Mac- 
beth," but  what  a  contrast  in  other  re- 
spects !  Every  one  must  feel  the  extreme 
beauty  of  the  scene  where  Duncan  is  riding 
towards  the  castle  and  is  met  by  Lady 
Macbeth,  and  Banquo  tells  us  of  the 
"temple-haunting  martlet, "and  how  it  is 
increased  by  contrast  with  the  horrors 
that  are  so  soon  to  follow.  The  mutual 
relations  of  Beatrice  and  Count  Cenci  are 
wonderfully  depicted,  and  Beatrice's  char- 
acter skilfully  developed ;  but  who  could 
suppose  that  such  a  perfect  monster  as 
Cenci  ever  existed  ?  His  utter  shameless- 
nessand  selfishness  are  superhuman.  We 
feel,  too,  the  fatal  want  of  humour,  but 
we  are  always  on  the  solid  ground,  the 


704 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


sentiments  are  obvious  enough,  and  the 
play  had  consequently  some  success,  being 
the  only  one  of  Shelley's  poems  that 
reached  a  second  edition  in  his  lifetime. — 
Seaton,  R.  C,  1881,  Shelley,  The  Temple 
Bar,  vol.  61,  p.  234. 

The  greatest  English  dramatic  poem  of 
the  century. —Payne,  William  Morton, 
1895,  Little  Leaders,  p.  19. 

ADONAIS 

1821 

ADONAIS  I  An  Elegy  on  the  Death  of 
John  Keats,  |  Author  of  Endymion,  Hy- 
perion, etc.  I  By  I  Percy  B.  Shelley  | 

AcTTrjp  Trplv  [xkv  eAa/XTres  en  ^(ootcriv  eoios.  j 
Nvj/  Be  6avC)v^  Aa/XTrets  €(rirepo<:  ev  (^dCfxevoi^. 

I  Plato.  I  Pisa  |  With  the  Types  of 
Didot  I  MDCCCXXI.— Title  Page  of 
First  Edition,  1821. 

There  is  much  in  the  **Adonais"  which 
seems  now  more  applicable  to  Shelley 
himself,  than  to  the  young  and  gifted  poet 
whom  he  mourned.  The  poetic  view  he 
takes  of  death,  and  the  lofty  scorn  he  dis- 
plays towards  his  calumniators,  are  as  a 
prophecy  on  his  own  destiny,  when  received 
among  immortal  names,  and  the  poisonous 
breath  of  critics  has  vanished  into  empti- 
ness before  the  fame  he  inherits. — Shel- 
ley, Mary  Wollstonecraft,  1839,  ed. 
Shelley's  Poetical  Works,  p.  328. 

There  is,  in  reading  his  poem,  a  feeling 
^  of  deeper  sorrow  for  the  poet  that  wrote 
than  for  him  that  was  lamented. — Reed, 
Henry,  1850-55,  Lectures  on  English  Lit- 
erature from  Chaucer  to  Tennyson,  p.  321. 

An  elegy  only  equalled  in  our  language 
by  ''Lycidas,''  and  in  the  point  of  passion- 
/  ate  eloquence  even  superior  to  Milton's 
youthful  lament  for  his  friend. — Sy- 
MONDS,  John  Addington,  1879,  Shelley 
(English  Men  of  Letters),  p,  143. 

As  an  utterance  of  abstract  pity  and 
indignation,  ^'Adonais"  is  unsurpassed  in 
literature;  with  its  hurrying  train  of 
beautiful  spectral  images,  and  the  irresist- 
ible current  and  thrilling  modulation  of  its 
verse,  it  is  perhaps  the  most  perfect  and 
sympathetic  effect  of  Shelley's  art ;  while 
its  strain  of  transcendental  consolation j 
for  mortal  loss  contains  the  most  lucid] 
exposition  of  his  philosophy.  But  of^ 
Keats  as  he  actually  lived  the  elegy  pre- 
sents no  feature,  while  the  general  impres- 
sion it  conveys  of  his  character  and  fate  is 
erroneous.— CoLviN,  Sidney,  1887,  Keats 
(English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  207. 


''Adonais,"  perhaps  the  most  widely 
read  of  the  longer  poems  of  Shelley,  owes 
something  of  its  charm  to  the  fact  noted 
by  Mrs.  Shelley.  .  .  .  The  elegy  has 
contributed  much  to  the  feeling  that  links 
these  two  poets  in  one  memory,  though  in 
life  they  were  rather  pleasant  than  inti-  j- 
mate  friends. — Woodberry,  George  Ed- 
ward, 1901,  ed.  The  Complete  Poetical 
Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  Cambridge 
ed.,  p.  307. 

GENERAL 

There  is  no  Original  Poetry  in  this 
volume:  [''Original  Poetry  by  Victor  and 
Cazire"] :  there  is  nothing  in  it  but  down- 
right scribble.  It  is  really  annoying  to 
see  the  waste  of  paper  which  is  made  by 
such  persons  as  the  putters-together  of 
these  64  pages.  There  is,  however,  one 
consolation  for  the  critics  who  are  obliged 
to  read  all  this  sort  of  trash.  It  is  that 
the  crime  of  publishing  is  generally  fol- 
lowed by  condign  punishment  in  the  shape 
of  bills  from  the  stationer  and  printer,  and 
in  the  chilling  tones  of  the  bookseller, 
when,  to  the  questions  of  the  anxious 
rhymer  how  the  book  sells,  he  answers  that 
not  more  than  a  half-a-dozen  copies  have 
been  sold. — Anon,  1810-11,  The  Poetical 
Register  and  Repository  of  Fugitive  Poetry. 

I  can  no  more  understand  Shelley  than 
you  can.  His  poetry  is  ' '  thin-sown  with 
profit  or  delight."  .  .  .  For  his  theories 
and  nostrums,  they  are  oracular  enough, 
but  I  either  comprehend  'em  not,  or  there 
is  ''miching  malice"  and  mischief  in  'em  ; 
but,  for  the  most  part,  ringing  with  their 
own 'emptiness.    Hazlitt  said  well  of  'em. 

Many  are  the  wiser  or  better  for  reading 
Shakspeare,  but  nobody  was  ever  wiser  or 
better  for  reading  Shelley."  —  Lamb, 
Charles,  1824,  To  Bernard  Barton,  Aug. 
24 ;  Life  and  Letters,  ed.  Talfourd. 

Mr.  Shelley's  style  is  to  poetry  what 
astrology  is  to  natural  science — a  passion- 
ate dream,  a  straining  after  impossibilities, 
a  record  of  fond  conjectures,  a  confused 
embodying  of  vague  abstractions,  — a  fever 
of  the  soul,  thirsting  and  craving  slUqx 
what  it  cannot  have,  indulging  its  love  of 
power  and  novelty  at  the  expense  of  truth 
and  nature,  associating  ideS  by  con- 
traries, and  wasting  great  powers  by  their 
application  to  unattainable  objects. — 
Hazlitt,  William,  1824,  Shelley's  Pos- 
thumous Poems,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol. 
40,  p.  494. 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


705 


The  disappearance  of  Shelley  from  the 
world,  seems,  like  the  tropical  setting  of 
that  luminary  {aside-1  hate  that  word)  to 
which  his  poetical  genius  can  alone  be  com- 
pared with  reference  to  the  companions  of 
his  day,  to  have  been  followed  by  instant 
darkness  and  owl-season;  whether  the 
vociferous  Darley  is  to  be  the  comet,  or 
tender  fullfaced  L.  E.  L.  the  milk-and- 
watery  moon  of  our  darkness,  are  questions 
for  the  astrologers :  if  I  were  the  literary 
weather-guesser  for  1825  I  would  safely 
prognosticate  fog,  rain,  blight  in  due  suc- 
cession for  its  dullard  months. —  Bed- 
does,  Thomas  Lo yell,  1824,  Letters, p.SS. 

Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  was  a  man  of  far 
superior  powers  to  Keats.  He  had  many 
of  the  faculties  of  a  great  poet.  He  was, 
however,  we  verily  believe  it  now,  scarcely 
in  his  right  mind.— Wilson,  John,  1826, 
Blackwood's  Magazine,  Preface,  V(j)L  19. 

Shelley  is  one  of  the  best  artists  of  us 
all :  I  mean  in  workmanship  of  /style. — 
Wordsworth,  William,  1827,  Miscella- 
neous Memoranda,  Memoirs  by  Christopher 
Wordsworth,  vol.  ii,  p.  484. 

The  strong  imagination  of  Shelley  made 
him  an  idolater  in  his  own  despite.  Out 
of  the  most  indefinite  terms  of  a  hard, 
cold,  dark,  metaphysical  system,  he  made 
a  gorgeous  Pantheon,  full  of  beautiful, 
majestic,  and  life-like  forms.  He  turned 
atheism  itself  into  a  mythology,  rich  with 
visions  as  glorious  as  the  gods  that  live  in 
the  marble  of  Phidias,  or  the  virgin  saints 
that  smile  on  us  from  the  canvass  of 
Murillo.  The  Spirit  of  Beauty,  the 
Principle  of  Good,  the  Principle  of  'Evil, 
when  he  treated  of  them,  ceased  to  be 
abstractions.  They  took  shape  and  colour. 
They  were  no  longer  mere  words,  but 
''intelligible  forms;"  ''fair  humanities;'' 
objects  of  love,  of  adoration,  or  of  fear. 
As  there  can  be  no  stronger  sign  of  a  mind 
destitute  of  the  poetical  faculty  than  that 
tendency  which  was  so  common  among  the 
writers  of  the  French  school  to  turn 
images  into  abstractions, — Venus,  for  ex- 
ample, into  Love,  Minerva  into  Wisdom, 
Mars  into  War,  and  Bacchus  into  festivity, 
— so  ther^can  be  no  stronger  sign  of  a 
mind  trulr^poetical  than  a  dispositi'on  to 
reverse  this  abstracting  process,  and  to 
make  individuals  out  of  generalities. 
Some  of  the  metaphysical  and  ethical 
theories  of  Shelley  were  certainly  most 
absurd  and  pernicious.    But  we  doubt 

45  c 


whether  any  modern  poet  has  possessed  in 
^n  equal  degree  the  highest  qualities  of 
the  great  ancient  masters.  The  words 
bard  and  inspiration,  which  seems  so  cold 
and  affected  when  applied  to  other  modern 
writers,  have  a  perfect  propriety  when 
applied  to  him.  He  was  not  an  author, 
but  a  bard.  His  poetry  seems  not  to  have 
been  an  art,  but  an  inspiration.  Had  he 
lived  to  the  full  age  of  man,  he  might  not 
improbably  have  given  to  the  world  some 
great  work  of  the  very  highest  rank  in 
design  and  execution.    But,  alas, 

6  Adcj^vtq  tfia  poov  erjvae  8tVa 
Ybv  Mojcrats  c{>lX.ov  dvSpa^  tov  6v  Nv//<^at(Ttv 
oLTreKdrj 

— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babingtox,  1831, 
Southey's  Edition  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress, 
Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  54,  p.  454. 

Read  the  "Prometheus  Unbound. "  How 
gorgeous  it  is !  I  do  not  think  Shelley  is 
read  or  appreciated  now  as  enthusiastically 
as  he  was,  even  in  my  recollection,  some 
few  years  ago.  ...  At  home  spent 
my  time  in  reading  Shelley.  How  wonder- 
ful and  beautiful  the  "Prometheus"  is! 
The  unguessed  heavens  and  earth  and  sea 
are  so  many  storehouses  from  which  Shel- 
ley brings  gorgeous  heaps  of  treasure 
and  piles  them  in  words  like  jewels.  I 
read  "The  Sensitive  Plant"  and  "Pvosa- 
lind  and  Helen. "  As  for  the  latter — power- 
ful enough,  certainly — it  gives  me  bodily 
aches  to  read  such  poetry. — Kemble, 
Frances  Ann,  1832,  Records  of  a  Girl- 
hood, Jan.  25,  27,  pp.  496,  498. 
Smi-treader,  life  and  light  be  thine  for  ever! 
Thou  art  gone  from  us;  years  go  by  and 
spring 

Gladdens  and  the  young  earth  is  beautiful, 
Yet  thy  songs  come  not,  other  bards  arise, 
But  none  like  thee :  they  stand,  thy  majesties 
Like  mighty  works  which  tell  some  spirit 
there 

Hath  sat  regardless  of  neglect  and  scorn. 
Till,  its  long  task  completed,  it  hath  risen 
And  left  us,  never  to  return,  and  all 
Rush  in  to  peer  and  praise  when  all  in  vain. 


But  thou  art  still  for  me  who  have  adored 
Tho'  single,  panting  but  to  hear  thy  name 
Which  I  believed  a  spell  to  me  alone. 
Scarce  deeming  thou  wast  as  a  star  to  men ! 

— Browning,  Robert,  1833,  Pauline. 

The  imaginative  feelings  ot  Byron  and 
Shelley  had  but  little  similitude :  those  of 
Shelley  were  mystical  and  clouded ;  those 
of  Byron,  clear,  distinct,  direct,  and  bold. 
Shelley  was  more  theoretical  and  abstract ; 


706 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


Byron,  however  imaginative,  had  it  always 
mixed  up  with  humanity, — human  passions 
and  human  forms.  Shelley  had  gleams  of 
poetry ;  Byron  was  always  poetical ;  Shel- 
ley never  put  a  master's  hand  upon  his 
subject ;  he  could  not  mould  it  to  his  will. 
— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834, 
Autobiography  J  vol.  i,  p.  329. 
•  ''The  Ode  to  the  Skylark''  and  ''The 
>^loud,"  which,  in  the  opinion  of  many  orit- 
ur ics,  bear  a  purer  poetical  stamp  than  any 
other  of  his  productions.  They  were  writ- 
ten as  his  mind  prompted,  listening  to  the 
carolling  of  the  bird  aloft  in  the  azure  sky 
of  Italy ;  or  marking  the  cloud  as  it  sped 
across  the  heavens,  ^while  he  floated  in  his 
boat  on  the  Thames.  No  poet  was  ever 
warmed  by  a  more  genuine  and  unforced 
inspiration.  His  extreme  sensibility  gave 
the  intensity  of  passion  to  his  intellectual 
pursuits;  and  rendered  his  mind  keenly 
alive  to  every  perception  of  outward 
objects,  as  well  as  to  his  internal  sensa- 
tions. Such  a  gift  is,  among  the  sad 
vicissitudes  of  human  life,  the  disappoint- 
ments we  meet,  and  the  galling  sense  of 
our  own  mistakes  and  errors,  fraught  with 
pain;  to  escape  from  such,  he  delivered 
up  his  soul  to  poetry,  and  felt  happy  when 
he  sheltered  himself  from  the  influence  of 
human  sympathies  in  the  wildest  regions 
of  fancy.— Shelley,  Mary  Godwin,  1839, 
ed.  Shelley's  Poetical  WorkSy  Preface. 

If  Coleridge  is  the  sweetest  of  our  poets, 
Shelley  is  at  once  the  most  ethereal  and 
most  gorgeous ;  the  one  who  has  clothed 
his  thoughts  in  draperies  of  the  most 
evanescent  and  most  magnificent  words 
and  imagery.  Not  Milton  himself  is  more 
learned  in  Grecisms,  or  nicer  in  etymo- 
logical propriety;  and  nobody,  through- 
out, has  a  style  so  Orphic  and  primseval. 
His  poetry  is  as  full  of  mountains,  seas, 
and  skies,  of  light,  and  darkness,  and  the 
seasons,  and  all  the  elements  of  our  being, 
as  if  Nature  herself  had  written  it,  with 
the  creation  and  its  hopes  newly  cast 
around  her;  not,  it  must  be  confessed, 
without  too  indiscriminate  a  mixture  of 
great  and  small,  and  a  want  of  sufficient 
shade,  — a  certain  chaotic  brilliancy,  * '  dark 
with  excess  of  light." — Hunt,  Leigh, 
1844,  Imagination  and  Fancy,  p.  268. 
And  Shelley,  in  his  white  ideal 
All  statue-blind. 

—Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1844, 
Vision  of  Poets. 


Had  Shelley  possessed  humor,  his  might 
have  been  the  third  name  in  English 
poetry. — Whipple,  Edwin  P.,  1845,  Wit 
and  Humor,  Literature  and  Life,  p.  112. 

If  ever  mortal  wreaked  his  thoughts 
upon  expression, ' '  it  was  Shelley.  If  ever 
poet  sang  (as  a  bird  sings)  impulsively, 
earnestly,  with  utter  abandonment,  to 
himself  solely,  and  for  the  mere  joy  of  his 
own  song,  that  poet  was  the  author  of  the 
* '  Sensitive  Plant. ' '  Of  art— beyond  that 
which  is  the  inalienable  instinct  of  genius 
— he  either  had  little  or  disdained  all.  He 
really  disdained  that  Rule  which  is  the 
emanation  from  Law,  because  his  own  soul 
was  law  in  itself.  His  rhapsodies  are  but 
the  rough  notes,  the  stenographic  memo- 
randa of  poems, — memoranda  which, 
because  they  were  all-sufficient  for  his  own 
intelligence,  he  cared  not  to  be  at  the 
trouble  of  transcribing  in  full  for  mankind. 
In  his  whole  life  he  wrought  not  thoroughly 
out  a  single  conception.  For  this  reason 
it  is  that  he  is  the  most  fatiguing  of  poets. 
Yet  he  wearies  in  having  done  too  little, 
rather  than  too  much ;  what  seems  in  him 
the  diffuseness  of  one  idea,  is  the  conglom- 
erate concision  of  many ;  and  this  concision 
it  is  which  renders  him  obscure.  With 
such  a  man,  to  imitate  was  out  of  the 
question ;  it  would  have  answered  no  pur- 
pose— for  he  spoke  to  his  own  spirit  alone, 
which  would  have  comprehended  no  alien 
tongue;— he  was,  therefore,  profoundly 
original.— Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  1845? 
Miss  Barretfs  ''A  Drama  of  Exile,"  Works 
of  Poe,  ed.  Stedman  and  Woodberry,  vol. 
VI,  p.  317. 

Most  purely  poetic  genius  of  his  age. 
— Howitt,  William,  1846,  Homes  and 
Haunts  of  the  Most  Eminent  British  Poets, 
vol.  I,  p.  494. 

I  turn  to  one  whom  I  love  still  more  than 
I  admire ;  the  gentle,  the  gifted,  the  ill- 
fated  Shelley.  .  .  .  Poor  Shelley! 
Thou  were  the  warmest  of  philanthropists, 
yet  doomed  to  live  at  variance  with  thy 
country  and  thy  time.  Full  of  the  spirit  of 
genuine  Christianity,  yet  ranking  thyself 
among  unbelievers,  because  in  early  life 
thou  hadst  been  bewildered  by  seeing  it 
perverted,  sinking  beneath  those  precious 
gifts  which  should  have  made  a  world 
thine  own,  intoxicated  with  thy  lyric  en- 
thusiasm and  thick-coming  fancies,  adoring 
Nature  as  a  goddess,  yet  misinterpreting 
her  oracles,  cut  off  from  life  just  as  thou 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


707 


wert  I  ling  to  read  it  aright ;  0,  most 
musical,  most  melancholy  singer ;  who  that 
has  a  soul  to  feel  genius,  a  heart  to  grieve 
over  misguided  nobleness,  can  forbear 
watering  the  profuse  blossoms  of  thy  too 
early  closed  spring  with  tears  of  sympathy, 
^  of  love,  and  (if  we  may  dare  it  for  one  so 
superior  in  intellect)  of  pity? — OssoLi, 
Margaret  Fuller,  1850?  Art,  Litera- 
ture and  the  Drama,  p.  78. 

It  is  needless  to  disguise  the  fact,  and 
it  accounts  for  all — his  mind  was  diseased : 
he  never  knew,  even  from  boyhood,  what 
it  was  to  breathe  the  atmosphere  of 
healthy  life,  to  have  the  mens  sana  in  cor- 
pore  sano.  His  sensibilities  were  over- 
acute  ;his  morality  was  thoroughly  morbid ; 
his  metaphysical  speculations  illogical,  in- 
congruous, incomprehensible — alike  base- 
less and  objectless.  The  suns  and  systems 
of  his  universe  were  mere  nebulae ;  his  con- 
tinents were  a  chaos  of  dead  matter; 
his  oceans  *'a  world  of  waters,  and  with- 
out a  shore/'  .  .  .  It  is  gratuitous 
absurdity  to  call  his  mystical  speculations 
a  search  after  truth;  they  are  no  such 
thing ;  and  are  as  little  worth  the  atten- 
tion of  reasoning  and  responsible  man  as 
the  heterogeneous  reveries  of  nightmare. 
— MoiR,  D.  M.,  1850-51,  Sketches  of  the 
Poetical  Literature  of  the  Past  Half- Cen- 
tury. 

I  would  rather  consider  Shelley's  poetry 
as  a  sublime  fragmentary  essay  towards  a 
presentment  of  the  correspondency  of  the 
universe  to  Diety,  of  the  natural  to  the 
spiritual,  and  of  the  actual  to  the  ideal, 
than  I  would  isolate  and  separately  ap- 
praise the  worth  of  many  detachable  por- 
tions which  might  be  acknowledged  as 
utterly  perfect  in  a  lower  moral  of  view, 
under  the  mere  conditions  of  art. — 
Browning,  Robert,  1851,  Letters  of  Percy 
Bysshe  Shelley,  Introductory  Essay. 

See'st  thou  a  Skylark  whose  glistening  wing- 
lets  ascending 

Quiver  like  pulses  beneath  the  melodious 
dawn  ? 

Deep  in  the  heart-yearning  distance  of  heaven 
it  flutters — 

Wisdom  and  beauty  and  love  are  the  treas- 
ures it  brings  down  at  eve. 

—Meredith,  George,  1851,  Works,  vol. 
XXXI,  p.  140. 

In  a  literary  point  of  view,  there  is  no 
doubt  but  every  succeeding  poem  showed 
the  gradual  clearing  away  of  the  mists  and 


vapors  with  which,  in  spite  of  his  exquisite 
rhythm,  and  a  thousand  beauties  of  detail, 
his  fine  genius  was  originally  clouded. — 
MiTFORD,  Mary  Russell,  1851,  Recollec- 
tions of  a  Literary  Life,  p.  315. 

Nature  baptized  him  in  ethereal  fire, 
And  Death  shall  crown  him  with  a  wreath 
of  flame. 

— Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  1853,  After 
a  Lecture  on  Shelley.  ^ 

And  it  is  worth  remarking,  that  it  is 
Shelley's  form  of  fever,  rather  than 
Byron's,  which  has  been  of  late  years  the 
prevailing  epidemic.  Since  Shelley's 
poems  have  become  known  in  England, 
and  a  timid  public,  after  approaching  in 
fear  and  trembling  the  fountain  which 
was  understood  to  be  poisoned,  has  begun 
first  to  sip,  and  then,  finding  the  magic 
water  at  all  events  sweet  enough,  to  quench 
its  thirst  with  unlimited  draughts,  the 
Byron's  Head  has  lost  its  customers. 
Well — at  least  the  taste  of  the  age  is  more 
refined,  if  that  be  matter  of  congratula- 
tion. And  there  is  an  excuse  for  pre- 
ferring eau  Sucre  to  waterside  porter, 
heady  with  grains  of  paradise  and  quassia, 
salt  and  coccum  indicum.  .  .  .  Among 
the  many  good-going  gentleman  and  ladies, 
Byron  is  generally  spoken  of  with  horror — 
he  is  *'so  wicked,"  forsooth;  while  poor 
Shelley,  ''poor  dear  Shelley,"  is  ''very 
wrong,  of  course, "  but  "so  refined,"  "so 
beautiful,"  "so  tender" — a  fallen  angel, 
while  Byron  is  a  satyr  and  a  devil.  We 
boldly  deny  the  verdict.  Neither  of  the 
two  are  devils;  as  for  angels,  when  we 
have  seen  one,  we  shall  be  better  able  to 
give  an  opinion ;  at  present,  Shelley  is  in 
our  eyes  far  less  like  one  of  those  old 
Hebrews  and  Miltonic  angels,  fallen  or 
unfallen,  than  Byron  is.  And  as  for  the 
satyr,  the  less  that  is  said  for  Shelley,  on 
that  point,  the  better.  If  Byron  sinned 
more  desperately  and  flagrantly  than  he, 
it  was  done  under  the  temptations  of  rank, 
wealth,  disappointed  love,  and  under  the 
impulses  of  an  animal  nature,  to  which 
Shelley's  passions  were 
As  moonlight  unto  sunlight,  and  as  water 
unto  wine . 

And,  at  all  events,  Byron  never  set  to  work 
to  consecrate  his  own  sin  into  a  religion, 
and  proclaim  the  worship  of  uncleanness 
as  the  last  and  highest  ethical  development 
of  "pure"  humanity.  No — Byron  may 
be  brutal,  but  he  never   cants.    If  at 


708 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


moments  he  finds  himself  in  hell,  he 
never  turns  round  to  the  world,  and  melo- 
diously informs  them  that  it  is  heaven,  if 
they  could  but  see  it  in  its  true  light. — ■ 
KiNGSLEY,  Charles,  1853,  Thoughts  about 
Shelley  and  Byron,  Eraser's  Magazine,  vol. 
48,  p.  570. 

Melodious  Shelley  caught  thy  softest  song, 
And  they  who  heard  his  music  heard  not 
thine ; 

Gentle  and  joyous,  delicate  and  strong, 
From  the  far  tomb  his  voice  shall  silence 
mine. 

— Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1853,  To  the 
Nightingale. 

Through  cloud  and  wave  and  star  his  insight 

keen 

Shone  clear,  and  traced  a  God  in  each  dis- 
guise, 

Protean,  boundless.    Like  the  buskined  scene 
All  Nature  rapt  him  into  ecstasies : 

In  him,  alas!  had  Reverence  equal  been 
With  Admiration,  those  resplendent  eyes 

Had  wandered  not  through  all  her  range 
sublime 

To  miss  the  one  great  marvel  of  all  time. 
— De  Vere,  Aubrey,  1856,  Lines  Com- 
posed Near  Shelley's  House  at  Lerici. 

It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  he  loved 
with  a  great  intensity ;  yet  it  was  with  a 
certain  narrowness,  and  therefore  a  cer- 
tain fitfulness.  Possibly  a  somewhat 
wider  nature,  taking  hold  of  other  char- 
acters at  more  points, — fascinated  as  in- 
tensely but  more  variously,  stirred  as 
deeply  but  through  more  complicated 
emotions, — is  requisite  for  the  highest 
and  most  lasting  feeling;  passion,  to 
be  enduring,  must  be  many-sided.  Eager 
and  narrow  emotions  urge  like  the  gadfly 
of  the  poet,  but  they  pass  away;  they 
are  single;  there  is  nothing  to  revive 
them.  Various  as  human  nature  must  be 
the  passion  which  absorbs  that  nature  into 
itself.  Shelley's  mode  of  delineating 
women  has  a  corresponding  peculiarity ; 
they  are  well  described,  but  they  are 
described  under  only  one  aspect.  Every 
one  of  his  poems,  almost,  has  a  lady  whose 
arms  are  white,  whose  mind  is  sympathiz- 
ing, and  whose  soul  is  beautiful.  She  has 
many  names, — Cythna,  Asia,  Emily;  but 
these  are  only  external  disguises ;  she  is 
indubitably  the  same  person,  for  her  char- 
acter never  varies.  No  character  can  be 
simpler ;  she  is  described  as  the  ideal 
object  of  love  in  its  most  simple  and  ele- 
mental form ;  the  pure  object  of  the 
essential  passion.    She  is  a  being  to  be 


loved  in  a  single  moment,  with  eager  eyes 
and  gasping  breath;  but  you  feel  that 
in  that  moment  you  have  seen  the  whole,  — 
there  is  nothing  to  come  to  afterwards. 
The  fascination  is  intense,  but  uniform; 
there  is  not  the  ever-varying  grace,  the 
ever-changing  charm,  that  alone  can  at- 
tract for  all  time  the  shifting  moods  of  a 
various  and  mutable  nature. — Bagehot, 
Walter,  1856,  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley, 
Works,  ed.  Morgan,  vol.  i,  p.  117. 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  I  mean  to 
compare  the  sickly  dreaming  of  Shelley 
over  clouds  and  waves  with  the  masculine 
and  magnificent  grasp  of  men  and  things 
which  we  find  in  Scott.— Ruskin,  John, 
1856,  Modern  Painters,  pt.  iii,  sec.  ii.  ch. 
iv,  note. 

Intense  as  is  his  ethical  spirit,  his  de- 
sire to  act  upon  man  and  society,  his 
imagination  cannot  work  with  things  as 
he  finds  them,  with  the  actual  stuff  of 
historical  life.  His  mode  of  thinking  is 
not  according  to  the  terrestrial  conditions 
of  time,  place,  cause  and  effect,  variety 
of  race,  climate,  and  costume.  His  per- 
sons are  shapes,  winged  forms,  modernized 
versions  of  Grecian  mythology,  or  mortals 
highly  allegorized ;  and  their  movements 
are  vague,  swift,  and  independent  of 
ordinary  physical  laws.  In  the  ''Revolt 
of  Islam,''  for  example,  the  story  is  that 
of  two  lovers  who  career  through  the 
plains  and  cities  of  an  imaginary  kingdom 
on  a  Tartar  horse,  or  skim  over  leagues  of 
ocean  in  a  boat  whose  prow  is  of  moon- 
stone. But  for  the  Cenci,  and  one  or  two 
other  pieces,  one  would  say  that  Shelley 
had  scarcely  any  aptitude  for  the  historical. 
— Masson,  David,  1860-74,  Wordsworth, 
Shelley,  Keats  and  Other  Essays,  p.  140. 

Florence  to  the  living  Dante  was  not 
more  cruelly  unjust  than  England  to  the 
living  Shelley.  Only  now,  nearly  forty 
years  after  his  death,  do  we  begin  to  dis- 
cern his  true  glory.  It  is  well  that  this 
glory  is  such  as  can  afford  to  wait  for  rec- 
ognition ;  that  it  is  one  of  the  permanent 
stars  of  heaven,  not  a  rocket  to  be  ruined 
by  a  night  of  storm  and  rain.  I  confess 
that  I  have  long  been  filled  with  astonish- 
ment and  indignation  at  the  manner  in 
which  he  is  treated  by  the  majority  of  our 
best  living  writers.  Emerson  is  serenely 
throned  above  hearing  him  at  all ;  Carlyle 
only  hears  him  ''shriek  hysterically;" 
Mrs.  Browning  discovers  him  "blind  with 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


709 


his  white  ideal;"  Messrs.  Ruskin  and 
Kingsley  treat  him  much  as  senior  school- 
boys treat  the  youngster  who  easily  * '  walks 
over  their  heads"  in  class — with  reluctant 
tribute  of  admiration  copiously  qualified 
with  sneers,  pinches,  and  kicks.  Even 
Bulwer  (who,  intellectually  worthless  as 
he  is,  now  and  then  serves  well  as  a  straw 
to  show  the  way  the  wind  blows  among  the 
higher  and  more  educated  classes),  even 
Bulwer  can  venture  to  look  down  upon  him 
with  pity,  to  pat  him  patronisingly  on  the 
back,  to  sneer  at  him — in  Earnest  Mal- 
travers" — with  a  sneer  founded  upon  a 
maimed  quotation.  .  .  .  These  dis- 
tinctive marks  of  the  highest  poetry  I  find 
displayed  in  the  works  of  Shelley  more 
gloriously  than  in  those  of  any  other  poet 
in  our  language.  As  we  must  study  Shake- 
speare for  knowledge  of  idealised  human 
nature,  and  Fielding  for  knowledge  of 
human  nature  unidealised,  and  Carlyle's 
' '  French  Revolution' '  as  the  unappr cached 
model  of  history,   and   Currer  Bell's 

Villette' '  tolearn  the  highest  capabilities 
of  the  novel,  and  Ruskin  for  the  true  philos- 
ophy of  art,  and  Emerson  for  quintessen- 
tial philosophy,  so  must  we  study,  and  so 
will  future  men  more  and  more  study 
Shelley  for  quintessential  poetry. — Thom- 
son, James  C'B.  V."),  1860-96,  Bio- 
graphical and  Critical  Studies y  pp.  21 0,2^0. 

Since  the  seventeenth  century,  we  have 
had  no  poet  of  the  highest  order,  though 
Shelley,  had  he  lived,  would  perhaps  have 
become  one.  He  had  something  of  that 
burning  passion,  that  sacred  fire,  which 
kindles  the  soul,  as  though  it  came  fresh 
from  the  altar  of  the  gods.  But  he  was 
cut  off  in  his  early  prime,  when  his  splen- 
did genius  was  still  in  its  dawn. — Buckle, 
Henry  Thomas,  1861,  History  of  Civili- 
zation in  England,  vol,  ii,  p.  397. 

Emotion  was  found  insufl5cient ;  ideas 
were  called  for.  And  so  poor  Shelley, 
poor  Shelley!  so  disdained  and  cried 
down  in  his  lifetime,  succeeded  Words- 
worth in  vogue.  The  amende  honorable 
was  made  to  him ;  he  was  proclaimed  one 
of  the  glories  of  England.  Men  be- 
came passionately  enamoured  of  his 
ethereal,  subtle,  intangible  poetry,  and  the 
hoUowness  of  his  humanitarian  dreams  was 
forgiven  him  in  virtue  of  the  sublimity 
and  beauty  of  his  imagination.  After 
which  he  shared  the  fate  of  his  prede- 
cessors.   As  time  went  on  his  defects 


became  more  apparent.  There  was  not 
enough  human  heart-beat,  not  enough  life, 
not  enough  of  the  dramatic  within  him. 
— ScHERER,  Edmond,  1863-91,  Taine's 
History  of  English  Literature,  Essays  on 
English  Literature,  tr.  Saintsbury,  p.  87. 

The  master-singer  of  our  modern  poets. 
— Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  1869, 
Notes  on  the  Text  of  Shelley,  Fortnightly 
Review,  vol.  11,  p.  539. 

Has  anyone  since  Shakspeare  and  Spen- 
ser lighted  on  such  tender  and  such 
grand  ecstasies ?—Taine,  H.  A.,  1871, 
History  of  English  Literature,  tr.  Van 
Laun,  vol.  ii,  hk.  iv,  ch.  i,  p.  267. 

The  most  truly  spiritual  of  all  English 
poets,  Shelley.  .  .  .  That  Shelley  was 
immeasurably  superior  to  Byron  in  all  the 
rarer  qualities  of  the  specially  poetic 
mind  appears  to  us  so  unmistakably  as- 
sured a  fact,  that  diflference  of  opinion 
upon  it  can  only  spring  from  a  more  funda- 
mental difference  of  opinion  as  to  what  it 
is  that  constitutes  this  specially  poetic 
quality.  .  .  .  We  feel  that  Shelley 
transports  the  spirit  to  the  highest  bound 
and  limit  of  the  intelligible;  and  that 
with  him  thought  passes  through  one 
superadded  and  more  rarefying  process 
than  the  other  poet  is  master  of. — Mor- 
LEY,  John,  1871,  Byron,  Critical  Miscel- 
lanies, p.  259. 

This  uncritical  negligence,  the  want  of 
minute  accuracy  in  the  details  of  his  verse, 
seems  to  us  intimately  connected  with  the 
whole  character  of  Shelley's  mind,  and 
especially  with  the  lyrical  sweep  and  in- 
tensity of  his  poetical  genius.  He  had 
an  intellect  of  the  rarest  delicacy  and 
analytical  strength,  that  intuitively  per- 
ceived the  most  remote  analogies,  and 
discriminated  with  spontaneous  precis- 
ion the  finest  shades  of  sensibility,  the 
subtilest  difl^erences  of  perception  and 
emotion.  He  possessed  a  swift  soaring 
and  prolific  imagination  that  clothed  every 
thought  and  feeling  with  imagery  in  the 
moment  of  its  birth,  and  instinctively  read 
the  spiritual  meanings  of  material  sjTnbols. 
His  fineness  of  sense  was  so  exquisite  that 
eye  and  ear  and  touch  became,  as  it  were, 
organs  and  inlets  not  merely  of  sensitive 
apprehension,  but  of  intellectual  beauty 
and  ideal  truth.  Every  nerve  in  his  slight 
but  vigorous  frame  seemed  to  vibrate  in 
unison  with  the  deeper  life  of  nature  in 
the  world  around   him,  and,  like  the 


710 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


wandering  harp,  he  was  swept  to  music  by 
every  breath  of  material  beauty,  every 
gust  of  poetical  emotion.  Above  all,  he 
had  a  strength  of  intellectual  passion  and 
a  depth  of  ideal  sympathy  that  in  moments 
of  excitement  fused  all  the  powers  of  his 
mind  into  a  continuous  stream  of  creative 
energy,  and  gave  the  stamp  of  something 
like  inspiration  to  all  the  higher  produc- 
tions of  his  muse.  His  very  method  of 
composition  reflects  these  characteristics 
of  his  mind.  He  seems  to  have  been  urged 
by  a  sort  of  irresistible  impulse  to  write, 
and  displayed  a  vehement  and  passionate 
absorption  in  the  work  that  recalls  the  old 
traditions  of  poetical  frenzy  and  divine 
possession.— Baynes,  Thomas  S.,  1871, 
Rossetti's  Edition  of  Shelley,  Edinburgh 
Review,  vol  133,  p.  428. 

I  heard  of  an  enthusiastic  American  who 
went  about  English  fields  hunting  a  lark 
with  Shelley's  poem  in  his  hand,  thinking 
no  doubt  to  use  it  as  a  kind  of  guide-book 
to  the  intricacies  and  harmonies  of  the 
song.  He  reported  not  having  heard  any 
larks,  though  I  have  little  doubt  they  were 
soaring  and  singing  about  him  all  the  time, 
though  of  course  they  did  not  sing  to  his 
ear  the  song  that  Shelley  heard.  .  .  . 
Shelley's  poem  is  perhaps  better  known 
and  has  a  higher  reputation  among  literary 
folk  than  Wordsworth's,  but  1  like  the 
latter  best.  Shelley's  is  too  long,  though 
no  longer  than  the  lark's  song;  but  the 
lark  cannot  help  it,  and  Shelley  can. — 
Burroughs,  John,  1873,  The  Birds  of  the 
Poets,  Scrihnefs  Monthly,  vol.  6,  p:  568. 

Shelley  balloons  it  too  much.  He  ascends 
easily,  gracefully,  and  then  is  swayed  by 
scented  breezes  from  an  exuberant  imagi- 
nation. It  had  been  a  gain  could  he  oftener 
have  dipped  his  mind  deeper  into  the  core 
of  common  things.  He  has  too  much  eleva- 
tion and  not  enough  depth, — that  is,  not 
enough  depth  for  his  elevation. — Cal- 
vert, George  H.,  1874,  Brief  Essays 
and  Brevities,  p.  217. 

One  cannot  help  thinking  that  Shelley's 
natural  place  in  the  world  would  be  that  of 
a  spiritualised  Spenser ;  and  if  that  calm 
could  have  come  to  him  which  alone  can 
furnish  the  poet  with  the  opportunity  he 
ought  to  have,  there  is  no  knowing  but  he 
might  have  given  us  a  work  rich  enough 
to  justify  this  fancy  of  him.  As  it  is, 
between  writhings  and  groanings,  the  par- 
oxysms of  a  much- tried  spirit,  he  wrote 


those  exquisite  lyrics  and  poems,  which  we 
should  be  indeed  loth  to  loose  from  our 
literature.  —  Smith,  George  Barnett, 
1875,  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,  Poets 
and  Novelists,  p.  84. 

Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Shelley — 
these  are,  I  believe,  the  four  sublimest 
sons  of  song  that  England  has  to  boast  of 
among  the  mighty  dead — say  rather  among 
the  undying,  the  never-to-die.  Let  us  re- 
member also  two  exceptional  phenomena, 
an  inspired  ploughman,"  Burns,  and  an 
unparalleled  poetess,  Mrs.  Browning,  and 
be  thankful  for  .such  a  national  destiny. 
There  are  plenty  of  others :  but  those  four 
are,  if  1  mistake  not,  the  four.  .  .  . 
The  poetic  ecstacy  took  him  constantly  up- 
wards ;  and,  the  higher  he  got,  the  more 
thoroughly  did  his  thoughts  and  words 
become  one  exquisite  and  intense  unit. 
With  elevation  of  meaning,  and  splendour 
and  beauty  of  perception,  he  combined 
the  most  searching,  the  most  inimitable 
loveliness  of  verse-music;  and  he -stands 
at  this  day,  and  perhaps  will  always  re- 
main, the  poet  who,  by  instinct  of  verbal 
selection  and  charm  of  sound,  comes  near- 
est to  expressing  the  half-inexpressible — 
the  secret  things  of  beauty,  the  intolerable 
light  of  the  arcane.  ...  To  sum  up, 
there  is  no  poet — and  no  man  either — in 
whose  behalf  it  is  more  befitting  for  all 
natures,  and  for  some  natures  more  inevit- 
able, to  feel  the  privileges  and  the  delights 
of  enthusiasm.  The  very  soul  rushes  out 
towards  Shelley  as  an  unapproached  poet, 
and  embraces  him  as  a  dearest  friend. — 
Rossetti,  William  Michael,  1878,  Lives 
of  Famous  Poets,  pp.  309,  327,  328. 

Whether  we  consider  his  minor  songs, 
his  odes,  or  his  more  complicated  choral 
dramas,  we  acknowledge  that  he  was  the 
loftiest  and  the  most  spontaneous  singer 
of  our  language.  In  range  of  power  he 
was  also  conspicuous  above  the  rest.  Not 
only  did  he  write  the  best  lyrics,  but  the 
best  tragedy,  the  best  translations,  and 
the  best  familiar  poems  of  his  century. 
As  a  satirist  and  humourist,  I  cannot  place 
him  so  high  as  some  of  his  admirers  do ; 
and  the  purely  polemical  portions  of  his 
poems,  those  in  which  he  puts  forth  his 
antagonism  to  tyrants  and  religions  and 
custom  in  all  its  myriad  forms,  seem  to , 
me  to  degenerate  at  intervals  into  poor 
rhetoric— Symonds,  John  Addington, 
1879,  Shelley  (English  Men  of  Letters). 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


711 


The  materials  with  which  he  works  are 
impalpable  abstractions  where  other  poets 
use  concrete  images.  His  poetry  is  like 
the  subtle  veil  woven  by  the  witch  of  Atlas 
from  "threads  of  fleecy  mist, ""long  lines 
of  light, "  such  as  are  kindled  by  the  dawn 
and  "starbeams."  When  he  speaks  of 
natural  scenery  the  solid  earth  seems  to 
be  dissolved,  and  we  are  in  presence  of 
nothing  but  the  shifting  phantasmagoria 
of  cloudland,  the  glow  of  moonlight  on 
eternal  snow,  or  the  "golden  lightning  of 
the  setting  sun. ' '  The  only  earthly  scenery 
which  recalls  Shelley  to  a  more  material 
mind  is  that  which  one  sees  from  a  high 
peak  at  sunrise,  when  the  rising  vapours 
tinged  with  prismatic  colours  shut  out  all 
signs  of  human  life,  and  we  are  alone  with 
the  sky  and  the  shadowy  billows  of  the  sea 
of  mountains.  Only  in  such  vague  regions 
can  Shelley  find  fitting  symbolism  for  those 
faint  emotions  suggested  by  the  most 
abstract  speculations,  from  which  he  alone 
is  able  to  extract  an  unearthly  music. — 
Stephen,  Leslie,  1879,  Hours  in  a  Li- 
brary, Cornhill  Magazine,  vol.  39,  294. 

The  title  of  "the  poet's  poet,"  which 
has  been  bestowed  for  various  reasons  on 
very  different  authors,  applies  perhaps  with 
a  truer  fitness  to  Shelley  than  to  any  of 
the  rest.  For  all  students  of  Shelley  must 
in  a  manner  feel  that  they  have  before  them 
an  extreme,  almost  an  extravagant,  speci- 
men of  the  poetic  character;  and  the 
enthusiastic  love,  or  contemptuous  aver- 
sion, which  his  works  have  inspired  has 
depended  mainly  on  the  reader's  sympathy 
or  distaste  for  that  character  when  ex- 
hibited in  its  unmixed  intensity. — Myers, 
Frederic  W.  H.,  1880,  The  English  Poets 
ed.  Ward,  vol.  iv,  p.  348. 

On  flaming  chariot  Shelley  soars 
Through  starry  realms  serene. 

— Blackie,  John  Stuart,  1880,  Lays 
and  Legends  of  Ancient  Greece,  Introduc- 
tion. 

By  instinct,  intuition,  whatever  we 
have  to  call  that  fine  faculty  that  feels 
truths  before  they  are  put  into  definite 
shape,  Shelley  was  an  evolutionist.  He 
translated  into  his  own  pantheistic  lan- 
guage the  doctrine  of  the  eternity  of 
matter  and  the  eternity  of  motion,  of  the 
infinite  transformation  of  the  diflierent 
forms  of  matter  into  each  other,  without 
any  creation  or  destruction  of  either  mat- 
ter or  motion. — Aveling,  Edward  and 


Eleanor  Marx,  1880,  Shelley  and  Social- 
ism, To- Day,  April. 

In  choosing  the  Spenserian  stanza  for 
his  great  visionary  poem,  Shelley  chal- 
lenges comparison  with  Spenser  himself, 
and  with  Byron ;  and  it  cannot  be  said  that 
he  appears  to  advantage  in  this  compari- 
son. .  .  .  Compare  the  impetuous 
rapidity  and  pale  intensity  of  Shelley's 
verse  with  the  lulling  harmony,  the  linger- 
ing cadence,  the  voluptuous  color  of 
Spenser's,  or  with  the  grandiose  majesty 
of  Byron's.  The  stanzas  of  the  "Faerie 
Queene"  have  somethingof  the  wholesome 
old-world  mellowness  of  Haydn's  music; 
those  of  "Laonand  Cythna"  something  of 
the  morbid  fever  of  Chopin's.  .  .  . 
In  "Adonais,"  indeed,  a  poem  on  which 
he  bestowed  much  labor,  he  handles  the 
stanza  in  a  masterly  manner,  and  endows 
it  with  an  individual  music  beautiful  and 
new;  and  even  "Laon  and  Cythna"  is  full 
of  exquisite  passages,  in  which  the  very 
rhymes  lend  wings  to  his  imagination,  and 
become  the  occasion  of  sweet  out-of-the- 
way  modes  of  expression,  full  of  ethereal 
poetry  of  the  most  Shelley  an  kind. — Tod- 
hunter,  John  A.,  1880,  A  Study  of 
Shelley. 

When  that  mist  cleared,  O  Shelley !  what 
dread  veil 

Was  rent  for  thee,  to  whom  far-darkling 
Truth 

Reigned  soverign  guide  through  thy  brief 

ageless  youth? 
Was  the  Truth  %  Truth,  Shelley?— Hush ! 

All-Hail, 

Past  doubt,  thou  gav'st  it ;  and  in  Truth's 

bright  sphere 
Art  first  of  praisers,  being  most  praisfed  here. 
— Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  1881,  Five 
English  Poets,  Ballads  and  Sonnets. 

Of  Shelley  he  said:  "He  is  often  too 
much  in  the  clouds  for  me.  I  admire  his 
^Alastor,'  'Adonais,'  'Prometheus  Un- 
bound,' and  'Epipsychidion,'  and  some  of 
his  short  lyrics  are  exquisite.  As  for '  The 
Lover's  Tale, '  that  was  written  before  I 
had  ever  seen  a  Shelley,  though  it  is  called 
Shelleyan."— Tennyson,  Alfred  Lord, 
1883,  Some  Criticisms  on  Poets,  Memoir, 
by  his  Son,  vol.  ii,  p.  285. 

Each  poet  gives  what  he  has,  and  what 
he  can  offer ;  you  spread  before  us  fairy 
bread  and  enchanted  wine,  and  shall  we 
turn  away,  with  a  sneer,  because,  out  of 
all  the  multitudes  of  singers,  one  is  spirit- 
ual and  strange,  one  has  seen  Artemis 


712 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


unveiled? — Lang,  Andrew,  1886,  Letters 
to  Dead  Authors,  p.  177. 

After  Milton,  the  next  great  poet  who 
is  eminently  musical  is  Shelley.  .  .  . 
In  some  of  Shelley's  lyrics  no  formal 
quality  seems  to  exist  except  the  music ;  a 
clear  intellectual  meaning  is  always  pres- 
ent, but  often  there  is  scarcely  any  sug- 
gestion of  distinct  imagery.  The  power 
that  he  shows  in  these  lyrics  of  giving 
music  of  verse  an  existence  apart  from  all 
other  formal  qualities  is  what  makes  Shel- 
ley more  of  a  musical  poet  than  Coleridge 
or  Keats ;  and  no  other  poet  of  the  same 
period  can  be  compared  with  these  in  this 
quality  of  verse.— Whittaker,  Thomas, 
1886,  The  Musical  and  the  Picturesque 
Elements  vn  Poetry,  Essays  and  Notices, 
p,  103. 

Shelley  wrote  even  fewer  sonnets  than 
did  Byron :  but  the  few  which  Byron  wrote 
he  wrote  well,  and  this  cannot  be  said  of 
Shelley.  ...  It  is  strange  that  Shelley, 
the  most  poetic  of  poets,  should  have  been 
unable  to  write  a  good  sonnet  as  a  son- 
net; but  probably  the  restrictions  of 
the  form  pressed  upon  him  with  a  special 
heaviness.  Chopin,  the  Shelley  of  musical 
composers,  wrote  his  beautiful  mazurkas : 
looked  at  strictly  as  mazurkas  they  are 
unsatisfactory.  In  both  instances,  how- 
ever, uncontrollable  genius  overbalanced 
propriety  of  form. — Sharp,  William, 
1886,  Sonnets  of  this  Century,  p.  312,  note. 

How  shall  we  name  the  third  class  of 
men,  who  live  for  the  ideal  alone,  and  yet 
are  betrayed  into  weakness  and  error,  and 
deeds  which  demand  an  atonement  of  re- 
morse ;  men  who  can  never  quite  reconcile 
the  two  worlds  in  which  we  have  our 
being,  the  world  of  material  fact  and  the 
spiritual  world  above  and  beyond  it ;  who 
give  themselves  away  for  love  or  give 
themselves  away  for  light  yet  sometimes 
mistake  bitter  for  sweet,  and  darkness  for 
light ;  children  who  stumble  on  the  sharp 
stones  and  bruise  their  hands  and  feet, 
yet  who  can  wing  their  way  with  angelic 
ease  through  spaces  of  the  upper  air. 
These  are  they  whom  we  say  the  gods 
love,  and  who  seldom  reach  the  four-score 
years  of  Goethe's  majestic  old  age.  They 
are  dearer  perhaps  than  any  others  to  the 
heart  of  humanity,  for  they  symbolise, 
in  a  pathetic  way,  both  its  weakness 
and  its  strength.  We  cannot  class  them 
with  the  exact  and  patient  craftsmen; 


they  are  ever  half  defeated  and  can  have 
no  claim  to  take  their  seats  beside  their 
conquerors.  Let  us  name  them  lovers; 
and  if  at  any  time  they  have  wandered  far 
astray,  let  us  remember  their  errors  with 
gentleness,  because  they  have  loved  much. 
It  is  in  this  third  class  of  those  who  serve 
mankind  that  Shelley  has  found  a  place. — 
DowDEN,  Edward,  1887,  Last  Words  on 
Shelley,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  48,  p.  481. 

There  is  no  longer,  we  imagine,  any 
room  for  discussion  of  the  position  of 
Shelley  as  a  lyric  poet.  He  is  second  to 
no  one  in  our  language.  If  we  want  an 
exact  definition  of  what  we  mean  by 
''poetry,"  we  turn  to  his.  It  was  his 
natural  language.  He  wrote  as  a  bird 
flies.  And  his  flights  are  only  to  be  com- 
pared to  the  strong-pinioned  eagle,  which 
soars  iii  ever -widening  spirals  into  the 
empyrean.  Both  go  out  of  mortal  ken. 
How  prodigal  he  is!  Image  on  image, 
flight  above  flight,  imagination  on  imagina- 
tion, scaling  the  heavens,  and  when  the 
amazed  reader  thinks  the  climax  is 
reached,  lo !  the  unconscious  ease  with 
which  he  soars  to  more  aerial  regions.  If 
you  attempt  to  turn  this  verse  into  prose, 
the  meaning  escapes.  It  is  poetry.  The  un- 
approachable melody  of  it,  also !  It  is  as 
untranslatable  as  music.  It  is  possible 
for  a  person,  sensitive  to  harmony,  to  read 
pages  and  pages  of  his  poetry,  with  ex- 
quisite delight,  having  only  the  vaguest 
consciousness  of  the  poet's  meaning,  with 
that  sense  of  enjoyment  tbat  one  has  in 
listening  to  an  orchestra. —  Warner, 
Charles  Dudley,  1887,  Shellei),  The  New 
Princeton  Review,  vol.  4,  p.  302. 

I  liked  Shelley  very  much  better,  though 
his  qualities  were  too  ethereal  in  their  ex- 
quisiteness  to  have  any  practical  influence 
on  my  own  work. — Hamersqon,  Philip 
Gilbert,  1887,  Books  which  Have  Influ- 
enced Me,  p.  55. 

I  remember,  at  a  very  early  age,  falling 
in  with  a  little  dumpy  16mo  edition  of 
Shelley,  and  finding  a  kind  of  fearful 
fascination  in  secretly  reading  it.  Not 
that  his  ideas  anywise  influenced  my  mind. 
Shelley  is  a  magician,  not  a  thinker,  and 
his  creations  are  chiefly  a  wondrous  dream- 
work  set  to  the  most  exquisite  music. 
That  music  never  ceased  to  charm  me,  and 
for  many  months  I  carried  the  book  about 
in  my  pocket  and  read  it  whenever  1 
found  myself  alone.    I  was  already  quite 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


713 


as  democratic  as  the  poet,  but  rather 
shuddered  at  his  atheism.  But  I  could 
not  read  ' '  The  Cloud, "  or  * '  The  Skylark, ' ' 
or ''The  Lines  to  an  Indian  Air,"  or  the 
dedication  of  "The  Revolt  of  Islam," 
even  when  I  only  partly  understood  them, 
without  bringing  a  moisture  into  my  eyes. 
Yet  the  book  did  not  do  much  for  me, 
for  it  did  not  properly  give  me  any 
thoughts. — Smith,  Walter  C.,1887,  Books 
which  have  Influenced  Ife,  91. 

Shelley,  however,  was  not  for  long  my 
idol.  He  so  often  seems  to  be  singing  in 
a  falsetto  voice ;  and  when  a  man  does 
that,  he  is  pretty  sure  to  shriek  when  he 
gets  excited. — Jessopp,  Augustus,  1887, 
Books  that  have  Helped  Me,  The  Forum, 
vol.  4,  p.  33. 

Strange  as  it'may  seem,  Shelley  has  given 
me  very  uniformly  the  delight  of  the 
invisible,  the  spiritual,  resolving  itself,  in 
rapid,  creative  touch,  into  distinct,  change- 
able, evanescent,  beautiful  form.  No 
English  poet  quite  equals  him  in  making 
way  for  his  thought  where  no  way  is ;  in 
leaving  a  vivid  trail  of  light  behind  him 
where  no  light  was.  He  completes  the 
illusion  of  his  own  sight  with  marvelous 
facility,  and  leaves  the  distinct  mirage  of 
his  vision  where  the  elements  must  almost 
instantly  swallow  it  up  again.  The  gos- 
samer web  of  the  spider  floats  in  the  air, 
invisible  save  from  some  one  position, 
from  which  it  gleams  through  its  whole 
length,  a  fluctuating  silver  thread.  No  poet 
ever  cast  in  the  air  lighter  conceptions, 
or  made  them,  from  his  own  outlook,  more 
fascinatingly  visible.  To  turn  Nature, 
in  all  her  mailifold  forms,  into  the  inex- 
haustible vocabulary  of  the  spirit,  so  that 
the  image  and  the  feeling  it  utters  float  off 
together  as  a  living  thing,  this  is  the  un- 
wearied iiiipiration  of  Shelley.  Yet  no 
mind  is  more  alien  to  me  than  that  of 
Shelley  in  some  of  its  aspects.  Of  logical 
incoherence,  inconsequential  narrative, 
and  thoroughly  mistaken  opinion,  Shelley 
is  a  supreme  example.  Deep  and  pure  in 
his  own  affections,  he  missed  the  first 
principles  of  purity  and  strength  in  the 
living  world  of  men.  He  wandered  like 
a  lost,  not  a  fallen,  angel  among  the  evil 
passions  of  his  kind,  and  understood 
nothing  of  their  nature  or  their  remedy. 
In  his  sympathetic  rehearsal  of  the  en- 
counter of  the  serpent  and  the  eagle,  he 
takes  part  with  the  serpent,  because  the 


facts  symbolized  are  wholly  misplaced  in 
his  mind.  An  error  so  deep  as  this  would 
fatally  have  weakened  another  man — it 
weakened  Byron ;  but  Shelley  escapes  from 
it  constantly  into  a  region  pure,  creative, 
remote.  In  the  freedom  of  his  own  free 
spirit,  he  mistook  unlicensed  activity  for 
liberty,  and  resentfully  struggled  with, 
and  cast  off,  those  social  restraints  which 
are,  after  all,  the  flowing  garments  of 
virtue.— Bascom,  John,  1888,  Books  that 
have  Helped  Me,  p.  30. 

It  is  his  poetry,  above  everything  else, 
which  for  many  people  establishes  that  he 
is  an  angel.  Of  his  poetry  I  have  not 
space  now  to  speak.  But  let  no  one  sup- 
pose that  a  want  of  humour  and  a  self- 
delusion  such  as  Shelley's  have  no  effect 
upon  a  man's  poetry.  The  man  Shelley, 
in  very  truth,  is  not  entirely  sane,  and 
Shelley's  poetry  is  not  entirely  sane  either. 
The  Shelley  of  actual  life  is  a  vision  of 
beauty  and  radiance,  indeed,  but  availing 
nothing,  effecting  nothing.  And  in  poetry, 
no  less  than  in  life,  he  is ''a  beautiful  and 
ineffectual  angel,  beating  in  the  void  his 
luminous  wings  in  vain." — Arnold,  Mat- 
thew, 1888,  Shelley,  The  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, vol.  23,  p.  39,  Esssays  in  Criticism^ 
vol.  II. 

Behold  I  send  thee  to  the  heights  of  song, 
My  brother !  Let  thine  eyes  awake  as  clear 
As  morning  dew,  within  whose  glowing 
sphere 

Is  mirrowed  half  a  world ;  and  listen  long, 
Till  in  thine  ears, famished  to  keenness, throng 
The  bugles  of  the  soul,  till  far  and  near 
Silence  grows  populous,  and  wind  and  mere 
Are  phantom-choked  with  voices.    Then  be 
strong — 

Then  halt  not  till  thou  seest  the  beacons  flare 
Souls  mad  for  truth  liave  lit  from  peak  to 
peak. 

Haste  on  to  breathe  the  intoxicating  air — 
Wine  to  the  brave  and  poison  to  the  weak — 
Far  in  the  blue  where  angels'  feet  have  trod, 
Where  earth  is  one  with  heaven  and  man 
with  God. 

— Monroe,  Harriet,  1889,  With  a  Copy 
of  Shelley,  The  Century,  vol.  39,  p.  313. 

With  the  exception  of  Shakespeare,  no 
English  poet  ever  possessed  a  greater 
wealth  of  language  or  a  finer  sense  of 
harmony.  What  he  lacked  was  a  general 
idea  of  Nature,  and  a  knowledge  of  the 
manner  in  which  the  great  majority  of 
mankind  think  and  feel.  Hence  the 
"Revolt  of  Islam."  ' 'Prometheus  Un- 
bound," and  the  ''Witch  of  Atlas,"  fail 


714 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


in  what  is  most  essential  to  epic  and 
dramatic  poets — design,  action,  manners, 
character.  Shelley  formed  his  idea  of 
Nature  and  his  conception  of  his  subjects 
in  a  solitary  and  purely  capricious  spirit. 
Unless  the  reader  is  prepared  to  surrender 
his  own  thought  and  judgment  to  his 
author's  imagination,  and  to  reason,  judge, 
and  believe,  for  the  moment,  as  the  poet 
would  have  him,  he  cannot  fail  to  perceive 
that,  in  the  poems  I  have  mentioned,  the 
''parts  do  not  mutually  support  and  explain 
each  other."  —  Courthope,  William 
John,  1889,  The  Life  of  Alexander  Pope  ; 
Pope's  Works,  eds.  Elwin  and  Courthope, 
vol.  V,  p.  373. 

His  muse  had  only  wings,  and  not  feet. 
It  could  soar  into  ideal  heights,  but  it 
could  not  walk  on  the  earth. — Story, 
William  Wetmore,  1890,  Conversations 
in  a  StudiOy  vol.  I,  p.  233. 

Shelley  is  more  truly  a  son  of  Italy  than 
any  one  of  her  own  poets,  for  he  had  the 
sentiment  and  passion  of  her  natural 
beauty,  which  cannot  be  said  of  the  great- 
est of  them.  I  think  that  Shelley  can 
scarcely  be  well  comprehended  by  those 
who  are  not  intimately  acquainted  with 
Italian  landscape.  The  exceeding  truth- 
fulness of  his  observation  of  and  feeling 
for  it  cannot  certainly  be  appreciated  ex- 
cept by  those  who  have  lived  amongst  the 
sights  and  sounds  which  took  so  close  a 
hold  upon  his  imagination  and  his  heart. 
— Ramee,  Louise  de  la  (Ouida),  1890, 
A  New  View  of  Shelley,  North  American 
Review,  vol.  150,  p.  246. 

A  creature  of  impetuous  breath, 

Our  torpor  deadlier  tlian  death 

He  knew  not;  whatsoe'er  he  saith 
Flashes  with  life : 

He  spurreth  men,  he  quickeneth 
To  splendid  strife. 

And  in  his  gusts  of  song  he  brings 

Wild  odours  shaken  from  strange  wings, 

And  unfamiliar  whisperings 
From  far  lips  blown, 

While  all  the  rapturous  heart  of  things 
Throbs  through  his  own. 
— Watson,  William,  1892,  Shelley's  Cen- 
tenary, Poems,  p.  142. 

Shelley  is  none  of  those  of  whom  we  are 
sometimes  told  in  these  days,  whose  mis- 
sion is  too  serious  to  be  transmitted  with 
the  arts  of  language,  who  are  too  much 
occupied  with  the  substance  to  care  about 
the  form.  All  that  is  best  in  his  exquisite 
collection  of  verse  cries  out  against  this 


wretched  heresy.  With  all  his  modernity, 
his  revolutionary  instinct,  his  disdain  of 
the  unessential,  his  poetry  is  of  the  highest 
and  most  classical  technical  perfection. 
No  one,  among  the  moderns,  has  gone 
further  than  he  in  the  just  attention  to 
poetic  form. — Gosse,  Edmund,  1892, 
Shelley  in  1892,  Questions  at  Issue,  p.  213. 

In  Christ's  own  town  did  fools  of  old  con- 
demn 

A  sinless  maid  to  burn  in  felon's  fire  ; 
She  looked  above ;  she  spake  from  out  the 
pyre 

To  skies  that  made  a  star  for  Bethlehem, 
When,  lo!  the  flames  touching  her  garment's 
hem 

Blossom' d  to  roses — warbled  like  a  lyre — 
Made  every  fagot-twig  a  scented  brier, 
And  crowned  her  with  a  rose-bud  diadem ! 
Brothers  in  Shelley,  we  this  morn  are  strong : 
Our  Heart  of  Hearts  hath  conquered— con- 
quered those 
Once  fain  to  work  the  world  and  Shelley- 
wrong  : 

Their  pyre  of  hate  now  bourgeons  with  the 
rose — 

Their  every  fagot,  now   a  sweet-brier, 
throws 

Love's  breath  upon  the  breeze  of  Shelley's 
song! 

—Watts,  Theodore,  1892,  For  the  Shel- 
ley Centenary. 

He  could  not  solve  the  mystery  of  life 
— its  shame,  its  wrong,  its  anguish :  and 
like  many  another  pure  and  ardent  spirit 
bruised  himself  in  many  a  wild  fluttering 
against  the  iron  bars  of  insoluble  prob- 
lems. And  then  he  flew  to  Nature.  In 
her  freshness  and  grandeur,  in  the  hospi- 
tality of  her  silence,  and  the  friendliness 
of  her  unchangingness,he  took  refuge,  and 
hid  himself  in  her  starry  pavilion  against 
the  windy  tempest  of  life's  futility  and 
malice.  He  becomes  her  high-priest  and 
confidant.  He  serves  her  with  unquench- 
able devotion  and  delight.  He  thirsts 
for  her  beauty,  and  toils  to  mirror  her 
glory  in  fit  and  perfect  speech.  At  thirty 
he  is  gray-headed,  and  his  face  is  lined  and 
furrowed  like  an  old  man's.  The  spirit  of 
sorrow  never  leaves  him ;  his  verse  is  one 
long  lament,  and  underneath  its  utmost 
triumph  the  voice  sobs  quietly  and  the  sick 
heart  aches.  Then  suddenly  the  end  comes, 
and  Nature  weaves  her  blackest  tempest 
for  a  pall  and  opens  the  door  of  rest  in 
the  dim  green  depths  of  that  unresting 
ocean  he  had  loved  so  well.  He  dies  with 
purpose,  character,  and  work  alike  un- 
finished.   We  know  what  he  did,  but  know 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


715 


not  what  he  might  have  done  or  been. 
But  life  is  only  just  begun  at  thirty,  and 
ended  thus  in  its  beginning,  surely  merits 
the  grace  of  charity,  of  sympathy,  of  pity. 
That  meed  of  reverent  feeling  has  never 
yet  been  denied  by  any  who  have  drunk  of 
the  magic  stream  of  his  poetry,  and  never 
will  be  wanting  so  long  as  English  litera- 
ture endures,  and  with  it  the  name  of 
Shelley.— Dawson,  W.  J.,  1892,  Quest 
and  Vision,  p.  38. 

Now  a  hundred  years  agone  among  us  came 
Down  from  some  diviner  sphere  of  purer 
flame, 

Clothed  in  flesh  to  suffer,  maimed  of  wings 
to  soar, 

One  whom  hate  once  hailed  as  now  love 

hails  by  name, 
Chosen  of  love  as  chosen  of  hatred.  Now 

no  more 

♦     Ear  of  man  may  hear  or  heart  of  man  deplore 
Aught  of  dissonance  or  doubt  that  mars  the 
strain 

Raised  at  last  of  love  where  love  sat  mute 
of  yore. 

—Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  1892, 
The  Centenary  of  Shelley. 
Be  then  the  poet's  poet  still!  for  none 
Of  them  whose  minstrelsy  the  stars  have 
blessed 

Has  from  expression's  wonderland  so  won 

The  unexpressed, — 
So  wrought  the  charm  of  its  elusive  note 
On  us,  who  yearn  in  vain 
To  mock  the  paean  and  the  plain 
Of  tides  that  rise  and  fall  with  sweet  myste- 
rious rote. 

— Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  1892, 
Ariely  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  70,  p.  146. 

The  cause  Shelley  served  is  still  in  its 
struggle ;  but  those  to  whom  social  justice 
is  a  watchword,  and  the  development  of 
the  individual  everywhere  in  liberty,  intel- 
ligence, and  virtue  is  a  cherished  hope, 
must  be  thankful  that  Shelley  lived,  that 
the  substance  of  his  work  is  so  vital,  and 
his  influence,  inspiring  as  it  is  beyond  that 
of  any  of  our  poets  in  these  ways,  was, 
and  is,  so  completely  on  the  side  of  the 
century's  advance.  His  words  are  sung 
by  marching  thousands  in  the  streets  of 
London.  No  poet  of  our  time  has  touched 
the  cause  of  progress  in  the  living  breath 
and  heart-throb  of  men  so  close  as  that. 
Yet,  remote  as  the  poet's  dream  always 
seems,  it  is  rather  that  life-long  singing 
of  the  golden  age,  in  poem  after  poem 
which  most  restores  and  inflames  those 
who,  whether  they  be  rude  or  refined,  are 


the  choicer  spirits  of  mankind,  and  bring, 
with  revolutionary  violence  or  ideal  im- 
agination, the  times  to  come. — Wood- 
berry,  George  E.,  1892,  Shelley's  Work, 
The  Century,  vol.  44,  p.  629. 
The  star  tliat  burns  on  revolution  smote 
Wild  heats  and  change  on  thine  ascendant 
sphere, 

Whose  influence  thereafter  seemed  to  float 
Through  many  a  strange  eclipse  of  wrath 
and  fear, 

Dimming  awhile  the  radiance  of  thy  love. 

But  still  supreme  in  thy  nativity. 
All  dark,  invidious  aspects  far  above, 

Beamed  one  clear  orb  for  thee, — 
The  star  whose  ministrations  just  and  strong 

Controlled  the  tireless  flight  of  Dante's 
song. 

—Roberts,  Charles  G.  D.,  1892-93, 
Ave!  An  Ode  for  the  Centenary  of  Shelley's 
Birth,  st.  xiii. 

The  sovereign  transmutation  that  the 
dull,  hard  stuff  of  Godwin's  doctrines 
suffered  in  the  crucible  of  Shelley's  im- 
agination is  known  to  all  readers  of  the 
poems.  In  the  ''Epipsychidion"  the 
nightingale  pours  forth  a  song  suggested 
to  her  by  the  croaking  of  the  frog. — 
Raleigh,  Walter,  1894,  The  English 
Novel,  p.  251. 

The  common  judgment  of  Shelley,  at 
least  as  expressed  in  literary  organs,  has 
undergone  a  complete  revolution  since 
he  was  a  living  man.  Nobody  now  would 
venture  to  publish  an  article  about  Shelley 
without  copious  protestations  of  admira- 
tion for  the  poet,  whatever  the  opinion 
might  be  expressed  about  his  conduct  as  a 
man.  To  acknowledge  indifference  to  his 
poetry  would  be  to  set  one's  self  against 
an  overwhelming  weight  of  authoritative 
opinion.  To  deny  him  equal  rank  with  any 
poet  of  his  generation  would  be  heresy. 
Enjoyment  of  Shelley  is  often  put  forward 
as  a  test  of  poetic  sensibility ;  if  Shelley 
does  not  delight  you,  you  are  set  down  as 
not  being  capable  of  knowing  what  poetry 
is.  He  is  now  par  excellence  the  poet's 
poet. — MiNTO,  William,  1894,  The  Lit- 
erature of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed.  Knight, 
p.  292. 

It  Defence  of  Poetry"]  expresses 
Shelley's  deepest  thoughts  about  poetry, 
and  marks,  as  clearly  as  any  writing  of 
the  last  hundred  years,  the  width  of  the 
gulf  that  separates  the  ideals  of  recent 
poetry  from  those  of  the  century  preced- 
ing the  French  Revolution.    It  may  be 


716 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


compared  with  Sidney's  *'Apologie"  on  the 
one  hand,  and  with  Wordsworth's  Preface 
to  the ''Lyrical  Ballads,"  or  the  more  ab- 
stract parte  of  Carlyle's  critical  writings 
upon  the  other.  The  fundamental  con- 
ceptions of  Shelley  are  the  same  as  those 
of  the  Elizabethan  critic  and  of  his  own 
great  contemporaries.  But  he  differs  from 
Sidney  and  Wordsworth,  and  perhaps  from 
Carlyle  also,  in  laying  more  stress  upon 
the  outward  form,  and  particularly  the 
musical  element,  of  poetry ;  and  from  Sid- 
ney in  laying  less  stress  upon  its  directly 
moral  associations.  He  thus  attains  to  a 
wider  and  truer  view  of  his  subject;  and, 
while  insisting  as  strongly  as  Wordsworth 
insists  upon  the  kinship  between  the  mat- 
ter of  poetry  and  that  of  truth  or  science, 
he  also  recognizes,  as  Wordsworth  com- 
monly did  not,  that  there  is  a  harmony 
between  the  imaginative  conception  of 
that  matter  and  its  outward  expression, 
and  that  beautiful  thought  must  neces- 
sarily clothe  itself  in  beauty  of  language 
and  of  sound.  There  is  not  in  our  litera- 
ture any  clearer  presentment  of  the  in- 
separable connection  between  the  matter 
and  form  of  poetry,  nor  of  the  ideal  ele- 
ment which,  under  different  shapes,  is  the 
life  and  soul  of  both. — Vaughan,  C.  E., 
1896,  ed.f  English  Literary  Criticism, 
p.  160. 

Shelley  was  heart  and  soul  a  free- 
thinker ;  and  free-thought  is  now  in  the 
ascendant  wherever  men  think  at  all.  He 
was  an  advocate  of  free  love ;  and  the  fail- 
ure of  marriage  has  become  so  notorious 
as  to  be  a  commonplace  of  modern  novel- 
writers.  He  was  a  pioneer  of  communism ; 
and  the  vast  spread  of  socialist  doctrines 
is  the  every-day  complaint  of  a  capitalist 
press.  He  was  a  humanitarian ;  and  human- 
itarianism,  having  survived  the  phase  of 
ridicule  and  misrepresentation,  is  taking 
its  place  among  the  chief-motive  powers 
of  civilised  society. — Salt,  Henry  S., 
1896,  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  Poet  and 
Pioneer,  p.  187. 

He  has  had  a  vast  influence ;  but  it  has 
been  in  the  main  the  influence,  the  inspira- 
tion of  his  unsurpassed  exciting  power. 
No  one  has  borrowed  or  carried  further 
any  specially  Shelleian  turns  of  phrase, 
rhythm,  or  thought.  Those  who  have 
attempted  to  copy  and  urge  further  the 
Shelleian  attitude  towards  politics,  philos- 
ophy, ethics,  and  the  like,  have  made  it 


generally  ludicrous  and  sometimes  disgust- 
ing. He  is,  in  his  own  famous  words, 
' '  something  remote  and  afar. ' '  His  poetry 
is  almost  poetry  in  its  elements,  uncoloured 
by  race,  language,  time,  circumstance,  or 
creed.  He  is  not  even  so  much  a  poet  as 
Poetry  accidentally  impersonated  and 
incarnate.— Saintsbury,  George,  1896, 
A  History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  88. 

Happily,  Shelley's  treatment  of  Nature 
— his  landscape  would  be  too  limiting  a 
word — in  those  instances  where  he  has 
concentrated  his  mind  upon  his  object,  I 
should  myself  hold,  as  in  the  case  of  Keats, 
on  the  whole,  his  most  precious  achieve- 
ment in  poetry.  .  .  .  Without  adopting 
M.  Arnold's  judgment  that  Shelley's  prose 
will  prove  his  permanent  memorial,  1  must 
here  (with  all  due  respect  and  apology) 
make  the  confession,  probably  unpopular, 
reached  after  long  reluctance,  that  no 
true  poet  of  any  age  has  left  us  so  gigantic 
a  mass  of  wasted  effort,  exuberance  so 
Asiatic,  such  oceans  (to  speak  out)  of 
fluent,  well-intended  platitude — such  in- 
effectual beating  of  his  wings  in  the  per- 
sistent effort  to  scale  heights  of  thought 
beyond  the  reach  of  youth ;— youth  closed 
so  prematurely,  so  lamentably.  Hence 
the  difference  between  Shelley's  best  and 
what  is  not  best  is  enormous ;  the  sudden 
transition  from  mere  prose  rendered  more 
prosaic  by  its  presentation  in  verse,  to  the 
most  ethereal  and  exquisite  poetry,  fre- 
quent ;  and  hence,  also,  it  is  in  his  shorter 
and  mostly  later  lyrics  that  we  find  Shel- 
ley's very  finest,  uniquest,  most  magically 
delightful  work.  Yet  even  here  at  times 
the  matter  is  attenuated  as  the  film  of  the 
soap-bubble,  gaining  through  its  very 
thinness  its  marvellous  iridescent  beauty. 
— Palgrave,  Francis  Turner,  1896, 
Landscape  in  Poetry,  pp.  218,  219. 

Shelley's  love-poems  may  be  very  good 
evidence,  but  we  know  well  that  they  are 
''good  for  this  day  and  train  only."  We 
are  able  to  believe  that  they  spoke  the 
truth  for  that  one  day,  but  we  know  by 
experience  that  they  could  not  be  depended 
OH  to  speak  it  the  next.  That  very  sup- 
plication for  a  rewarming  of  Harriet's 
chilled  love  was  followed  so  suddenly  by 
the  poet's  plunge  into  an  adoring  passion 
for  Mary  Godwin  that  if  it  had  been  a 
check  it  would  have  lost  its  value  before  a 
lazy  person  could  have  gotten  to  the  bank 


SHELLEY— RADCLIFFE 


717 


with  it.— Clemens,  Samuel  Langhornb 
(Mark  Twain),  1897,  In  Defence  of  Har- 
riet Shelley,  How  to  Tell  a  Story  and  other 
Essays,  p.  SI. 

He  took  Parnassus  by  storm.  His 
poetical  productiveness  would  have  been 
admirable  as  the  result  of  a  long  life ;  as 
the  work  in  the  main  of  little  more  than 
five  years,  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  marvels 
in  the  history  of  the  human  mind. — 
Garnett,  Richard,  1897,  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  vol.  Lii,  p.  38. 

Shelley: — The  early  editions  of  Shelley's 
Poems  and  Prose  Treatises  were  amongst 
the  first  of  this  class  of  books  to  attain 
high  prices.  Some  may  be  noted  here  in 
chronological  order: — "Zastrozzi:  a  Ro- 
mance," 1810,  was  published  at  5s.  Bound 
and  cut  copies  have  sold  for  £5,  15s.,  and 
£12,  5s.  An  uncut  copy,  in  calf,  fetched 
£12,  5s.  in  1890,  and  an  uncut  copy  in 
morocco  brought  fifteen  guineas  in  1897 
(Sir  C.  S.  Forbes).  The  most  interesting 
of  these  pamphlets  is  the  one  which  was 
the  cause  of  its  author  being  expelled  from 
University  College,  Oxford.  ' '  The  Neces- 
sity of  Atheism.  Worthing.  Printed  by 
E.  &  W.  Phillips.  Sold  in  London  and  Ox- 
ford," n.  d.  (1811)  f.  8vo,  p.  13.  Nearly 
all  the  copies  were  destroyed  by  the  print- 
ers, and  Mr.  Slater  values  a  clean  copy  at 
about  £20,  but  probably  it  would  realise 
much  more  than  that.  "St.  Irvyne," 
1811,  morocco  uncut,  Sir  C.  S.  Forbes, 
1897,  £16,  10s.  ' '  An  Address  to  the  Irish 
People"  (Dublin,  1812)  was  published  at 
5d. ,  and  Mr.  Slater  values  a  copy  at  £8  to 
£12,  but  one  was  sold  at  Alfred  Cramp- 
ton's  sale,  1896,  for  £42.  "Qu^enMab," 
1813,  in  the  original  boards,  was  sold  in 
1891  for  £22,  10s.  "The  Refutation  of 
Deism,"  1814,  fetched  £33  at  an  auction 
in  1887.  The  largest  price,  however, 
given  for  one  of  these  pamphlets  was  £130 
for  "CEdipus  Tyrannus,"  1820,  at  Cramp- 
ton's  sale.  The  entire  impression  was 
destroyed  except  seven  copies,  only  two  or 
three  of  which  were  known  to  exist,  but 


a  reprint  on  vellum  appeared  in  1876. 
The  British  Museum  possesses  a  copy, 
presented  by  Lady  Shelley.— Wheatley, 
Henry  B.,  1898,  Prices  of  Books,  p.  259. 

Shelley  was  a  true  child  of  the  Revolu- 
tion ;  he  inherited  its  vehement  temper,  he 
shared  its  impassioned  illusions,  he  was 
the  apt  pupil  of  its  doctrines ;  among  his 
brother  poets  he  must  therefore  take  prec- 
edence. His  radical  spirit  expressed 
itself  in  two  ways:  in  an  unrestrained 
denunciation  of  the  past  with  its  tyrannical 
government  of  priests  and  kings,  and  in  an 
unshakable  faith  for  a  future  with  its  per- 
fect humanity  and  exemption  from  govern- 
ment. Like  Rousseau  and  his  dreaming 
disciples,  he  broke  absolutely  with  a  his- 
toric method;  he  failed  to  connect  the 
gap  between  past  and  future  with  a 
passable  bridge.  History  for  him  was  but 
a  record  of  human  misery  and  depravity ; 
he  could  read  it  only  with  a  shudder. 
From  that  his  mind  turned,  with  its  incan- 
descent idealism,  to  flash  upon  the  screen 
of  the  future  the  radiant  panorama  of  the 
Golden  Age.  Imagination  bestrode  his 
reason,  as  Dean  Swift  would  say;  blind 
faith  and  hope  obscured  his  sense  of  fact ; 
desire  gave  wings  to  his  thoughts,  and 
they  flew  until,  to  use  his  own  phrase, 
they  were  "pinnacled  dim  in  the  intense 
inane. ' '  Shelley  was  a  true  apostle  of  the 
Revolution's  method;  he  objectified  his 
own  ideals  and  called  them  realities. — 
Hancock,  Albert  Elmer,  1899,  The  French 
Revolution  and  the  English  Poets,  p.  50. 

Shelley's  was  the  passion  of  weakness, 
but  not  the  passion  of  strength  Here  is 
the  true  cause  of  his  essential  inferiority 
to  Byron;  here  is  the  reason,  as  Mr. 
Richard  Holt  Hutton  well  showed,  why 
Shelley's  poetry  is  not  sublime.  There  is 
no  sublimity  without  power  and  Shelley's 
power  was  only  the  pseudo-power  which 
morbid  and  introspective  people  can  dis- 
cover in  weakness. — Trent,  William  P., 
1899,  The  Authority  of  Criticism  and  other 
Essays,  p.  80. 


Ann  Ward  Radcliffe 

1764-1823 

Born  [Ann  Ward],  in  London,  9  July  1764.  Married  William  Radcliffe,  1787. 
Occupied  with  literature,  1789-1802.  Spent  last  twenty  years  of  her  life  practically 
in  retirement.  Died,  7  Feb.  1823.  Buried  in  St.  George's  Burial  Ground,  Bayswater 
Road.    Works :  ' '  The  Castles  of  Athlin  and  Dunbayne, ' '  1789 ;  "  A  Sicilian  Romance, ' ' 


718 


ANN  WARD  RADCLIFFE 


1790;  ''The  Romance  of  the  Forest''  (anon.),  1791;  ''The  Mysteries  of  Udulpho," 
1794;  "A  Journey  .  .  .  through  Holland,"  1795;  "The  Italian,"  1797;  "Poems," 
1816.  Posthumous:  "Gaston  de  Blondeville,"  1826. — Sharp,  R.  Farquharson, 
1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Author Sy  p.  235. 


PERSONAL 

The  tenor  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  private 
life  seems  to  have  been  peculiarly  calm 
and  sequestered.  She  probably  declmed 
the  sort  of  personal  notoriety,  which,  in 
London  society,  usually  attaches  to  persons 
of  literary  merit ;  and  perhaps  no  author 
whose  works  wer^  so  universally  read  and 
admired,  was  so  little  personally  known 
even  to  the  most  active  of  that  class  of 
people  of  distinction,  who  rest  their 
peculiar  pretensions  to  fashion  upon  the 
selection  of  literary  society. — Scott,  Sir 
Walter,  1821,  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe. 

A  beautiful  little  woman  of  delicate 
constitution  and  sequestered  habits,  as 
fond,  as  her  own  heroines  of  lonely  sea- 
shores, picturesque  mountains,  and  poet- 
ical mediations.— HuiNT,  Leigh,  1849,  A 
Book  for  a  Corner,  p.  104. 

Mrs.  Radclilfe  appears  to  have  possessed 
a  cheerful  and  equable  temper,  and  to  have 
manifested  no  peculiarity  except  the  sensi- 
tive aversion  to  notice  which  she  shared 
with  many  other  authoresses.  For  the 
last  twelve  years  of  her  life  she  suffered 
from  spasmodic  asthma,  and  succumbed  to 
a  sudden  attack  on  7  Feb.  1823.  She  was 
interred  at  the  chapel-of-ease  in  the  Bays- 
water  Road  (the  resting-place  of  Laurence 
Sterne  and  of  Paul  Sand  by)  belonging  to 
St.  George's  Hanover  Square. — Garnett, 
Richard,  1896,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography y  vol.  XLVii,  p.  121. 

GENERAL 

I  have  read  some  of  the  descriptive 
verbose  tales,  of  which  your  Ladyship  says 
I  was  the  patriarch  by  several  mothers. 
(Miss  Reeve  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe?)  All  I 
car  say  for  myself  is  that  I  do  not  think 
my  concubines  have  produced  issue  more 
natural  for  excluding  the  aid  of  anything 
marvellous.— Walpole,  Horace,  1794, 
To  Countess  of  Ossory,  Sept.  4 ;  Letters^  ed. 
Cunningham,  vol.  ix,  p.  440. 

Mrs.  Charlotte  Smith,  Mrs.  Inchbald, 
Mrs.  Mary  Robinson,  Mrs.  &c.,  &c.,  though 
all  of  them  are  very  ingenious  ladies,  yet 
they  are  too  frequently  whining  or  frisking 
in  novels,  till  our  girls'  heads  turn  wild 
with  impossible  adventures,  and  now  and 
then  are  tainted  with  democracy. — Not  so 


the  mighty  magician  of  the  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho,  bred  and  nourished  by  the  Floren- 
tine Muses  in  their  sacred  solitary  caverns, 
amid  the  paler  shrines  of  Gothick  super- 
stition, and  in  all  the  dreariness  of  inchant- 
ment ;  a  poetess  whom  Ariosto  would  with 
rapture  have  acknowledged,  as  the 
La  nudrita 
Damigella  Trivulzia  al  sacro  speco. 
— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1795,  The 
Pursuits  of  Literature,  p.  58. 

In  the  productions  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  the 
Shakspeare  of  Romance  Writers,  and  who 
to  the  wild  landscape  of  Salvator  Rosa  has 
added  the  softer  graces  of  a  Claude,  may 
be  found  many  scenes  truly  terrific  in  their 
conception,  yet  so  softened  down,  and  the 
mind  so  much  relieved,  by  the  intermixture 
of  beautiful  description,  or  pathetic  inci- 
dent, that  the  impression  of  the  whole 
never  becomes  too  strong,  never  degener- 
ates into  horror,  but  pleasurable  emotion 
is  ever  the  predominating  result. — Drake, 
Nathan,  1798-1820,  Literary  Hours, 
vol.  I,  No.  xvii,  p.  273. 

In  the  writings  of  this  author  there  is  a 
considerable  degree  of  uniformity  and 
mannerism,  which  is  perhaps  the  case  with 
all  the  productions  of  a  strong  and  original 
genius.  Her  heroines  too  nearly  resemble 
each  other,  or  rather  they  possess  hardly 
any  shade  of  difference.  They  have  all 
blue  eyes  and  auburn  hair — the  form  of 
each  of  them  has  "the  airy  lightness  of  a 
nymph" — they  are  all  fond  of  watching 
the  setting  sun,  and  catching  the  purple 
tints  of  evening,  and  the  vivid  glow  or 
fading  splendour  of  the  western  horizon. 
Unfortunately  they  are  all  likewise  early 
risers.  I  say  unfortunately,  for  in  every 
exigency  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  heroines  are  pro- 
vided with  a  pencil  and  paper,  and  the  sun 
is  never  allowed  to  rise  or  set  in  peace. 
Like  Tilburina  in  the  play,  they  are ' '  incon- 
solable to  the  minuet  in  Ariadne,"  and  in 
the  most  distressing  circumstances  find 
time  to  compose  sonnets  to  sunrise,  the 
bat,  a  sea-nymph,  a  lily,  or  a  butterfly. — 
DuNLOP,  John,  1814-42,  The  History  of 
Fiction,  vol.  ii,  p.  412. 

Her  descriptions  of  scenery,  indeed,  are 
vague  and  wordy  to  the  last  degree ;  they 
are  neither  like  Salvator  nor  Claude,  nor 


ANN  WARD  RADCLIFFE 


719 


nature  nor  art;  and  she  dwells  on  the 
effects  of  moonlight  till  we  are  sometimes 
weary  of  them  ;  her  characters  are  insipid, 
— the  shadows  of  a  shade,  continued  on, 
under  different  names,  through  all  her 
novels  ;  her  story  comes  to  nothing.  But 
in  harrowing  up  the  soul  with  imaginary 
horrors,  and  making  the  flesh  creep  and 
the  nerves  thrill  with  fond  hopes  and  fears, 
she  is  unrivalled  among  her  fair  country- 
women. Her  great  power  lies  in  describ- 
ing the  indefinable,  and  embodying  a 
phantom.  She  makes  her  readers  twice 
children.  ...  All  the  fascination 
that  links  the  world  of  passion  to  the  world 
unknown  is  hers,  and  she  plays  with  it  at 
her  pleasure:  she  has  all  the  poetry  of 
romance,  all  that  is  obscure,  visionary, 
and  objectless  in  the  imagination. — Haz- 
LiTT,  William,  1818,  Lecture  on  the  Eng- 
lish Novelists. 

Indeed,  the  praise  may  be  claimed  for 
Mrs.  Radcliffe,  of  having  been  the  first  to 
introduce  into  her  prose  fictions  a  beautiful 
and  fanciful  tone  of  natural  description  and 
impressive  narrative,  which  had  hitherto 
been  exclusively  applied  to  poetry.  Field- 
ing, Richardson,  Smollett,  even  Walpole, 
though  writing  upon  an  imaginative  sub- 
ject, are  decidedly  prose  authors.  Mrs. 
Radcliffe  has  a  title  to  be  considered  as 
the  first  poetess  of  romantic  fiction,  that 
is,  if  actual  rhythm  shall  not  be  deemed 
essential  to  poetry. — Scott,  Sir  Walter, 
1821,  Mrs.  Ann  Radcliffe. 

Up  to  the  close  of  ''The  Italian,''  her 
mind  seems  gradually  to  have  ascended ; 
and  perhaps  she  felt  as  if  the  next  step 
might  be  downward.  It  may  be  that  she 
was  right.  ''Gaston  de  Blondeville," — 
not  given  to  the  world  till  after  her  death, 
and  written  scarcely  five  years  after  "The 
Italian," — though  showing  a  surprising 
improvement  in  style,  discovers,  at  the 
same  time,  a  subsiding  of  those  energies 
by  which  she  had  held  us  with  such  fearful 
mastery. — Dana,  Richard  Henry,  1827- 
50,  Radcliffe' s  Gaston  de  Blondeville,  Poems 
and  Prose  Writings,  vol.  ii,  p.  317. 

Miss  Edgeworth  would  scarcely  venture 
into  the  region  of  the  picturesque,  and 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  is^ood  for  nothing  out  of 
it,  except,  indeed,  when  she  is  in  her 
horrors. — Prescqtt,  William  Hickling, 
1832,  English  Literature  of  the  Ninteenth 
Century,  North  American  Review,  vol.  35, 
p.  188. 


But  all  this,  though  impressive,  and 
sometimes  grand,  is  unnatural :  such 
fictions  could  not  last :  they  were  not  of 
God,  and  so  they  failed.  The  authoress 
lived  long  enough  to  see  the  fabric  which 
she  had  reared  melt  away,  and  Nature 
resume  her  reign  with  the  same  ease  and 
quietness  that  the  moon  succeeds  the 
tempest.— Cunningham,  Allan,  1833, 
Biographical  and  Critical  History  of  the 
Literature  of  the  Last  Fifty  Years. 

We  would  not  pass -over,  without  a 
tribute  of  gratitude,  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  wild 
and  wondrous  tales.  When  we  read  them, 
the  world  seems  shut  out,  and  we  breathe 
only  in  an  enchanted  region,  where  lovers' 
lutes  tremble  over  placid  waters,  moulder- 
ing castles  rise  conscious  of  deeds  of  blood, 
and  the  sad  voices  of  the  past  echo  through 
deep  vaults  and  lonely  galleries.  There  is 
always  majesty  in  her  terrors.  She  pro- 
duces more  effect  by  whispers  and  slender 
hints  than  ever  was  attained  by  the  most 
vivid  display  of  horrors.  Her  conclusions 
are  tame  and  impotent  almost  without 
example.  But  while  her  spells  actually 
operate,  her  power  is  truly  magical. — 
Talfourd,  Thomas  Noon,  1842,  On  British 
Novels  and  Romances,  Critical  and  Miscel- 
laneous Writings,  p.  17. 

Mystery  is  the  whole  spell.  Nothing 
can  be  poorer  and  more  conventional  than 
the  personages :  they  are  not  human  beings, 
nor  even  the  types  of  classes ;  they  have 
no  more  individuality  than  the  pieces  of  a 
chessboard;  they  are  merely  counters; 
but  the  skill  with  which  the  author  juggles 
with  them  gives  them  a  kind  of  awful 
necromantic  interest.  The  characters  are 
mere  abstract  algebraical  expressions,  but 
they  are  made  the  exponents  of  such  ter- 
rible and  intense  fear,  suffering  and  sus- 
pense, that  we  sympathise  with  their  fate 
as  if  they  were  real. — Shaw,  Thomas  B., 
1847,  Outlines  of  English  Literature, 
p.  372. 

In  her  verses,  she  is  a  tinselled  nymph 
in  a  pantomime,  calling  up  commonplaces 
with  a  wand. — Hunt,  Leigh,  1847,  Men, 
Women  and  Books,  vol.  ii,  p.  125. 

Mrs.  Radcliffe's  romances  are,  indeed, 
of  a  wholly  fantastic  kind  of  Gothic,  with 
no  whit  of  foundation  in  actual  knowledge 
of  mediaBval  history.  Her  characters  are 
but  vague  melodramatic  phantoms  that 
flit  through  her  descriptions  of  scenery, 


720 


ANN  WARD  RADCLIFFE 


and  serve  as  agents  for  her  terrific  situa- 
tions. There  is  something  like  treachery 
also  to  the  true  theory  of  her  style  in  her 
habit  of  always  solving  the  mystery  at  the 
end  by  purely  natural  explanations. — 
Masson,  David,  1859,  British  Novelists 
and  Their  Styles^  p.  187. 

Whose  name  everybody  knows,  but 
whose  works,  great  as  their  power  and 
effect  was  in  their  day,  are  less  known 
now  than  their  merit  deserves.  The 
''Mysteries  of  Udolpho"  is  old-fahioned, 
but  it  is  fine  reading  for  those  who  have 
leisure  to  trace  the  meanderings  of  the 
threads  so  carefully  entangled,  and  to  fol- 
low the  most  ethereal  of  heroines  through 
the  piled-up  troubles  which  make  her  re- 
ward all  the  sweeter  when  it  comes :  and 
that  reward  aways  does  come.  .  .  . 
Her  landscapes,  even  now,  though  litera- 
ture has  done  a  great  deal  since  then  in 
the  pictorial  art,  are  full  of  an  elaborate 
and  old-fashioned  yet  tender  beauty.  She 
is  not  familiar  with  them,  nor  playful,  but 
always  at  the  height  of  a  romantic  strain ; 
not  graphic,  but  refined  and  full  of  per- 
ception. There  are  scenes  that  remind  us 
of  the  learned  Poussin,  and  some  that 
have  a  light  in  them  not  unworthy  of  Claude 
before  he  v/as  put  down  from  his  throne  by 
the  braggart  energy  and  rivalship  of 
Turner — since  when  the  modern  spectator 
has  scarcely  had  eyes  for  those  serene 
horizons  and  gleaming  moonlight  seas. 
Perhaps  of  all  others  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  art 
is  most  like  that  of  the  gentle  painter 
whom  people  call  Italian  Wilson.  There 
is  a  ruined  temple  in  the  distance,  a  guitar 
laid  against  a  broken  column;  but  the 
lights,  how  mellow  and  soft,  the  skies  how 
full  of  tempered  radiance,  the  pastoral 
valleys  unprofaned  by  ungracious  foot — 
full  of  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
shore ! — Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882, 
The  Literary  History  of  England,  XVIIIth- 
XlXth  Century, ^  vol  li,  pp.  232,  233. 

But  what  Mrs.  Radcliffe  attempted,  she 
carried  out  with  a  very  great  skill. — 
TucKERMAN,  Bayard,  1882,  A  History  of 
English  Prose  Fiction,  p.  268. 

A  hundred  years  later,  women  touched 
the  novel  of  plot  and  adventure  with  a 
bolder  grasp,  and  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  romances 
seemed  the  joint  offspring  of  ''big  bow- 
bow"  and  nightmare  parentage.  But  they 
too  moved  with  sweep  and  power ;  she  was 
strong  in  description  and  invention ;  she 


bridged  the  interval  between  the  mediaeval 
and  modern  novel,  and  painted  landscape 
so  well  that  even  Byron  sometimes  bor- 
rowed from  her. — Higginson,  Thomas 
Wentworth,  1887,  Women  and  Men, 
p.  160. 

Mrs.  Radcliffe  sometimes  writes  power- 
fully and  well,  but  sometimes  she  writes 
very  badly.  Her  style  is  stiff  and  inflated ; 
she  is  fond  of  fine  words  and  involved 
sentences,  and  has  a  righteous  detestation 
of  calling  a  spade  a  spade.  Her  forte  is 
description,  she  has  a  peculiar  talent  for 
drawing  link  after  lin-k  of  detail.  She 
brings  us  into  a  suite  of  mysterious  rooms, 
with  high  casements,  a  dagger  eaten  with 
rust  on  the  floor,  an  old  bedstead,  a  heap 
of  lumber,  and  a  dusty  manuscript — each 
completes  a  chain  of  horrors. — Hamilton, 
Catharine  J.,  1892,  Women  Writers, 
First  Series,  p.  152. 

There  is  generally  some  mystery  afloat ; 
when  one  has  been  cleared  up,  we  are  not 
suffered  long  to  breathe  freely  before  we 
are  caught  in  the  toils  of  another.  Yet 
all  the  time  only  human  agents  are  at 
work;  there  is  nothing  improbable  except 
the  extraordinary  combination  of  circum- 
stances, nothing  supernatural  except  in 
the  superstitious  imaginings  of  the  person- 
ages of  the  story.  Every  thing  that 
seemed  as  if  it  must  be  the  work  of  spirits 
is  carefully  and  fully  explained  as  the  story 
goes  on.  Mrs.  Radcliffe  has  been  censured 
for  these  explanations,  as  if  they  were  a 
mistake  in  point  of  art,  destroying  the 
illusion  and  making  us  ashamed  of  our- 
selves for  having  been  imposed  upon.  This 
censure  I  can  regard  only  as  an  affectation, 
unless  when  it  comes  from  a  convinced 
believer  in  ghosts.  Such  persons  might 
resent  the  explanation  as  casting  doubts 
upon  their  cherished  belief.  But  for  other 
people  I  can  see  nothing  that  could  be 
gained  by  leaving  the  mysterious  incidents 
unexplained,  except  by  the  authoress,  who 
would  undoubtedly  have  saved  herself  an 
immense  deal  of  trouble  if  she  had  made 
free  use  of  ghosts  and  other  supernatural 
properties,  whenever  she  required  them, 
without  taking  any  pains  to  explain  how 
the  facts  occurred.  I  read  the  story  my- 
self with  a  double  interest ;  I  enjoy  the 
excitement  of  superstitious  wonder  and 
awe  while  the  illusion  lasts,  and  when  the 
mystery  is  cleared  up,  and  the  excitement 
is  gently  subsiding,  I  am  in  a  mood  to  get 


ANN  WARD  RADCLIFFE 


721 


additional  enjoyment  from  reflecting  on 
the  ingenuity  of  the  complication  that 
gave  to  the  illusion  for  the  moment  the 
force  of  truth.  Yet  it  was  no  less  a  per- 
son than  Sir  Walter  Scott  that  set  the 
fashion  of  objecting  to  Mrs.  Radcliffe' s 
explanations.— MiNTO,  William,  1894, 
The  Literature  of  the  Georgian  Era,  ed. 
Knight,  p.  126. 

Her  ignorance  of  the  world  at  the  time 
when  she  wrote  was  complete  and  many- 
sided.  Human  character  she  knew,  not 
from  observation  but  from  dreams.  The 
landscapes  for  which  she  is  so  justly 
famous  are  pictures  of  countries  she  never 
saw.  There  is  nothing  in  her  books  that 
she  did  not  create.  And  it  is  a  testimony 
to  the  power  of  her  art  that  her  fancy 
first  conceived  a  type  of  character  that 
subsequently  passed  from  art  into  life. 
The  man  that  Lord  Byron  tried  to  be  was 
the  invention  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  —  Ral- 
eigh, Walter,  1894,  The  English  Novel, 
p,  228. 

The  actual  literary  value  is,  on  the 
whole,  low ;  though  Mrs.  Radcliffe  is  not 
without  glimmerings.  —  Saintsbury, 
George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nineteenth 
Century  Literature,  p,  44. 

It  was,  indeed,  in  the  melodramatic 
manipulation  of  landscape  that  this  artist 
was  most  original.  *'The  scenes  that 
savage  Rosa  dashed' '  seem  to  have  been 
her  model,  and  critics  who  were  fond  of 
analogy  called  her  the  Salvator  Rosa  of 
fiction.  It  is  here  that  her  influence  on 
Byron  and  Chateaubriand  is  most  apparent. 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  scenery  is  not  quite  to 
our  modern  taste,  any  more  than  are  Sal- 
vator's  paintings.  Her  Venice  by  moon- 
light, her  mountain  gorges  with  their  black 
pines  and  foaming  torrents,  are  not  pre- 
cisely the  Venice  and  the  Alps  of  Ruskin ; 
rather  of  the  operatic  stage.  Still  they 
are  impressive  in  their  way,  and  in  this 
department  she  possessed  genuine  poetic 
feeling  and  a  real  mastery  of  the  art  of 
painting  in  distemper. — Beers,  Henry 
A.,  1898,  A  History  of  English  Romanti- 
cism in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  p.  255. 

Mrs.  Radcliffe  wrote  for  the  story,  and 
not  for  the  characters,  which  are  all 
types,  and  soon  became  conventional. 
There  is  always  the  young  lover,  a  gentle- 
man of  high  birth,  usually  in  some  sort  of 
disguise,  who,  without  seeing  the  face  of 

46  0 


the  heroine,  may  fall  in  love  with  her 
distinguished  air  of  delicacy  and  grace" 
or  **the  sweetness  and  fine  expression  of 
her  voice."  The  only  variation  in  the 
heroine  is  that  she  may  be  either  dark  or 
fair.  The  beautiful  creature  is  confined 
in  a  castle  or  a  convent  because  she  re- 
fuses to  marry  some  one  whom  she  hates. 
She  finally  has  her  own  way  and  marries 
her  lover.  The  tyrant  is  always  the 
same  man  under  different  names;  add 
to  him  a  little  softness,  and  he  becomes 
the  Byronic  hero.— Cross,  Wilbur  L., 
1899,  The  Development  of  the  English  Novel, 
p.  106. 

Does  any  one  now  read  Mrs.  Radcliffe, 
or  am  I  the  only  wanderer  in  her  windy 
corridors,  listening  timidly  to  groans  and 
hollow  voices,  and  shielding  the  flame  of 
a  lamp,  which,  I  fear,  will  presently  flicker 
out,  and  leave  me  in  the  darkness  ?  People 
know  the  name  of  ''The  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho ;"  they  know  that  boys  would  say 
to  Thackeray,  at  school,  "Old  fellow,  draw 
us  Vivaldi  in  the  Inquisition."  But  have 
they  penetrated  into  the  chill  galleries  of 
the  Castle  of  Udolpho  ?  Have  they  shud- 
dered for  Vivaldi  in  face  of  the  sable-clad 
and  masked  Inquisition  ?  Certainly  Mrs. 
Radcliffe,  within  the  memory  of  man,  has 
been  extremely  popular.  The  thick  double- 
columned  volume  in  which  I  peruse  the 
works  of  the  Enchantress  belongs  to  a 
public  library.  It  is  quite  the  dirtiest, 
greasiest,  most  dog's-eared,  and  most 
bescribbled  tome  in  the  collection.  Many 
of  the  books  have  remained,  during  the 
last  hundred  years,  uncut,  even  to  this 
day,  and  I  have  had  to  apply  the  paper 
knife  to  many  an  author,  from  Alciphron 
(1790)  to  Mr.  Max  Miiller,and  Dr.  Birkbeck 
Hill's  edition  of  Bozzy's  ''Life  of  Dr. 
Johnson."  But  Mrs.  Radcliffe  has  been 
read  diligently,  and  copiously  annotated. 
.  .  .  Mrs.  Radcliffe  does  not  always 
keep  on  her  highest  level,  but  we  must 
remember  that  her  last  romance,  "The 
Italian, "  is  by  far  her  best.  She  had  been 
feeling  her  way  to  this  pitch  of  excellence, 
and,  when  she  had  attained  to  it,  she  pub- 
lished no  more.  .  .  .  "The  Italian" 
is  an  excellent  novel.  The  Prelude,  "the 
dark  and  vaulted  gateway,"  is  not  un- 
worthy of  Hawthorne,  who,  I  suspect, 
had  studied  Mrs.  Radcliffe. — Lang,  An- 
drew, 1900,  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  Novels,  Corn- 
hill  Magazine,  vol,  82,  pp.  23,  24,  33. 


722 


Charles  Wolfe 

1791-1823 

Born,  in  Dublin,  14  Dec.  1791.  At  school  at  Batli,  1801;  at  Salisbury,  1803-05; 
at  Winchester  Col.,  1806-09.  To  Dublin  Univ.,  1809;  scholar,  1812;  B.  A.,  1814. 
Ordained,  Nov.  1817.  Curate  of  Ballyclog,  Tyrone,  Dec.  1817  to  Jan.  1818;  of  Castle 
Caulfield,  Donoughmore,  1818-21.  Ill-health  from  1821.  Died  at  Cove  of  Cork,  21 
Feb.  1823.  Works:  ''The  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore;  with  other  poems,''  1825; 
''Remains,"  ed.  by  J.  A.  Russell,  with  memoir  (2  vols.),  1825. — Sharp,  R.  Far- 
QUHARSON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  303. 


PERSONAL 

His  habits  and  manner  of  life,  as  a 
clergyman,  were  exceedingly  simple  and 
primitive.  He  scarcely  ever  thought  of 
providing  a  regular  meal.  His  small  cot- 
tage contained  a  few  rushbottomed  chairs, 
a  rickety  table,  and  two  trunks :  one  for 
his  papers  and  the  other  for  his  linen. 
The  trunks  also  did  service  by  covering 
the  broken  parts  of  the  floor.  The  damp 
paper  hung  in  loose  folds  from  the  mouldy 
walls  of  the  closet  where  he  slept.  A 
dangerous  place  for  a  man  of  a  consump- 
tive habit.  Between  the  parlour  and  the 
closet  was  the  kitchen,  the  warmest  and 
most  comfortable  apartment  of  the  three. 
This  was  occupied  by  a  disbanded  soldier, 
his  wife,  and  a  numerous  band  of  children, 
who  kept  house  for  the  minister,  whom 
they  entertained  as  a  lodger,  taking  pos- 
session of  the  "bit  of  potato  garden" 
(which  went  with  the  cottage)  as  lords  of 
the  soil. — Gibson,  Charles  B.,  1864, 
Charles  WoJfe^  Once  a  Week,  vol.  11, 
p.  504. 

GENERAL 

Charles  Wolfe  has  been  one  of  the  few 
who  have  gained  probable  immortality 
from  a  casual  gleam  of  inspiration  thrown 
over  a  single  poem,  consisting  of  only  a 
few  stanzas,  and  these,  too,  little  more 
than  a  spiritual  version  from  the  prose  of 
another.  But  the  lyric  is  indeed  full  of 
fervor  and  freshness ;  and  his  triumph  is 
not  to  be  grudged. —Mom,  D.  M.,  1850- 
51,  Sketches  of  the  Poetical  Literature  of 
the  Past  Half- Century. 

The  famous  ode  on  "The  Burial  of  Sir 
John  Moore."  .  .  .  Almost  immediately 
it  took  its  place  among  the  four  or  five 
best  martial  poems  in  our  language,  pre- 
eminent for  simplicity,  patriotic  fervour, 
and  manly  pathos.  It  was  presently  dis- 
covered that  this  poem  had  been  written 
some  years  before  it  was  printed,  by  a 
young  Irishman  of  much  promise  who  died 
of  a  decline  in  his  thirty-second  year. 


When  this  fact  became  known,  public 
curiosity  was  attracted  to  his  name,  and 
an  attempt  was  made  by  one  of  his  early 
friends  to  collect  what  he  had  written. 
Only  twelve  short  pieces,  besides  the  ode, 
could  be  discovered;  they  were  mostly 
songs  of  love  and  friendship, full  of  ardour, 
and  not  uninfluenced  by  the  popular  Irish 
manner  of  Moore. — GossE,  Edmund,  1880, 
The  English  Poets,  ed.  Ward,  vol,  iv,  p.  323. 

The  "single  speech"  accident  of  Charles 
Wolfe,  the  author  of  the  "Burial  of  Sir 
John. Moore,"  which  everybody  knows, 
and  of  absolutely  nothing  else  that  is 
worth  a  single  person's  knowing. — Saints- 
BURY,  George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nine- 
teenth Century  Literature,  p.  124. 

The  Rev.  Charles  Wolfe,  an  obscure  Irish 
clergyman,  writes  a  short  poem  which  a 
friend  who  had  learned  it  recites  to  a  casual 
travelling  acquaintance.  The  latter  pub- 
lishes it  in  the  "Newry  Telegraph."  Soon 
it  is  on  the  lips  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  and 
now  there  is  hardly  a  reader  of  the  English 
language  who  has  not  read  the ' '  Burial  of 
Sir  John  Moore."  Few  indeed  are  the 
"occasional"  poems  that  possess  so  endur- 
ing a  power  to  move  the  heart.  Its  note 
of  pride  and  sorrow  is  tuned  to  that  of  all 
the  lofty  sorrows  of  the  world,  and  the 
very  music  of  the  lines  with  their  long, 
deep  vowel  sounds,  like  the  burst  of  solemn 
passion  in  Beethoven's  Funeral  March,  will 
carry  their  meaning  and  emotion  to  read- 
ers of  many  generations  hence.  Wolfe 
wrote  but  little  poetry  in  his  short  life, 
and  little  of  what  he  wrote  can  compare 
with  the ' '  Burial  Ode. ' '  But  the ' '  Song' ' 
which  he  wrote  under  the  influence  of  a 
strain  of  Irish  music,  to  which  he  was 
keenly  sensitive,  has  a  remarkable  inten- 
sity of  feeling  and  sweetness  of  melody. — 
Rolleston,  T.  W.,  1900,  A  Treasury  of 
Irish  Poetry,  eds.  Brooke  and  Rolleston, 
p.  51. 

The  poetical  achievements  of  Wolfe  fill 
but  a  few  pages  in  the  memorial  volumes. 


WOLFE— BLOOMFIELD 


723 


.  .  .  Exclusive  of  some  boyish  produc- 
tions, they  number  no  more  than  fifteen 
pieces,  all  of  them  written  almost  at  ran- 
dom, without  any  idea  of  publication,  and 
preserved  almost  by  accident.  These, 
however,  present  the  potentials  of  a  poet 
of  no  mean  order.  The  testimony  of 
many  contemporaries,  afterwards  eminent. 


confirms  the  impression  which  his  other 
lyrics  convey,  that  the  lines  on  the  burial  of 
Sir  John  Moore  are  not,  as  has  been  repre- 
sented, a  mere  freak  of  intellect,  but  the 
fruit  of  a  temperament  and  genius  es- 
sentially poetic. — Falkiner,  C.  Litton, 
1900,  Dictionary  of  National  Biography ^ 
vol.  LXii,  p.  296. 


Robert  Bloomfield 

1766-1823 

Robert  Bloomfield  (1766-1823) — farmer's  boy,  and,  through  the  influence  of  the 
Duke  of  Grafton,  government  clerk,  with  a  somewhat  unhappy  lot  in  both  positions — 
*'The  Farmer's  Boy"  (1798),  ^'Rural  Tales"  (1802),  ^^Wild  Flowers,"  and  other 
pieces ;  volumes  of  cheerful  description  of  rural  life  with  much  moral  feeling  and 
smoothness  of  versification :  his  great  fault  is  his  want  of  passion — his  great  excellence, 
the  truth  and  reality  of  his  delineations :  some  of  his  lines,  those  for  example  on  the 
Soldier's  Home,"  Wilson  thinks  equal  to  Burns'. — Angus,  Joseph,  1865,  The  Hand- 
hook  of  English  Literature,  p.  265. 


PERSONAL 

Bloomfield  was  dull  in  conversation ;  but 
humble,  simple,  mild,  and  unpretending. 
...  I  never  saw  a  man  more  humble  in 
manner,  without  losing  his  dignity,  than 
Robert  Bloomfield ;  but  he  was  not  easy  in 
the  company  of  men  born  and  moving  in  a 
rank  of  society  much  above  him ;  and  I  do 
not  think  he  gained  anything  by  suffering 
himself  to  be  drawn  into  it. — Brydges, 
Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834,  Autobiogra- 
phy, vol.  II,  pp.  46,  172. 

It  is  little  to  the  credit  of  the  age,  that 
the  latter  days  of  a  man  whose  name  was 
at  one  time  so  deservedly  popular,  should 
have  been  past  in  poverty,  and  perhaps 
shortened  by  distress,  that  distress  having 
been  brought  on  by  no  misconduct  or  im- 
prudence of  his  own. — Southey,  Robert, 
1836,  Lives  of  Uneducated  Poets,  p.  163. 

Having  now  become  hypochondriacal 
and  half  blind,  he  retired  to  Shefford, 
where  he  died  in  great  poverty  on  19  Aug. 
1823,  leaving  a  widow  and  four  children. 
Had  he  lived  longer,  he  would  probably 
have  gone  mad.— Bullen,  A.  H.,  1886, 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  vol.  v, 
p.  237. 

No  British  poet  ever  had  a  harder  life 
than  Robert  Bloomfield,  whose  misfortune 
it  was  to  suffer  from  poetry  and  poverty 
alike.  He  cannot  be  said  to  have  been 
worsened  by  his  gift  of  verse,  such  as  it 
was,  but  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  been 
bettered  by  it,  since  it  neither  developed 
his  character  nor  strengthened  his  mind. 


But  perhaps  it  did  all  that  could  be  ex- 
pected, his  mind  being,  as  Lamb  observed, 
a  poor  one,  and  his  character  a  weak  one. 
He  was  the  creature  of  circumstances, 
crushed  by  inherited  poverty,  and  cursed 
with  a  feeble  constitution  and  constant 
illness.  Nature  does  not  make  heroes  out 
of  sickly  shoemakers  only  five  feet  four 
inches  long,  still  less  great  poets. — Stod- 
dard, Richard  Henry,  1892,  Under  the 
Evening  Lam,p,  p.  116. 

GENERAL 

Such  indeed  are  the  merits  of  this  work 
[''The  Farmer's  Boy"]  that,  in  true 
pastoral  imagery  and  simplicity,  I  do 
not  think  any  production  can  be  put  in 
competition  with  it  since  the  days  of 
Theocritus.  To  that  charming  rusticity 
which  particularises  the  Grecian  are  added 
the  individuality,  fidelity,  and  boldness 
of  description  which  render  Thomson  so 
interesting  to  the  lovers  of  Nature. 
Gresner  possesses  the  most  engaging 
sentiment,  and  the  most  refined  simplicity 
of  manners,  but  he  wants  that  rustic  wild- 
ness  and  naivete  in  delineation  character- 
istic of  the  Sicilian  and  of  the  composition 
before  us.  Warner  and  Drayton  have 
much  to  recommend  them,  but  they  are 
very  unequal,  and  are  devoid  of  the 
sweet  and  pensive  morality  which  pervade 
almost  every  page  of  the  ''Farmer's  Boy ;" 
nor  can  they  establish  any  pretentions  to 
that  fecundity  in  painting  the  economy  of 
rural  life,  which  this  poem,  drawn  from 
actual  experience,  so  richly  displays  It 


724 


ROBERT  BLOOMFIELD 


is  astonishing,  indeed,  what  various  and 
striking  circumstances  peculiar  to  the 
occupation  of  the  British  Farmer,  and 
which  are  adapted  to  all  the  purposes  of 
the  pastoral  Muse,  had  escaped  our  poets 
previous  to  the  publication  of  Mr.  Bloom- 
field's  work. — Drake,  Nathan,  1798- 
1820,  Literary  HourSy  vol.  ii,  No.  xxxix, 
p.  308. 

Don't  you  think  the  fellow  who  wrote 
it  (who  is  a  shoemaker)  has  a  poor  mind  ? 
Don't  you  find  he  is  always  silly  about  poor 
Giles,  and  those  abject  kind  of  phrases 
which  mark  a  man  that  looks  up  to  wealth  ? 
None  of  Burns'  poet  dignity.  What  do 
you  think  ?  I  have  just  opened  him,  but  he 
makes  me  sick. — Lamb,  Charles,  1800, 
Letter  to  Manning^  Nov.  3. 

I  have  received  many  honourable  testi- 
monies of  esteem  from  strangers ;  letters 
without  a  name,  but  filled  with  the  most 
cordial  advice,  and  almost  a  parental  anx- 
iety, for  my  safety  under  so  great  a  share 
of  public  applause.  I  beg  to  refer  such 
friends  to  the  great  teacher.  Time;  and 
hope  that  he  will  hereafter  give  me  my 
deserts,  and  no  more. — Bloomfield,  Rob- 
ert, 1801,  Rural  Tales,  Preface. 

Bloomfield,  thy  happy -omen 'd  name 
Ensures  continuance  to  thy  fame ; 
Both  sense  and  truth  this  verdict  give, 
While  fields  shall  bloom,  thy  name  shall  live ! 

— White,  Henry  Kirke,  1803,  Clifton 
Grove. 

How  wise,  how  noble,  was  thy  choice. 

To  be  the  Bard  of  simple  swains ; 
In  all  their  pleasures  to  rejoice, 

And  soothe  with  sympathy  their  pains ; 
To  sing  with  feeling  in  thy  strains 

The  simple  subjects  they  discuss. 
And  be,  though  free  from  classic  chains. 

Our  own  more  chaste  Theocritus ! 
— Barton,  Bernard,  1823,  To  the  Mem- 
ory of  Robert  Bloomfield,  London  Magazine, 
vol.  8,  Memoir. 

In  his* 'Rural  Tales,"  he  has  succeeded 
in  the  patriotic  attempt  to  render  the 
loves  and  joys,  the  sports  and  manners,  of 
English  peasants  interesting.  I  recollect 
no  poet  before  him  who,  by  a  serious,  un- 
affected delineation  of  humble  life,  as  it 
actually  exists,  had  awakened  strong 
sympathy,  in  people  more  prosperously 
circumstanced,  towards  the  lower  classes 
of  the  community. — Montgomery,  James, 
1833,  Lectures  on  General  Liter aturCy 
Poetry,  etc.,  p.  165. 


Beyond  any  example,  save  that  of  Clare, 
Bloomfield  seemed  to  be  a  poet  almost  by 
intuition;  for  in  point  of  taste,  melody, 
and  accuracy,  his  early  verses,  composed 
without  almost  a  glimpse  of  education, 
were  never  excelled  by  his  after  efforts. — 
MoiR,  D.  M.,  1850-51,  Sketches  of  the 
Poetical  Literature  of  the  Past  Half-Cen- 
tury, p.  32. 

The  success  of  the  poem  was  immediate 
and  complete.  It  was  warmly  received  by 
the  public,  and  praised  in  all  quarters  as 
a  masterpiece  of  natural  poetic  simplicity 
and  beauty.  Twenty-six  thousand  copies 
were  sold  in  the  first  three  years  of  its 
issue,  seven  editions  having  been  called 
for.  The  position  secured  by  the  "Farmer's 
Boy"  on  its  first  publication  has  been  held 
until  the  present  day.  All  lovers  of 
poetry  read  it  with  delight.  It  is  natural 
and  graceful  as  the  song  of  a  bird  "warb- 
ling his  native  woodnotes  wild."  When 
the  English  song-bird  sings  in  captivity 
there  seems  to  be  a  touch  of  pathos  in  his 
note ;  and  one  can  hardly  resist  the  same 
impression  in  reading  these  sweet  rustic 
melodies  in  verse  which  came  from  the 
lips  of  the  shoemaker-poet  imprisoned  in 
a  London  garret.  Yet  there  is  something 
much  more  stimulating  in  Boomfield's  lines 
than  this.  They  are  sweet  and  joyous, 
and  full  of  that  glowing  enthusiasm  for 
beauty  which  all  fine  natures  feel.  Besides 
the  editions  sent  forth  in  this  country,  the 
''Farmer's  Boy"  was  printed  at  Leipsic, 
and  was  translated  into  French,  Italian, 
and  Latin.— Winks,  William  Edward, 
1SS2, Lives  of  Illustrious  Shoemakers, p.9d. 

It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  a  man  like 
Lamb  to  respect  a  man  like  Bloomfield. 
There  was  nothing  in  common  between 
them,  the  one  being  a  scholar  and  a  thinker, 
the  other  an  unlettered  rustic,  with  a 
knack  at  versifying.  The  reputation  of 
Burns,  who  died  four  years  before,  pre- 
pared the  way  for  a  self-made  rhymester 
like  Bloomfield,  whose  temporary  vogue 
prepared  the  way  in  turn  for  a  little  school 
of  self-made  rhymsters  who  sprung  up 
around  him.  There  are  tracts  of  litera- 
ture wherein,  as  in  old,  neglected  pastures, 
mushrooms  are  sometimes  found,  and  with 
these  mushrooms  hundreds  of  other  fungi 
which  are  often  mistaken  for  them  by  the 
ignorant  and  the  credulous.  Byron  de- 
scribed Churchill  as  the  comet  of  a  season. 
If  I  were  to  describe  Bloomfield,  it  would 


BLOOMFIELD—RICARDO 


725 


be  as  a  glow-worm,  whose  mild  and  fitful 
raidance  twinkled  awhile,  and  then  went 
out  in  the  darkness. — Stoddard,  Richard 
Henry,  1892,  Under  the  Evening  Lamp^ 
p.  114. 

We  children  who  were  used  to  the  free 
range  of  woods  and  fields  were  homesick 
for  the  country  in  our  narrow  city  yard, 
and  I  associate  with  this  longing  the 
''Farmer  Boy"  of  Bloomfield,  which  my 
father  got  for  me.  It  was  a  little  book 
in  blue  cloth,  and  there  were  some  mild 
woodcuts  in  it.  I  read  it  with  a  tempered 
pleasure  and  with  a  vague  resentment  of 
its  trespass  upon  Thomson's  ground  in  the 
division  of  its  parts  under  the  names  of 
the  seasons.  I  do  not  know  why  I  need 
have  felt  this.  I  was  not  yet  very  fond 
of  Thomson.  I  really  liked  Bloomfield 
better ;  for  one  thing,  his  poem  was  writ- 
ten in  the  heroic  decasyllables  which  I 
preferred  to  any  other  verse. — Howells, 
William  Dean,  1895,  My  Literary  Pas- 
sions, p.  46. 

Bloomfield's  poetry  is  characterised  by 
a  smoothness  and  ease  of  versification 
which  came  quite  natural  to  him.    He  had 


an  ear  for  music  which  guided  him  in  the 
formation  of  his  verse.  If  his  vocabulary 
was  not  extensive  it  was  quite  large  enough 
for  the  themes  upon  which  he  wrote ;  and 
his  choice  of  words  is  often  felicitous. 
.  .  .  But  it  is  as  a  poet  of  Nature  rather 
than  of  Humanity  that  Bloomfield  claims 
recognition.  His  descriptions  of  natural 
scenery  are  both  faithful  and  character- 
istic. His  pictures  of  the  farmer's  boy 
engaged  in  various  labours  of  the  farm  are 
those  of  one  who  draws  direct  from 
Nature,  and  who  has  himself  experienced 
the  life  that  he  depicts.  These  show  both 
minuteness  of  observation  and  fidelity  of 
description,  which  entitle  him  to  an 
honourable  place  among  the  earliest  of 
modern  worshippers  at  the  so  long  neg- 
lected shrine  of  Nature.— Miles,  Alfred 
H.,  1895,  The  Poets  and  the  Poetry  of  the 
Century^  Crahbe  to  Coleridge,  pp.  155,  156. 

One  of  those  unfortunate  ''prodigy" 
poets  whom  mistaken  kindness  encourages. 
.  .  .  His  "Farmer's  Boy,"  an  estimable 
but  much  over-praised  piece. — Saints- 
bury,  George,  1896,  A  History  of  Nine- 
teenth Century  Literature,  p.  107. 


David  Ricardo 

1772-1823 

Born,  in  England,  19  April  1772.  Early  education  in  England ;  in  Holland,  1783-85. 
Began  to  assist  his  father  in  business  on  Stock  Exchange,  1786.  Married  Priscilla 
Anne  Wilkinson,  20  Dec.  1793.  Mem.  of  newly  founded  Geological  Soc,  1807. 
Bought  the  estate  of  Gatcombe  Park,  Gloucestershire,  1813.  Retired  from  business, 
1814.  Sherilf,  1818.  M.  P.  for  Portarlington,  Ireland,  1819-23.  Visit  to  Continent, 
1822.  Died,  at  Gatcombe  Park,  11  Sept.  1823.  Works:  "The  High  Price  of  Bullion 
a  proof  of  the  depreciation  of  Bank  Notes, "  1810  (3rd  edn.,  same  year) ;  "Observations 
on  some  passages  in  .  .  .  the  Edinburgh  Review,"  1811 ;  "Reply  to  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
Practical  Observations, "  1811 ;  "Essay  on  the  Influence  of  a  Low  Price  of  Corn  on  the 
Profits  of  Stock, ' '  1815  (2nd  edn. ,  same  year) ; ' '  Proposals  for  an  Economical  and  Secure 
Currency,"  1816  (2nd  edn.,  same  year) ;  "On  the  Principles  of  Political  Economy  and 
Taxation,"  1817;  "On  Protection  to  Agriculture, "  1822  (4th  edn.,  same  year) ;  "Plan 
for  the  Establishment  of  a  National  Bank,"  1824.  Posthumous :  Letters  to  T.  R. 
Malthus,  1887.  Collected  Works:  ed.  by  McCulloch,  2nd  edn.,  1852.— Sharp,  R. 
Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  239. 


PERSONAL 
I  do  not  remember  that  any  public  event 
of  our  own  times  has  touched  me  so  nearly, 
or  so  much  with  the  feelings  belonging  to 
a  private  affliction,  as  the  death  of  Mr. 
Ricardo.  To  me  in  some  sense  it  was  a 
private  affliction,  and  no  doubt  to  all 
others  who  knew  and  honoured  his  ex- 
traordinary talents.  For  great  intellectual 
merit,  wherever  it  has  been  steadily  con- 
templated, cannot  but  conciliate  some 


personal  regard;  and,  for  my  part,  I 
acknowledge  that,  abstracting  altogether 
from  the  use  to  which  a  man  of  splendid 
endowments  may  apply  them — or  even 
supposing  the  case  that  he  should  deliber- 
ately apply  them  to  a  bad  one — I  could  no 
more  on  that  account  withhold  my  good 
wishes  and  affection  from  his  person,  than, 
under  any  consideration  of  their  terrific 
attributes,  I  could  forbear  to  admire  the 
power  and  the  beauty  of  the  serpent  or  the 


726 


DAVID  RICARDO 


panther.  .  .  .  Mr.  Ricardo,  however, 
stood  in  no  need  of  a  partial  or  indulgent 
privilege ;  his  privilege  of  intellect  had  a 
comprehensive  sanction  from  all  the  pur- 
poses to  which  he  applied  it  in  the  course 
of  his  public  life ;  in  or  out  of  Parliament, 
as  a  senator,  or  as  an  author,  he  was 
known  and  honoured  as  a  public  benefactor. 
Though  connected  myself  by  private 
friendship  with  persons  of  the  political 
party  hostile  to  his,  I  heard  amongst  them 
all  but  one  language  of  respect  for  his 
public  conduct. — De  Quincey,  Thomas, 
1823,  The  Services  of  Mr.  Ricardo  to  the 
Sciences  of  Political  Economy,  London 
Magazine, 

His  speaking,  his  conduct,  his  manner, 
were  all  exceptionable  and  all  suited  to 
the  man, — his  high  station  among  philos- 
ophers, his  known  opinions  on  political 
alfairs,  his  kindly  nature,  and  his  genuine 
modesty.  There  was  something  about 
him,  chiefly  a  want  of  all  affectation  as 
well  as  pretention  in  everything  he  said  or 
did,  that  won  the  respect  of  each  party. 
His  matter  was  ever  of  high  value. 
Whether  you  agreed  or  differed  with  him, 
you  were  well  pleased  to  have  it  brought 
out  and  made  to  bear  upon  the  question,  if 
indeed  the  pursuit  of  right  and  truth  was 
your  object.  His  views  were  often,  indeed, 
abundantly  theoretical,  sometimes  too  re- 
fined for  his  audience,  occasionally  extrav- 
agant, from  his  propensity  to  follow  a  right 
principle  into  all  its  consequences,  with- 
out duly  taking  into  account  in  practice 
the  condition  of  things  to  which  he  was 
applying  it,  as  if  a  mechanician  were  to 
construct  an  engine  without  taking  into 
consideration  the  resistance  of  the  air  in 
which  it  was  to  work,  or  the  strength  and 
the  weight  and  the  friction  of  the  parts 
of  which  it  was  to  be  made.  .  .  .  But 
while  such  were  his  errors,  and  those  of  a 
kind  to  excite  very  strong  feelings  in  cer- 
tain large  and  important  classes  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  he  was  uniformly  and 
universally  respected  for  the  sterling 
qualities  of  his  capacity  and  his  charac- 
ter, which  were  acknowledged  by  all. — 
Brougham,  Henry  Lord,  1839-43,  Lives 
of  Statesmen  of  the  Time  of  George  III. 

His  benignity  of  character  and  simple 
but  earnest  manner  in  argument  often 
made  converts  where  his  books  had  failed 
to  do  so. — Holland,  Sir  Henry,  1871, 
Recollections  of  Past  Life,  p.  241. 


During  this  first  period  of  my  life,  the 
habitual  frequenters  of  my  father's  house 
were  limited  to  a  very  few  persons,  most 
of  them  little  known  to  the  world,  but 
whom  personal  worth,  and  more  or  less  of 
congeniality  with  at  least  his  political 
opinions  (not  so  frequently  to  be  met 
with  then  as  since)  inclined  him  to  culti- 
vate; and  his  conversations  with  them 
I  listened  to  with  interest  and  instruction. 
My  being  an  habitual  inmate  of  my  father's 
study  made  me  acquainted  with  the  dearest 
of  his  friends,  David  Ricardo,  who  by  his 
benevolent  countenence,  and  kindliness  of 
manner,  was  very  attractive  to  young  per-' 
sons,  and  who,  after  I  became  a  student 
of  political  economy,  invited  me  to  his 
house  and  to  walk  with  him  in  order  to 
converse  on  the  subject. — Mill,  John 
Stuart,  1873,  Autobiography. 

Miss  Edgeworth  visited  the  Ricardos  at 
Gatcombe  in  1821,  and  gives  an  account 
of  his  family  and  delightfully  pleasant 
house.''  She  says  that  he  was  charming 
in  conversation ;  perpetually  starting  new 
game,  and  never  arguing  for  victory.  He 
took  part  in  charades,  and  represented  a 
coxcomb  very  drolly.  Altogether  she 
thought  him  one  of  the  most  agreeable  an(J 
least  formal  persons  she  ever  met.  .  .  . 
His  family  held,  it  appears,  that  any  child 

could  impose  upon  him.'' — Stephen, 
Leslie,  1896,  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  vol.  XLViii,  p.  95. 

GENERAL 

Consolidating  his  views  in  one  work,  he 
gave  to  the  world  his  excellent  treatise  on 
his  favourite  science,  which,  with  Mr. 
Malthus's  Essay  on  the  Principle  of 
Population, "  divides  the  claim  to  a  second 
place  after  the  ''Wealth  of  Nations," 
among  the  books  which  this  country  has 
produced  upon  the  important  science  of 
economics. — Brougham,  Henry  Lord, 
1839-43,  Lives  of  Statesmen  of  the  Time 
of  George  III. 

This  is  a  most  able,  original,  and  pro- 
found work.  Its  appearance  formed  a 
new  era  in  the  history  of  the  science. 
Exclusive  of  many  valuable  correlative 
discussions,  Mr.  Ricardo  has  traced  the 
source  and  limiting  principle  of  exchange- 
able value,  and  has  exhibited  the  laws 
which  determine  the  distribution  of  the 
.various  products  of  art  and  industry 
among  the  various  ranks  and  orders  of 


DAVID  RICARDO 


121 


society.  .  .  .  Mr.  Ricardo  was  the 
first  to  perceive  the  error  into  which  Smith 
had  fallen,  in  supposing  that  the  effects 
consequent  upon  an  increase  or  diminution 
of  the  wages  paid  for  the  labour  employed 
in  the  production  of  commodities  were  the 
same  with  those  consequent  upon  an  in- 
crease or  diminution  of  the  quantity  of 
such  labour. — McCulloch,  John  Ram- 
say, 1845,  Literature  of  Political  Econ- 
omy^ p.  16. 

His  book  is  the  true  manual  of  the  dema- 
gogue,— seeking  power  by  means  of  agra- 
rianism,  war,  and  plunder.  Its  lessons 
being  inconsistent  with  those  afforded  by 
the  study  of  all  well-observed  facts,  and 
inconsistent  even  with  themselves,  the 
sooner  they  shall  come  to  be  discarded  the 
better  will  it  be,  for  the  interests  of  land- 
lord and  tenant,  manufacturer  and  me- 
chanic, and  mankind  at  large. — Carevt, 
Henry  C,  1858,  Principles  of  Social 
Science,  vol.  ill,  p.  154. 

He  was  an  economist  only,  not  at  all  a 
social  philosopher  in  the  wider  sense,  like 
Adam  Smith  or  John  Mill.  He  had  great 
acuteness,  but  little  breadth.  For  any 
large  treatment  of  moral  and  political 
questions  he  seems  to  have  been  alike  by 
nature  and  preparation  unfitted  ;  and  there 
is  no  evidence  of  his  having  had  any  but 
the  most  ordinary  and  narrow  views  of  the 
great  social  problems.  His  whole  concep- 
tion of  human  society  is  material  and  me- 
chanical, the  selfish  principle  being  re- 
garded, after  the  manner  of  the  Bentham- 
ites, as  omnipotent,  not  merely  in  prac- 
tical economy,  but,  as  appears  from  his 
speech  on  the  ballot  and  his  tract  on 
reform,  in  the  whole  extent  of  the  social 
field.  Roscher  calls  him  "ein  tiefer  Men- 
schenkenner it  would  be  diflScult  to 
characterize  him  more  inaptly.  The  same 
writer  remarks  on  his  capitalistic"  tone, 
which,  he  says,  becomes,  ''mammonistic'^ 
in  some  of  his  followers;  but  the  latter 
spirit  is  already  felt  as  the  pervading 
atmosphere  of  Ricardo's  works.  He 
shows  no  trace  of  that  hearty  sympathy 
with  the  working  classes  which  breaks  out 
in  several  passages  of  the  ''Wealth  of 
Nations;"  we  ought,  perhaps,  with  Held, 
to  regard  it  as  a  merit  in  Ricardo  that  he 
does  not  cover  with  fine  phrases  his  defi- 
ciency in  warmth  of  social  sentiment.— 
Ingram,  John  Kells,  1886,  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  Ninth  ed.,  vol.  xx,  p.  550. 


There  are  few  writers  so  open  to  mis- 
understanding, and  few  indeed  whose  real 
merits  have  been  so  completely  thrust  out 
of  sight  by  other  merits  fancifully  attrib- 
uted to  them.  ''The  Principles  of  Polit- 
ical Economy  and  Taxation"  has  been 
invested  with  the  portentiously  solemn 
character  of  a  complete  scientific  hand- 
book, while  its  author  has  been  praised 
alike  by  friend  and  foe  for  rigid  logic, 
careful  method,  and  an  exactitude  of 
definition,  almost  mathematical  in  its 
nature.  To  such  an  extent  has  this  atti- 
tude been  assumed  that  till  some  few  years 
ago  hardly  any  critic,  however  unfriendly, 
hesitated  to  give  his  assent  to  the  propo- 
sition that  Ricardo's  conclusions,  his 
premises  once  granted,  were  irrefutable. 
And  yet  it  is  hardly  possible  to  doubt  that 
the  eulogies  thus  lavishly  if  carelessly 
bestowed  are  not  those  to  which  Ricardo 
is  best  entitled.  It  is  doubtful,  perhaps, 
whether  he  is  entitled  to  some  of  them  at 
all.  So  far  is  the  work  under  considera- 
tion from  being  a  perfect  work  that  it  is 
disfigured  by  blemishes  and  defects  of  very 
many  kinds.  Not  only  is  it  remarkable 
for  infelicity  of  language,  with  all  its  fatal 
consequences  of  exaggeration  and  obscu- 
rity, but  the  grammar  itself  is  halting  and 
the  accuracy  often  apparent,  fallaciously 
apparent,  rather  than  real. — Gonner,  E. 
C.  K.,  1891,  ed.  Ricardo's  Political  Econ- 
omy,  Introductory  Essay,  p.  xxiii. 

English  economists  can  hardly  fail  to  be 
proud  of  Ricardo  ;  and  whether  their  pride 
takes  the  form  of  treating  him  as  an  Angel 
of  Light  or  as  the  Prince  of  Darkness, 
they  will  probably  all  assign  to  him  much 
greater  influence  than  foreign  economists 
would  allow.  Besides,  if,  as  we  are  told, 
it  is  a  pleasure  to  the  young  and  vehement 
to  be  heterodox  and  to  scoff  at  great 
names,  it  is  a  comfort  to  the  staid  and 
academic  "stare  super  antiquas  vias, "  to 
feel  that  they  are  building  on  the  founda- 
tions that  were  laid  by  the  fathers  of  their 
church.— Ashley,  W.  J.,  1891,  The  Re- 
habilitation of  Ricardo,  Economic  Journal, 
vol.  I,  p.  475. 

With  Ricardo's  name  is  associated  a 
progress  in  our  science  far  more  consider- 
able than  can  be  credited  to  Say.  Ricardo 
is  in  fact  by  general  consent  recognised 
as  the  greatest  economist  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Like  Malthus,  he  suffered 
much  from  the  misconceptions  of  his  too 


728 


mCARDO—ERSKINE 


enthusiastic  friends,  but  he  had  a  still 
larger  number  of  adversaries  who  attacked 
him  when  he  wrote,  and  his  recent  adversa- 
ries have  not  been  few.  Among  them  it  is 
grievous  that  we  must  mention  two  writers 
of  such  conspicuous  merit  as  Jevons  and 
Ferrara.  .  .  .  But  after  all,  Ricardo's 
chief  title  to  fame  rests  upon  the ''Princi- 
ples of  Political  Economy''  (1817),  a  work 
of  originality  and  profundity  so  remark- 
able that  it  marks  an  epoch  in  the  history 
of  our  science,  though,  to  be  sure,  its  good 
points  are  overstated  by  such  enthusiastic 
partisans  as  MacCulloch  and  De  Quincey. 
That  it  has  defects  is  obvious  to  any  con- 
scientious and  critical  reader,  but  these 
are  not  often  the  ones  which  trivial-minded 
or  incompetent  critics  have  stretched  its 
words  and  twisted  its  thoughts  to  fasten 
upon  it.  Ricardo  certainly  never  dreamt 
of  writing  an  exhaustive  treatise,  because, 
as  is  definitely  recorded  by  him  again  and 
again  in  his  letters,  he  was  painfully  aware 
of  his  disqualifications  as  a  writer,  indeed 
his  modesty  has  overstated  them. — Cossa, 
LuiGi,  1891-93,  An  Introduction  to  the 
Study  of  Political  Economy,  ed.  Dyer. 

Ever  since  the  death  of  Ricardo  there 
has  been  an  increasing  interest  in  him  and 
his  writings.  For  all  deductive  economists 
his  theories  have  had  a  charm  which  those 
of  no  later  writer  possess.    There  are 


many  whose  reasoning  is  more  perfect, 
many  whose  ideas  are  more  clearly  ex- 
pressed ;  but  few  have  attained  the  com- 
manding position  of  Ricardo  in  economic 
theory.  On  the  other  hand,  among  a  large 
class  of  economists  with  inductive  and 
historical  tendencies,  any  doctrine  to 
which  Ricardo's  name  is  attached  is  dis- 
credited, and  often  treated  with  contempt. 
I  have  no  desire  to  enter  this  controversy, 
which  must  rest  as  it  is  until  a  new  spirit 
causes  men  to  interpret  the  history  of 
economic  theory  from  a  new  standpoint. 
I  only  desire  to  discuss  the  interpretation 
of  Ricardo 's  writings  which  has  grown  up 
among  his  followers  and  disciples,  and 
from  a  position  friendly  to  him  and  them. 
Few  writers  have  a  greater  interest  in 
deductive  economics  than  I,  and  no  one 
would  be  less  willing  to  say  anything  that 
would  reflect  any  discredit  or  lower  in  any 
way  the  high  esteem  in  which  Ricardo  is 
held.  Yet  it  seems  to  me  that  his  friends 
in  defending  him  have  placed  him  in  a 
false  light,  and  have  distorted  the  history 
of  economic  theory.  Ricardo  is  too  great 
a  man  to  need  any  false  praise ;  his  merits 
will  only  be  magnified  if  he  is  placed  in 
his  true  historical  position  as  an  econo- 
mist.—Pett  an,  Simon  N.,  1893,  The  In- 
terpretation of  Ricardo,  The  Quarterly 
Journal  of  Economics,  vol.  7,  p.  322. 


Thomas  Erskine 

1750-1823 

Thomas,  Baron  Erskine.  Born  at  Edinburgh,  Jan.  21,  1750:  died  at  Almondell, 
near  Edinburgh,  Nov.  17,  1823.  A  British  jurist  and  forensic  orator.  He  was  the 
youngest  son  of  the  tenth  Earl  of  Buchan.  He  attained  celebrity  as  a  pleader  in  sup- 
porting charges  of  corruption  advanced  against  Lord  Sandwich,  and  subsequently  dis- 
tinguished himself  especially  in  his  defence  of  Stockdale  (1789),  Thomas  Paine  (1792), 
and  Hardy,  Horne  Tooke,  etc.  (1794).  He  represented  Portsmouth  in  the  House  of 
Commons  from  1790  till  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Erskine,  of  Restormel,  on  his 
being  made  lord  chancellor  in  Lord  Grenville's  administration  (Feb.,  1806, — April, 
1807.)— Smith,  Benjamin  E.,  ed.,  1894-97,  The  Century  Cyclopedia  of  Names,  p.  367. 


PERSONAL 

Erskine. — Mr.  Barrister  Erskine  is 
famous  for  taking  opium  in  great  quanti- 
ties (I  have  often  heard  him  speak  in  praise 
of  it),  and  if  he  proceeds  in  this  manner,  it 
is  apprehended  that  his  political  faculties 
will  die  of  too  large  a  dose,  of  which  there 
are  many  symptoms  already.  But  all  my 
observations  are  confined  to  his  political 
conduct  and  career.  They  are  not  ex- 
tended to  his  professional  character, 
which  is  great,  or  to  his  private  life,  which 


no  man  is  inclined  to  respect  more  than 
myself.  But  his  political  doctrines  are 
plunging  and  dangerous.  Mr.  Erskine 
has  informed  the  publick,  that  He  has  not 
the  talents  of  a  statesman,  which,  in  common 
with  the  kingdom  at  large,  I  readily  admit 
as  part  of  my  political  creed ;  though  it  is 
so  very  plain,  as  hardly  to  be  an  article  of 
faith.— Mathias,  Thomas  James,  1794- 
98,  The  Pursuits  of  Literature,  p.  363. 

Although  the  new  administration  has 
been  formed  in  general  of  the  public  men 


THOMAS  ERSKINE 


729 


:  the  greatest  talents  and  highest  char- 
acter of  any  in  the  country,  yet  there  are 
some  few  appointments  which  have  been 
received  by  the  public  with  such  dissatis- 
faction, and  none  the  more  than  that  of 
Erskine  to  be  Lord  Chancellor.  The  truth 
undoubtedly  is,  that  he  is  totally  unfit  for 
the  situation.  His  practice  has  never  led 
him  into  courts  of  equity ;  and  the  doctrines 
which  prevail  in  them  are  to  him  almost 
like  the  law  of  a  foreign  country.  It  is 
true  that  he  has  a  great  deal  of  quickness 
and  is  capable  of  much  application ;  but, 
at  his  time  of  life,  with  the  continual 
occupations  which  the  duties  of  his  office 
will  give  him,  and  the  immense  arrear  of 
business  left  him  by  his  tardy  and  doubt- 
ing predecessor.  It  is  quite  impossible 
that  he  should  find  the  means  of  making 
himself  master  of  that  extensive  and  com- 
plicated system  of  law,  which  he  will  have 
to  administer. — Romilly,  Sir  Samuel, 
1806,  Diary,  Feb,  8 ;  Memoirs  by  his  Sons, 
vol.  II,  p.  128. 

The  House  of  Commons  was  not  his 
theatre  of  glory ;  he  was  perpetually  losing 
there  the  fame  he  won  in  Westminster 
Hall. — Horner,  Francis,  1810,  Memoirs 
and  Correspondence,  vol.  ii,  /?.  21. 

Erskine,  too !  Erskine  was  there ;  good, 
but  intolerable.  He  jested,  he  talked,  he 
did  every  thing  admirably,  but  then  he 
would  be  applauded  for  the  same  thing 
twice  over.  He  would  read  his  own 
verses,  his  own  paragraph,  and  tell  his 
own  story,  again  and  again  — Byron, 
Lord,  1812,  Detached  Thoughts. 

He  was  a  most  zealous  and  efficient 
labourer  in  the  cause  of  the  Greeks,  not 
that  he  had  much  knowledge  or  judgment 
— for  what  he  wrote  on  the  subject  was 
vague  and  declamatory — but  there  was  a 
charm  about  his  name  which  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  cause,  and  the  master-string 
of  his  mind,  vanity,  had  been  touched,  its 
vibrations  trembling  to  the  very  end  of  his 
existence. — Bo  wring.  Sir  John,  1823- 
72,  Autobiographical  Recollections,  p.  400. 

At  such  a  moment,  Tom  Sheridan  came 
up  to  me,  and  asked  me,  whether  I  had  a 
mind  for  a  high  treat  ?  ''I  won't  keep  you 
long,"  said  he,  ''you  may  rely  upon  that." 
He  then  led  a  few  of  us,  among  whom  was 
George  Gordon,  the  brother  of  Pryse  Lock- 
hart,  a  fellow  of  ''infinite  jest  and  most  ex- 
cellent fancy,"  to  the  opposite  end  of  the 
building;  where, standing  in  an  armchair. 


with  the  back  foremost,  we  saw  Thomas 
Erskine,  the  prince  of  pleaders,  but  the 
most  unfortunate  of  politicians,  with  an 
audience  of  about  a  dozen  dry  Scotch 
Whigs,  delivering,  with  almost  insane  ex- 
pression, a  whole  Armata  of  political 
oratory.  The  thing  was  irresistible.  We 
honoured  the  orator  with  the  "Hear! 
hear!"  very  exactly  imitated,  of  several 
well  known  voices  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons ;  and  effected  our  retreat,  undiscov- 
ered by  the  learned  and  honourable  gentle- 
men.— Bo  ADEN,  James,  1831,  The  lAfe  of 
Mrs.  Jordan,  vol.  ii,  p.  139. 

Latterly  Erskine  was  very  poor ;  and  no 
wonder,  for  he  always  contrived  to  sell  out 
of  the  funds  when  they  were  very  low,  and 
to  buy  in  when  they  were  very  high.  ' '  By 
heaven,"  he  would  say,  "I  am  a  perfect 
kite,  all  paper;  the  boys  might  fly  me." 
Yet,  poor  as  he  was  he  still  kept  the  best 
society. — Rogers,  Samuel,  1855,  Recol- 
lections of  Table-Talk,  ed.  Dyce,  p.  53. 

In  singular  contrast  to  Sir  S.  Romilly 
came  Lord  Erskine ;  of  whom  indeed  I  saw 
much  less,  and  at  a  time,  when  his  facul- 
ties had  undergone  a  decay  more  obvious 
to  others  than  to  himself.  He  was  still 
eager  and  eloquent  in  speech ;  but  with  a 
certain  restless  irritability,  augmented, 
as  I  believe,  by  narrow  worldly  circum- 
stances, and  by  what  he  deemed  the  neglect 
of  his  former  political  friends.  His  mind 
too,  when  I  knew  him,  was  clouded  by  little 
foibles  and  superstitions.  I  well  recollect 
a  dinner  at  Sir  S.  Romilly' s,  where  his 
agitation  was  curiously  shown  in  his  reluct- 
ance to  sit  down  as  one  of  thirteen  at 
table,  and  by  the  relief  he  expressed  when 
the  fourteenth  guest  came  in.  His  life 
had  been  one  of  meteoric  kind  throughout, 
vanishing  in  mist  as  such  lives  are  prone 
to  do.— Holland,  Sir  Henry,  1871,  Rec- 
ollections of  Past  Life,  p.  243. 

Erskine  was  a  man  of  undoubted  genius, 
and  yet  was  a  great  spendthrift  of  the 
personal  pronoun,  so  much  so  that  Cobbett, 
who  was  printing  one  of  his  speeches, 
stopped  in  the  middle,  stating  that  the 
remainder  would  be  published  when  they 
got  a  new  font  with  sufficient  I's,  and  that 
it  was  proposed  Erskine  should  take  "the 
title  of  Baron  Ego  of  Eye,  in  the  county 
of  Suffolk."— Morrill,  Justin  S.,  1887, 
Self-Consciousness  of  Noted  Persons,  p.  125. 

At  first  his  arguments  and  authorities 
were  laboriously  prepared,  and  read  from 


.780 


THOMAS  ERSKINE 


a  manuscript  volume.  Till  his  day  there 
were  few  classical  allusions  or  graces  of 
rhetoric  in  the  king's  bench.  His  oratory, 
never  overloaded  with  ornament,  but 
always  strictly  relevant  and  adapted  to 
the  needs  of  the  particular  case,  set  a  new 
example,  as  his  courtesy  and  good  humour 
considerably  mitigated  the  previous  asper- 
ities of  nisi  prius  practice. — Hamilton, 
J.  A.,  1889,  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy, vol.  XVII,  p.  438. 

The  life  of  Lord  Erskine  should  exercise 
a  salutary  influence  on  the  younger  mem- 
bers of  the  legal  profession.  It  should 
constantly  remind  them  of  thenoble  objects 
of  that  noble  profession,  and  impress 
indelibly  upon  their  minds  the  great  truth, 
that  its  highest  rewards  can  only  be  at- 
tained by  the  advocate  who  is  honest  and 
strictly  faithful  to  the  interests  of  clients. 
He  should  be,  as  Erskine  was,  imbued, 
deeply,  with  the  principles  of  patriotism 
and  a  passionate  love  of  his  highly  honour- 
able profession.  He  should  ever  be,  too, 
keenly  alive  to  human  suffering,  and  reflect 
that  it  often  becomes  his  duty  to  remember 
the  forgotten,  to  attend  the  neglected, 
and  visit  the  forsaken. —  Hardwicke, 
Henry,  1896,  History  of  Oratory  and 
Orator Sy  ».235. 

GENERAL 

The  style  of  Lord  Erskine's  speeches 
may  be  regarded  as  a  model  for  serious 
forensic  oratory:  it  is  clear,  animated, 
forcible,  and  polished ;  never  loaded  with 
meretricious  ornament,  never  debased  by 
colloquial  vulgarisms.  It  is  throughout 
sustained  in  a  due  and  dignified  elevation. 
The  illustrations  which  it  exhibits  are 
borrowed  rather  from  the  intellectual  than 
the  material  world;  and  its  ornaments  are 
rather  those  of  sentiment  than  of  diction. 
It  receives  little  assistance  from  the 
quaintness  of  similes  or  the  brilliancy  of 
metaphors ;  and  is  addressed  rather  to  the 
reason  and  to  the  passions  than  to  the 
taste  and  imagination  of  the  hearer.  It 
seldom  displays  any  attempt  at  wit,  or  even 
at  humour;  though  occasional  instances 
of  the  latter  quality  are  to  be  found  in  the 
Speeches.  Although  the  speeches  of  Lord 
Erskine  cannot  be  compared  with  those  of 
Mr.  Burke,  for  the  varied  exposition  of 
philosophical  principles  in  which  those 
extraordinary  productions  abound ;  yet 
they  not  unfrequently  display  a  profound 
acquaintance  with  human  nature,  and  with 


the  springs  of  human  action. — RoscoE, 
Henry,  1830,  Eminent  British  Lawyers, 
p.  382. 

Erskine's  rapidity  and  lightness  of  wing 
made  him  often  take  the  first  hasty  view 
of  his  own  mind,  than  search  in  books  for 
technical  knowledge  and  arbitrary  author- 
ity. His  arguments,  therefore,  are  com- 
monly addressed  rather  to  the  general 
condition  of  men's  understandings  than  to 
professional  auditors.  All  these  distinc- 
tions may  be  exemplified  and  illustrated, 
by  a  comparison  of  his  speeches  with  those 
of  the  other  law  lords  in  the  Banbury  case, 
as  reported  by  Le  Marchant. — Brydges, 
Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834,  Autobiogra- 
phy, vol,  I,  p.  296. 

In  considering  the  characteristics  of  his 
eloquence,  it  is  observable  that  he  not  only 
was  free  from  measured  sententiousness 
and  tiresome  attempts  at  antithesis,  but 
that  he  was  not  indebted  for  his  success 
to  riches  of  ornament,  to  felicity  of  illus- 
tration, to  wit,  to  humour,  or  to  sarcasm. 
His  first  great  excellence  was  his  devotion 
to  his  client,  and  in  the  whole  compass  of 
his  orations,  there  is  not  a  single  instance 
of  the  business  in  hand, — the  great  work 
of  persuading, — being  sacrificed  to  raise  a 
laugh  or  to  excite  admiration  of  his  own 
powers.  He  utterly  forgot  himself  in  the 
character  he  represented.  Through  life  he 
was  often  ridiculed  for  vanity  and  egot- 
ism,— but  not  from  anything  he  ever  said 
or  did  in  conducting  a  cause  in  a  court  of 
justice.  There,  from  the  moment  the  jury 
were  sworn,  he  thought  of  nothing  but  the 
verdict,  till  it  was  recorded  in  his  favour. 
Earnestness  and  energy  were  ever  present 
throughout  his  speeches — impressing  his 
argument  on  the  mind  of  his  hearer  with 
a  force  which  seemed  to  compel  convic- 
tion. He  never  spoke  at  a  tiresome 
length;  and  throughout  all  his  speeches 
no  weakness,  no  dulness,  no  flagging  is 
discoverable;  and  we  have  ever  a  lively 
statement  of  facts,  — or  reasoning  pointed, 
logical,  and  triumphant. — Campbell,  John 
Lord,  1845-48,  The  Lives  of  the  Lord 
Chancellors  and  Keepers  of  the  Great  Seal 
of  England,  vol.  vi,  p.  514. 

Though  not  a  poet  in  the  highest  sense 
of  the  term,  Mr  Erskine  was  wont  to  in- 
dite stanzas  with  more  success  than  usually 
inspires  the  gentle  tinklings  of  orators  and 
statesmen.  From  the  date  of  his  residence 
in  college — when  he  wrote  the  clever 


OF  THfc 

UNiVF.Rsrry9f  ILLINOIS. 


ERSKINE— BYRON 


731 


parody  to  his  barl  n  Gray's  ode, 
''Ruin  seize  thee,  n  king,"  to  the 
octo-syllabic  stanzas  Ach  he  would 
fain  in  old  age  have  wniled  away  farmers 
from  the  cruel  sport  of  shooting  rooks — 
he  was  never  wholly  innocent  of  rhyme. — 
TowNSEND,  William  C,  1846,  The  Lives 
of  Twelve  Eminent  Judges^  vol.  I,  p.  469. 

The  published  Speeches  of  Thomas,  Lord 
Erskine  are  among  the  finest  specimens 
we  have  of  English  forensic  oratory. — 
Chambers,  Robert,  1876,  Cyclopcedia  of 
English  Literaturey  ed.  Carruthers. 

In  the  long  roll  of  names  which  have 
shed  lustre  on  the  British  bar,  there  is  no 
one  about  which  clusters  more  of  romance 
and  undying  interest  than  about  that  of 
Thomas  Erskine.  ...  A  profound 
lawyer  he  was  not,  nor  was  he  well  equipped 
with  the  learning  of  the  schools.  It  was 
not  to  its  rhetorical  qualities,  to  its  beauty 
of  diction,  its  richness  of  ornament  or 
illustration,  its  wit,  humor,  or  sarcasm, 
that  his  oratory  owed  its  power  and  charm, 
but  to  its  matchless  strength  and  vigor. 
His  first  great  excellence  was  his  devotion 


to  his  client,  to  which  all  other  considera- 
tions were  made  secondary.  Self  was 
forgotten  in  the  character  he  personated. 
From  the  moment  the  jury  were  sworn  he 
thought  of  nothing  but  the  verdict  till  it 
was  recorded  in  his  favor.  The  earnest- 
ness, the  vehemence,  the  energy  of  the 
advocate  were  ever  present  throughout  his 
speeches,  impressing  the  arguments  upon 
the  mind  of  the  hearer  with  a  force  which 
seemed  to  compel  conviction.  He  resisted 
every  temptation  to  mere  declamation 
which  his  luxuriant  fancy  cast  in  his  path, 
and  won  his  verdicts  not  more  by  what  he 
said  than  by  what  he  refrained  from  say- 
ing. Even  in  the  longest  of  his  speeches 
there  is  no  weakness,  no  flagging ;  but  the 
same  earnestness  of  manner,  the  same 
lively  statement  of  facts,  the  same  lumi- 
nous exposition  of  argument,  from  begin- 
ning to  close.  ...  Of  all  the  lawyers 
that  ever  lived,  Erskine  seems  to  have 
made  the  closest  approach  to  the  ideal 
of  a  forensic  advocate. — Mathews,  Wil- 
liam, 1878,  Oratory  and  Orators,  pp.  346, 
354,  358. 


G-eorge  Gordon  Lord  Byron 

1788-1824 

Born,  in  London,  22  Jan.  1788.  Lame  from  birth.  Early  years  spent  with  mother 
in  Aberdeen.  Educated  at  private  schools  there,  and  at  Grammar  School,  1794-98. 
Succeeded  to  title  on  death  of  grand-uncle.  May  1798.  To  Newstead  with  his  mother, 
autumn  of  1799.  Made  ward  in  Chancery  under  guardianship  of  Lord  Carlisle.  To 
school  at  Nottingham.  To  London  for  treatment  for  lameness,  1799.  To  Dr.  Glennie's 
school  at  Dulwich,  1799.  At  Harrow,  summer  of  1801  to  1805.  To  Trinity  Coll., 
Cambridge,  Oct.  1805;  M.  A.,  4  Julv  1808.  On  leaving  Cambridge,  settled  at  New- 
stead.  Took  seat  in  House  of  Lords,  13  March  1809.  Started  on  grand  tour,"  2 
July  1809,  to  Spain,  Malta,  Turkey,  Greece.  Returned  to  England,  July  1811.  Settled 
in  St.  James's  Street,  London,  Oct.  1811.  Spoke  for  first  time  in  House  of  Lords,  27 
Feb.  1812.  Married  Anne  Isabella  Milbanke,  2  Jan.  1815.  Settled  in  Piccadilly  Ter- 
race, London,  March  1815.  Daughter  born,  10  Dec.  1815.  Separation  from  wife, 
Feb.  1816.  Left  England,  24  April  1816.  To  Belgium,  Germany,  Switzerland,  Italy. 
Amour  with  Miss  Clairmont,  1816-17.  Daughter  born  by  her,  Jan.  1817  (died  April 
1822).  Settled  in  Venice,  1817.  Amour  with  Countess  Guiccioli,  April  to  Oct., 
1819.  To  Ravenna,  Christmas  1819.  Prolific  literary  production.  ' '  Marino  Faliero' ' 
performed  at  Drury  Lane,  spring  of  1821.  To  Pisa,  Oct.  1821.  ''The  Liberal"  pub- 
lished (4  nos.  only),  with  Leigh  Hunt  and  Shelley,  1823.  Elected  member  of  Greek 
Committee  in  London,  1823.  Sailed  from  Genoa  for  Greece,  15  July  1823.  Raising 
Suliote  troops  on  behalf  of  Greeks  against  Turks  at  Missolonghi,  Dec.  1823.  Serious 
illness,  Feb.  1824.  Died,  19  April  1824.  Buried  in  England,  at  Hucknall  Torkard. 
Works:  'Tugutive  Pieces"  (privately  printed,  all  destroyed  except  two  copies),  1806 
(a  facsimile  privately  reprinted,  1886) ;  'Toems  on  Various  Occasions"  (anon.,  same 
as  preceding,  with  omissions),  1807; ''Hours  of  Idleness,"  1807;  "English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers"  (anon.),  1809  (2nd  edn.  same  year);  Poems  contrib.  to  J.  C. 
Hobhouse's  "Imitations  and  Translations,"  1809;  "Childe  Harold,"  cantos  1  and  2, 
1812  (2nd-5th  edns.,  same  year);  "The  Curse  of  Minerva"  (anon.),  1812;  "The 


732 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


Waltz'*  (under pseud,  of  ^'Horace  Hornem'O,  1813 ;  *'The  Giaour,"  1813;  *'The  Bride 
of  Abydos,"  1813  (2nd-5thedns.,  same  year) ;  *^  The  Corsair,"  1814  ;**Ode  to  Napoleon 
Buonaparte"  (anon.),  1814;  **Lara"  (anon.,  with  Rogers's  Jacqueline"),  1814; 
^'Hebrew  Melodies,"  1815;  '^Siege  of  Corinth"  (anon.),  1816;  *^Parisina,"  1816 
(second  edn.,  with  preceding  work,  same  year);  "Poems,"  1816;  *' Poems  on  his 
Domestic  Circumstances,"  1816;  "Prisoner  of  Chillon,"  1816;  "Childe  Harold," 
canto  3, 1816;  "Monody  on  the  Death  of  Sheridan"  (anon.),  1816;  "Fare  Thee  Well !" 
1816y  "Manfred,"  1817  (2nd  edn.,  same  year);  "The  Lament  of  Tasso,"  1817; 
"Poems  Written  by  Somebody"  (anon.),  1818;  "Childe  Harold,"  canto  4,  1818; 
"Beppo"  (anon.),  1818;  "Suppressed  Poems,"  1818;  "Three  Poems  not  included  in 
the  Works  of  Lord  Byron,"  1818;  "Don  Juan,"  cantos  1  and  2  (anon.),  1819; 
"Mazeppa,"1819;  "Marino  Faliero,"  1820;  "Don  Juan,"  cantos  3-5  (anon.),  1821; 
"Prophecy  of  Dante"  (with  2nd.  edn.  of  "Marino  Faliero"),  1821;  "Sardanapalus, 
The  Two  Foscari,  and  Cain,"  1821;  "Letter  ...  on  the  Rev.  W.  L.  Bowles's 
Strictures  on  Pope,"  1821;  "Werner,"  1822;  "Don  Juan,"  cantos  6-14  (anon.), 
1823;  "The  Liberal, "  with  Leigh  Hunt  and  Shelley  (anon.,  4  nos.),  1823;  "The  Age 
of  Bronze"  (anon.),  1823;  "The  Island,"  1823  (2nd.  edn.,  same  year) ;  "The  Deformed 
Transformed,"  1823;  "Heaven  and  Earth"  (anon.),  1824;  "Don  Juan,"  cantos  15, 
16  (anon.),  1824  (canto  17  of  "Don  Juan,"  1829,  and  "Twenty  Suppressed  Stanzas," 
1838,  are  spurious);  "Parliamentary  Speeches,"  1824;  "The  Vision  of  Judgment" 
(anon.,  reprinted  from  pt.  i.  of  "The Liberal"),  1824.  Postomoi^s;  "Correspondence 
with  a  Friend"  (3  vols.),  1825;  "Letters and  Journals,"  edited  by  T.  Moore  (2  vols.), 
1830.  Collected  Works:  in  8  vols.,  1815-17;  in5  vols.,  1817;  in 8 vols.,  1818-20;  in 
4vols.,1828;  "Life  and  Works"  (17  vols.),  1832-35,  etc.  Life:  "Lord  Byron  and  his 
Contemporaries,"  by  Leigh  Hunt,  1828;  life  by  Moore,  1830;  by  Gait,  1830;  by  Jeaff- 
reson,  1883;  by  Roden  Noel  ("Great  Writers"  series),  1890. — Sharp,  R.  Farquhar- 
SON,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p,  45. 
PERSONAL 


Of  Lord  Byron  I  can  tell  you  only  that 
his  appearance  is  nothing  that  you  would 
remark. — Edge  worth,  Maria,  1813,  Let- 
ters, vol.  I,  p.  206. 

I  called  on  Lord  Byron  to-day,  with  an 
introduction  from  Mr.  Gifford.  Here, 
again,  my  anticipations  were  mistaken. 
Instead  of  being  deformed,  as  I  had  heard, 
he  is  remarkably  well  built,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  his  feet.  Instead  of  having  a 
thin  and  rather  sharp  and  anxious  face, 
as  he  has  in  his  picture,  it  is  round,  open, 
and  smiling;  his  eyes  are  light,  and  not 
black ;  his  air  easy  and  careless,  not  for- 
ward and  striking ;  and  I  found  his  manners 
affable  and  gentle,  the  tones  of  his  voice 
low  and  conciliating,  his  conversation  gay, 
pleasant,  and  interesting  in  an  uncommon 
degree.— TiCKNOR,  George,  1815,  Jour- 
nal, June  20 ;  Life  Letters  and  Journals, 
vol.  I,  p.  58. 

A  countenance,  exquisitely  modeled  to 
the  expression  of  feeling  and  passion,  and 
exhibiting  the  remarkable  contrast  of  very 
dark  hair  and  eye-brows,  with  light  and 
expressive  eyes,  presented  to  the  physiog- 
nomist the  most  interesting  subject  for 
the  exercise  of  his  art.  The  predominat- 
ing expression  was  that  of  deep  and 


habitual  thought,  which  gave  way  to  the 
most  rapid  play  of  features  when  he  en- 
gaged in  interesting  discussion ;  so  that  a 
brother  poet  compared  them  to  the  sculpt- 
ure of  a  beautiful  alabaster  vase,  only 
seen  to  perfection  when  lighted  up  from 
within.  The  flashes  of  mirth,  gayety, 
indignation,  or  satirical  dislike  which  fre- 
quently animated  Lord  Byron's  counte- 
nance, might,  during  an  evening's  conver- 
sation, be  mistaken  by  a  stranger,  for  the 
habitual  expression,  so  easily  and  happily 
was  it  formed  for  them  all;  but  those  who 
had  an  opportunity  of  studying  his  features 
for  a  length  of  time,  and  upon  various 
occasions,  both  of  rest  and  emotion,  will 
agree  with  us  that  their  proper  language 
was  that  of  melancholy. — ScoTT,  Sir 
Walter,  1816,  Childe  Harold  Canto  iii, 
and  Other  Poems,  Quarterly  Review^  vol. 
16,  p.  176. 

If  you  had  seen  Lord  Byron,  you  could 
scarcely  disbelieve  him.  So  beautiful  a 
countenance  I  scarcely  ever  saw — his  teeth 
so  many  stationary  smiles,  his  eyes  the 
open  portals  of  the  sun — things  of  light 
and  for  light — and  his  forehead  so  ample, 
and  yet  so  flexible,  passing  from  marble 
smoothness  into  a  hundred  wreaths  and 
lines  and  dimples  correspondent  to  the 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


733 


feelings  ana  sentiments  he  is  uttering.— 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1816,  Let- 
ter ^  April  10 ;  Life  by  Gillman. 

I  was  introduced,  at  the  theatre,  to  Lord 
Byron. — What  a  grand  countenance! — 
it  is  impossible  to  have  finer  eyes ! — the 
divine  man  of  genius ! — He  is  yet  scarcely 
twenty-eight  years  of  age,  and  he  is  the 
first  poet  in  England,  probably  in  the 
world ;  when  he  is  listening  to  music  it  is 
a  countenance  worthy  of  the  beau-ideal  of 
the  Greeks.  For  the  rest,  let  a  man  be 
ever  so  great  a  poet,  let  him  besides  be 
the  head  of  one  of  the  most  ancient  families 
in  England,  this  is  too  much  for  our  age, 
and  I  have  learnt  with  pleasure  that  Lord 
Byron  is  a  wretch.  When  he  came  into 
the  drawing-room  of  Madame  de  Stael,  at 
Copet,  all  the  English  ladies  left  it.  Our 
unfortunate  man  of  genius  had  the  impru- 
dence to  marry, — his  wife  is  very  clever, 
and  has  renewed  at  his  expense  the  old 
story  of  ' '  Tom  Jones  and  Blifil. ' '  Men  of 
genius  are  generally  mad,  or  at  the  least 
very  imprudent!  His  lordship  was  so 
atrocious,  as  to  take  an  actress  into 
keeping  for  two  months.  If  he  had  been 
a  blockhead,  nobody  would  have  concerned 
themselves  with  his  following  the  example 
of  almost  all  young  men  of  fashion ;  but  it 
is  well  known  that  Mr.  Murray,  the  book- 
seller, gives  him  two  guineas  a  line  for  all 
the  verses  he  sends  him.  He  is  absolutely 
the  counterpart  of  M.  de  Mirabeau;  the 
feodalists,  before  the  Revolution,  not 
knowing  how  to  answer  the  "Eagle  of 
Marseilles,"  discovered  that  he  was  a 
monster.  —  Beyle,  Henri  (Count  de 
Stendhal),  1817,  Rome,  Naples  and  Flor- 
ence, June  27. 

Thou,  whose  true  name  the  world  yet  knows 
not, 

Mysterious  spirit,  man,  angel,  or  devil. 

— Lamartine,  Alphonse  Marie  Louis 
DE,  1820,  Meditation:  L' Homme y  A  Lord 
Byron. 

I  come  at  once  to  his  lordship^s  charge 
against  me,  blowing  away  the  abuse  with 
which  it  is  frothed,  and  evaporating  a 
strong  acid  in  which  it  is  suspended.  The 
residuum,  then,  appears  to  be,  that  "Mr. 
Southey,  on  his  return  from  Switzerland 
(in  1817),  scattered  abroad  calumnies, 
knowing  them  to  be  such,  against  Lord 
Byron  and  others."  To  this  I  reply  with 
a  direct  and  positive  denial.  If  I  had  been 
told  in  that  country  that  Lord  Byron  had 


turned  Turk,  or  monk  of  La  Trappe, — that 
he  had  furnished  a  harem,  or  endowed  a 
hospital,  I  might  have  thought  the  report, 
whichever  it  had  been,  possible,  and  re- 
peated it  accordingly,  passing  it,  as  it  had 
been  taken,  in  the  small  change  of  con- 
versation, for  no  more  than  it  was  worth. 
In  this  manner  I  might  have  spoken  of  him 
as  of  Baron  Gerambe,  the  Green  Man,  the 
Indian  Jugglers,  or  any  other  figurante  of 
the  time  being.  There  was  no  reason  for 
any  particular  delicacy  on  my  part  in 
speaking  of  his  lordship;  and,  indeed,  I 
should  have  thought  anything  which  might 
be  reported  of  him  would  have  injured  his 
character  as  little  as  the  story  which  so 
greatly  annoyed  Lord  Keeper  Guilford— 
that  he  had  ridden  a  rhinoceros.  He 
may  ride  a  rhinoceros,  and  though  every 
one  would  stare,  no  one  would  wonder. 
But  making  no  inquiry  concerning  him 
when  I  was  abroad,  because  I  felt  no 
curiosity,  I  heard  nothing,  and  had  nothing 
to  repeat. — Southey,  Robert,  1822,  To 
the  Editor  of  the  Courier,  Jan.  5. 

Saw  Lord  Byron  for  the  first  time.  The 
impression  of  the  first  few  minutes  disap- 
pointed me,  as  I  had,  both  from  the  por- 
traits and  descriptions  given,  conceived  a 
diflierent  idea  of  him.  I  had  fancied  him 
taller,  with  a  more  dignified  and  command- 
ing air ;  and  I  looked  in  vain  for  the  hero- 
looking  sort  of  person  with  whom  I  had  so 
long  identified  him  in  imagination.  His 
appearance  is,  however,  highly  prepossess- 
ing; his  head  is  finely  shaped,  and  the 
forehead  open,  high,  and  noble ;  his  eyes 
are  gray  and  full  of  expression,  but  one  is 
visibly  larger  than  the  other ;  the  nose  is 
large  and  well  shaped,  but  from  being  a 
little  too  thick,  it  looks  better  in  profile 
than  in  front-face ;  his  mouth  is  the  most 
remarkable  feature  in  his  face,  the  upper 
lip  of  Grecian  shortness,  and  the  corners 
descending;  the  lips  full  and  finely  cut. 
In  speaking,  he  shows  his  teeth  very  much, 
and  they  are  white  and  even ;  but  I  observed 
that  even  in  his  smile — and  he  smiles  fre- 
quently— there  is  something  of  a  scornful 
expression  in  his  mouth  that  is  evidently 
natural,  and  not,  as  many  suppose, 
afl^ected.  This  particularly  struck  me. 
His  chin  "is  large  and  well  shaped,  and 
finishes  well  the  oval  of  his  face.  He  is 
extremely  thin ;  indeed,  so  much  so  that  his 
figure  has  almost  a  boyish  air ;  his  face  is 
peculiarly  pale,  but  not  the  paleness  of 


734 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


ill-health,  as  its  character  is  that  of  fair- 
ness, the  fairness  of  a  dark-haired  person — 
and  his  hair  (which  is  getting  rapidly  gray) 
is  of  a  very  dark  brown,  and  curls  natur- 
ally: he  uses  a  great  deal  of  oil  in  it, 
which  makes  it  look  still  darker.  His 
countenance  is  full  of  expression,  and 
changes  with  the  subject  of  conversation ; 
it  gains  on  the  beholder  the  more  it  is 
seen,  and  leaves  an  agreeable  impression. 
I  should  say  that  melancholy  was  its  pre- 
vailing character,  as  I  noticed  that  when 
any  observation  elicited  a  smile — and  they 
were  many,  as  the  conversation  was  gay 
and  playful — it  appeared  to  linger  but  for 
a  moment  on  his  lip,  which  instantly  re- 
sumed its  former  expression  of  serious- 
ness. His  whole  appearance  is  remarkably 
gentlemanlike,  and  he  owes  nothing  of 
this  to  his  toilet,  as  his  coat  appears  to 
have  been  many  years  made,  is  much  too 
large — and  all  his  garments  convey  the 
idea  of  having  been  purchased  ready-made, 
so  ill  do  they  fit  him.  There  is  a gaucherie 
in  his  movements,  which  evidently  proceeds 
from  the  perpetual  consciousness  of  his 
lameness,  that  appears  to  haunt  him ;  for 
he  tries  to  conceal  his  foot  when  seated, 
and  when  walking  has  a  nervous  rapidity 
in  his  manner.  He  is  very  slightly  lame, 
and  the  deformity  of  his  foot  is  so  little 
remarkable  that  I  am  not  now  aware 
which  foot  it  is.— Blessington,  Countess 
OF,  1823,  Conversations  with  Lord  Byron, 
Genoa,  April  1. 

Unlooked-for  event!  deplorable  mis- 
fortune! But  a  short  time  has  elapsed 
since  the  people  of  this  deeply  suffering 
country  welcomed,  with  unfeigned  joy  and 
open  arms,  this  celebrated  individual  to 
their  bosoms;  to-day,  overwhelmed  with 
grief  and  despair,  they  bathe  his  funeral 
couch  with  tears  of  bitterness,  and  mourn 
over  it  with  inconsolable  affliction.  On 
Easter  Sunday,  the  happy  salutation  of 
the  day,  Christ  is  risen,''  remained  but 
half  pronounced  on  the  lips  of  every  Greek ; 
and  as  they  met,  before  even  congratulat- 
ing one  another  on  the  return  of  that 
joyous  day,  the  universal  demand  was, 
**How  is  Lord  Byron?''  Thousands, 
assembled  in  the  spacious  plain  outside  of 
the  city  to  commemorate  the  sacred  day, 
appeared  as  if  they  had  assembled  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  imploring  the  Saviour  of 
the  world  to  restore  to  health  him  who  was 
a  partaker  with  us  in  our  present  struggle 


for  the  deliverance  of  our  native  land. 
And  how  is  it  possible  that  any  heart 
should  remain  unmoved,  any  lip  closed 
upon  the  present  occasion?  Was  ever 
Greece  in  greater  want  of  assistance  than 
when  the  ever-to-be-lamented  Lord  Byron, 
at  the  peril  of  his  life,  crossed  over  to 
Messolonghi?  Then,  and  ever  since  he 
has  been  with  us,  his  liberal  hand  has  been 
opened  to  our  necessities — necessities 
which  our  own  poverty  would  have  other- 
wise rendered  irremediable.  How  many 
and  much  greater  benefits  did  we  not  ex- 
pect from  him ! — and  to-day,  alas !  to-day, 
the  unrelenting  grave  closes  over  him 
and  our  hopes!  ...  All  Greece, 
clothed  in  mourning  and  inconsolable, 
accompanies  the  procession  in  which  it 
is  borne;  all  ecclesiastical,  civil  and 
military  honours  attend  it;  all  his 
fellow-citizens  of  Messolonghi  and  fellow- 
countrymen  of  Greece  follow  it,  crowning 
it  with  their  gratitude  and  bedewing  it 
with  their  tears ;  it  is  blessed  by  the  pious 
benedictions  and  prayers  of  our  Arch- 
bishop, Bishop,  and  all  our  Clergy. — Tri- 
COUPi,  M.  Spiridion,  1824,  Funeral  Ora- 
tion on  Lord  Noel  Byron,  April  10 ;  Med- 
win's  Conversations  of  Lord  Byron,  pp. 
xci,  xcviii. 

I  was  told  it  all  alone  in  a  room  full  of 
people.  If  they  had  said  the  sun  or  the 
moon  was  gone  out  of  the  heavens,  it  could 
not  have  struck  me  with  the  idea  of  a 
more  awful  and  dreary  blank  in  the  crea- 
tion than  the  words,  **Byron  is  dead." — 
Welsh,  Jane,  1824,  Letter  to  Thomas 
Carlyle,  Life  by  Froude,  vol.  I,  p.  173. 

Poor  Byron !  alas,  poor  Byron !  the  news 
of  his  death  came  upon  my  heart  like  a 
mass  of  lead ;  and  yet,  the  thought  of  it 
sends  a  painful  twinge  through  all  my 
being,  as  if  I  had  lost  a  brother.  0  God ! 
that  so  many  souls  of  mud  and  clay  should 
fill  up  their  base  existence  to  its  utmost 
bound;  and  this  the  noblest  spirit  in 
Europe  should  sink  before  half  his  course 
was  run.  Late  so  full  of  fire  and  generous 
passion  and  proud  purposes ;  and  now  for 
ever  dumb  and  cold.  Poor  Byron !  and  but 
a  young  man,  still  struggling  amidst  the 
perplexities  and  sorrows  and  aberrations 
of  a  mind  not  arrived  at  maturity,  or 
settled  in  its  proper  place  in  life.  Had  he 
been  spared  to  the  age  of  three-score  and 
ten,  what  might  he  not  have  done !  what 
might  he  not  have  been!    But  we  shall 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


735 


hear  h  "oice  no  more.  I  dreamed  of 
seeing  :  :  -  and  knowing  him ;  but  the  cur- 
tain of  everlasting  night  has  hid  him  from 
our  eyes.  We  shall  go  to  him  ;  he  shall 
not  return  to  us.  Adieu.  There  is  a 
blank  in  your  heart  and  a  blank  in  mine 
since  this  man  passed  away. — Carlyle, 
Thomas,  1824,  Letter  to  Jane  Welsh,  Life 
by  Froude,  vol.  I,  p.  173. 

I  am  extremely  sorry  I  have  not  had  it 
in  my  power  to  answer  the  kind  letter  with 
which  you  have  honored  me,  before  this, 
being  so  very  unwell,  and  so  much  hurt  at 
the  severe  loss  of  my  much-esteemed  and 
ever-to-be-lamented  lord  and  master.  You 
wish  me,  Sir,  to  give  you  some  informa- 
tion in  respect  to  my  lord's  manner  and 
mode  of  life  after  his  departure  from 
Cephalonia,  which  I  am  very  happy  to  say 
was  that  of  a  good  Christian,  and  one  who 
fears  and  serves  God,  in  doing  all  the  good 
that  lay  in  his  power,  and  avoiding  all 
evil.  And  his  charity  was  always  without 
bounds ;  for  his  kind  and  generous  heart 
could  not  see  nor  hear  of  misery,  without 
a  deep  sigh,  and  striving  in  which  way  he 
could  serve  and  soften  misery,  by  his 
liberal  hand,  in  the  most  effectual  manner. 
.  .  .  A  greater  friend  to  Christianity 
could  not  exist,  I  am  fully  convinced,  in 
his  daily  conduct,  not  only  making  the 
Bible  his  first  companion  in  the  morning, 
but  in  regard  to  whatever  religion  a  man 
might  be  of,  whether  Protestant,  Catholic, 
friar,  or  monk,  or  any  other  religion,  every 
priest,  of  whatever  order,  if  in  distress, 
was  always  most  liberally  rewarded,  and 
with  larger  sums  than  any  one  who  was 
not  a  minister  of  the  gospel,  I  think, 
(would  give).  I  think  every  thing,  com- 
bined together,  must  prove,  not  only  to 
you,  Sir,  but  to  the  public  at  large,  that 
my  lord  was  not  only  a  Christian,  but  a 
good  Christian. —  Fletcher,  William, 
1824,  Letter  to  Dr,  Kennedy,  May  19; 
Kennedy's  Conversations  on  Religion  with 
Lord  Byron,  pp.  369,  372. 

I  met  Lord  B.  for  the  first  time  at 
Metaxata,  in  Cephalonia,  in  the  month  of 
October,  1823.  On  calling,  I  found  his* 
Lordship  had  ridden  out  with  Count 
Gamba ;  I  resolved  to  wait  for  his  return, 
and  was  shown  his  only  public  room,  which 
was  small  and  scantily  furnished  in  the 
plainest  manner.  One  table  was  covered 
for  dinner,  another  and  a  chair  were 
strewed  wi '  ^  books,  and  many  were  ranged 


in  order  on  the  floor.  ...  I  presented  a 
letter  of  introduction,  and  he  sat  down 
upon  the  sofa,  still  examining  me ;  I  felt 
the  reception  more  poetical  than  agree- 
able: but  he  immediately  commenced  his 
fascinating  conversation.  .  .  .  Whenever 
he  commenced  a  sentence  which  showed 
that  the  subject  had  engaged  his  mind,  and 
that  his  thoughts  were  sublime,  he  checked 
himself,  and  finished  a  broken  sentence, 
either  with  an  indifferent  smile,  or  with 
this  annoying  tone.  I  thought  he  had 
adopted  it  to  conceal  his  feelings,  when 
he  feared  to  trust  his  tongue  with  the 
sentiments  of  his  heart.  Often,  it  was 
evident,  he  did  it  to  avoid  betraying  the 
author,  or  rather  the  poet.  In  mere  satire 
and  wit  his  genius  ran  wild,  even  in  con- 
versation. I  left  him  quite  delighted, 
charmed  to  find  so  great  a  man  so  agree- 
able, yet  astonished  that  the  author  of 
''Childe  Harold,"  the  Corsair,"  and 
Manfred,"  should  have  said  so  little 
worth  remembering. — Finlay,  George, 
1824,  Letter  to  Colonel  Stanhope,  June; 
Broughton's  Recollections  of  a  Long  Life, 

Honorable  Lady,  —After  the  ever  to  be 
lamented  loss  of  your  illustrious  brother, 
with  whose  friendship  I  was  so  long 
honoured,  my  sole  aim  was  to  fulfil  my 
duties  towards  his  memory  and  towards 
those  whom  I  knew  were  nearest  and 
dearest  to  him  when  alive.  ...  I 
collected  all  the  words  he  uttered  in  those 
few  hours  in  which  he  was  certain  of  his 
danger.  He  said,  'Toor  Greece!  Poor 
People !  my  poor  family !  Why  was  I  not 
aware  of  this  in  time?  but  now  it  is  too 
late."  Speaking  of  Greece  he  said, 
have  given  her  my  time,  my  money,  and 
my  health — what  could  I  do  more  ?  Now 
I  give  her  my  life."  He  frequently  re- 
peated that  he  was  content  to  die,  and 
regretted  only  that  he  was  aware  of  it  too 
late.  He  mentioned  the  names  of  many 
people  and  several  sums  of  money,  but  it 
was  not  possible  to  distinguish  clearly  what 
he  meant.  He  named  his  dear  daughter 
— his  sister — his  wife— Hobhouse,  and 
Kinnaird.  **Why  did  I  not  go  to  England 
before  I  came  here  ?  I  leave  those  that  I 
love  behind  me — in  other  respects  I  am 
willing  to  die."  After  six  o'clock  in  the 
evening  of  the  18th  it  is  certain  that  he 
suffered  no  pain  whatever.  He  died  in  a 
strange  land  and  amongst  strangers,  but 
more  loved — more  wept — he  could  not 


736 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


have  been.  .  .  .  Those  who  are  ac- 
quainted only  with  his  writings  will  lament 
the  loss  of  so  great  a  genius :  but  I  knew 
his  heart.  If  to  have  sincere  companions  of 
your  sorrows  will  at  all  alleviate  them,  be 
assured  that  the  grief  of  no  one  can  be 
more  deeply,  more  truly  felt  than  that  of 
— Gamba,  Count  Pietro,  1824,  To  the 
Hon.  Augusta  Leigh,  Aug.  17. 

I  never  met  with  any  man  who  shines  so 
much  in  conversation.  He  shines  the 
more,  perhaps,  for  not  seeking  to  shine. 
His  ideas  flow  without  effort,  without  his 
having  occasion  to  think.  As  in  his  let- 
ters, he  is  not  nice  about  expressions  or 
words ; — there  are  no  concealments  in  him 
no  injunctions  to  secresy.  He  tells  every- 
thing that  he  has  thought  or  done  with- 
out the  least  reserve,  and  as  if  he  wished 
the  whole  world  to  know  it ;  and  does  not 
throw  the  slightest  gloss  over  his  errors. 
.  .  .  He  hates  argument,  and  never 
argues  for  victory.  He  gives  every  one 
an  opportunity  of  sharing  in  the  conver- 
sation, and  has  the  art  of  turning  it  to 
subjects  that  may  bring  out  the  person 
with  whom  he  converses.  —  Medwin, 
Thomas,  1824,  Conversations  of  Lord  Byron 
Noted  During  a  Residence  with  his  Lord- 
ship at  Pisa  in  the  Years  1821  and  1822, 
p.  334. 

I  have  just  finished  Lord  Byron's* 'Con- 
versations." .  .  .  Fifty  years  hence 
our  descendants  will  see  which  is  remem- 
bered best,  the  author  of  the ' '  Excursion, '  * 
or  of  Childe  Harold."  But  he  seems  to  me 
to  have  wanted  the  power  of  admiration, 
the  organ  of  veneration ;  to  have  been  a 
cold,  sneering,  vain,  Voltairish  person, 
charitable  as  far  as  money  went,  and 
liberal  so  far  as  it  did  not  interfere  with 
his  aristocratic  notions ;  but  very  derisive, 
very  un-English,  very  scornful.  Captain 
Medwyn  speaks  of  his  suppressed  laugh. 
How  unpleasant  an  idea  that  gives !  The 
only  thing  that  does  him  much  credit  in 
the  whole  book  is  his  hearty  admiration  of 
Scott.  .  .  .  Well,  I  think  this  book 
will  have  one  good  effect,  it  will  disen- 
chant the  'whole  sex. — Mitford,  Mary 
Russell,  1824,  Letter  to  B.  R.  Hay  don, 
Nov.  2. 

It  would  be  to  little  purpose  to  dwell 
upon  the  mere  beauty  of  a  countenance  in 
which  the  expression  of  an  extraordinary 
mind  was  so  conspicuous.  What  serenity 
was  sealed  on  the  forehead,  adorned  with 


the  finest  chestnut  hair,  light,  curling,  and 
disposed  with  such  art,  that  the  art  was 
hidden  in  the  imitation  of  most  pleasing 
nature!  What  varied  expression  in  his 
eyes !  They  were  of  the  azure  colour  of 
the  heavens,  from  which  they  seemed  to 
derive  their  origin.  His  teeth,  in  form, 
in  colour,  in  transparency,  resembled 
pearls;  but  his  cheeks  were  too  delicately 
tinged  with  the  hue  of  the  pale  rose.  His 
neck,  which  he  was  in  the  habit  of  keep- 
ing uncovered  as  much  as  the  usages  of 
society  permitted,  seemed  to  have  been 
formed  in  a  mould,  and  was  very  white. 
His  hands  were  as  beautiful  as  if  they  had 
been  the  works  of  art.  His  figure  left 
nothing  to  be  desired,  particularly  by  those 
who  found  rather  a  grace  than  a  defect  in 
a  certain  light  and  gentle  undulation  of 
the  person  when  he  entered  a  room,  and 
of  which  you  hardly  felt  tempted  to  en- 
quire the  cause.  Indeed  it  was  scarcely 
perceptible, — the  clothes  he  wore  were  so 
long.  .  .  .  His  face  appeared  tran- 
quil like  the  ocean  on  a  fine  spring  morn- 
ing; but,  like  it,  in  an  instant  became 
changed  into  the  tempestuous  and  terrible, 
if  a  passion  (a  passion  did  I  say?),  a 
thought,  a  word,  occurred  to  disturb  his 
mind.  His  eyes  then  lost  all  their  sweet- 
ness, and  sparkled  so  that  it  became  diffi- 
cult to  look  on  them.  .  .  What  de- 
lighted him  greatly  one  day  annoyed  him 
the  next.  —  Albrizzi,  Countess,  1826, 
Character  of  Byron. 

It  appears,  therefore,  from  a  review  of 
Byron's  private  character,  that  it  was  a 
common  one,  being  mixed  with  many 
virtues  and  stained  with  some  fashionable 
vices.  We  meet  nothing  in  it  to  command 
our  veneration:  we  find  many  things  to 
pity  and  excuse,  from  the  peculiarity  of 
his  situation ;  but  we  are  not  entitled  to 
call  him  a  virtuous,  pious  man.  .  .  .  We 
find,  in  fact,  that  he  was  like  all  those 
nominal  Christians  who  areunregenerate : 
— he  knew  not  its  spirit.  His  conduct  was 
not  regulated  by  it,  and  he  differed  simply 
from  many  of  those  who  hold  in  the  world 
a  very  respectable  character,  in  his  having 
treated  it  with  seeming  ridicule  in  his 
writings,  while  they,  perhaps,  have  done 
the  same  in  conversation. — Kennedy,  Dr. 
James,  1827-30,  Conversations  on  Reli- 
gion with  Lord  Byron  and  Others,  held  in 
Cephalonia,  a  Short  Time  Previous  to  his 
Lordship^ s  Death,  pp.  340,  341. 


GEOBGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


737 


Lord  Byron's  ia^^  /as  handsome ;  emi- 
nently so  in  some  respects.  He  had  a 
mouth  and  chin  fit  for  Apollo ;  and  when 
I  first  knew  him,  there  were  both  lightness 
and  energy  all  over  his  aspect.  But  his 
countenance  did  not  improve  with  age,  and 
there  were  always  some  defects  in  it. 
The  jaw  was  too  big  for  the  upper  part. 
It  had  all  the  wilfulness  of  a  despot  in  it. 
The  animal  predominated  over  the  intel- 
lectual part  of  his  head,  inasmuch  as  the 
face  altogether  was  large  in  proportion  to 
the  skull.  The  eyes  also  were  set  too 
near  one  another;  and  the  nose,  though 
handsome  in  itself,  had  the  appearance 
when  you  saw  it  closely  in  front,  of  being 
grafted  on  the  face,  rather  than  growing 
properly  out  of  it.  His  person  was  very 
handsome,  though  terminating  in  lame^ 
ness,  and  tending  to  fat  and  effeminacy ; 
which  makes  me  remember  what  a  hostile 
fair  one  objected  to  him,  namely,  that  h§ 
had  little  beard.  .  .  .  His  lameness 
was  only  in  one  foot,  the  left ;  and  it  was 
so  little  visible  to  casual  notice,  that  as 
he  lounged  about  a  room  (which  he  did  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  screen  it)  it  was 
hardly  perceivable.  But  it  was  a  real  and 
even  a  sore  lameness.  Much  walking  upon 
it  fevered  and  hurt  it.  It  was  a  shrunken 
foot,  a  little  twisted.— Hunt,  Leigh, 
1828,  Lord  Byron  and  Some  of  his  Con- 
temporarieSy  vol.  I,  pp.  150,  151. 

With  the  faults  and  foibles  of  Byron, 
Greece  had  nothing  to  do;  she  knew 
nothing  of  them;  to  her  he  was  only* 'the 
great  and  noble."  .  .  .  Crossing  the  Gulf 
Salamis  one  day  in  a  boat,  with  a  rough 
mountain  Captain  and  his  men,  I  pulled  out 
a  volume  of  Byron's  works  and  was  read- 
ing; the  wind  blowing  open  the  leaves,  the 
Captain  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  portrait 
and  recognised  it.  He  begged  to  take  the 
book,  and  looking  for  a  moment,  with 
melancholy,  at  the  face  of  the  noble  lord, 
he  kissed  it  and  passed  it  to  his  men,  who 
did  the  same  saying,  **Eeton  megalos  kai 
kalos"  (''he  was  great  and  noble"). — 
Howe,  Samuel  G.,  1828,  Historical  Sketch 
of  the  Greek  Revolution,  p.  198,  and  note. 

Of  his  face  the  beauty  may  be  pro- 
nounced to  have  been  of  the  highest  order, 
as  combining  at  once  regularity  of  features 
with  the  most  varied  and  interesting  ex- 
pression. The  same  facility,  indeed,  of 
change  observable  in  the  movements  of  his 
mind  was  seen  also  in  the  free  play  of  his 

47  C 


features,  as  the  passing  thoughts  within 
darkened  or  shone  through  them.  His 
eyes,  though  of  a  light  grey,  were  capable 
of  all  extremes  of  expression,  from  the 
most  joyous  hilarity  to  the  deepest  sad- 
ness, from  the  very  sunshine  of  benevolence 
to  the  most  concentrated  scorn  or  rage. 
.  .  .  But  it  was  in  the  mouth  and  chin 
that  the  great  beauty  as  well  as  expres- 
sion of  his  fine  countenance  lay.  .  .  . 
His  head  was  remarkably  small,— so  much 
so  as  to  be  rather  out  of  proportion  with 
his  face.  The  forehead,  though  a  little 
too  narrow,  was  high,  and  appeared  more 
so  from  his  having  his  hair  (to  preserve  it, 
as  he  said),  shaved  over  the  temples; 
while  the  glossy,  dark-brown  curls, 
clustering  over  his  head,  gave  the  finish 
to  its  beauty.  When  to  this  is  added, 
that  his  nose,  though  handsomely,  was 
rather  thickly  shaped,  that  his  teeth  were 
white  and  regular,  and  his  complexion 
colourless,  as  good  an  idea  perhaps  as  it 
is  in  the  power  of  mere  words  to  convey 
may  be  conceived  of  his  features.  In 
height  he  was,  as  he  himself  has  informed 
us,  five  feet  eight  inches  and  a  half,  and 
to  the  length  of  his  limbs  he  attributed 
his  being  such  a  good  swimmer.  His 
hands  were  very  white,  and — according  to 
his  own  notion  of  the  size  of  hands  as 
indicating  birth— aristocratically  small. 
The  lameness  of  his  right  foot,  though  an 
obstacle  to  grace,  but  little  impeded  the 
activity  of  his  movements ;  and  from  this 
circumstance,  as  well  as  from  the  skill 
with  which  the  foot  was  disguised  by  means 
of  long  trowsers,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
conceive  a  defect  of  this  kind  less  obtrud- 
ing itself  as  a  deformity ;  while  the  diffi- 
dence which  a  constant  consciousness  of 
the  infirmity  gave  to  his  first  approach 
and  address  made,  in  him,  even  lameness 
a  source  of  interest. — Moore,  Thomas, 
1830-31,  Life  of  Lord  Byron,  vol.  n,  pp. 
534,  535. 

The  young  peer  had  great  intellectual 
powers ;  yet  there  was  an  unsound  part  in 
his  mind.  He  had  naturally  a  generous 
and  tender  heart ;  but  his  temper  was  way- 
ward and  irritable.  He  had  a  head  which 
statuaries  loved  to  copy,  and  a  foot  the 
deformity  of  which  the  beggars  in  the 
streets  mimicked.  Distinguished  at  once 
by  the  strength  and  by  the  weakness  of  his 
intellect,  affectionate  yet  perverse,  a  poor 
lord  and  a  handsome  cripple,  he  required 


738 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


if  ever  man  required,  the  firmest  and  the 
most  judicious  training.  But,  capriciously 
as  nature  had  dealt  with  him,  the  relative 
to  whom  the  office  of  forming  his  character 
was  intrusted  was  more  capricious  still. 
She  passed  from  paroxysms  of  rage  to 
paroxysms  of  fondness.  At  one  time  she 
stifled  him  with  her  caresses,  at  another 
time  she  insulted  his  deformity.  He  came 
into  the  world,  and  the  world  treated  him 
as  his  mother  treated  him — sometimes  with 
kindness,  sometimes  with  severity,  never 
with  justice.  It  indulged  him  without 
discrimination,  and  punished  him  without 
discrimination.  He  was  truly  a  spoiled 
child ;  not  merely  the  spoiled  child  of  his 
parents,  but  the  spoiled  child  of  nature, 
the  spoiled  child  of  fortune,  the  spoiled 
child  of  fame,  the  spoiled  child  of  society. 
— Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1830, 
Moore's  Life  of  Lord  Byron,  Critical  and 
Miscellaneous  Essays. 

Perhaps  the  beauty  of  his  physiogonomy 
has  been  more  highly  spoken  of  than  it 
really  merited.  Its  chief  grace  consisted, 
when  he  was  in  a  gay  humour,  of  a  liveliness 
which  gave  a  joyous  meaning  to  every 
articulation  of  the  muscles  and  features ; 
when  he  was  less  agreeably  disposed,  the 
expression  was  morose  to  a  very  repulsive 
degree.— Galt,  John,  1830,  The  Life  of 
Byron,  ch.  xlix. 

No  petit  maitre  could  pay  more  sedulous 
attention  than  he  did  to  external  appear- 
ance, or  consult  with  more  complacency 
the  looking  glass.  Even  when  en  neglige 
he  studied  the  nature  of  the  postures  he 
assumed  as  attentively  as  if  he  had  been 
sitting  for  his  picture,  and  so  much  value 
did  he  attach  to  the  whiteness  of  his 
hands,  that,  in  order  not  to  suffer  ''the 
winds  of  heaven  to  visit  them  too 
roughly,"  he  constantly,  and  even  within 
doors,  wore  gloves.— Millingen;  Julius, 
1831,  Memoirs  of  Affairs  of  Greece. 

Mrs.  Arkwright  is  here.  I  know  few 
people  as  agreeable  as  she  is,  so  fresh  and 
original.  She  told  me  a  great  deal  of  Mr. 
Hodgson,  Lord  Byron's  friend,  and  now  the 
clergyman  at  Bakewell,  and  who,  she 
says,  is  the  most  delightful  man  in  the 
world.  He  was  warmly  attached  to  Lord 
Byron,  and  had  lived  with  him  in  the 
closest  intimacy  for  twenty-six  years.  He 
had  no  doubt  that  Lord  Byron  was  insane ; 
when  Lady  l>yron  left  Lord  Byron  he  sent 
for  Mr.  Hodgson,  who  found  him  perfectly 


mad. — Greville,  Henry,  1832.  Leaves 
from  his  Diary,  p.  5. 

It  now  remains  to  show  how  far  the 
character  of  Byron  was  influenced  by 
disease,  and  what  the  nature  of  that  disease 
was.  ...  In  one  place  we  read  of 
his  being  subject  to  an  hysterical  affection, 
in  another  of  his  being  carried  out  of  a 
theatre  in  a  convulsive  swoon ;  elsewhere, 
of  an  apoplectic  tendency,  attended  with 
temporary;  deprivation  of  sense  and  motion ; 
at  another  time,  of  nervous  twitches  of  the 
features,  and  the  limbs  following  any 
emotion  of  anger,  and  from  trivial  excite- 
ment, and  slight  indisposition,  of  temporary 
aberrations  of  intellect,  and  delirium ;  but 
no  where  do  we  find  the  cause  of  these 
phenomena  plainly  and  intelligibly  pointed 
out,  nor  the  real  name  given  to  his  dis- 
order, till  his  last  and  fatal  attack.  The 
simple  fact  is,  he  laboured  under  an  epi- 
leptic diathesis,  and  on  several  occasions 
of  mental  emotion,  even  in  his  early  years, 
he  had  slight  attacks  of  this  disease. — 
Madden,  R.  R.,  1833,  Infirmities  of  Gen- 
ius, vol.  II,  pp.  128,  129. 

Byron  had  the  strangest  and  most  per- 
verse of  all  vanities — the  desire  to  surprise 
the  world  by  showing,  that,  after  all  his 
sublime  and  spiritual  flights,  he  could,  on 
nearer  inspection,  be  the  lowest,  the 
coarsest,  the  most  familiar,  and  the  most 
sensual  of  the  low :  and  this,  it  is  said,  he 
exhibited  in  the  MS.  autobiography  which 
was  burnt.  This  is  a  most  incomprehen- 
sible fact,— even  more  incomprehensible 
than  some  of  the  mad  Confessions  of 
Rousseau.  Byron's,  perhaps,  arose  from 
the  vanity  of  wishing  to  be  considered  a 
man  of  the  world,  and  a  man  of  fashion 
— a  very  mean  and  contemptible  wish. 
I  scorn  hypocrisy ;  but  who  in  a  sane 
mind  would  blacken  his  own  character 
with  disgraceful  vice  beyond  the  truth? 
— Brydges,  Sir  Samuel  Egerton,  1834, 
Autobiography,  vol.  ii,  p.  229. 

England  will  one  day  feel  how  ill  it  is — 
not  for  Byron  but  for  herself — that  the 
foreigner  who  lands  upon  her  shores 
should  search  in  vain  in  that  Temple  which 
should  be  her  national  Pantheon,  for  the 
Poet  beloved  and  admired  by  all  the 
nations  of  Europe,  and  for  whose  death 
Greece  and  Italy  wept  as  if  it  had  been 
that  of  the  noblest  of  their  own  sons. — 
Mazzini,  Joseph,  1839,  Byron  and  Goethe, 
Essays,  ed.  Clarke,  p.  108. 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


739 


Lord  Byro  failings — many  failings 
certainly,  bu  ^vas  untainted  with  any 
of  the  baser  vices ;  and  his  virtues,  his 
good  qualities,  were  all  of  the  higher 
order.  He  was  honourable  and  open  in 
all  his  dealings — he  was  generous,  and  he 
was  kind.  He  was  affected  by  the  dis- 
tress, and  rarer  still  he  was  pleased 
with  the  prosperity  of  others.  Tender- 
hearted he  was  to  a  degree  not  usual  with 
our  sex— and  he  shrunk,  with  feminine 
sensibility,  from  the  sight  of  cruelty. 
.  .  .  There  was,  indeed,  something 
about  him,  not  to  be  definitely  described, 
but  almost  universally  felt,  which  capti- 
vated those  around  him,  and  impressed 
them,  in  spite  of  occasional  distrusts,  with 
an  attachment  not  only  friendly  but  fixed. 
Part  of  this  fascination  may,  doubtless, 
be  ascribed  to  the  entire  self-abandonment, 
the  incautious,  it  may  be  said  the  danger- 
ous, sincerity  of  his  private  conversation ; 
but  his  very  weaknesses  were  amiable; 
and,  as  has  been  said  of  a  portion  of  his 
virtues,  were  of  a  feminine  character — so 
that  the  affection  felt  for  him  was  as  that 
for  a  favourite  and  sometimes  froward 
sister.  —  Broughton,  Lord,  1844-55, 
Travels  in  Albania,  Appendix. 

Byron  may  almost  be  said  to  have  had  no 
character  at  all.  Every  attempt  to  bring 
his  virtues  or  his  vices  within  the  bound- 
aries of  a  theory,  or  to  represent  his  con- 
duct as  guided  by  any  predominant  princi- 
ple of  good  or  evil,  has  been  accompanied 
by  blunders  and  perversions.  His  nature 
had  no  simplicity.  He  seems  an  embodied 
antithesis, — a  mass  of  contradictions, — a 
collection  of  opposite  frailties  and  powers. 
Such  was  the  versatility  of  his  mind  and 
morals,  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  discern 
the  connection  between  the  giddy  goodness 
and  the  brilliant  wickedness  which  he 
delighted  to  exhibit.  His  habit  of  mysti- 
fication, of  darkly  hinting  remorse  for 
sins  he  never  committed,  of  avowing  virtues 
he  never  practised,  increases  the  difficulty. 
— Whiffle,  Edwin  P.,  1845,  Byron,  Es- 
says and  Reviews. 

He  died  among  strangers,  in  a  foreign 
land,  without  a  kindred  hand  to  close  his 
eyes ;  yet  he  did  not  die  unwept.  With 
all  his  faults  and  errors,  and  passions  and 
caprices,  he  had  the  gift  of  attaching  his 
humble  dependents  warmly  to  him.  One 
of  them,  a  poor  Greek,  accompanied  his 
remains  to  England,  and  followed  them  to 


the  grave.  I  am  told,  that  during  the 
ceremony,  he  stood  holding  on  by  a  pew 
in  an  agony  of  grief,  and  when  all  was  over, 
seemed  as  if  he  would  have  gone  down  into 
the  tomb  with  the  body  of  his  master. — 
A  nature  that  could  inspire  such  attach- 
ments, must  have  been  generous  and 
beneficent.  .  .  .  His  love  for  Miss 
Chaworth,  to  use  Lord  Byron's  own  ex- 
pression, was  *Hhe  romance  of  the  most 
romantic  period  of  his  life,"  and  I  think 
we  can  trace  the  effect  of  it  throughout 
the  whole  course  of  his  writings,  coming 
up  every  now  and  then,  like  some  lurking 
theme  which  runs  through  a  complicated 
piece  of  music,  and  links  it  all  in  a  per- 
vading chain  of  melody. — Irving,  Wash- 
ington, 1849,  Newstead  Abbey,  The  Crayon 
Miscellany,  pp,  296,  316. 

Changeful !  how  little  do  you  kuow 

Of  Byron  when  you  call  him  so ! 

True  as  the  magnet  is  to  iron 

Byron  hath  ever  been  to  Byron. 

His  colour'd  prints,  in  gilded  frames, 

Whatever  the  designs  and  names, 

One  image  set  before  the  rest, 

In  shirt  with  falling  collar  drest, 

And  keeping  up  a  rolling  fire  at 

Patriot,  conspirator,  and  pirate. 
— Landor,  Walter  Savage,  1853,  Last 
Fruit  of  An  Old  Tree. 

In  external  appearance  Byron  realised 
that  ideal  standard  with  which  imagination 
adorns  genius.  He  was  in  the  prime  of 
life,  thirty-four;  of  middle  height,  five 
feet  eight  and  a  half  inches;  regular 
features,  without  a  stain  or  furrow  on  his 
pallid  skin,  his  shoulders  broad,  chest 
open,  body  and  limbs  finely  proportioned. 
His  small  highly-finished  head  and  curly 
hair  had  an  airy  and  graceful  appearance 
from  the  massiveness  and  length  of  his 
throat :  you  saw  his  genius  in  his  eyes  and 
lips.  In  short.  Nature  could  do  little 
more  than  she  had  done  for  him,  both  in 
outward  form  and  in  the  inward  spirit  she 
had  given  to  animate  it.  But  all  these 
rare  gifts  to  his  jaundiced  imagination 
only  served  to  make  his  one  personal 
defect  (lameness)  the  more  apparent,  as  a 
flaw  is  magnified  in  a  diamond  when 
polished ;  and  he  brooded  over  that  blemish 
as  sensitive  minds  will  brood  until  they 
magnify  a  wart  into  a  wen.  His  lameness 
certainly  helped  to  make  him  sceptical, 
cynical,  and  savage.  There  was  no  pecul- 
iarity in  his  dress,  it  was  adapted  to  the 
climate :  a  tartan  jacket  braided — he  said 


740 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


it  was  the  Gordon  pattern,  and  that  his 
mother  was  of  that  race.  A  blue  velvet 
cap  with  a  gold  band,  and  very  loose 
nankeen  trousers  strapped  down  so  as  to 
cover  his  feet ;  his  throat  was  not  bare,  as 
represented  in  drawings.  ...  He  would 
exist  on  biscuits  and  soda-water  for  days 
together.  —  Trelawny,  Edward  John, 
1858-78,  Records  of  Shelley,  Byron  and 
the  Author,  pp.  18,  51.  ' 

All  who  knew  Lord  Byron  personally, 
while  thoroughly  understanding  the  conse- 
quence of  a  fickleness  nurtured  by  an 
excessively  bad  training, — that  of  a  boy 
of  fortune,  with  an  impulsive  and  passion- 
ate nature,  brought  up  among  strangers, 
with  traditions  of  wild  life  in  his  family 
— remember,  also,  that  he  had  a  strong 
sympathy  with  all  that  was  beautiful  and 
generous,  strong  tendencies  of  natural 
affection,  and  unquestionably  a  desire  to 
do  right.  One  of  his  besetting  weak- 
nesses was  the  excessive  anxiety  for  ap- 
proval. This  betrayed  him  into  impulsive 
courses,  which  he  afterwards  found  a 
difficulty  in  sustaining,  and  his  extravagant 
disappointment  exhibited  itself  in  ways 
which  made  him  seem  far  more  uncertain 
and  changeful  than  he  really  was  at  heart. 
— Hunt,  Thornton,  1862,  ed.,  Correspond- 
ence of  Leigh  Hunt,  vol.  i,  p.  202. 

The  man  in  Byron  is  of  nature  even  less 
sincere  than  that  of  the  poet.  Under- 
neath this  Beltenebros  there  is  hidden  a 
coxcomb.  He  posed  all  through  his  life. 
He  had  every  affectation — the  writer's, 
the  roue's,  the  dandy's,  the  conspirator's. 
He  was  constantly  writing,  and  he  pretends 
to  despise  his  writings.  To  believe  him- 
self, he  was  proud  of  nothing  but  his  skill 
in  bodily  exercises.  An  Englishman,  he 
affects  Bonapartism ;  a  peer  of  the  realm, 
he  speaks  of  the  Universal  Republic  with 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  schoolboy  of  fifteen. 
He  plays  at  misanthropy,  at  disillusion: 
he  parades  his  vices ;  he  even  tries  to  make 
us  believe  that  he  has  committed  a  crime 
or  two.  Read  his  letters — his  letters 
written  nominally  to  friends,  but  handed 
about  from  hand  to  hand  in  London.  Read 
his  journal — a  journal  kept  ostensibly  for 
himself,  but  handed  over  afterwards  by 
him  to  Moore  with  authority  to  publish  it. 
The  littleness  which  these  things  show  is 
amazing.— ScHERER,  Edmond,  1863-91, 
Taine's  History  of  English  Literature,  Es- 
says on  English  Literature,  tr.  Saintsbury. 


What  helps  it  now,  that  Byron  bore, 
With  haughty  scorn  which  mock'd  the  smart 
Through  Europe  to  the  ^tolian  shore 
The  pageant  of  his  bleeding  heart  ? 
That  thousands  counted  every  groan. 
And  Europe  made  his  woe  her  own? 
—Arnold,  Matthew,  1867,  Stanzas  from 
the  Grande  Chartreuse. 

Occasionally,  indeed,  the  fervour  of  the 
poet  warmed  his  expression,  and  always 
the  fire  of  genius  kindled  his  eye ;  but  in 
general,  an  affection  of  fashion  pervaded 
his  manner,  and  the  insouciance  of  satiety 
spread  a  languor  over  his  conversation. 
He  was  destitute  of  that  simplicity  of 
thought  and  manner  which  is  the  attendant 
of  the  highest  intellect,  and  which  was  so 
conspicuous  in  Scott.  He  was  always 
aiming  at  effect :  and  the  effect  he  desired 
was  rather  that  of  fashion  than  of  genius ; 
he  sought  rather  to  astonish  than  impress. 
He  seemed  blase  with  every  enjoyment  of 
life,  affected  rather  the  successful  roue 
than  the  great  poet,  and  deprecated  beyond 
the  cant  of  morality.  The  impression  h^ 
wished  to  leave  on  the  mind  was  that  of  a 
man  who  had  tasted  to  the  dregs  of  all  the 
enjoyments  of  life,  and  above  all  of  high 
life,  and  thought  everything  else  mere 
balderdash  and  affectation. — Alison,  Sir 
Archibald,  1867-83,  Some  Account  of  my 
Life  and  Writings,  vol.  I,  p.  142. 

Personally,  I  know  nothing  but  good  of 
him.  Of  what  he  became  in  his  foreign 
banishment,  when  removed  from  all  his 
natural  ties  and  hereditary  duties,  I,  per- 
sonally, am  ignorant.  In  all  probability 
he  deteriorated ;  he  would  have  been  more 
than  human  if  he  had  not.  But  when  I 
was  in  the  habit  of  familiarly  seeing  him, 
he  was  kindness  itself.  .  "  .  .  Byron 
had  one  preeminent  fault — a  fault  which 
must  be  considered  as  deeply  criminal  by 
every  one  who  does  not,  as  I  do,  believe 
it  to  have  resulted  from  monomania.  He 
had  a  morbid  love  of  a  bad  reputation. 
There  was  hardly  an  offence  of  which  he 
would  not,  with  perfect  indifference, 
accuse  himself.  An  old  school-fellow,  who 
met  him  on  the  Continent,  told  me  that  he 
would  continually  write  paragraphs  against 
himself  in  the  foreign  journals,  and  delight 
in  their  republication  by  the  English  news- 
papers as  in  the  success  of  a  practical 
joke.  When  anybody  had  related  any- 
thing discreditable  of  Byron,  assuring  me 
that  it  must  be  true,  for  he  had  heard  it 
from  himself,  I  have  always  felt  that  he 


GWRGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


741 


could  not  have  spoken  with  authority,  and 
that,  in  all  probability,  the  tale  was  a  pure 
invention.  If  I  could  remember,  and  were 
willing  to  repeat,  the  various  misdoings 
which  I  have  from  time  to  time  heard  him 
attribute  to  himself,  I  could  fill  a  volume. 
But  1  never  believed  them.  I  very  soon 
became  aware  of  this  strange  idiosyncrasy. 
It  puzzled  me  to  account  for  it ;  but  there 
it  was— a  sort  of  diseased  and  distorted 
vanity.  — Harness,  William,  1869,  Life 
of  Harness  by  UEstrange^  ed.  Stoddard,  pp. 
189,  191. 

We  talked  of  Byron  and  Wordsworth. 
'*0f  course, said  Tennyson,  "Byron's 
merits  are  on  the  surface.  This  is  not  the 
case  with  Wordsworth.  You  must  love 
Wordsworth  ere  he  will  seem  worthy  of 
your  love.  As  a  boy  I  was  an  enormous 
admirer  of  Byron,  so  much  so  that  I  got  a 
surfeit  of  him,  and  now  I  cannot  read  him 
as  I  should  like  to  do.  I  was  fourteen 
when  I  heard  of  his  death.  It  seemed  an 
awful  calamity ;  I  remember  I  rushed  out 
of  doors,  sat  down  by  myself,  shouted 
aloud,  and  wrote  on  the  sandstone: 
*  Byron  is  dead!*'' — Tennyson,  Alfred 
Lord,  1869,  Some  Opinions  on  Poetry, 
Memoir  by  his  Son,  vol.  ii,  p.  69. 
O  master,  here  I  bow  before  a  shrine ; 

Before  the  lordliest  dust  that  ever  yet 
Moved  animate  in  human  form  divine. 

Lo !  dust  indeed  to  dust.    The  mould  is  set 

Above  thee,  and  the  ancient  walls  are  wet, 
And  drip  all  day  in  dark  and  silent  gloom ; 

As  if  the  cold  gray  stones  could  not  forget 
Thy  great  estate  shrunk  to  this  sombre  room, 
But  learn  to  weep  perpetual  tears  above  thy 
tomb. 

—Miller,  Joaquin,  1870-84,  At  Lord 
Byron's  Tomb,  Memorie  and  Rime,  p.  15. 

Byron  was  always  mean.  He  could  pre- 
tend affection  to  Shelley  in  Italy,  while  he 
was  secretly  joining  in  the  cry  against 
him  in  England.  He  betrayed  Leigh 
Hunt ;  he  betrayed  every  hand  that  ever 
touched  his.  The  only  good  thing  that 
can  be  said  of  him  is,  that  he  finally  came 
to  despise  himself;  and  he  probably 
entered  the  Greek  struggle,  where  he 
fell,  from  sheer  desperation  at  the  glimpse 
of  his  own  degradation.  As  for  this  new 
revelation  by  Mrs.  Stowe,  I  don't  see  that 
it  should  sink  Byron  another  degree  in  the 
opinion  of  any  one  were  it  proved  true ;  it 
would  suggest  the  plea  of  diseased  in- 
stincts, which  is  the  best  that  can  be 
offered  for  his  crimes ;  but  his  cowardice, 


his  affectation,  his  deliberate  meanness — ■ 
pah!— Conway,  M.  D.,  1870,  South- 
coast  Saunterings  in  England,  Harper's 
Magazine,  vol.  40,  p.  525. 

1  happened  to  be  in  London  when  Lord 
Byron's  fame  was  reaching  its  height, and 
saw  much  of  him  in  society.  .  .  . 
Though  he  was  far  from  being  a  great  or 
ambitious  talker,  his  presence  at  this  time 
made  the  fortune  of  any  dinner  or  draw- 
ing-room party  for  which  it  could  be  ob- 
tained ;  and  was  always  known  by  a  crowd 
gathered  round  him,  the  female  portion 
generally  predominating.  I  have  seen 
many  of  these  epidemic  impulses  of  fashion 
in  London  society,  but  none  more  marked 
than  this.  There  was  a  certain  haughti- 
ness or  seeming  indifference  in  his  manner 
of  receiving  the  homage  tendered  him, 
which  did  not  however  prevent  him  from 
resenting'its  withdrawal — an  inconsistency 
not  limited  to  the  case  of  Lord  Byron. 
Though  brought  into  frequent  intercourse 
by  our  common  travels  in  the  East,  my 
intimacy  with  him  went  little  beyond  this. 
He  was  not  a  man  with  whom  it  was  easy 
to  cultivate  friendship.  He  had  that 
double  or  conflicting  nature,  well  pictured 
by  Dante,  which  rendered  difficult  any 
close  or  continued  relations  with  him. — 
Holland,  Sir  Henry,  1871,  Recollections 
of  Past  Life,  p.  206. 

Insincerity  was  the  real  darkness  of 
Byron's  life ;  he  turned  to  the  unholy  love 
of  women  to  assuage  the  anguish  of  a 
spirit,  enraged,  both  with  itself  and  the 
world. — Smith,  George  Barnett,  1876, 
Dean  Swift,  The  International  Review,  vol. 
3,  p.  311. 

Had  he  survived  he  might  possibly  have 
become,  as  H.  E.  W.  surmises.  King  of 
Greece,  and  perhaps  not  altogether  a  bad 
one.  How  strange  a  vista  of  the  possi- 
bilities of  history  is  opened  by  such  a  sug- 
gestion !  Against  Byron's  vices  and  misera- 
ble affectations,  and  the  false  ring  of  his 
whole  character — which  was  so  ludicrously 
exemplified  by  his  writing  'Tare  thee 
well,  and  if  for  ever"  on  the  back  of  an 
unpaid  butcher's  bill — must  always  be  set 
the  honour  of  his  self-devotion  and  heroism 
in  the  Greek  war.  If  he  was  somewhat  of  a 
Sardanapalus,  it  was  a  Sardanapalus  who 
could  fight  for  a  noble  cause  not  his  own. 
Expressing  once  to  Mazzini  my  own  sense 
that  Byron  could  scarcely  take  rank  as  a 
poet,  compared  to  Shelley,  the  Italian 


742 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


patriot  replied:  *'Ah!  but  you  forgot 
that  Shelley  was  only  a  poet  in  words  and 
feeling ;  Byron  translated  his  poetry  into 
action, when  he  went  to  fight  for  Greece.'^ 
— CoBBE,  Frances  Power,  1882,  Letter  to 
the  Temple  Bar,  vol.  64,  p.  318. 

Vehement  in  all  things,  Byron  was 
especially  vehement  in  his  friendships ;  and 
despite  all  that  may  be  urged  to  the  con- 
trary, on  the  strength  of  cynical  flippancies 
uttered  to  astonish  his  hearers,  and  bitter 
words  spoken  or  written  under  the  spur 
of  sudden  resentments  or  the  torture  of 
exasperating  suspicions,  it  may  be  averred 
stoutly  that  in  choosing  his  friends  and 
dealing  with  them  he  was  altogether  con- 
trolled by  his  heart.  ...  In  the 
domain  of  the  affections  he  was,  from  boy- 
hood till  his  hair  whitened,  a  man  of  so 
acute  a  sensibility  that  it  may  well  be 
termed  morbid.  To  this  excessive  sensi- 
bility, and  the  various  kinds  of  emotional- 
ity that  necessarily  attended  it,  must  be 
attributed  the  quickness  with  which  his 
''passions"  succeeded  one  another.  .  .  . 
With  women  he  was  what  they  pleased  to 
make  or  take  him  for.  But  he  was  most 
pleased  with  them  when  they  treated  him 
as  nearly  as  possible  like  "a  favorite  and 
sometimes  froward  sister."  The  reader 
may  smile,  but  must  not  laugh ;  it  was  as 
"a  favorite  and  sometimes  froward  sister" 
that  he  was  thought  of  and  treated  by 
Hobhouse  and  other  men.  What  then 
more  natural  for  him  to  like  to  be  thought 
of  and  treated  by  women  in  the  same  way? 
— .Jeaffreson,  John  Cordy,  1883,  The 
Real  Lord  Byron,  pp.  4,  65,  172. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  char- 
acter of  Lord  Byron,  though  untainted  by 
the  baser  vices  attributed  to  it  during  the 
poet's  lifetime,  consisted  of  a  mass  of 
miserable  weaknesses  and  transparent 
affectations,  relieved  by  certain  amiable 
traits  and  some  generous  impulses.— 
Caine,  Hall,  1883,  Cobwebs  of  Criticism, 
p.  101. 

And  lived  he  here?  And  could  this  sweet 

green  isle 
Volcanic  stuff  to  his  hot  heart  afford, 
That  he  might  nurse  his  wrath,  and  vent  his 

bile 

On  gods  and  men,  this  proud,  mistempered 
lord? 

Alas!  poor  lord,  to  this  soft  leafy  nest, 
Where  only  pure  and  heavenly  thoughts 

should  dwell, 
He  brought,  and  bore  and  cherished  in  his 

breast, 


A  home-bred  devil,  and  a  native  hell. 
Unhappy  lord!  If  this  be  genius,  then 

Grant  me,  O  God,  a  muse  with  sober  sweep, 
That  I  may  eat  and  drink  with  common  men, 

Joy  with  their  joys,  and  with  their  weep- 
ing weep : 

Better  to  chirp  mild  loves  in  lowly  bower, 
Than  soar  through  stormy  skies,  with  hatred 
for  my  dower. 

— Blackie,  John  Stuart,  1886,  Lord 
Byron  and  the  Armenian  Convent,  Messis 
Vitae,  p.  164. 

"The  Balaam  of  Baron;"  "Bard of  Cor- 
sair "The  Comus  of  Poetry "Damsetas 
"Don  Jose;"  "Don  Juan ;"  "A  Literary 
Vassal ;"  "Lord  Glenarvon ;"  "The  Mock- 
ing Bird  of  our  Parnassian  Ornithology." 
— Frey,  Albert  R.,  1888,  Sobriquets  and 
Nicknames,  p.  395. 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Stevenson's  Attwater 
to  Captain  Davis,  "you  seem  to  me  to  be 
a  very  twopenny  pirate!"  And  to  me, 
Byron  with  all  his  pretensions  and  his 
fame  seems  a  very  twopenny  poet  and  a 
farthing  man.  .  .  .  His  letters  alone 
reveal  the  man ;  a  man  of  malignant  dis- 
honour and  declamatory  affectation,  and 
poetising  conceit;  a  man  who  could  not 
even  act  upon  Luther's  advice  and  "sin 
boldly, "  but  must  needs  advertise  his  silly 
obscenities.  Despicable,  that  is  the  word 
for  him ;  and  it  is  no  Philistine  Puritanism 
that  so  speaks.  The  vulgar  aristocrat, 
the  insolent  plebeian,  that  Byron  was,  looks 
ludicrous  by  the  side  of  his  great  contem- 
poraries. Wordsworth,  so  impassioned, 
awful,  and  august;  Shelley  and  Keats; 
Lamb,  the  well-beloved,  that  tragic  and 
smiling  patient;  miraculous  Coleridge; 
Landor,  with  his  gracious  courtesy  and 
Roman  wrath;  how  does  Byron  show  by 
these?  He  did  one  thing  well ;  he  rid  the 
world  of  a  cad — by  dying  as  a  soldier. 
There  was  a  strain  of  greatness  in  the 
man,  and  it  predominated  at  the  last. — 
Johnson,  Lionel,  1898,  Byron,  The 
Academy,  vol.  53,  p.  489. 

Byron  and  Napoleon  are  "in  the  air." 
The  cause  is  not  far  to  seek.  Ours  is  an 
age  of  co-operation  rather  than  of  ascend- 
ency ;  "the  individual  withers ;"  and  public 
interest  naturally  recurs  to  the  overwhelm- 
ing personalities  of  the  past.  Among 
these  there  is  none  more  original  than 
Byron.  As  a  meteoric  force  he  was  rev- 
olutionary; as  a  "human  document"  he 
is  at  once  perplexing  and  paramount.  To 
understand  him  aright  it  is  needful  to 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


743 


watch  the  development  of  his  weird  char- 
acter, to  get  close  up  to  him,  both  in  his 
works  and  his  letters — which  are  them- 
selves literature.  Such  a  study  has, until 
now,  been  rendered  extremely  difficult  by 
the  mass  of  disordered  material  and  the 
dearth  of  digested  information.  It  has, 
practically,  been  confined  to  a  few,  the 
chief  of  whom  was  Disareli  the  younger, 
eminently  qualified,  alike  by  his  poetic  en- 
dowment and  by  his  aristocratic  percep- 
tions. In  one  passage  of ''Vivian  Grey," 
throughout  "Venetia,"  is  a  real  interpre- 
tation of  Byron's  nature. — Sichel,  Wal- 
ter, 1898,  The  Two  Byrons,  The  Fort- 
nightly Review,  vol.  70,  p.  231. 

The  real  original  reason  of  the  outcry 
against  Byron  was  simply  that  the  women 
made  such  a  ridiculous  fuss  about  him  that 
the  men  grew  jealous,  and  were  not  satis- 
fied until  he  was  hounded  out  of  England. 
—Graham,  William,  1898,  Last  Links 
with  Byron,  Shelley  and  Keats,  Introduc- 
tion, p.  xii. 

The  more  I  read  in  his  letters  and  in 
the  accounts  of  those  who  knew  him  best, 
the  more  I  am  convinced  that  the  popular 
idea  of  Byron  as  a  man  whose  life  was 
bound  up  in  his  love  affairs,  whate\^r  their 
nature,  is  the  very  reverse  of  the  truth : 
that,  on  the  contrary,  his  heart  was  very 
little  concerned  in  them,  and  that  his 
strongest  emotions  were  his  friendships 
with  men  whom  he  respected,  whom  he 
took  for  his  intellectual  peers.  He  seems 
to  me  to  have  longed  to  be  understood,  and 
liked,  and  affectionately  regarded  by  his 
men  friends  with  far  more  real  feeling  of 
the  heart  than  is  shown  in  any  one  of  his 
affairs  with  women.  He  took  women 
lightly,  just  a  trifle  in  the  Mohammedan 
way,  and  did  not  really  care  deeply  about 
them  in  any  other. — Street,  G.  S.,  1901, 
Byron,  1816-1824,  Blackwood's  Magazine, 
vol  170,  p.  764. 

LADY  BYRON 
She  is  a  very  superior  woman,  and  very 
little  spoiled;  which  is  strange  in  an 
heiress,  a  girl  of  twenty,  a  peeress  that 
is  to  to  be  in  her  own  right,  an  only  child, 
and  a  savante,  who  has  always  had  her 
own  way.  She  is  a  poetess,  a  mathe- 
matician, a  metaphysician;  yet,  withal, 
very  kind,  generous,  and  gentle,  with  very 
little  pretension.  Any  other  head  would 
be  turned  with  half  her  acquisitions  and  a 


tenth  of  her  advantages. — Byron,  Lord, 
1815,  Journal. 
Fare  thee  well !  and  if  for  ever 

Still  for  ever,  fare  thee  well  ; 
Even  though  unforgiving,  never 
'Gainst  thee  shall  my  heart  rebel. 


Though  my  many  faults  defaced  me, 

Could  no  other  arm  be  found, 
Than  the  one  which  once  embraced  me, 
To  inflict  a  cureless  wound? 
—Byron,  Lord,  1816,  Fare  Thee  Well, 
March  17. 

Lord  and  Lady  Byron  are,  you  know, 
separated.  He  said  to  Rogers  that  Lady 
Byron  had  parted  with  him,  apparently  in 
good  friendship,  on  a  visit  to  her  father, 
and  that  he  had  no  idea  of  their  being 
about  to  part,  when  he  received  her  decis- 
ion to  that  effect.  He  stated  that  his  own 
temper,  naturally  bad,  had  been  rendered 
more  irritable  by  the  derangement  of  his 
fortune,  and  that  Lady  Byron  was  entirely 
blameless.  The  truth  is,  he  is  a  very  un- 
principled fellow.— Smith,  Sydney,  1816, 
To  Francis  Jeffrey,  A  Memoir  of  Sydney 
Smith  by  Lady  Holland. 

Of  Lady  Byron, — highly  informed  and 
accomplished,  richly  endowed  by  both 
nature  and  fortune,  yet  dwelling  meekly 
in  the  shade  of  retirement, — 
"As  mild  and  patient  as  the  female  dove, 
When  first  her  golden  couplets  are  disclos'd ; ' ' 

bearing  with  patience  her  own  hard  lot, 
and  the  published  sarcasm  of  her  malig- 
nant lord,  devoting  herself  to  her  superior 
duties,  a  blessing  to  all  around  by  her  pious 
example,  and  liberal  charity, — of  her  I 
have  neither  time  nor  room  to  speak  as 
she  deserves.  Her  injuries  from  him  she 
never  did  nor  will  disclose.  It  should  be 
observed  that  the  most  cordial  intimacy 
has  always  subsisted  between  her  and  Mrs. 
Leigh,  the  half-sister  of  Lord  Byron. — 
Grant,  Anne,  1827,  Letters,  Jan.  16; 
Memoir  and  Correspondence,  ed.  Grant, 
vol  III,  p.  86. 

Lord  Byron's  was  a  marriage  of  con- 
venience,— certainly  at  least  on  his  own 
part.  ...  He  married  for  money, 
but  of  course  he  wooed  with  his  genius ; 
and  the  lady  persuaded  herself  that  she 
liked  him,  partly  because  he  had  a  genius, 
and  partly  because  it  is  natural  to  love 
those  who  take  pains  to  please  us. 
Furthermore,  the  poet  was  piqued  to  ob- 
tain his  mistress,  because  she  had  a 


744 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


reputation  for  being  delicate  in  such  mat- 
ters ;  and  the  lady  was  piqued  to  become 
his  wife,  not  because  she  did  not  know  the 
gentleman  previously  to  marriage,  but 
because  she  did,  and  hoped  that  her  love 
and  her  sincerity,  and  her  cleverness, 
would  enable  her  to  reform  him.  The 
experiment  was  dangerous,  and  did  not 
succeed.  ...  The  ''Farewell"  that 
he  wrote,  and  that  set  so  many  tender- 
hearted white  handkerchiefs  in  motion, 
only  resulted  from  his  poetical  power  of 
assuming  an  imaginary  position,  and  tak- 
ing pity  on  himself  in  the  shape  of  another 
man.  He  had  no  love  for  the  object  of  it, 
or  he  would  never  have  written  upon  her 
in  so  different  a  style  afterwards. — 
Hunt,  Leigh,  1828,  Lord  Byron  and 
Some  of  His  Contemporaries^  vol.  i,  pp. 
9,  11. 

True  Jedwood  justice  was  dealt  out  to 
him.  First  came  the  execution,  then  the 
investigation,  and  last  of  all,  or  rather 
not  at  all,  the  accusation. — Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1830,  Moore's  Life 
of  Lord  Byrony  Critical  and  Miscellaneous 
Essays. 

The  accounts  given  me  after  I  left  Lord 
Byron,  by  the  persons  in  constant  inter- 
course with  him,  added  to  those  doubts 
which  had  before  transiently  occurred  t(J 
my  mind  as  to  the  reality  of  the  alleged 
disease;  and  the  reports  of  his  medical 
attendant  were  far  from  establishing  the 
existence  of  anything  like  lunacy.  Under 
this  uncertainty,  I  deemed  it  right  to 
communicate  to  my  parents,  that,  if  I 
were  to  consider  Lord  Byron's  past  con- 
duct as  that  of  a  person  of  sound  mind, 
nothing  could  induce  me  to  return  to  him. 
It  therefore  appeared  expedient,  both  to 
them  and  myself,  to  consult  the  ablest 
advisers.  For  that  object,  and  also  to 
obtain  still  further  information  respecting 
the  appearances  which  seemed  to  indicate 
mental  derangement,  my  mother  deter- 
mined to  go  to  London.  She  was  em- 
powered by  me  to  take  legal  opinions  on  a 
written  statement  of  miie,  though  I  had 
then  reasons  for  reserving  a  part  of  the 
case  from  the  knowledge  even  of  my  father 
and  mother.  Being  convinced  by  the  re- 
sult of  these  inquiries,  and  by  the  tenor  of 
Lord  Byron's  proceedings,  that  the  notion 
of  insanity  was  an  illusion,  I  no  longer 
hesitated  to  authorize  such  measures  as 
were  necessary  in  order  to  secure  me  from 


being  ever  again  placed  in  his  power. 
Conformably  with  this  resolution,  my 
father  wrote  to  him  on  the  2d  of  February 
to  propose  an  amicable  separation.  Lord 
Byron  at  first  rejected  this  proposal ;  but 
when  it  was  distinctly  notified  to  him, 
that,  if  he  persisted  in  his  refusal,  re- 
course must  be  had  to  legal  measures,  he 
agreed  to  sign  a  deed  of  separation. — 
Byron,  Lady  A.  L  Noel,  1830,  Letter  to 
the  Public,  Feb.  19. 

She  brought  to  Lord  Byron  beauty, 
manners,  fortune,  meekness,  romantic 
affection,  and  every  thing  that  ought  to 
have  made  her  to  the  most  transcendent 
man  of  genius — had  he  been  what  he  should 
have  been — his  pride  and  his  idol.  I  speak 
not  of  Lady  Byron  in  the  commonplace 
manner  of  attesting  character;  I  appeal 
to  the  gifted  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Joanna 
Baillie,  to  Lady  Charlemont,  and  to  other 
ornaments  of  their  sex,  whether  I  am 
exaggerating  in  the  least  when  I  say,  that, 
in  their  whole  lives,  they  have  seen  few 
beings  so  intellectual  and  well-tempered 
as  Lady  Byron.  I  wish  to  be  as  ingenuous 
as  possible  in  speaking  of  her.  Her  man- 
ner, I  have  no  hesitation  to  say,  is  cool  at 
the  first  interview,  but  is  modestly,  and 
not  insolently,  cool :  she  contracted  it,  I 
believe,  from  being  exposed  by  her  beauty 
and  large  fortune,  in  youth,  to  numbers  of 
suitors,  whom  she  could  not  have  other- 
wise kept  at  a  distance.  But  this  manner 
could  have  had  no  influence  with  Lord 
Byron ;  for  it  vanishes  on  nearer  acquaint- 
ance, and  has  no  origin  in  coldness.  All 
her  friends  like  her  frankness  the  better 
for  being  preceded  by  this  reserve.  This 
manner,  however,  though  not  the  slightest 
apology  for  Lord  Byron,  has  been  inimical 
to  Lady  Byron  in  her  misfortunes. — Camp- 
bell, Thomas,  1830,  The  New  Monthly 
Magazine. 

Miss  Milbank  knew  that  he  was  reck- 
oned a  rake  and  a  roue;  and  although 
his  genius  wiped  off,  by  impassioaned  elo- 
quence in  love-letters  that  were  felt  to  be 
irresistible,  or  hid  the  worst  stain  of  that 
reproach,  still  Miss  Milbank  must  have 
believed  it  a  perilous  thing  to  be  the  wife 
of  Lord  Byron.  ...  But  still,  by 
joining  her  life  to  his  in  marriage,  she 
pledged  her  troth,  and  her  faith,  and  her 
love,  under  probabilities  of  severe,  dis- 
turbing, perhaps  fearful  trials  in  the 
future.    .    .    .    But  I  think  Lady  Byron 


GEORGE  GOl 

ought  not  to  have  printed  that  Narrati^ 
Death  abrogates  not  the  rights  of  a 
husband  to  his  wife's  silence,  when  speech 
is  fatal  ...  to  his  character  as  a 
man.  Has  she  not  flung  suspicion  over 
his  bones  interred,  that  they  are  the  bones 
of  a— monster  ?— Wilson,  John  (Chris- 
topher North),  1830,  Nodes  Ambro- 
siance,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol.  27,  pp. 
823,  824. 

Many  excellent  reasons  are  given  for 
his  being  a  bad  husband;  the  sum  of 
which  is,  that  he  was  a  very  bad  man.  I 
confess  I  was  rejoiced  then,  and  am  re- 
joiced now,  that  he  was  driven  out  of  Eng- 
land by  public  scorn;  because  his  vices 
were  not  in  his  passions,  but  in  his  princi- 
ples.—Webster,  Daniel,  1833,  Letter  to 
George  Ticknor,  April  8. 

I  have  said  enough  to  show  him  as  he 
was,  a  thoroughly  spoilt  man.  Lady  Byron 
was  equally  spoilt  in  an  opposite  direction 
— self-willed,  intolerant,  jealous,  and 
vindictive.  She  was  a  rigid  Puritan: 
they  are  a  brave  and  undaunted  sect  in 
self-reliance  on  their  superiority  over  all 
other  people,  and  fear  nothing.  Saints 
armed  in  righteousness  prefer  doing  battle 
with  great  sinners,  confident  of  their 
cause.  Lady  Byron,  with  the  pertinacity 
of  a  zealot,  plied  the  poet  with  holy  texts 
from  Scripture  and  moral  maxims  from 
pious  writers.  .  .  .  Any  one  could 
live  with  him  excepting  an  inflexible  and 
dogmatic  saint;  not  that  he  objected  to 
his  wife's  piety,  for  he  saw  no  harm  in 
that,  but  her  inflicting  it  on  him.  The 
lady's  theory  was  opposed  to  this:  her 
mission  was  to  reform  him  by  her  example 
and  teaching.  She  had  a  smattering  of 
science,  mathematics,  and  metaphysics — 
a  toy  pet  from  her  childhood,  idolized  by 
her  parents,  and  considered  as  a  phenom- 
enon by  her  country  neighbours. — Tre- 
LAWNY,  Edward  John,  1858-78,  Records 
of  Shelley,  Byron  and  the  Author,  pp. ^0,41. 

Never  was  a  young  creature  led  to  the 
altar  more  truly  as  a  sacrifice.  She  was 
rash,  no  doubt;  but  she  loved  him.  and 
who  was  not,  in  the  whole  business,  more 
rash  than  she?  At  the  altar  she  did  not 
know  that  she  was  a  sacrifice :  but  before 
sunset  of  that  winter  day  she  knew  it, 
if  a  judgment  may  be  formed  from  her 
face  and  attitude  of  despair  when  she 
alightjed  from  the  carriage  on  the  after- 
noon of  her  marriage-day.    It  was  not  the 


V  LORD  BYRON  745 

traces  of  tears  which  won  the  sympathy 
of  the  old  butler  who  stood  at  the  open 
door.  The  bridegroom  jumped  out  of  the 
carriage  and  walked  away.  The  bride 
alighted,  and  came  up  the  steps  alone, 
with  a  countenance  and  frame  agonized 
and  listless  with  evident  horror  and  de- 
spair. The  old  servant  longed  to  offer  his 
arm  to  the  young,  lonely  creature,  as  an 
assurance  of  sympathy  and  protection. 
From  this  shock  she  certainly  rallied,  and 
soon.  The  pecuniary  difiiculties  of  her 
new  home  were  exactly  what  a  devoted 
spirit  like  hers  was  fitted  to  encounter. 
Her  husband  bore  testimony,  after  the 
catastrophe,  that  a  brighter  being,  a  more 
sympathizing  and  agreeable  companion, 
never  blessed  any  man's  home.  When  he 
afterwards  called  her  cold  and  mathe- 
matical, and  over-pious,  and  so  forth,  it 
was  when  public  opinion  had  gone  against 
him,  and  when  he  had  discovered  that  her 
fidelity  and  mercy,  her  silence  and  magna- 
nimity, might  be  relied  on,  so  that  he  was 
at  full  liberty  to  make  his  part  good,  as 
far  as  she  was  concerned.  .  .  .  She 
loved  him  to  the  last  with  a  love  which  it 
was  not  in  his  own  power  to  destroy.  She 
gloried  in  his  fame;  and  she  would  not 
interfere  between  him  and  the  public  who 
adored  him,  any  more  than  she  would  ad- 
mit the  public  to  judge  between  him  and 
her.  As  we  have  said,  her  love  endured 
to  the  last. — Martineau,  Harriet,  1860- 
69,  Biographical  Sketches,  pp.  284,  287. 

She  has  been  called,  after  his  words, 
the  moral  Clytemnestra  of  her  husband. 
Such  a  surname  is  severe :  but  the  repug- 
nance we  feel  to  condemning  a  woman 
cannot  prevent  our  listening  to  the  voice 
of  justice,  which  tells  us  that  the  com- 
parison is  still  in  favor  of  the  guilty  one 
of  antiquity ;  for  she  driven  to  crime  by 
fierce  passion  overpowering  reason,  at 
least  only  deprived  her  husband  of  physical 
life,  and,  in  committing  the  deed,  exposed 
herself  to  all  its  consequences ;  while  Lady 
Byron  left  her  husband  at  the  very 
moment  that  she  saw  him  struggling  amid 
a  thousand  shoals  in  the  stormy  sea  of 
embarrassments  created  by  his  marriage, 
and  precisely  when  he  more  than  ever 
required  a  friendly,  tender,  and  indul- 
gent hand  to  save  him  from  the  tem- 
pests of  life.  Besides,  she  shut  herself 
up  in  silence  a  thousand  times  more  cruel 
than  Clytemnestra's  poniard:  that  only 


746 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


killed  the  body;  whereas  Lady  Byron^s 
silence  was  destined  to  kill  the  soul, — and 
such  a  soul! — leaving  the  door  open  to 
calumny,  and  making  it  to  be  supposed 
that  her  silence  was  magnanimity  destined 
to  cover  over  frightful  wrongs,  perhaps 
even  depravity.  In  vain  did  he,  feeling  his 
conscience  at  ease,  implore  some  inquiry 
and  examination.  She  refused,  and  the 
only  favor  she  granted  was  to  send  him, 
one  fine  day,  two  persons  to  see  whether 
he  were  not  mad.  — GuiccoLi,  Countess, 
1868-69,  My  Recollections  of  Lord  ByroUy 
tr.  Jerningham,  p.  540. 

Supposing  Mrs.  Stowe's  narrative  to 
have  been  really  a ''true  story,'*  and  that 
we  had  meant  to  reveal  the  whole  of  our 
grandmother's  history,  I  do  not  see  what 
defence  that  is  to  Mrs.  Stowe  against  the 
charge  of  repeating  what  was  told  her  in 
a  ''private,  confidential  conversation." 
But  it  is  not  true  that  Lady  Anne  Blunt 
and  I  ever  intended  to  publish  correspond- 
ence of  the  nature  mentioned.  About 
three  years  ago  a  manuscript  in  Lady  Noel 
Byron's  handwriting  was  found  among  her 
papers,  giving  an  account  of  some  circum- 
stances connected  with  her  marriage,  and 
apparently  intended  for  publication  after 
her  death ;  but  as  this  seemed  not  quite 
certain,  no  decision  as  to  its  publication 
was  come  to.  In  the  event  of  a  memoir 
being  written,  this  manuscript  might,  per- 
haps, be  included,  but  hitherto  it  has  not 
been  proposed  to  publish  any  other  matter 
about  her  separation.  This  statement  in 
Lady  Byron's  own  handwriting  does  not 
contain  any  accusation  of  so  grave  a  nature 
as  that  which  Mrs.  Stowe  asserts  was  told 
her,  and  Mrs.  Stowe 's  story  of  thesepara- 
stion  is  inconsistent  with  what  I  have  seen 
in  various  letters,  &c.,  of  Lady  Byron's. 
.  .  .  I,  for  one,  cannot  allow  that  Mrs. 
Stowe's  statement  is  substantially  correct. 
— Wentworth,  Lord,  1869,  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  Sept.  3. 

It  appears  by  Dr.  Lushington's  state- 
ments, that,  when  Lady  Byron  did  speak, 
she  had  a  story  to  tell  that  powerfully 
affected  both  him  and  Romilly, — a  story 
supported  by  evidence  on  which  they  were 
willing  to  have  gone  to  public  trial.  Sup- 
posing, now,  she  had  imitated  Lord  Byron's 
example,  and,  avoiding  public  trial,  had 
put  her  story  into  private  circulation ;  as 
he  sent  "Don  Juan"  to  fifty  confidential 
friends,  suppose  she  had  sent  a  written 


statement  of  her  story  to  fifty  judges  as 
intelligent  as  the  two  that  had  heard  it ; 
or  suppose  she  had  confronted  his  auto- 
biography with  her  own, — what  would 
have  been  the  result?  The  first  result 
would  have  been  Mrs.  Leigh's  utter  ruin. 
The  world  may  finally  forgive  the  man  of 
genius  anything ;  but  for  a  woman  there 
is  no  mercy  and  no  redemption.  This  ruin 
Lady  Byron  prevented  by  her  utter  silence 
and  great  self-command.  Mrs.  Leigh 
never  lost  position.  Lady  Byron  never  so 
varied  in  her  manner  toward  her  as  to  ex- 
cite the  suspicions  even  of  her  confidential 
old  servant.  To  protect  Mrs.  Leigh 
effectually,  it  must  have  been  necessary 
to  continue  to  exclude  even  her  own 
mother  from  the  secret,  as  we  are  assured 
she  did  at  first;  for,  had  she  told  Lady 
Milbanke,  it  is  not  possible  that  so  high- 
spirited  a  woman  could  have  restrained 
herself  from  such  outward  expressions  as 
would  at  least  have  awakened  suspicion. 
There  was  no  resource  but  this  absolute 
silence. — Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  1870, 
Lady  Byron  Vindicated,  p.  73. 

If  the  case  is  looked  at  calmly,  a  simple 
explanation  is  not  difficult  to  find.  A 
woman  who  could  ask  such  a  husband  in  a 
voice  of  provoking  sweetness  "when  he 
meant  to  give  up  his  bad  habit  of  making 
verses,"  a  woman  who  never  lost  her 
temper,  never  gave  up  her  point,  and  in- 
flicted the  most  malignant  stabs  in  the 
tenderest  places  with  angelic  coolness, 
possessed  the  power  of  goading  a  sensitive, 
impetuous  man  to  frenzy.  She  had  a 
maid,  for  example,  to  whom  Byron  enter- 
tained a  violent  aversion,  because  he  sus- 
pected her  of  poisoning  his  wife's  mind 
against  him.  Lady  Byron  listened  to  all 
his  furious  tirades  with  unruffled  meekness, 
but  never  consented  to  send  the  woman 
away.  She  was  quite  as  jealous  of  her 
dignity,  quite  as  resentful  of  slights,  real 
or  supposed,  as  himself;  and  in  their 
differences  of  opinion  she  had  the  inestima- 
ble advantage  of  a  temper  perfectly  under 
control,  and  a  command  of  all  the  sweet 
resignation  of  a  martyr,  combined  with 
the  most  skilful  ingenuity  of  provoking 
retort.  Byron,  with  his  liability  to  fits  of 
uncontrollable  passion,  could  never  have 
been  an  easy  man  to  live  with ;  but  if  his 
wife  had  been  a  loving,  warm-hearted 
woman,  with  the  unconscious  tact  that  such 
women  have,  the  result  would  probably 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


747 


have  been  •  different.— Minto,  Wil- 
liam, 1894,  Literature  of  the  Georgian 
Era,  ed.  Kn       p.  272. 

HOURS  OF  IDLENESS 
1807 

The  poesy  of  this  young  lord  belongs  to 
the  class  which  neither  gods  nor  men  are 
said  to  permit.  Indeed,  we  do  not  recol- 
lect to  have  seen  a  quantity  of  verse  with 
so  few  deviations  in  either  direction  from 
that  exact  standard.  His  effusions  are 
spread  over  a  dead  flat,  and  can  no  more 
get  above  or  below  the  level,  than  if  they 
were  so  much  stagnant  water.  As  an 
extenuation  of  this  offence,  the  noble 
author  is  peculiarly  forward  in  pleading 
minority.  We  have  it  in  the  title-page, 
and  on  the  very  back  of  the  volume ;  it 
follows  his  name  like  a  favourite  part  of 
his  style.  Much  stress  is  laid  upon  it  in 
the  preface,  and  the  poems  are  connected 
with  this  general  statement  of  his  case,  by 
particular  dates,  substantiating  the  age  at 
which  each  was  written.  Now,  the  law 
upon  the  point  of  minority  we  hold  to  be 
perfectly  clear.  It  is  a  plea  available  only 
to  the  defendant ;  no  plaintiff  can  offer  it 
as  a  supplementary  ground  of  action.  .  .  . 
Whatever  judgment  may  be  passed  on  the 
poems  of  this  noble  minor,  it  seems  we 
must  take  them  as  we  find  them,  and  be 
content;  for  they  are  the  last  we  shall 
ever  have  from  him^  •  •  •  What  right 
have  we  poor  devils  to  be  nice  ?  We  are 
well  off  to  have  got  so  much  from  a  man 
of  this  Lord's  station;  who  does  not  live 
in  a  garret,  but  ''has  the  sway"  of 
Newstead  Abbey.  Again,  we  say,  let  us 
be  thankful;  and,  with  honest  Sancho,  bid 
God  bless  the  giver,  nor  look  the  gift 
horse  in  the  mouth. — Brougham,  Henry 
Lord,  1808,  Lord  Byron^s  Poems,  Edin- 
burgh Review,  vol.  11,  pp.  285,  289. 

Yet  though  there  were  many,  and  those 
not  the  worst  judges,  who  discerned  in 
these  juvenile  productions,  a  depth  of 
thought  and  felicity  of  expression  which 
promised  much  at  a  more  mature  age,  the 
errors  did  not  escape  the  critical  lash; 
and  certain  brethren  of  ours  yielded  to  the 
opportunity  of  pouncing  upon  *  a  titled 
author,  and  to  that  which  most  readily 
besets  our  fraternity,  and  to  which  we 
dare  not  pronounce  ourselves  wholly  inac- 
cessible, the  temptation,  namely,  of  shew- 
ing our  own  wit,  and  entertaining  our 
readers  with  a  lively  article  without  much 


respect  to  the  feelings  of  the  author,  or 
even  to  the  indications  of  merit  which  the 
work  may  exhibit. — Scott,  Sir  Walter, 
1816,  Childe  Harold  Canto  iii,  and  other 
Poems,  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  16,  p.  174. 

The  ''Hours  of  Idleness"  were  poorish 
and  pretentious  verses,  certainly  with  less 
of  promise  in  them  than  the  first  produc- 
tions of  most  other  great  poets.  Yet 
they  had  some,  and  there  was  little  excuse 
for  the  smart  but  stupid  "Edinburgh  Re- 
view" article  upon  them.  However,  this 
had  the  good  effect  of  rousing  Byron  to 
put  forth  his  power.— Noel,  Roden,1896, 
The  Poets  and  the  Poetry  of  the  Century, 
Southey  to  Shelley,  ed.  Miles,  p.  375. 

ENGLISH  BARDS  AND  SCOTCH 
REVIEWERS 
1809 

As  to  the  Edinburgh  Reviewers,  it  would 
indeed  require  an  Hercules  to  crush  the 
Hydra;  but  if  the  author  succeeds  in 
merely  "bruising  one  of  the  heads  of  the 
serpent,"  though  his  own  hand  should  suffer 
in  the  encounter,  he  will  be  amply  satis- 
fied.— Byron,  Lord,  1809,  English  Bards 
and  Scotch  Reviewers,  Preface. 

If  I  could  envy  any  man  for  success- 
ful ill-nature,  I  should  envy  Lord  Byron 
for  his  skill  in  satirical  momenclature. — 
Smith,  Sydney,  1810,  To  Lady  Holland, 
June;  Memoir  by  Lady  Holland. 

It  is  very  abusive ;  but  with  few  excep- 
tions its  satire  is  as  weak  as  it  is  violent 
and  unjust.— Story,  William  Wetmore, 
1890,  Conversations  in  a  Studio,  vol.  i, 
p.  233. 

A  verse  pamphlet  clearly  inspired. — 
Rhys,  Ernest,  1897,  Literary  Pamphlets, 
vol.  I,  p.  32. 

Is  the  last  angry  reverberation  of  the 
literary  satire  of  Dryden  and  Pope.  It  is 
a  kind  of  inverted  "Dunciad ;"  and  novice 
falls  upon  the  masters  of  his  day,  as  the 
Augustan  master  upon  the  nonentities  of 
his,  and  emulates  Pope's  stiletto  with  a 
vigorous  bludgeon.  Only  those  who,  like 
Rogers  or  Campbell,  in  some  sort  also 
maintained  the  tradition  of  Pope,  came  off 
without  a  gibe.  But  the  invective,  though 
as  a  rule  puerile  as  criticism,  shows  ex- 
traordinary powers  of  malicious  state- 
ment, and  bristles  with  the  kind  of  epigram 
which  makes  satire  stick,  when  it  is  too 
wildly  aimed  to  wound. — Herford,  C.  H., 
1897,  The  Age  of  Wordsworth,  p.  222. 


748 


GEORGE  LORD  GORDON  BYRON 


CHILDE  HAROLD 

1812-16-18 

You  have  written  one  of  the  most 
delightful  poems  1  ever  read.  ...  I 
have  been  so  fascinated  with  "Childe 
Harold/'  that  I  have  not  been  able  to  lay 
it  down.  I  would  almost  pledge  my  life 
on  its  advancing  the  reputation  of  your 
poetical  powers,  and  of  its  gaining  you 
great  honour  and  regard,  if  you  will  do 
me  the  credit  and  favour  of  attending  to 
my  suggestions  respecting  some  altera- 
tions and  omissions  which  I  think  indis- 
pensable.— Dallas,  R.  C,  1811,  Letter 
to  ByroUf  July  16 ;  Recollections  of  Lord 
Byron,  pp.  74,  75. 

The  Third  Canto  of  *Thilde  Harold'' 
exhibits,  in  all  its  strength  and  in  all  its 
peculiarities,  the  wild,  powerful  and 
original  vein  of  poetry  which,  in  the  pre- 
ceding cantos,  first  fixed  the  public  atten- 
tion upon  the  author.  If  there  is  any 
difference,  the  former  seems  to  us  to  have 
been  rather  more  sedulously  corrected  and 
revised  for  the  publication,  and  the  present 
work  to  have  been  dashed  from  the 
author's  pen  with  less  regard  to  the  sub- 
ordinate points  of  expression  and  versifica- 
tion. Yet  such  is  the  deep  and  powerful 
strain  of  passion,  such  the  original  tone 
and  colouring  of  description,  that  the  want 
of  polish  in  some  of  its  minute  parts  rather 
adds  to  than  deprives  the  poem  of  its 
energy.  —  Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1816, 
Childe  Harold  Canto  iii,  and  other  Poems, 
Quarterly  Review,  vol.  16,  p.  189. 

The  effect  was,  accordingly,  electric; 
his  fame  had  not  to  wait  for  any  of  the 
ordinary  gradations,  but  seemed  to  spring 
up,  like  the  palace  of  a  fairy  tale,  in  a 
night.  As  he  himself  briefly  described  it 
in  his  memoranda,  ''I  awoke  one  morn- 
ing and  found  myself  famous." — Moore, 
Thomas,  1830,  Life  of  Lord  Byron,  vol.  i, 
p.  274. 

The  appearance  of  this  admirable  poem 
placed  the  author,  instantly  and  forever, 
at  the  head  of  all  the  poets  of  his  time. — 
Shaw,  Thomas  B.,  1847,  Outlines  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  p.  352. 

Byron,  who  desired  to  please  the  public, 
took  care  to  mix  a  good  deal  of  tall  talk 
in  the  most  popular  of  his  poems,  Childe 
Harold."— Pattison,  Mark,  1872-89, 
Pope  and  His  Editors,  Essays,  ed.  Nettle- 
ship,  vol.  II,  p.  355. 

**Childe  Harold,"  even  in  its  complete 


form,  is  no  finished  whole,  -lo  work  of  art 
in  the  higher  sense ;  the  requisite  repose 
and  depth  were  wanting  alike  for  the 
creation  and  for  the  enjoyment  of  such  a 
work.  It  is  a  string  of  pearls  of  opinions 
and  thoughts  on  questions  of  philosophy 
and  politics  in  a  brilliant  and  highly  poet- 
ical setting,  and  what  many  scarcely 
ventured  to  think,  they  found  there  set 
forth  in  bold  and  lofty  expression.  .The 
dissatisfaction,  so  energetically  uttered 
by  the  poet,  on  the  part  which  England 
played  in  the  affairs  of  the  world,  was  felt 
and  recognised  with  especial  earnestness 
by  a  great  part  of  the  nation. — Elze, 
Karl,  1870-72,  Lord  Byron,  p.  125. 

On  taking  up  a  fairly  good  version  of 
* 'Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage"  in  French 
or  Italian  prose,  a  reader  whose  eyes  and 
ears  are  not  hopelessly  sealed  against  all 
distinction  of  good  from  bad  in  rhythm  or 
in  style  will  infallibly  be  struck  by  the  vast 
improvement  which  the  text  has  undergone 
in  the  course  of  translation.  The  blunder- 
ing, fioundering,  lumbering  and  stumbling 
stanzas,  transmuted  into  prose  and  trans- 
figured into  grammar,  reveal  the  real  and 
latent  force  of  rhetorical  energy  that  is 
in  them :  the  gasping,  ranting,  wheezing, 
broken-winded  verse  has  been  transformed 
into  really  effective  and  fluent  oratory. 
A  ranter,  of  course,  it  is  whose  accents 
we  hear  in  alternate  moan  and  bellow  from 
the  trampled  platform  of  theatrical  mis- 
anthropy :  but  he  rants  no  longer  out  of 
tune :  and  we  are  able  to  discern  in  the 
thick  and  troubled  stream  of  his  natural 
eloquence  whatever  of  real  value  may  be 
swept  along  in  company  with  much  drift- 
ing rubbish.  It  is  impossible  to  express 
how  much ''Childe  Harold"  gains  by  being 
done  out  of  wretchedly  bad  metre  into 
decently  good  prose :  the  New  Testament 
did  not  gain  more  by  being  translated  out 
of  canine  Greek  into  divine  English. — 
Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  1886, 
Wordsworth  and  Byron,  Miscellanies, 
p.  75. 

But  no  English  poet  has  -o  l  .-he 
Spenserian  stanza  with  the  gi.- ■  i  t;<./or 
with  which  Byron  has  used  it  in  h  * '  Ch^"  !de 
Harold."  His  impetuous  spirit  I'-sa 
character  to  the  stanza  quite  dis  ' 'm 

its  peculiar  Spenserian  charact  3n 
the  stanzas  in  which  his  gentler  re 
pensive  moods  are  embodied,  bea  )r 
no  similarity  to  the  manner  of  Spenser. 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


749 


—Corson,  Hiram,  1892,  A  Primer  of 
English  Verse,  p.  125. 

Its  cantos,  here  and  there  splendidly 
ablaze  with  Nature— its  storms,  its 
shadows,  its  serenities ;  and  the  sentiment 
— now  morbid,  now  jubilant— is  always 
his  own,  though  it  beguiles  with  honeyed 
sounds,  or  stabs  like  a  knife. — Mitchell, 
Donald  G.,  1897,  English  Lands  Letters 
and  KingSy  The  Later  Georges  to  Victoria, 
p.  238. 

The  demerits  of ''Childe  Harold"  lie  on 
the  surface;  but  it  is  difficult  for  the 
modern  reader,  familiar  with  the  sight,  if 
not  the  texture,  of  "the  purple  patches," 
and  unattracted,  perhaps  demagnetized, 
by  a  personality  once  fascinating  and 
always  **pusissant,"  to  appreciate  the 
actual  worth  and  magnitude  of  the  poem. 
We  are  *'o'er  informed;"  and  as  with 
Nature,  so  with  Art,  the  eye  must  be 
couched,  and  the  film  of  association  re- 
moved, before  we  can  see  clearly.  But 
there  is  one  characteristic  feature  of 
"Childe  Harold"  which  association  and 
familiarity  have  been  powerless  to  veil  or 
confuse — originality  of  design.  "By  what 
accident,"  asks  the  Quarterly  Reviewer 
(George  Agar  Ellis),  "has  it  happened  that 
no  other  English  poet  before  Lord  Byron 
has  thought  fit  to  employ  his  talents  on 
a  subject  so  well  suited  to  their  display  ?' ' 
The  question  can  only  be  answered  by  the 
assertion  that  it  was  the  accident  of  genius 
which  inspired  the  poet  with  a  "new 
song."  "Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage" 
had  no  progenitors,  and,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  some  feeble  and  forgotten  imita- 
tions, it  has  had  no  descendants. — Cole- 
ridge, Ernest  Hartley,  1899,  ed.,  The 
Works  of  Lord  Byron,  Poetry,  vol.  ii,  p.  13. 

THE  GIAOUR 

1813 

I  suppose  you  have  read  Lord  Byron's 
"Giaour," — and  which  edition?  because 
there  are  five,  and  in  every  one  he  adds 
about  fifty  lines;  so  that  the  different 
editions  have  rather  the  sisterly  likeness 
which  Ovid  says  the  Nereids  had,  than  the 
identity  expected  by  the  purchasers  of  the 
same  work.  And  pray  do  you  say  Lord 
Byron,  or  Byron,  in  defiance  of  the  y  and 
our  old  friend  in  Sir  Charles  Grandison  ? 
And  do  you  pronounce  Giaour  hard  g  or 
soft  g  ?  And  do  you  understand  the  poem 
at  first  reading? — because  Lord  Byron  and 
the  Edinburgh  Reviewers  say  you  are  very 


stupid  if  you  don't;  and  yet  the  same 
Reviewers  have  thought  proper  to  prefix 
the  story  to  help  your  apprehension.  All 
these,  unimportant  as  you  may  think  them, 
are  matters  of  discussion  here. — Bar- 
bauld,  Anna  L^titia,  1813,  Works,  vol. 
II,  p.  96. 

Poured  forth  for  its  amusement  those 
Oriental  tales,  of  which  "The  Giaour" 
alone  retains  sufficient  vitality  or  perfume 
of  true  poetry  to  make  its  perusal  at  the 
present  day  desirable. — Symonds,  John 
Addington,  1880,  The  English  Poets,  ed. 
Ward,  vol.  iv,  p.  247. 

The  "Giaour"  is,  as  he  truly  called  it, 
' '  a  string  of  passages, ' '  not  a  work  moving 
by  a  deep  internal  law  of  development  to 
a  necessary  end ;  and  our  total  impression 
from  it  cannot  but  receive  from  this,  its 
inherent  defect,  a  certain  dimness  and 
indistinctness.  But  the  incidents  of  the 
journey  and  death  of  Hassan,  in  that  poem, 
are  conceived  and  presented  with  a  vivid- 
ness not  to  be  surpassed ;  and  our  impres- 
sion from  them  is  correspondingly  clear 
and  powerful. — Arnold,  Matthew,  1881, 
Poetry  of  Byron,  Preface. 

THE  CORSAIR 

1814 

To  me  Byron's  "Corsair"  appears  the 
best  of  all  his  works.  Rapidity  of  execu- 
tion is  no  sort  of  apology  for  doing  a  thing 
ill,  but  when  it  is  done  well,  the  wonder 
is  so  much  the  greater.  I  am  told  he 
wrote  this  poem  at  ten  sittings — certainly 
it  did  not  take  him  more  than  three  weeks. 
—Dudley,  Earl  of,  1818,  Letters. 

His  "Corsair"  is  marred  by  classic 
elegancies :  the  pirates'  song  at  the  begin- 
ning is  no  truer  than  a  chorus  at  the  Italian 
opera ;  his  scamps  propound  philos^hical 
antitheses  as  balanced  as  those  of  t^ope. 
A  hundred  times  ambition,  glory,  envy, 
despair,  and  the  other  abstract  person- 
ages, whose  images  in  the  time  of  the 
Empire  the  French  used  to  set  upon  their 
drawing-room  clocks,  break  in  amidst 
living  passions.  The  noblest  passages  are 
disfigured  by  pedantic  apostrophes,  and 
the  pretentious  poetic  diction  sets  up 
its  threadbare  frippery  and  conventional 
ornaments.  Far  worse,  he  studies  effect 
and  follows  the  fashion. — Taine,  H.  A., 
1871,  History  of  English  Literature,  tr. 
Van  Laun,  vol.  ii,  bk.  iv,  ch.  ii,  p.  284. 

Medora's  song  in  the  Corsair,  "Deep  in 


750 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


my  soul  that  tender  secret  dwells,  though 
not  flawless  as  a  lyric,  is  one  of  his  most 
beautiful  expressions  of  this  mournful 
sentiment  in  a  subdued  key. — Minto,  Wil- 
liam, 1876,  Encyclopoedia  Britannicaj  vol. 
IV,  p.  540. 

PRISONER  OF  CHILLON 

1816 

Next  day  beautiful  drive  to  Vevay,  as 
you  know.  After  visiting  Chillon,  where 
Lord  Byron's  name  and  coat  of  arms  are 
cut  upon  Bonnivar's  pillar,  I  read  the  poem 
again,  and  think  it  most  sublime  and 
pathetic.  How  can  that  man  have  per- 
verted so  much  feeling  as  was  originally 
given  to  him !— Edgeworth,  Maria,  1820, 
Letters,  vol.  ii,  p.  12. 

Perhaps  the  first  and  most  faultless  of 
his  poems. — Reed,  Henry,  1850-55,  Lec- 
tures on  English  Literature  from  Chaucer 
to  Tennyson,  p.  290. 

No  one  of  Byron's  poems  is  so  purely 
narrative,  or  has  such  a  unity  of  lofty  and 
tender  interest,  uninterrupted  by  a  single 
distracting  image.  But  this  very  perfec- 
tion makes  it  tame  and  cold  among  the 
heat  and  animation  of  the  rest :  it  is  the 
only  one  in  which  Byron  is  left  out. — 
Oliphant,  Margaret  0.  W.,  1882,  Liter- 
ary History  of  England,  X  VIII- XIX  Cen- 
tury, vol.  Ill,  p.  56. 

Detained  by  bad  weather  at  Ouchy,  he 
wrote  in  two  days  **The  Prisoner  of 
Chillon,"  with  its  glorious  introductory 
sonnet  to  Liberty.  This  tale  is  a  very  beau- 
tiful composition,  having  unity,  graphic 
description,  tenderness,  and  pathos.  — 
Noel,  Roden,  1890,  Life  of  Lord  Byron 
(Great  Writers),  p.  120. 

MANFRED 
1817 

There  are  great  faults,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, in  this  poem; — but  it  is  un- 
doubtedly a  work  of  genius  and  originality. 
Its  worse  fault,  perhaps,  is  that  it  fatigues 
and  overawes  us  by  the  uniformity  of  its 
terror  and  solemnity.  Another  is  the 
painful  and  offensive  nature  of  the  circum- 
stance on  which  its  distress  is  ultimately 
founded.— Jeffrey,  Francis  Lord,  1817- 
44,  Contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Review, 
vol.  II,  p.  386. 

His  [Goethe's]  'Taust"  I  never  read,  for 
I  don't  know  German ;  but  Matthew  Monk 
Lewis,  in  1816,  at  Coligny,  translated 
most  of  it  to  me  irivd  voce,  and  1  was  natur- 
ally much  struck  with  it ;  but  it  was  the 


*'Staubach"  and  the  ''Jungfrau,"  and 
something  else,  much  more  than  Faustus, 
that  made  me  write  ''Manfred." — Byron, 
Lord,  1820,  Letter  to  Mr.  Murray,  June  7. 

Last  week,  le  sentiment  de  malediction 
was  upon  me,  about  me,  within  me.  I  owe 
that  to  Lord  Byron;  I  read  through  his 
''Manfred,"  in  English,  twice.  Never, 
never  shall  I  be  so  upset  by  any  thing  I 
read  as  I  was  by  that.  It  has  fairly  made 
me  ill.  On  Sunday  I  went  out  to  see  the 
sun  set ;  it  was  as  threatening  as  the  fires 
of  hell.  I  went  into  the  church  where  the 
faithful  were  peacefully  chanting  the 
Hallelujah ;  1  leaned  against  a  pillar,  and 
gazed  at  them  with  envy  and  scorn.  I 
understood  why  Byron's  Incantation  ended 
thus : — 

"O'er  thy  heart  and  brain  together 
Hath  the  word  been  passed, — now  wither!  " 
In  the  evening  I  dined  with  Edmond ;  I  had 
to  talk  with  Mrs.  Morel  about  rooms  and 
wall-papers.  At  nine  o'clock  I  could 
stand  it  no  longer;  I  was  overcome  by 
bitter,  violent  despair;  my  eyes  were 
closed ;  my  head  tipped  back,  and  I  was 
consuming  my  own  heart.  To  the  gentle 
Lydia's  consolations  I  dropped  a  few  words 
of  grief  and  irony.  Adieu. — Ampere, 
J.  J.,  1820,  Letter,  May  20,  Correspondence. 

Byron's  tragedy,  "Manfred,"  was  to 
me  a  wonderful  phenomenon,  and  one  that 
closely  touched  me.  This  singular  intel- 
lectual poet  has  taken  my  Faustus  to  him- 
self, and  extracted  from  it  the  strangest 
nourishment  for  his  hypochondriac  humour. 
He  has  made  use  of  the  impelling  principles 
in  his  own  way,  for  his  own  purposes,  so 
that  no  one  of  them  remains  the  same ;  and 
it  is  particularly  on  this  account  that  I 
cannot  enough  admire  his  genius\  The 
whole  is  in  this  way  so  completely  formed 
anew  that  it  would  be  an  interesting 
task  for  the  critic  to  point  out,  not  only 
the  alterations  he  has  made,  but  their 
degree  of  resemblance  with,  or  dissimilar- 
ity to,  the  original ;  in  the  course  of  which 
I  cannot  deny  that  the  gloomy  heat  of  an 
unbounded  and  exuberant  despair  becomes 
at  last  oppressive  to  us.  Yet  is  the  dis- 
satisfaction we  feel  always  connected  with 
esteem  and  admiration.  We  find  thus  in 
this  tragedy  the  quintessence  of  the  most 
astonishing  talent  born  to  be  its  own  tor- 
mentor.—Goethe,  JOHA  J  V"  '^.FGANG, 
1820,  Review  of  Manfred,  .  • .  <7'  ner. 

Lord  Byron's  "Manfrt  n  parts 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


751 


intensely  poetical ;  yet  the  delicate  mind 
naturally  shrinks  from  the  spirit  which 
here  and  there  reveals  itself,  and  the  basis 
on  which  the  drama  is  built.  From  a 
perusal  of  it  we  should  infer,  according  to 
the  above  theory,  that  there  was  right  and 
fine  feeling  in  the  poet's  mind,  but  that 
the  central  and  consistent  character  was 
wanting.  From  the  history  of  his  life  we 
know  this  to  be  the  fact.— Newman, 
John  Henry,  1829-71,  Poetry  with  Ref- 
erence to  Aristotle's  Poetics ;  Essays  Crit- 
ical and  Historical,  vol.  I,  p.  22. 

Into  what  mediocrity  and  platitude  sinks 
the  'Taust"  of  Goethe,  compared  to 
'^Manfred!'— Taine,  H.  A.,  1871,  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun, 
vol.  II,  bk.  iv,  ch.  ii,  p.  295. 

Byron's  grandest  poem  is  ''Manfred." 
Henri  Taine  compares  it  with  "Faust," 
and  says  that  "Manfred"  is  the  poem  of 
individuality,  and  "Faust"  the  poem  of 
humanity.  I  should  call  "Manfred"  the 
poem  of  sentiment,  and  "Faust"  the  poem 
of  ideas;  "Manfred"  the  poem  of  nature, 
and  "Faust"  the  poem  of  history.  Both 
poems  represent  the  disenchantment  which 
is  produced  within  the  limits  of  human 
existence.  Faust  himself  is  weary  after 
having  thought,  and  Manfred  after  having 
lived.  The  one  dies,  as  becomes  a  German 
doctor,  after  having  studied  medicine, 
alchemy,  the  theological  sciences  and 
philosophy,  and  having  found  them  but 
ashes.  The  other  expires  after  having 
felt,  struggled,  and  loved  in  vain ;  after 
having  ascended  the  gigantic  ladder 
formed  by  the  Alps,  without  finding  any- 
thing more  than  the  piercing  wind  eter- 
nally moaning,  the  white  frost  falling,  the 
pines  amid  the  snow-flakes,  the  cold  desert 
of  crystal  fatal  to  life,  the  profound  abyss 
where  light  is  extinguished ;  beneath,  men 
are  like  insects ;  above,  the  eagles  fly  in 
endless  circles,  breaking  the  immensity 
and  the  silence  by  their  cries  of  hunger ; 
a  spectacle  which  reminds  him  of  another 
desolation,  the  moonlight  night  in  which 
he  trod  the  ground  of  the  Colosseum,  the 
ruins  overgrown  with  nettles,  and  heard 
nothing  but  owls,  whose  melancholy  cries 
were  an  elegy  over  the  ashes  of  the  martyrs 
and  gladiators  of  the  past.  .  .  .  Byron 
feels  the  evil  and  Goethe  thinks  it. — Cas- 
TELAR,  Emilio,  1873-75,  Life  of  Lord 
Byron  and  other  Sketches,  tr.  Arnold,  pp. 
169,  176. 


We  read  Jeffrey's  awe-stricken  ap- 
plause and  Wilson's  enthusiastic  apprecia- 
tion, and  find  that  even  such  an  authority 
as  Goethe  declares  Manfred's  mouthings  of 
mock  despair  to  be  an  improvement  on 
Hamlet's  soliloquy,  the  extraordinary 
mistake  takes  away  our  breath.  .  .  . 
The  subject  is  one  which  only  the  most 
exceptional  merit  in  the  poetry  could 
make  tolerable ;  and  the  poetry  is  not  ex- 
ceptional, but  below  the  highest  level  of 
Byron's  power.  To  compare  this  diablerie 
with  that  of  Goethe,  or  the  songs  of  the 
spirits  whom  Manfred  evokes,  with  the 
melody  of  Shelley's  responses  in  the  "Pro- 
metheus," is  to  put  him  at  an  extraor- 
dinary disadvantage.  —  Oliphant,  Mar- 
garet 0.  W.,  1882,  Literary  History  of  Eng- 
land,XVni-XIX  Century, vol.iii,  pp.60,6l. 

DON  JUAN 

1819-1824 

A  foul  blot  on  the  literature  of  his 
country,  an  act  of  high  treason  on  Eng- 
lish poetry.— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1820, 
Letter  to  Landor,  Feb.  20. 

I  do  most  cordially  agree  with  you  that 
I  deserve  quizzing  for  refusing  to  sell 
"Don  Juan,"  and  should  not  be  spared  in 
the  article.  The  only  apology  I  have  to 
offer  to  you  is  this,  that  it  proceeded 
partly  from  pique  and  partly  from  princi- 
ple. When  the  book  was  published  by 
Murray,  I  was  just  on  the  point  of  breaking 
with  him.  I  had  not  had  a  letter  from 
him  for  some  months.  He  sent  me  copies 
of  the  book  per  mail,  without  either  letter 
or  invoice,  so  that  when  I  received  them  I 
was  not  disposed  to  read  it  with  a  favour- 
able eye.  I  did  read  it,  and  I  declare- 
solemnly  to  you,  much  as  I  admire  the 
talent  and  genius  displayed  in  it,  I  never 
in  my  life  was  so  filled  .with  utter  disgust. 
It  was  not  the  grossne^sor  blackguardism 
which  struck  me,  but  it  was  the  vile,  heart- 
less, and  cold-blooded  way  in  which  this 
fiend  attempted  to  degrade  every  tender 
and  sacred  feeling  of  the  human  heart.  I 
felt  such  a  revolting  at  the  whole  book 
after  I  had  finished  it,  that  I  was  glad  of 
the  excuse  I  had,  from  Mr.  Murray  not 
writing  me,  for  refusing  to  sell  it.  I  was 
terribly  laughed  at  by  my  friends  here, 
and  I  daresay  you  will  laugh  as  much  still 
at  my  prudery  and  pique. — Blackwood, 
William,  1821,  Letter  to  Maginn ;  Wil- 
liam Blackwood  and  His  Sons,  by  Oliphant, 
vol.  I,  p.  380. 


752 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


How  lamentably  the  art  of  versification 
is  neglected  by  most  of  the  poets  of  the 
present  day ! — by  Lord  Byron,  as  it  strikes 
me,  in  particular,  among  those  of  eminence 
for  other  qualities.  IJpon  the  whole,  I 
think  the  part  of  "Don  Juan"  in  which 
Lambro's  return  to  his  home,  and  Lambro 
himself,  are  described,  is  the  best,  that  is, 
the  most  individual,  thing  in  all  I  know  of 
Lord  B's.  works.  The  festal  abandonment 
puts  one  in  mind  of  Nicholas  Poussin's 
pictures.— Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor, 
1824,  Tahle-Talk,  ed.  Ashe,  June  7,  p.  39. 

Lord  Byron  was  the  assassin  of  his  own 
fame,  and  seemed  to  glory  in  the  deliber- 
ate act  of  assassination.  .  .  .  Replete,  it 
is  true,  with  passages  -of  extraordinary 
splendour  and  power,  but  debased  with  a 
far  greater  proportion  of  what  was  vulgar, 
common-place,  and  indecent.  Latterly, 
indeed,  these  cantos  became  intolerably 
dull,  and  found  few  readers. — Dibdin, 
Thomas  Frognall,  1824,  The  Library 
Companioriy  p.  744,  note. 

The  most  prodigal  use  did  not  exhaust 
his  powers,  nay,  seemed  rather  to  increase 
their  vigour.  Neither  ''Childe  Harold,  " 
nor  any  of  the  most  beautiful  of  Byron's 
earlier  tales,  contain  more  exquisite  mor- 
sels of  poetry  than  are  to  be  found  scat- 
tered through  the  cantos  of  ''Don  Juan," 
amidst  verses  which  the  author  appears  to 
have  thrown  off  with  an  effort  as  spontane- 
ous as  that  of  a  tree  resigning  its  leaves 
to  the  wind. — Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1824, 
Death  of  Lord  Byron,  The  Edinburgh 
Weekly  Journal. 

I  passed  some  hours  over  *'Don  Juan," 
and  saw  no  reason  to  change  the  opinion 
which  I  formed  twenty-five  years  ago. 
The  first  two  cantos  are  Byron's  master- 
piece. The  next  two  may  pass  as  not 
below  his  average.  Then  begins  the  de- 
scent, and  at  last  he  sinks  to  the  level  of 
his  own  imitators  in  the  Magazines. — 
Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  1849, 
Journal,  Aug.  3 ;  Life  and  Letters,  ed. 
Trevelyan. 

No  father  would  put  *'Don  Juan"  into 
his  daughter's  hands ;  nor  would  he  con- 
sent that  his  son  should  read  it  until  his 
principles  were  fixed,  and  his  judgment 
clear  and  defined.  It  has  received  its 
worst  condemnation  by  being  reprinted 
and  sold  by  certain  booksellers  who  deal 
with  the  most  corrupting  literature,  and  by 
being  found  on  the  bookshelves  of  the  rake 


and  the  man  of  the  world.  And  yet — 
C  But  yet  the  pity  of  it,  lago!  Olago,  the 
pity  of  it,  lago!")— it  contains  noble 
poetry,  most  beautiful  passages,  and  the 
best  literary  work  that  its  author  in  his 
mature  power  was  capable  of. — Friswell, 
James  Hain,  1869,  Essays  on  English 
Writers,  p.  322. 

The  admirable  wit  both  of  his  letters, 
and  of  pieces  like  the  "Vision  of  Judg- 
ment" and  "Don  Juan,"  where  wit  reaches 
as  high  as  any  English  writer  has  ever 
^carried  it.— Morley,  John,  1870,  Byron, 
Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  14,  p.  656. 

The  poem,  as  will  be  remembered,  begins 
with  the  meanest  and  foulest  attack  on  his 
wife  that  ever  ribald  wrote,  and  put  it  in 
close  neighborhood  with  scenes  which  every 
pure  man  or  woman  must  feel  to  be  the 
beastly  utterances  of  a  man  who  had  lost 
all  sense  of  decency.  .  .  .  Society 
revolted,  however,  and  fought  stoutly 
against  the  nauseous  dose.  Even  his  sister 
wrote  to  him  that  she  heard  such  things 
said  of  it  that  she  never  would  read  it ;  and 
the  outcry  against  it  on  the  part  of  all 
women  of  his  acquaintance  was  such  that 
for  a  time  he  was  quite  overborne ;  and 
the  Countess  Guiccioli  finally  extorted  a 
promise  from  him  to  cease  writing  it. 
Nevertheless  there  came  a  time  when  Eng- 
land accepted  ''Don  Juan," — when  Wil- 
son, in  the  Noctes  Ambrosianse,  praised 
it  as  a  classic,  and  took  every  opportunity 
to  reprobate  Lady  Byron's  conduct. — 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  1870,  Lady 
Byron  Vindicated,  pp.  62,  64. 

And  then  he  wrote  his  masterpiece, 
"Don  Juan."  .  .  .  There  is  a  derange- 
ment of  heart  and  mind  in  the  style  of 
"Don  Juan,"  as  in  Swift.  When  a  man 
jests  amidst  his  tears,  it  is  because  he  has 
a  poisoned  imagination.  This  kind  of 
laughter  is  a  spasm,  and  you  see  in  one 
man  a  hardening  of  the  heart,  or  mad- 
ness; in  another,  excitement  or  disgust. 
Byron  was  exhausted,  at  least  the  poet 
was  exhausted  in  him.  The  last  cantos 
of  "Don  Juan"  drag:  the  gaiety  became 
forced,  the  escapades  became  digressions; 
the  reader  began  to  be  bored.  A  new  kind 
of  poetry,  which  he  had  attempted,  had 
given  way  in  his  hands :  in  the  drama  he 
only  attained  to  powerful  declamation,  his 
characters  had  no  life ;  when  he  forsook 
poetry,  poetry  forsook  him ;  he  went  to 
Greece  in  search  of  action,  and  only  found 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


753 


^ath.— Taine,  H.  a.,  1871,  History  of 
English  Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun^  vol.  ii, 
bk.  iv,  cL  ii,  pp.  301,  309. 

In  my  opinion  the  poem  of  ''Don  Juan" 
could  not  have  been  written  by  any  other 
author  of  the  present  century.  The  jests 
and  turns  which  have  been  stigmatized  as 
so  many  blots  and  sins  of  the  author,  are 
essentially  portions  of  the  poem,  of  its 
nature  and  character,  and  could  not  have 
been  omitted  or  destroyed,  except  by 
radically  damaging  the  poem  itself. — 
Procter,  Bryan  Waller,  1874,  Recollec- 
tions of  Men  of  Letters,  p.  135. 

The  Immortal,  the  unprecedented  and 
unrivalled  masterpiece. — Rossetti,  Wil- 
LL4M  Michael,  1878,  Lives  of  Famous 
Poets,  p.  301. 

A  sensitive  man,  and  yet  heroic,  strong 
in  spirit,  but  without  fixed  ideals  of  life, 
a  rebel  by  nature  who  yet  finds  no  greater 
soul  to  lead  him,  no  faithful  band  to  follow 
him  in  any  definite  effort  for  mankind, 
Byron  is  a  modern  likeness  of  him  that  in 
the  legend  afterwards  became  St.  Chris- 
topher. Only  Byron  seeks  the  strongest 
without  finding  him,  learns  to  despise  the 
devil,  and  never  meets  the  devil's  master. 
Worn  out  with  the  search,  the  poet  flings 
himself  down  in  the  woods  of  doubt  and 
dreams  ' '  Don  Juan. ' '  We  look  in  vain  for 
the  right  adjective  with  which  to  qualify 
this  poem:  it  is  so  full  of  strength,  so 
lavish  of  splendid  resources,  and  yet  in 
sum  so  disappointing.  It  has  no  true 
ending,  and  never  could  have  had  one.  It 
is  a  mountain  stream,  plunging  down 
dreadful  chasms,  singing  through  grand 
forests,  and  losing  itself  in  a  lifeless  gray 
alkali  desert.  Here  is  romantic  self- 
criticism  pushed  to  its  farthest  conse- 
quences. Here  is  the  self-confession  of 
an  heroic  soul  that  has  made  too  high  de- 
mands on  life,  and  that  has  found  in  its 
own  experience  and  in  the  world  nothing 
worthy  of  true  heroism.— Royce,  Josiah, 
1885,  Tke  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy, 
p.  119. 

He  could  exhibit  only  two  squeaking  and 
disjointed  puppets :  there  is,  as  far  as  I 
can  remember,  just  one  passage  in  the 
whole  range  of  his  writings  which  shows 
any  power  of  painting  any  phase  of  any 
kind  of  character  at  all :  and  this  is  no 
doubt  a  really  admirable  (if  not  wholly 
original)  instance  of  the  very  broadest 
comedy— the  harangue  addressed  by  Donna 

48C 


Julia  to  her  intruding  husband. — Swin- 
burne, Algernon  Charles,  1886,  Words- 
worth and  Byron,  Miscellanies,  p.  85. 

Some  of  Byron's  most  powerful  writing 
is  found  in  "Don  Juan;"  some  of  his 
tenderest ;  and  the  possible  flexibility  of  the 
English  language  is  often  fully  realized. 
But  when  he  wrote  this  poem,  his  better 
nature  was  more  or  less  eclipsed;  but 
wherever  it  asserts  itself,  we  feel  its  pres- 
ence in  the  moulding  of  the  verse,  as 
much  as  we  do  in  the  sentiments  expressed. 
— Corson,  Hiram,  1892,  A  Primer  of 
English  Verse,  p.  29. 

If  a  novel  in  verse  is  a  novel  all  the 
same,  where  is  better  reading  (given 
liberty  to  skip  when  you  like)  than  in  ' '  Don 
Juan?" — Hawkins,  Anthony  Hope,  1897, 
My  Favorite  Novelist  and  His  Best  Book, 
Munsey's  Magazine,  vol.  18,  p.  351. 

MARINO  FALIERO 

1820 

Marino  Faliero,"  has,  we  believe,  been 
pretty  generally  pronounced  a  failure  by 
the  public  voice,  and  we  see  no  reason  to 
call  for  a  revision  of  their  sentence.  It 
contains,  beyond  all  doubt,  many  passages 
of  commanding  eloquence  and  some  of 
genuine  poetry,  and  the  scenes,  more 
particularly,  in  which  Lord  Byron  has 
neglected  the  absurd  greed  of  his  pseudo- 
Hellenic  writers,  are  conceived  and  elabo- 
rated with  great  tragic  effect  and  dexter- 
ity. But  the  subject  is  decidedly  ill- 
chosen.  In  the  main  tissue  of  the  plot 
and  in  all  the  busiest  and  most  interesting 
parts  of  it,  it  is,  in  fact,  no  more  than 
another  "Venice  Preserved,"  in  which 
the  author  has  had  to  contend  (nor  has  he 
contended  successfully)  with  our  recollec- 
tions of  a  former  and  deservedly  popular 
play  on  the  same  subject. — Heber,  Regi- 
nald, 1822,  Lord  Byron's  Dramas,  Quar- 
terly Review,  vol.  27,  p.  487. 

Notwithstanding  his  predominant  per- 
sonality, has  sometimes  had  the  power  of 
renouncing  himself  altogether,  as  may  be 
seen  in  some  of  his  dramatic  pieces,  par- 
ticularly in  his  "Marino  Faliero. "  In  this 
piece  one  quite  forgets  that  Lord  Byron, 
or  even  an  Englishman,  wrote  it.  We  live 
entirely  in  Venice,  and  entirely  in  the  time  / 
in  which  the  action  takes  place. — Goethe, 
Johann  Wolfgang,  1830,  Conversations, ' 
ed.  Eckermann,  vol.  u,  p.  253. 

A  composition  that  abounds  in  noble 


754 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


passages  and  rests  on  a  fine  and  original 
conception  of  character. — Morley,  John, 
1870,  Byron,  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  14, 
p.  659. 

**Marino  Faliero,"  one  of  Byron's  less 
important  works,  may  be  cited  as  a  fair 
example  of  his  eloquence  and  concentrated 
passion.  The  theme  of  the  drama  is  per- 
fectly simple, — the  conflict  in  Marino's 
breast  between  aristocratic  pride  and  the 
love  of  liberty  (predominant  character- 
istics, be  it  observed,  of  the  poet  himself) ; 
and  about  this  conflict  the  whole  action  of 
the  play  revolves,  without  any  minor  issues 
to  dissipate  the  effect.  The  mind  is  held 
gripped  to  one  emotion  and  one  thought ; 
we  seem  to  hear  the  mighty  pleading  of 
a  Demosthenes.  There  is  no  poem  of 
Shelley's  (with  the  possible  exception  of 
**The  Cenci,"  where  he  resorts  to  mon- 
strous and  illegitimate  means)  which 
begins  to  leave  on  the  mind  so  distinct  and 
powerful  an  impression  as  this,  yet  the 
whole  drama  contains  perhaps  not  a  single 
line  of  the  illusive  charm  to  be  found  in 
passages  on  every  page  of  Shelley's  works. 
—More,  Paul  Elmer,  1898,  The  Whole- 
some Revival  of  Byron,  Atlantic  Monthly, 
vol.  82,  p.  802. 

CAIN 

1821 

**Cain,  a  Mystery,"  was  worse  and 
worse.  Byron  dared  to  measure  himself 
with  Milton,  and  came  off  as  poorly  as 
Belial  might  have  done  from  a  contest  with 
Michael.  Crude  metaphysics,  as  old  as 
the  hills,  and  as  barren— bald,  thread-bare 
blasphemies,  and  peurile  ravings,  formed 
the  staple  of  the  piece.  The  only  toler- 
able touches,  those  of  domestic  love  and 
the  like,  were  visibly  borrowed  from 
Gesner's  ''Death  of  Abel:"  and  in  short, 
one  of  the  most  audacious  of  all  the  insults 
that  have  ever  been  heaped  upon  the  faith 
and  feelings  of  a  Christian  land,  was  also 
one  of  the  most  feeble  and  ineffectual. 
Thank  God !  Cain  was  abandoned  to  the 
Radicals— and  thank  God,  it  was  too  radi- 
cally dull  to  be  popular  even  among  them. 
— Maginn,  William,  1822,  Odoherty  on 
Werner,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol.  12, 
p.  711. 

Though  it  abounds  in  beautiful  passages, 
and  shows  more  power  perhaps  than  any 
of  the  author's  dramatical  compositions, 
we  regret  very  much  that  it  should  ever 
have  been  published.    It  will  give  great 


scandal  and  offence  to  pious  persons  in 
general — and  may  be  the  means  of  suggest- 
ing the  most  painful  doubts  and  distress- 
ing perplexities,  to  hundreds  of  minds  that 
might  never  otherwise  have  been  exposed 
to  such  dangerous  disturbance. — Jef- 
frey, Francis  Lord,  1822-44,  Contribu- 
tions to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  ii,  p.  362. 

I  said  that  I  had  lately  been  reading 
Byron's  "Cain, "  and  had  been  particularly 
struck  by  the  third  act,  and  the  manner 
in  which  the  murder  is  brought  about. 
*'It  is,  indeed,  admirable,"  said  Goethe. 
''Its  beauty  is  such  as  we  shall  not  see  a 
second  time  in  the  world."  "Cain," 
said  I, ' '  was  at  first  prohibited  in  England ; 
but  now  everybody  reads  it,  and  young 
English  travellers  usually  carry  a  com- 
plete Byron  with  them."  "It  was  folly" 
said  Goethe ;  "for,  in  fact,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  whole  of  'Cain'  which  is  not  taught 
by  the  English  bishops  themselves." — 
ECKERMANN,  JoHN  Peter,  1827,  Conver- 
sations of  Goethe,  vol.  i,  p.  419. 

Like  a  lion  impatiently  beating  against 
the  iron  bars  of  his  cage,  so  Byron 
precipitates  himself  in  this  poem  on  the 
mysteries  of  revealed  faith.  He  never, 
indeed,  succeeds  in  bursting  his  cage; 
rather  he  remains  in  a  state  of  indecision, 
and  never  comes  to  a  positive  conclusion 
in  either  direction.  To  Englishmen  this 
scepticism  was,  with  few  exceptions,  an 
insurmountable  stone  of  offence.  In  Eng- 
land freedom  of  action  is  cramped  by  the 
want  of  freedom  in  thought ;  the  converse 
is  the  case  with  us  Germans,  freedom  of 
thought  is  restricted  by  the  want  of 
freedom  in  action.  To  us  this  scepticism 
presents  nothing  in  the  least  degree  fear- 
ful ;  we,  like  Faust,  are  afraid  neither  of 
the  devil  nor  of  hell.— Elze,  Karl,  1870- 
72,  Lord  Byron,  p.  415. 

' '  Cain' '  is  the  most  complete  and  finished 
work  of  the  poet,  and  we  cannot  contradict 
Shelley  when  he  calls  it  the  greatest  of 
Byron's  poems.  Cain  is  a  Titanic  Man- 
fred, a  creation  similar  to  Job  and  Pro- 
metheus. The  spirit  of  ^schylus  seems 
to  breath  in  the  poem,  and  with  the 
exception  of  a  few  passages  in  "Paradise 
Lost"  and  in  "Faust,"  modern  poetry  has 
produced  nothing  similar  in  boldness  and 
in  grandeur  to  Cain's  flight  with  Lucifer 
through  illimitable  space,  and  the  con- 
versations of  the  two  in  Hades.  In  Eng- 
land the  poem  was  appreciated  by  few  at 


GEORGE  GOR: 

Tirst,  and  Byron  called  it  jestingly  *'the 
Waterloo  of  his  popularity. ' '  But  it  is  an 
aesthetic  truth  that  the  creation  of  Satan 
in  "Cain"  must  be  considered  as  one  of  the 
greatest  achievements  of  modern  poetry. 
There  are  altogether  only  four  poets  who 
have  succeeded  in  portraying  Satan :  Van- 
del,  Milton,  Goethe,  and  Byron.  Vandel's 
satan  was  created  fourteen  years  before 
that  of  Milton ;  it  is  a  powerful  concep- 
tion, and  undoubtedly  the  greatest  poetical 
figure  which  Holland  has  produced. 
Goethe's  Mephisto  is  such  a  peculiar  im- 
personation of  the  Satanic  idea  that  he 
cannot  be  compared  to  the  others.  Byron's 
Satan  ranks  next  to  Milton's.  Dante's 
detailed  delineation  only  produces  a  some- 
what ridiculous  monster  which  leaves  us 
perfectly  indifferent,  while  Milton's  and 
Byron's  Satan  is  a  colossal  extention  of  the 
human  form  surrounded  by  a  darkness  as 
of  thunder-clouds,  and  exciting  our  terror 
as  well  as  a  feeling  of  sympathy. — 
SCHERR,  J.,  1874,  A  History  of  English 
Literature,  tr.  M.  F.,  p.  236. 

It  may  be  true,  Basrandes  observes, 
that  in  Cain,  Byron  is  dashing  about  like 
a  wild  beast  in  the  cage  of  dogma ;  it  may 
be  true  that  this  poem  is  simply  an  expres- 
sion of  man's  monotonous  fate  in  this 
world ;  but  the  power  of  personal  force, 
the  strength  of  the  individual's  will,  must 
have  been  an  inspiring  influence  to  that 
younger  generation  whose  fate  it  was  to 
stand  firm  against  the  efforts  of  the  Holy 
Alliance  to  crush  out  the  spirit  of  liberty. 
Certainly  the  poem  is  another  revelation 
of  that  fierce  assertion  of  self-sufficiency 
which  enabled  Byron,  in  the  later  days,  to 
take  up  the  heritage  of  leadership  left  him 
by  Rousseau.— Hancock,  Albert  Elmer, 
1899,  The  French  Revolution  and  the  Eng- 
lish Poets f  p.  117. 

LETTERS 

The  Letters,  at  least  those  which  were 
sent  from  Italy,  are  among  the  best  in  our 
language.  They  are  less  affected  than 
those  of  Pope  and  Walpole;  they  have 
more  matter  in  them  than  those  of  Cow- 
per.  Knowing  that  many  of  them  were 
not  written  merely  for  the  person  to  whom 
Ihey  were  directed,  but  were  general 
epistles,  meant  to  be  read  by  a  large  circle, 
"ve  expected  to  find  them  clever  and 
spirited,  but  deficient  in  ease.  We  looked 
with  vigilance  for  instances  of  stiffness  in 
the  language,  and  awkwardness  in  the 


LORD  BYRON  755 

transitions.  We  have  been  agreeably  dis- 
appointed; and  we  must  confess,  that  if 
the  epistolary  style  of  Lord  Byron  was 
artificial,  it  was  a  rare  and  admirable  in- 
stance of  that  highest  art  which  cannot  be 
distinguished  from  nature. — Macaulay, 
Thomas  Babington,  1830,  Moore's  Life  of 
Lord  Byron,  Edinburgh  Review,  Critical 
and  Miscellaneous  Essays. 

His  letters  from  Italy,  alone, — things 
thrown  off  in  every  variety  of  mood,  and 
some  of  them  bearing  strong  evidence  of 
the  bottle, — display  more  genius  than  can 
be  found  in  all  the  first  two  cantos  of 
^'Childe  Harold."— Whipple,  Edwl\  P., 
1845,  Byron,  Essays  and  Reviews. 

We  are  indebted  to  the  poet'smisfortune 
for  all  that  series  of  delightful  letters 
which  in  themselves  form  one  of  the  most 
perfect  biographies,  and  which  reflect  the 
whole  contemporary  life  like  the  literary 
correspondence  of  Grimm.  A  slender 
thread  of  criticism  and  by-play  links  them 
together  in  Moore's  Life,  and  with  this  are 
blended  corollary  recollections  of  observ- 
ers and  travellers,  critics,  and  intimates ; 
never,  however,  obscuring  the  splendid 
figure  of  the  chief  actor,  embellishing  his 
surroundings  like  living  coulisses,  shifting 
or  shoving  in  landscapes  or  backgrounds, 
stories,  and  scenes,  and  throwing  right 
upon  him  as  he  stands  in  the  centre  of  the 
stage  the  whole  affluence  of  their  light. 
There  is  no  better  illuminated  figure  on  the 
whole  canvas  of  history.  Turning  to  the 
memoirs  of  this  man  is  like  walking  down 
a  corridor  of  the  Louvre,  where  the  Pagan 
mythology  shimmers  before  us  in  marble, 
and  far  at  the  end,  queen-like  and  alone, 
stands  the  Venus  of  Milo.  Turn  down 
what  corridor  you  will,  an  excess  of 
illumination  falls  upon  the  head  of  Byron  ; 
it  is  cloudless  save  for  one  great  cloud ; 
it  is  put  to  the  torture  of  endless  light : 
it  is  the  story  of  Regulus  and  the  Car- 
thaginian sun ;  it  is  the  glare  of  the  dog- 
star  upon  the  bald  ruins  of  the  Parthenon. 
— Harrison,  James  Albert,  1875,  A 
Group  of  Poets  and  Their  Haunts,  p.  33. 

GENERAL 

Byron,  with  eager  indifference. — Hunt, 
Leigh,  1814,  The  Feast  of  the  Poets. 

His  verse,  with  all  its  lofty  aspirations 
and  endowments,  is  lost  in  the  mazes  of 
infidelity  and  despair;  groping  in  a  vast 
crowd  of  strange  unearthly  shapes  con- 
jured up  by  midnight  fancy,  it  deifies  only 


756 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


a  morbid  heroism,  which  it  invests  with 
the  glomny  spell  of  varie4-passion.  --This" 
atheistic  inspiration  was  not  altogether 
alien  to  German  poetry  at  an  earlier  epoch  ; 
but  a  purer  sphere  was  soon  attained,  the 
monstrosities  of  false  tragic  grandeur 
being  banished  to  the  extreme  confines  of 
the  drama.  In  the  higher  regions  of  art 
it  was  speedily  discovered  that  modern 
poetry  cannot  jflow  in  transparent  stream 
from  the  turbid  eddy  of  forward  passion;- 
but  founded  on  eternal  hope,  it  must 
become  a  glorified  admixture  of  Faith  and 
Lov-e,  radiant  as  the  rainbow  after  the 
storm,  or  the  dawn  of  morn  after  the 
shades  of  night. — Schlegel,  Friedrich, 
1815-  59,  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Liter- 
ature. 

*'Parisina,"  is  the  most  interesting  and 
best  conceived  and  best  told  story  I  ever 
read.  I  was  never  more  affected. — 
Murray,  John,  1815,  William  Black- 
wood and  His  SonSy  by  Oliyhant,  vol.  i,  p. 49. 

He  has  not  the  variety  of  Scott — nor  the 
delicacy  of  Campbell — nor  the  absolute 
truth  of  Crabbe — nor  the  polished  spark- 
ling of  Moore;  but  in  force  of  diction, 
and  inextinguishable  energy  of  sentiment, 
he  clearly  surpasses  them  all. — Jeffrey, 
Francis  Lord,  1816-44,  Lord  Byron's 
Poetry^  Contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view y  vol.  Ill,  p.  164. 

Lord  Byron  is  a  splendid  and  noble 
egotist. — He  vists  Classical  shores ;  roams 
over  romantic  lands,  and  wanders  through 
magnificent  forests ;  courses  the  dark  and 
restless  waves  of  the  sea,  and  rocks  his 
spirit  on  the  midnight  lakes^  but  no  spot 
is  conveyed  to  our  minds,  that  is  not 
peopled  by  the  gloomy  and  ghastly  feelings 
of  one  proud  and  solitary  man.  It  is  as  if 
he  and  the  world  were  the  only  two  things 
which  the  air  clothed. — His  lines  are 
majestic  vanities ;— his  poetry  always  is 
marked  with  a  haughty  selfishness; — he 
writes  loftily,  because  he  is  the  spirit  of 
an  ancient  family ; — he  is  liked  by  most  of 
his  readers,  because  he  is  a  Lord.  If  a 
common  man  were  to  dare  to  be  as  moody, 
as  contemptuous,  and  as  misanthropical, 
the  world  would  laugh  at  him.  There 
must  be  a  coronet  marked  on  all  his  little 
pieces  of  poetical  insolence,  or  the  world 
would  not  countenance  them. — Reynolds, 
John  Hamilton,  1818,  West  of  England 
Journal  and  General  Advertiser,  Oct.  6. 

What,  then,  should  be  said  of  those  for 


whom  the  thoughtlessness  and  inebriety  of 
wanton  youth  can  no  longer  be  pleaded, 
but  who  have  written  in  sober  manhood, 
and  with  deliberate  purpose? — men  of 
diseased  hearts  and  depraved  imagina- 
tions, who,  forming  a  system  of  opinions 
to  suit  their  own  unhappy  course  of  con- 
duct, have  rebelled  against  the  holiest 
ordinances  of  human  society,  and,  hating 
that  revealed  religion,  which,  with  all  their 
efforts  and  bravadoes,  they  are  unable 
entirely  to  disbelieve,  labour  to  make 
others  as  miserable  as  themselves,  by  in- 
fecting them  with  a  moral  virus  that  eats 
into  the  soul !  The  school  which  they  have 
set  up  may  properly  be  called  the  Satanic 
School;  for,  though  their  productions 
breathe  the  spirit  of  Belial  in  their 
lascivious  parts,  and  the  spirit  of  Moloch 
in  those  loathsome  images  of  atrocities 
and  horrors  which  they  delight  to  repre- 
sent, they  are  more  especially  character- 
ized by  a  Satanic  pride  and  audacious  im- 
piety, which  still  betrays  the  wretched 
feeling  of  hopelessness  wherewith  it  is 
allied.— SouTHEY,  Robert,  1821,  The 
Vision  of  Judgmenty  Preface. 

The  Pilgrim  of  Eternity,  whose  fame 
Over  his  living  head  like  Heaven  is  bent, 
An  early  but  enduring  monument, 
Came,  veiling  all  the  lightnings  of  his  song 
In  sorrow. 

— Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  1821,  Adon- 
ais,  st.  XXX. 

It  seems,  to  my  ear,  that  there  is  a  sad 
want  of  harmony  in  Lord  Byro^i^p  vh.  5es. 
Is  it  not  unnatural  to  be  always  Oimer  i  ing 
very  great  intellectual  power  mt\\  utter 
depravity?  Does  such  a  comhinat  on 
often  really  exist  in  rerum  naturd '  — 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  1822,  '>  'le 
Talky  ed.  Ashe,  Dee.  29,  p.  16. 
Even  I— albeit  I'm  sure  I  did  not  kno^v  n 

Nor  sought  of  foolscap  subjects  to  bf)  I  ine— 
Was  reckon'd  a  considerable  time, 
The  grand  Napoleon  of  the  realms  o/  '  i 
—Byron,  Lord,  1823,  Don  Juan,  Ca. 

He  has  filled  a  leaf  in  the  book  ol  .  t 
but  it  is  a  very  blotted  leaf. — Barb.^:  ' 
Anna  L^titia,  1824,  Works,  vol.  n,  .  1 

There  are  things  in  Byron's  poe^r; 
exquisite,  that  fifty  or  five  hundred     .  •; 
hence,  they  will  be  read,  felt,  and  adni  ' 
throughout  the  world.    .    .    .    No,  i.  > ' 
give  me  Byron,  with  all  his  spite,  hatr'-d 
depravity,  dandyism,  vanity,  frankn'?' 
passion,  and  idleness,  to  Wordsworth 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


with  all  his  heartless  communion  with 
woods  and  grass.  —  Haydon,  Benjamin 
Robert,  1824,  Letter  to  Mary  Russell  Mit- 
ford ;  Life^  Letters  and  Table  Talk,  ed.  Stod- 
'dard,  pp.  217,  218. 

Lord  Byron  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  man, 
as  an  Englishman,  and  as  a  great  talent. 
His  good  qualities  belong  chiefly  to  the 
man,  his  bad  to  the  Englishman  and  the 
peer,  his  talent  is  incommensurable.  .  .  . 
He  is  a  great  talent,  a  born  talent,  and  I 
never  saw  the  true  poetical  power  greater 
in  any  man  than  in  him.  In  the  appre- 
hension of  external  objects,  and  a  clear 
penetration  into  past  situations,  he  is  quite 
as  great  as  Shakspeare.  But  as  a  pure 
individuality,  Shakspeare  is  his  superior. 
This  was  felt  by  Byron,  and  on  this  account, 
he  does  not  say  much  of  Shakspeare, 
although  he  knows  whole  passages  by 
heart.  He  would  willingly  have  denied 
him  altogether;  for  Shakspeare's  cheer- 
fulness is  in  his  way,  and  he  feels  that  he 
is  no  match  for  it.  Pope  he  does  not  deny, 
for  he  had  no  cause  to  fear  him.  On  the 
contrary,  he  mentions  him,  and  shews  him 
respect  when  he  can,  for  he  knows  well 
enough  that  Pope  is  a  mere  foil  to  himself. 
— Goethe,  JoHANN  Wolfgang,  1825,  Con- 
versations, ed.  Eckermann,  vol.  I,  p.  209. 

We  ought  too  to  look  back  with  late 
repentance  &  remorse  on  our  intoxicated 
praise,  now  cooling,  of  Lord  Byron — such 
a  man  to  be  so  spoken  of  when  the  world 
possessed  Goethe,  Schiller,  Shelley ! — 
Beddoes,  Thomas  Lovell,  1825,  Letters, 
p.  58. 

Byron — good  generous  hapless  Byron! 
And  yet  when  he  died  he  was  only  a  Kraft- 
mann  {Powerman  as  the  Germans  call 
them).  Had  he  lived  he  would  have  been 
a  poet.— Carlyle,  Thomas,  1826,  Jour- 
nal, Dec.  3 ;  Life  by  Froude,  vol.  i,  p.  304. 

As  a  poet,  he  stands  among  the  most 
eminent  that  England  has  ever  produced. 
Few,  indeed  (and,  among  those  who  live, 
we  may  say,  fearless  of  contradiction, 
none),  have  possessed  at  the  same  time 
an  energy  and  intellectual  grasp  like  his, 
together  with  his  facility  and  graceful- 
ness.—Clinton,  George,  1826,  The  Life 
and  Writings  of  Lord  Byron,  p.  1. 

Byron  seems  to  me  deficient  in  feeling. 
Professor  Wilson,  I  think,  used  to  say  that 
**Beppo"  was  his  best  poem;  because  all 
his  faults  were  there  brought  to  a  height. 


—Wordsworth,  William,  1827,  Miscel- 
laneous Memoranda,  Memoirs  by  Chris- 
topher Wordsworth,  vol.  ii,  p..  483. 

With  joint  acclaim 

Let's  hail  the  name 
Of  our  great  Bard,  whose  mighty  fame 

Must  spread  for  aye, 

Ne'er  to  decay 
Till  heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away. 
—Hogg,  James,  1827,  Ode  on  the  Death 
of  Lord  Byron,  Blackwood's  Magazine,  vol. 
21,  p.  521. 

He,  from  above  descending,  stooped  to  touch 
The  loftiest  thought ;  and  proudly  stooped, 

as  though 
It  scarce  deserved  his  verse. 
— PoLLOK,  Robert,  1827,  The  Course  of 
Time,  bk.  iv. 

Byron  has  been  extolled  as  the  sublimest 
of  poets.  There  are  passages  in  all  his 
poems  which  I  have  thought  charming,  but 
mixed  with  so  much  that  was  disgusting 
that  I  never  believed  his  popularity  would 
be  lasting.  His  versification  is  so  desti- 
tute of  sustained  harmony,  many  of  his 
thoughts  are  so  strained,  his  sentiments 
so  unamiable,  his  misanthropy  so  gloomy, 
his  images  so  grossly  indelicate,  his 
libertinism  so  shameless,  his  merriment 
such  grinning  of  a  ghastly  smile,  that  I 
have  always  believed  his  verses  would  soon 
rank  with  forgotten  things.  .  .  .  This 
person  has  now  been  seven  years  dead,  and 
the  public  interest  in  him  has  not  abated. 
He  was  one  of  the  wonders  of  his  age,  and 
was,  like  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  the  torso 
of  a  Hercules.  A  *  *  grand  homme  manque' ' 
— a  club-footed  Apollo — in  mind  as  in  per- 
son. There  are  sublime  and  beautiful  pas- 
sages of  detail  in  his  poetry ;  and  if  he  had 
finished  his  "Don  Juan"  it  would  have  been  a 
worthy  companion  to  Voltaire's  ''Pucelle," 
in  the  Temple  of  Cloacina  upon  the  summit 
of  Parnassus.  —  Adams,  John  Quincy, 
1830,  Memoirs,  vol.  viii,  pp.  218,  248. 

With  Byron's  own  works  in  one's  hand 
his  character  cannot  possibly  be  a  riddle 
to  anybody.  I  dare  say  the  devil  may 
sometimes  be  painted  blacker  than  he  is ; 
but  Byron  has  a  fancy  for  the  character 
of  Lucifer,  and  seems  to  me,  on  the  con- 
trary, tres  pauvre  diable.  .  .  .  Nobody 
was  ever  a  more  fanatical  worshipper  of 
his  poetry  than  I  was:  time  was  that  I 
devoured  his  verses  (poison  as  they  were  to 
me)  like  raspberry  tarts;"  I  still  know, 
and  remember  with  delight,  their  exquisite 
beauty  and  noble  vigor,  but  they  don't 


758 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


agree  with  me.  And,  without  knowing 
anything  of  his  religious  doubts  or  moral 
delinquencies,  1  cannot  at  all  agree  with 
Mr.  Moore  that  upon  the  showing  of  his 
own  works  Byron  was  a  ''good  man.*' — 
Kemble,  Frances  Anne,  1831,  Letter^  Jan. 
12 ;  Records  of  a  Girlhood^  pp.  330,  331. 

Byron  was  a  paradox  in  every  thing. 
He  was  at  once  a  cold-blooded  satirist  and 
a  man  of  sentiment ;  an  aristocrat  and  a 
radical ;  a  Platonist  and  an  Epicurean ; 
the  most  sublime  and  the  most  sensual  of 
mortals;  ''half  dust,  half  diety,''  to 
borrow  his  own  phrase ;  but  the  most  bare- 
faced paradox,  was  his  ostentatious  de- 
fence in  prose  of  Pope's  poetical  system, 
which,  in  his  poetry,  he  had  been  all  his 
life  endeavoring  to  subvert.  The  key  to 
Byron's  eccentricities  is  to  be  found  in 
his  total  want  of  principle,  and  his  uncon- 
trollable passions.  To  the  last  is  to  be 
referred,  moreover,  much  of  what  is  grand 
and  striking  in  his  poetry.  Many  were  led 
to  charge  him  with  affectation.  The  his- 
tory of  his  life,  however,  which  may  be 
calied  passion  j)ut  into  action,  shows  how 
uniformly  he  sacrificed  to  his  passions  all 
his  worldly  interests  and  better  hopes. 
His  poetry  gains  somewhat  in  effect  by  our 
conviction  of  this,  for  sincerity  is  essen- 
tial to  the  full  success  of  the  poet  as  of 
the  orator ;  and,  in  this  point  of  view,  the 
exhibition  of  actual  vice  is  less  detrimental 
to  his  interest  than  the  affectation  of  it. 
Much  stress  has  been  laid  on  the  mischiev- 
ous tendency  of  Byron's  philosophy.  But, 
in  truth,  there  is  little  in  his  writings  to 
deserve  that  name.  He  had  no  principles 
to  build  on,  and  seems  to  have  been  incap- 
able of  forming  any  settled  system,  or 
even  a  systematic  attack  on  any  thing. 
He  levelled  his  shafts  pretty  indiscrimi- 
nately at  whatever  men  prize  most  in  this 
life,  or  look  forward  to  with  hope  in  the 
next.  This  sort  of  random  aim  was  little 
better  than  shooting  in  the  dark. — Pres- 
COTT,  William  Hickling,  1832,  English 
Literature  of  the  Nineteenth  Century^  North 
American  Review,  vol.  35,  p.  176. 

No  modern  author  who  can  lay  claim  to 
the  highest  honors  of  Parnassus  has  writ- 
ten a  greater  quantity  of  perishable, 
perishing  rhyme,  than  the  noblest  of  them 
all.— Montgomery,  James,  1833,  Lec- 
tures on  General  Literature,  Poetry,  etc., 
p.  313. 

Byron's  "Heaven  and  Earth,"    .    .  . 


is  full  of  passages  which  none  but  he  could 
have  written;  and  it  also  affords  some 
instances  of  the  facility  with  which  the 
noble  bard  could  extract  honey  from  any 
flower,  or  weed,  however  humble. — Elli- 
ott, Ebenezer,  1833,  Spirits  and  Men, 
Preface. 

Lord  Byron  has  abundance  of  \^  and 
extremely  diversified  wit,  but  of  a  kind  V 
that  agitates  and  has  a  baneful  influence. 
He  has  read  Voltaire,  and  he  frequently 
imitates  him.  In  following  the  great  Eng- 
lish poet  step  by  step,  we  are  forced  to 
acknowledge  that  he  aims  at  effect,  that 
he  rarely  loses  sight  of  himself,  that  he  is 
almost  always  in  attitude ;  that  he  looks 
at  himself  with  complacency;  but  the 
affectation  of  eccentricity,  singularity, 
originality,  belongs  to  the  English  char- 
acter in  general.  If,  however,  Lord  Byron 
has  atoned  for  his  genius  by  certain 
foibles,  futurity  will  not  concern  itself 
about  such  paltry  matters,  or  rather  it 
will  know  nothing  about  them ;  the  poet 
will  hide  the  man,  and  will  interpose  talent 
between  the  man  and  future  generations : 
through  this  divine  veil  posterity  will  dis- 
cern nothing  but  the  god. — Chateau- 
briand, Franqois  Rene  Vicomte,  1837, 
Sketches  of  English  Literature,  vol.  ii,  p.  344. 

Byron  and  Goethe — the  two  names  that 
predominate,  and,  come  what  may,  ever 
will  predominate,  over  our  every  recollec- 
tion of  the  fifty  years  that  have  passed 
away.  They  rule; — ^the  master-minds,  I 
might  almost  say  the  tyrants,  of  a  whole 
period  of  poetry ;  brilliant,  yet  sad ; 
glorious  in  youth  and  daring,  yet  cankered 
by  the  worm  i'  the  bud,  despair.  They 
are  the  two  Representative  Poets  of  two 
great  schools;  and  around  them  we  are 
compelled  to  group  all  the  lesser  minds 
which  contributed  to  render  the  era  illus- 
trious. The  qualities  which  adorn  and 
distinguish  their  works  are  to  be  found, 
although  more  thinly  scattered,  in  other 
poets  their  contemporaries ;  still  theirs  are 
the  names  that  involuntarily  rise  to  our 
lips  whenever  we  seek  to  characterise  the 
tendencies  of  the  age  in  which  they  lived. 
.  .  .  The  day  will  come  when  Democracy 
will  remember  all  that  it  owes  to  Byron. 
England  too,  will,  I  hope,  one  day  remem- 
ber the  mission — so  entirely  English,  yet 
hitherto  overlooked  by  her — which  Byron 
fulfilled  on  the  Continent ;  the  European 
role  given  by  him  to  English  literature, 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


759 


fir:'  the  appreciation  and  sympathy  for 
jLngland  which  he  awakened  amongst  us. 
Before  he  came,  all  that  was  known  of  Eng- 
lish literature  was  the  French  translation 
of  Shakespeare,  and  the  anathema  hurled 
by  Voltaire  against  the  ''intoxicated  barba- 
rian. "  It  is  since  Byron  that  we  Continent- 
alists  have  learned  to  study  Shakespeare 
and  other  English  writers.  From  him 
dates  the  sympathy  of  all  the  true-hearted 
amongst  us  for  this  land  of  liberty,  whose 
true  vocation  he  so  worthily  represented 
among  the  oppressed.  He  led  the  genius 
of  Britain  on  a  pilgrimage  throughout  all 
Europe. — Mazzini,  Joseph,  1839,  Byron 
and  Goethe,  Essays,  ed.  Clarke,  pp.  84, 107. 
And  poor,  proud  Byron,  sad  as  grave 
And  salt  as  life ;  forlornly  brave, 
And  quivering  with  the  dart  he  drave. 

—Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  1844, 
A  Vision  of  Poets. 

Few  poets  excel  him  in  the  instantane- 
ous sympathy  he  creates,  even  among 
minds  having  no  natural  affinity  with  his 
own.  He  is  eminently  the  poet  of  passion. 
In  almost  all  the  changes  of  his  mood,  the 
same  energy  of  feeling  glows  in  his  verse. 
The  thought  or  emotion  uppermost  in  his 
mind  at  any  one  time,  whether  it  be  bad 
or  good,  seems  to  sway,  for  the  moment, 
all  the  faculties  of  his  nature.  He  has  a 
passionate  love  for  evil,  a  passionate  love 
for  nature,  for  goodness,  for  beauty,  and, 
we  may  add,  a  passionate  love  for  himself. 
When  he  sits  in  the  place  of  the  scoffer, 
his  words  betray  the  same  inspiration  from 
impulse, — the  same  passion,  though  con- 
densed into  bitterness  and  mockery. — 
Whipple,  Edwin  P.,  1845,  Byron,  Essays 
and  Reviews. 

In  Byron  there  is  much  to  admire  but 
nothing  to  imitate :  for  energy  is  beyond 
the  limits  of  imitation.  Byron  could  not 
have  written  better  than  he  did.  Altho' 
he  seems  negligent  in  many  places,  he  was 
very  assiduous  in  correcting  his  verses. 
His  poetry  took  the  bent  of  a  wayward  and 
perverted  mind  often  w^ak,  but  oftener 
perturbed.  Tho'  hemp  ''ax  and  cotton 
are  the  stronger  for  >  twisted, verses 
and  intellects  certai  iv  are  not.  .  .  . 
It  is  unfortunate  .  Ariosto  did  not 
attract  him  (Byr-  rst.  Byron  had  not 
in  his  nature  ?  ly  enough  for  it,  and 
chose  Berni  in  lerence,  and  fell  from 
Bern!  to  C?  :  But  his  scorching  and 
dewless  ^       burnt  up  their  flowery 


meadows.— Landor,  Walter  Savage, 
1845,  To  Mrs.  Paynter,  Aug.  3 ;  Letter 8^ 
ed.  Wheeler,  p.  146. 

Lord  Byron  is  altogether  in  my  affection 
again.  ...  I  have  read  on  to  the 
end,  and  am  quite  sure  of  the  great  quali- 
ties which  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years  had 
partially  obscured.  Only  a  little  longer 
life  and  all  would  have  been  gloriously 
right  again.  I  read  this  book  of  Moore's 
too  long  ago ;  but  I  always  retained  my 
first  feeling  for  Byron  in  many  respects, 
.  .  .  the  interest  in  the  places  he  had 
visited,  in  relics  of  him.  I  would  at  any 
time  have  gone  to  Finchley  to  see  a  curl 
of  his  hair  or  one  of  his  gloves,  I  am  sure 
— while  Heaven  knows  that  I  could  not 
get  up  enthusiasm  enough  to  cross  the 
room  if  at  the  other  end  of  it  all  Words- 
worth, Coleridge  and  Southey  were  con- 
densed into  the  little  China  bottle  yonder, 
after  the  Rosicrucian  fashion  .  .  .  they 
seem  to  ''have  their  reward"  and  want 
nobody's  love  or  faith.  Just  one  of  those 
trenchant  opinions  which  I  found  fault 
with  Byron  for  uttering, — as  "proving 
nothing!" — Browning,  Robert,  1846, 
Letters  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth 
Barrett,  1845-1846,  vol.  ii,  p.  453. 

Ever  so  unfortunate,  a  man's  folding  his 
hands  over  it  in  melancholy  mood,  and 
suffering  himself  to  be  made  a  puppet  by 
it,  is  a  sadly  weak  proceeding.  Most 
thoughtful  men  have  probably  some  dark 
fountains  in  their  souls,  by  the  side  of 
which,  if  there  were  time,  and  it  were 
decorous,  they  could  let  their  thoughts  sit 
down  and  wail  indefinitely.  That  long 
Byron  wail  fascinated  men  for  a  time, 
because  there  is  that  in  huamn  nature. — 
Helps,  Sir  Arthur,  1847,  Friends  in 
Council. 

The  truth  is,  that  what  has  put  Byron 
out  of  favour  with  the  public  of  late,  is  not 
his  faults,  but  his  excellencies.  His  artis- 
tic good  taste,  his  classical  polish,  his 
sound  shrewd  sense,  his  hatred  of  cant, 
his  insight  into  humbug,  above  all,  his 
shallow,  pitiable  habit  of  being  always 
intelligible ;  these  are  the  sins  which  con- 
demn him  in  the  eyes  of  a  mesmerizing, 
table-turning,  spirit-rapping.  Spiritualiz- 
ing, Romanizing  generation,  who  read 
Shelley  in  secret,  and  delight  in  his  bad 
taste,  mysticism,  extravagance,  and  vague 
and  pompous  sentimentalism.  The  age  is 
an  effeminate  one ;  and  it  can  well  afford 


760 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


to  pardon  the  lewdness  of  the  gentle  and 
sensitive  vegetarian,  while  it  has  no  mercy 
for  that  of  the  sturdy  peer,  proud  of  his 
bull-neck  and  his  boxing,  who  keeps  bears 
and  bull-dogs,  drilled  Greek  ruffians  at 
Missolonghi,  and  *'had  no  objection  to  a 
pot  of  beer;"  and  who  might,  if  he  had 
reformed,  have  made  a  gallant  English 
gentleman. — Kingsley,  Charles,  1853, 
Thoughts  about  Shelley  and  Byroriy  Eraser's 
Magazine,  vol.  48,  p.  571. 

It  was  not  until  the  ''Siebengebirge"  or 
Seven  Mountains  rose  to  view,  that  the 
glories  of  the  Rhine  were  revealed  in  all 
their  matchless  grandeur.  No  description 
1  have  ever  read  approaches  the  reality, 
save  the  verses  of  the  most  impassioned  of 
poets.  How  wonderfully,  how  truthfully, 
has  Byron  pictured  in  glowing  words  the 
beauty  of  scenery  which  meets  the  eye  on 
every  side.— Le  Vert,  Madame  Octavia 
Walton,  1853,  Souvenirs  of  Travel,  vol. 
I,  p.  130. 

Had  a  larger  amount  of  common  sense 
than  any  poet  of  his  day. — Smith,  Alex- 
ander, 1863,  Dreamthorp,  p.  160. 

Byron,  doubtless,  is  no  ordinary  bard. 
He  possesses  fecundity,  eloquence,  wit. 
Yet  these  very  qualites  are  confined  within 
pretty  narrow  limits.  The  wit  of ' '  Beppo' ' 
and  of  ''Don  Juan"  is  of  the  kind  that 
consists  in  dissonance ;  that  is  to  say,  in 
the  serio-comic,  in  an  apparent  gravity 
which  is  contradicted  every  moment  by 
drollery  of  phrase.  In  the  same  way 
Byron's  fecundity  is  more  apparent  than 
real.  He  wrote  a  great  deal — poems 
serious  and  poems  comic,  epics  and  dramas, 
visions  and  satires ;  but,  speaking  strictly, 
he  never  had  more  than  a  single  subject — 
himself.  No  man  has  ever  pushed  egotism 
farther  than  he. — Scherer,  Edmond, 
1863-91,  Taine's  History  of  English  Lit- 
erature, Essays  on  English  Literature,  tr. 
Saintshury,  p.  91. 

This  shallowness  has  no  part  in  Byron 
himself.  His  weariness  was  a  genuine 
outcome  of  the  influence  of  the  time  upon 
a  character  consumed  by  passion.  His  lot 
was  cast  among  spent  forces,  and  while  it 
is  no  hyperbole  to  say  that  he  was  himself 
the  most  enormous  force  of  his  time,  he 
was  only  half  conscious  of  this,  if  indeed 
he  did  not  always  inwardly  shrink  from 
crediting  his  own  power  and  strength,  as 
so  many  strong  men  habitually  do,  in  spite 
of  noisy  and  perpetual  self-assertion. 


Conceit  and  persumption  have  not  been 
any  more  fatal  to  the  world,  than  the 
waste  which  comes  of  great  men  failing  in 
their  hearts  to  recognise  how  great  they 
are.— Morley,  John,  1870,  Byron,  Fort- 
nightly Review,  vol.  14,  p.  664. 

The  genius  of  Byron  was  of  a  more 
vigorous  mould  than  that  of  Keats ;  but 
nothwithstanding  his  great  popularity  and 
the  number  of  his  imitators  at  one  time, 
he  made  a  less  permanent  impression  on 
the  character  of  English  poetry.  His 
misanthropy  and  gloom,  his  scoffing  vein, 
and  the  fierceness  of  his  animosities,  after 
the  first  glow  of  admiration  was  over,  had 
a  repellant  effect  upon  readers,  and  made 
them  turn  to  more  cheerful  strains.— 
Bryant,  William  Cullen,  1870,  A  New 
Library  of  Poetry  and  Song,  Introduction, 
vol.  I,  p.  43. 

Byron  will  be  remembered  longer  by  the 
lyrical  pearls,  which  are  scattered  so 
copiously  through  his^  poems,  gems  which 
are  familiar  to  every  reader  of  his  works, 
and  can  never  be  forgotten.  It  is  in  these 
that  his  muse  takes  her  noblest  flight; 
these  are  the  portions  of  his  poetry  which 
are  instinct  with  the  most  exquisite  beauty, 
and  exercise  on  us  the  most  powerful 
spell ;  and  we  cannot  imagine,  that  they 
will  ever  fail  to  fill  tbeir  readers  with 
rapture.  ...  In  Germany,  Byron, 
like  almost  all  English  poets,  found  a 
second  fatherland.  His  influence  on  our 
literature  was  confined  indeed  to  one 
period  only,  nor  has  his  poetry  been  inter- 
woven, like  Shakespeare's,  for  ever  with 
our  own  ;  but  if  limited  in  duration,  it  was 
widely  propagated  and  intense  during  its 
reign.— Elze,  Karl,  1870-72,  Lord  By- 
ron, pp.  402,  428. 

His  ideas  were  banned  during  his  life ; 
it  has  been  attempted  to  depreciate  his 
genius  since  his  death.  To  this  day  Eng- 
lish critics  are  unjust  to  him.  He  fought 
all  his  life  against  the  society  from  which 
he  came ;  and  during  his  life,  as  after  his 
death,  he  suffered  the  pain  of  the  resent- 
ment which  he  provoked,  and  the  repug- 
nance to  which  he  gave  rise.  A  foreign 
critic  may  be  more  impartial,  and  freely 
praise  the  powerful  hand  whose  blows  he 
has  not  felt.  If  ever  there  was  a  violent 
and  madly  sensitive  soul,  but  incapable  of 
being  otherwise ;  ever  agitated,  but  in  an 
enclosure  without  issue;  predisposed  to 
poetry  by  its  innate  fire,  but  limited  by 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


7G1 


its  natural  barriers  to  a  single  kind  of 
poetry,— it  was  Byron's.  ...  All 
styles  appear  dull,  and  all  souls  sluggish 
by  the  side  of  his.  ...  No  such  great 
poet  has  had  so  narrow  an  imagination ; 
he  could  not  metamorphose  himself  into 
another.  They  are  his  own  sorrows,  his 
own  revolts,  his  own  travels,  which,  hardly 
transformed  and  modified,  he  introduces 
into  his  verses.  He  does  not  invent,  he 
observes;  he  does  not  create,  he  tran- 
scribes — Taine,  H.  a.,  1871,  History  of 
English  Literature,  tr.  Van  Laun,  vol.  ii, 
bk.  iv,  ch.  ii,  pp.  271,  274,  279. 

The  youth  thus  strangely  educated,  had 
at  least  one  fountain  of  inspiration — the 
Bible.  The  study  of  the  Prophets  invigor- 
ated the  poetic  character  of  his  nature. 
Their  rugged  genius  is  visible  in  some  of 
his  works,  severe  and  steady  as  the 
simoom,  monotonous  as  the  desert,  but 
solemn  as  immensity,  and  sublime  as  the 
idea  of  the  Almighty;  their  semitical 
genius,  expressed  by  Isaiah  in  his  admirable 
works,  is  reproduced  by  Michael  Angelo  in 
the  majestic  features  of  his  Moses,  whose 
venerable  beard,  descending  to  his  breast, 
seems  to  be  stirred  by  the  breezes  of  Sinai. 
— Castelar,  Emilio,  1873-75,  Life  of 
Lord  Byron  and  other  Sketches,  tr.  Ar- 
nold, p.  10. 

The^reat  thing  in  Byron  is  genius, that 
quality  so  perilous  to  define,  so  evanescent 
in  its  aroma,  so  impossible  to  mistake.  If 
ever  a  man  breathed  whom  we  recognize 
(athwart  much  poor  and  useless  work, 
when  strictly  tested)  as  emphatically  the 
genius,  that  man  was  Byron ;  and,  if  ever 
genius  made  poetry  its  mouthpiece, 
covering  with  its  transcendent  utterances 
a  multitude  of  sins  whether  against  art  or 
against  the  full  stature  of  perfect  man- 
hood, Byron's  is  that  poetry. — Rossetti, 
William  Michael,  1878,  Lives  of  Famous 
Poets,  p.  307. 

How  to  make  a  Satanic  Poem  like  the  late 
Lord  Byron.  Take  a  couple  of  fine  deadly 
sins ;  and  let  them  hang  before  your  eyes 
until  they  become  racy.  Then  take  them 
down,  dissect  them,  and  stew  them  for 
some  time  in  a  solution  of  weak  remorse ; 
after  which  they  are  to  be  devilled  with 
mock-despair.— Mallock,  W.  H.,  1878, 
Every  Man  his  own  Poet,  or  the  Inspired 
Singer  s  Recipe  Book,  p.  28. 

Byron  is  probably  the  greatest  poet  that 
Britain  has  produced  since  the  days  of 


Dryden.  He  is,  perhaps,  the  most  thorough 
master  of  words  that  ever  lived.  His  most 
beautiful  passages  bear  comparison  with 
the  noblest  poetry  in  the  language ;  and 
his  longest  poems,  full  of  faults  as  they 
are,  are  mangnificent  monuments  to  his 
genius. — Walpole,  Spencer,  1878,  A 
History  of  England  from  the  Conclusion  of 
the  Great  War  in  1815,  vol.  i,  p.  362. 

The  refrain  of  Carlyle's  advice  during 
the  most  active  years  of  his  criticism  was, 
''Close  thy  Byron,  open  thy  Goethe."  We 
do  so,  and  find  that  the  refrain  of  Goethe's 
advice  in  reference  to  Byron  is — ''Nocturnd 
versate  manu,  versate  diurnd.'"  He  urged 
Eckermann  to  study  English,  that  he  might 
read  him;  remarking,  "A  character  of 
such  eminence  has  never  existed  before, 
and  probably  will  never  come  again.  .  .  . 
The  English  may  think  of  him  as  they 
please ;  this  is  certain,  they  can  show  no 
(living)  poet  who  is  to  be  compared  to 
him."  .  .  .  Dr.  Elze  ranks  the  author  of 
"Harold"  and  ''Juan"  among  the  four 
greatest  English  poets,  and  claims  for  him 
the  intellectual  parentage  of  Lamartine 
and  Musset,  in  France,  of  Espronceda,  in 
Spain ;  of  Puschkin,  in  Russia ;  with  some 
modifications,  of  Heine,  in  Germany,  of 
Berchet  and  others  in  Italy.  So  many 
voices  of  so  various  countries  cannot  be 
simply  set  aside :  unless  we  wrap  ourselves 
in  an  insolent  insularism,  we  are  bound  at 
least  to  ask  what  is  the  meaning  of  their 
concurrent  testimony.  .  .  .  We  may 
learn  much  from  him  still,  when  we  have 
ceased  to  disparage,  as  our  fathers  ceased 
to  idolize,  a  name  in  which  there  is  so 
much  warning  and  so  much  example. — 
NiCHOL,  John,  1880,  Byron  (English  Men 
of  Letters),  pp.  205,  206,  212. 

Wordsworth  has  an  Insight  into  perma- 
nent sources  of  joy  and  consolation  for 
mankind  which  Byron  has  not ;  his  poetry 
gives  us  more  which  we  may  rest  upon  than 
Byron's, — more  which  we  can  rest  upon 
now,  and  which  men  may  rest  upon  always. 
I  place  Wordsworth's  poetry,  therefore, 
above  Byron's,  on  the  whole,  although  in 
some  points  he  was  greatly  BjTon's  in- 
ferior, and  although  Byron's  poetry  will 
always,  probably,  find  more  readers  than 
Wordsworth's,  and  will  give  pleasure  more 
easily.  But  these  two,  Wordsworth  and 
Byron,  stand,  it  seems  to  me,  first  and 
preeminent  in  actual  performance,  a  glori- 
ous pair,  among  the  English  poets  of  this 


762 


GEORGR  GOREON  LORD  BYRON 


century.  —  Arnold,  Matthew,  1881, 
Poetry  of  Byron,  Preface. 

It  is  by  the  vast  strength  and  volume  of 
his  powers,  rather  than  by  any  one  perfect 
work,  that  he  is  to  be  estimated.  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  had  any  delicacy  of 
ear  for  the  refinements  of  metre,  or  to 
have  studied  the  intricacies  of  it.  But, 
when  the  impulse  came,  he  poured  himself 
forth  with  wonderful  rapidity,  home- 
thrusting  directness,  and  burning  elo- 
quence— eloquence  that  carries  you  over 
much  that  is  faulty  in  structure,  and  imper- 
fect, or  monotonous  in  metre.  He  him- 
self did  not  stay  to  consider  the  way  he 
said  things,  so  intent  was  he  on  the  things 
he  had  to  say.  Neither  any  more  does  the 
reader.  His  cadences  were  few,  but  they 
were  strong  and  impressive,  and  carried 
with  them,  for  the  time,  every  soul  that 
heard  them. — Shairp,  John  Campbell, 
1881,  Modern  English  Poetry,  Aspects  of 
Poetry,  p.  146. 

In  early  boyhood  he  had  been  possessed 
by  Byron's  poetry,  but  he  could  not  read 
it  in  later  life,  except  perhaps  * 'The  Vision 
of  Judgment,'.'  and  parts  of  ''Childe 
Harold,"  and  of  *'Don  Juan."  He  would 
say:  ''Byron  is  not  an  artist  or  a  thinker, 
or  a  creator  in  the  higher  sense,  but  a 
strong  personality:  he  is  endlessly  clever, 
and  is  now  unduly  depreciated. ' ' — Tenny- 
son, Alfred  Lord,  1883,  Some  Criti- 
cisms on  Poets,  Memoir  by  kis  Son,  vol.  n, 
p.  287. 

Has  stiri;ed  England  more  deeply  than 
any  other  poet  since  the  earlier  years  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  who  has  influ- 
enced human  kind  outside  England  more 
widely  and  profoundly  than  any  writer  of 
our  literature,  and  who,  in  whatever  else 
of  his  aspirations  he  failed,  will  be  found 
in  the  slowly  moving  ages  to  have  achieved 
his  ambition  to  be  "remembered  in  his 
line  with  his  land's  language." — Jeaf- 
freson,  John  Cordy,  1883,  The  Real 
Lord  Byron,  p.  553. 

The  glory  of  Scott  was  the  last  red  tints 
of  a  setting  sun,  and  the  glory  of  Words- 
worth the  first  mild  radiance  of  a  rising 
moon,  when  Byron  came  like  a  comet,  and 
paled  their  ineffectual  fires. — Stoddard, 
Richard  Henry,  1884,  Selections  from  the 
Poetical  Works  of  A.  C.  Swinburne,  Intro- 
duction, p.  X. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  influence  of 


Byron's  poetry  has  been  far  greater  on  the 
Continent  than  it  has  been  in  England. 
No  English  poet,  except  Shakespeare,  has 
been  so  much  read  or  so  much  admired  by 
foreigners.  His  works,  or  parts  of  them, 
have  been  translated  into  many  European 
languages,  and  numerous  foreign  writers 
have  been  afl^ected  by  their  ideas  and  style. 
The  estimate  that  has  been  formed  of  them 
is  extraordinarily  high.  Charles  Nodier 
said :  "The  appearance  of  Lord  Byron  in 
the  field  of  European  literature  is  one  of 
those  events  the  influence  of  which  is  felt 
by  all  peoples  and  through  all  genera- 
tions;" and  his  judgment  in  this  respect 
by  no  means  stands  alone.  The  chief 
reason  of  this,  independently  of  the 
splendour  of  his  compositions,  is  to  be 
found  in  his  political  opinions.  Byron's 
poetry,  like  that  of  most  of  his  English 
contemporaries — Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
Southey,  and  Shelley — was  the  outcome  of 
the  French  Revolution ;  but  whereas  the 
three  first-named  of  these  poets,  disgusted 
with  the  excesses  of  that  movement,  went 
over  into  the  opposite  camp,  and  the 
idealism  of  Shelley  was  too  far  removed 
from  the  sphere  of  practical  politics  to  be 
a  moving  force,  Byron  became,  almost 
unintentionally,  the  apostle  of  the  princi- 
ples which  it  represented.  .  .  .  Thus  his 
writings  became  a  political  power  through- 
out Europe,  and  more  so  on  the  Continent 
than  in  England,  in  proportion  as  the  loss 
of  liberty  was  more  keenly  felt  by  foreign 
nations.  Wherever  aspirations  for  inde- 
pendence arose,  Byron's  poems  were  read 
and  admired. — Tozer,  H.  F.,  1885,  ed. 
Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage. 

Byron  wrote,  as  easily  as  a  hawk  flies, 
and  as  clearly  as  a  lake  reflects,  the  exact 
truth  in  the  precisely  narrowest  terms; 
not  only  the  exact  truth,  but  the  most 
central  and  useful  one.  Of  course  I  could 
no  more  measure  Byron's  greater  powers 
at  that  time  than  I  could  Turner's;  but  I 
saw  that  both  were  right  in  all  things  that 
/  knew  right  from  wrong  in  ;  and  that  they 
must  henceforth  be  my  masters,  each  in 
his  own  domain.— RusKiN,  John,  1885, 
Proeterita,  vol.  I,  p.  258. 
^  Perhaps  the  most  powerful  factor  in 
Byron's  poetical  genius  is  his  style.  Alone 
among  his  contemporaries  he  understood 
how  to  swell  the  stream  of  English  poetical 
diction  as  it  had  come  down  to  him  from 
the  eighteenth  century,  so  as  to  make 


'      GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON  763 


it  an  adequate  vehicle  of  expression  for 
romantic  thought  and  feeling.  Words- 
worth speaks  the  language  of  philosophers, 
Shelley  of  spirits,  but  Byron  of  men. — 
CouRTHOPE,  William  John,  1885,  The 
Liberal  Movement  in  English  Literature, 
p.  141. 

May  all  the  devastating  force  be  spent? 
Or  all  thy  godlike  energies  lie  shent? 
Nay!    thou  art  founded  in  the  strength 

Divine : 

The  Soul's  immense  eternity  is  thine ! 
Profound  Beneficence  absorbs  thy  power, 
While  Ages  tend  the  long-maturing  flower: 
Our  Sun  itself,  one  tempest  of  wild  flame, 
For  source  of  joy,  and  very  life  men  claim 
In  mellowing  corn,  in  bird,  and  bloom  of 
spring, 

In  leaping  lambs,  and  lovers  dallying. 
Byron !  the  whirlwinds  rended  not  in  vain ; 
Aloof  behold  they  nourish  and  sustain ! 
In  the  far  end  we  shall  account  them  gain. 
— Noel,  Roden,  1885,  Byron's  Grave, 
Songs  of  the  Heights  and  Deeps,  p.  178. 

The  tragic  power  of  Crabbe  is  as  much 
above  the  reach  of  Byron  as  his  singularly 
vivid  though  curiously  limited  insight  into 
certain  shades  of  character. — Swinburne, 
Algernon  Charles,  1886,  Wordsworth 
and  Byron,  Miscellanies,  p,  89. 
✓^he  genius  of  Byron  was  not  one  from 
which  we  might  have  expected  good  sonnet- 
work.  He  is  greater  in  mass  than  in 
detail,  in  outlines  than  in  delicate  side- 
touches — in  a  word,  he  is  like  a  sculptor 
who  hews  a  Titan  out  of  a  huge  block,  one 
whom  we  would  never  expect  to  be  able, 
or  to  care,  to  delicately  carve  a  canoe. 
That  Byron  could  write  sonnets,  and  that 
he  could  even  write  an  exceptionaly  fine 
one,  is  evident  from  that  which  I  have 
quoted. — Sharp,  William,  1886,  Sonnets 
of  tfiis  Century,  p.  281,  note.  j 
^/The  next  influence  on  my  mind  was  that 
of  Byron,  and  his  power  over  me  was  much 
increased  by  the  injudicious  and  unjust 
hostility  of  one  of  my  tutors,  who  hated 
Byron  as  the  clergy  hated  him  during  his 
lifetime.  My  tutor  was  always  expressing 
contempt  for  the  poet,  whose  works  he 
had  not  read  and  was  incompetent  to  ap- 
preciate. This  only  made  me  read  them 
more  and  think  them  more  magnificent 
than  ever.  At  this  day  1  am  not  aware 
that  Byron  ever  exercised  any  bad  influence 
over  me.  His  gloom,  which  was  in  great 
part  unreal,  did  not  prove  to  be  infectious 
in  my  case,  but  his  clear,  direct,  and  manly 


use  of  the  English  language  was  very 
valuable  as  a  part  of  education.  As  to 
his  immorality,  it  was  more  in  his  life 
than  in  his  writings,  and  his  enemies  made 
the  most  of  it  whilst  they  tolerated  with- 
out protest  the  immoralities  of  more 
favoured  authors. —  Hamerton,  Philip 
Gilbert,  1887,  Books  which  have  Influ- 
enced Me,  p.  54. 

His  style  is  remarkable  for  its  strength 
and  elasticity,  for  its  immensely  powerful 
sweep,  tireless  energy,  and  brilliant  illus- 
trations.—Meiklejohn,  J.  M.  D.,  1887, 
The  English  Language:  Its  Grammar, 
History  and  Literature,  p.  344. 
y^^hich  is  the  better  and  stronger  is  a 
question  that  can  hardly  be  determined 
now.  It  is  certain  that  Byron's  star  has 
waned,  and  that  Wordsworth's  has  waxed ; 
but  it  is  also  certain  that  there  are  moments 
in  life  when  the  "Ode  to  Venice"  is  almost 
as  refreshing  and  as  precious  as  the  ode 
on  the  ''Intimations,"  and  when  the  epic 
mockery  of  ''Don  Juan"  is  to  the  full  as 
beneficial  as  the  chaste  philosophy  of  "The 
Excursion"  and  the  "Ode  to  Duty." — 
Henley,  William  Ernest,  1890,  Views^ 
and  Reviews,  p.  60. 

The  loose,  the  ungrammatical. — GossE, 
Edmund,  1891,  Is  Verse  in  Danger?  The 
Forum,  vol.  10,  p.  521. 

Now,  at  least  two  or  three  of  these  had 
great  genius ;  Shelley  and  Villon  especially 
set  a  lasting  fascination  in  their  works, 
and  although  Byron  does  not  wear  so  well, 
he  compels  a  slowly  relaxing  attention  as 
he  retreats  in  the  romantic  distance. — 
Thompson,  Maurice,  1893,  The  Ethics  of 
Literary  Art,  p.  75. 

^/Wordsworth  tried  the  moral  lesson  and 
spoiled  some  of  his  best  work  with  botany 
and  the  Bible.  A  good  many  smaller  men 
than  he  have  tried  the  same  thing  since, 
and  have  failed.  Perhaps  "Cain"  and 
"Manfred"  have  taught  the  human  heart 
more  wisdom  than  "Matthew"  or  the  un- 
fortunate "idiot  boy"  over  whom  Byron  was 
so  mercilessly  merry.  And  yet  Byron 
probably  never  meant  to  teach  any  one 
anything  in  particular,  and  Wordsworth 
meant  to  teach  everybody,  including  and 
beginning  with  himself.  —  Crawford, 
Marion,  1893,  What  is  a  Novel?  The 
Forum,  vol.  14,  p.  594. 

One  poet,  and  one  alone,  of  that  great 
early  group,  can  to-day  reach  our  affec- 
tions through  our  amusement.    If  Byron 


764 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


lives,  he  lives  by  virtue  of  wit.  The  sorrow- 
ful recklessness  of  his  irony  bears  the 
stamp  of  living  power,  unknown  to  his 
heroics  or  his  sentimental  tears.  Byron 
alone  among  his  comrades  is  great  as  a 
humorist ;  for  alone  among  his  comrades 
he  was  a  realist.  What  he  saw  was  doubt- 
less often  unworthy ;  but  it  had  the  merit 
of  existing.— SCUDDER,  Vida  D.,  1895, 
The  Life  of  the  Spirit  in  the  Modern  Eng- 
lish Poets,  p.  203. 

Poor  Byron  showed  in  his  life  the 
struggle  for  good  as  well  as  evil,  even  if 
the  evil  predominated.  He  had  so  nursed 
his  weaknesses  and  enjoyed  a  selfish  in- 
dulgence in  all  coveted  experiences,  with 
no  detaining  hand  or  gentle  voice  to  draw 
him  back,  that  his  passions,  prejudices, 
and  viciousness  overcame  him.  He  was  a 
wanderer  over  the  land,  with  a  ''might 
have  been.''  There  is  little  doubt  that 
Byron  deeply  loved  Mary  Chaworth,  and 
when  fate  placed  her  beyond  his  reach,  his 
whole  future  was  embittered,  and  he  had 
not  the  strength  of  character  to  rise  above 
it.  He  was  defiant,  with  a  will  that  could 
not  be  forced.  .  .  .  The  originality 
of  his  conceptions,  the  vigor  of  his 
thoughts,  the  boldness  of  his  imagination, 
together  with  beauty  and  sublime  harmony, 
stand  to-day  unrivalled. — Warren,  Ina 
RussELLE,  1896,  Magazine  of  Poetry y  vol. 
8,  p.  168. 

Byron's  landscape  style  resembles  that 
of  Scott  in  its  direct  painting,  in  its  rapid 
motion,  but,  as  a  rule,  with  very  superior 
though  very  unequal  power.  In  fact,  to 
digress  for  a  moment,  perhaps  no  English 
poet  has  equaled  Byron,  whether  in  his 
grasp  and  sweep  of  subject,  his  free  sym- 
pathy with  mankind,  or  in  what  we  might 
call  his  initial  force.  In  narrative,  how 
straight  to  the  mark  does  his  energy  go, 
compared  with  the  bewildering  discursive- 
ness of  the  ''Revolt  o^  Islam,"  or  "Endym- 
ion,"  the  tortuous  progress,  never  end- 
ing, still  beginning,  of  the  "Ring  and  the 
Book !' '  In  this  movement,  this  directness 
of  power,  and  here  only,  Byron's  style  was 
doubtless  affected  by  Scott.  .  .  .  Even  in 
his  early  lines  it  is  impossible  not  to 
recognise  the  hand  of  a  mighty  master — 
unless  indeed  we  are  enslaved  and  bound 
to  limit  our  taste  by  partisan  favouritism 
and  coterie  decrees :  as  if  Parnassus  could 
not  afford  space  for  many  styles ; — or  as 
if  a  man  should  worship  crimson  and 


therefore  despise  blue.  .  .  .  When  success- 
ful, his  work  retains  its  original  freshness, 
its  stimulating  power,  its  largeness  of  senti- 
ment, its  humanity  veiled  under  cynicism. 
What  has  been  condemned  as  mere  calcu- 
lated and  spurious  sensibility  was,  in  truth, 
the  clumsy  turbid  expression  of  genuine 
feeling,  by  an  artist  who  could  rarely  put 
in  his  deepest,  finest  tints  with  success— 
who  had  little  command  of  gradation.  .  .  . 
Byron's  love  of  landscape  was  a  passion, 
deep  and  sincere  perhaps  as  that  of  any 
poet. — Palgrave,  Francis  Turner,  1896, 
Landscape  in  Poetry y  pp.  188,  189,  195. 

Byron,  then,  seems  to  me  a  poet  dis- 
tinctly of  the  second  class,  and  not  even 
of  the  best  kind  of  second,  inasmuch  as 
his  greatness  is  chiefly  derived  from  a  sort 
of  parody,  a  sort  of  imitation,  of  the 
qualities  of  the  first.  His  verse  is  to 
the  greatest  poetry  what  melodrama  is  to 
tragedy,  what  plaster  is  to  marble,  what 
pinchbeck  is  to  gold.  He  is  not  indeed  an 
impostor ;  for  his  sense  of  the  beauty  of 
nature  and  of  the  unsatisfactoriness  of 
life  is  real,  and  his  power  of  conveying 
this  sense  to  others  is  real  also.  He  has 
great,  though  uncertain,  and  never  very 
fine,  command  of  poetic  sound,  and  a  con- 
siderable though  less  command  of  poetic 
vision.  But  in  all  this  there  is  a  singular 
touch  of  illusion,  of  what  his  contempo- 
raries had  learnt  from  Scott  to  call  grama- 
rye.  The  often  cited  parallel  of  the  false 
and  true  Florimels  in  Spenser  applies  here 
also.  The  really  great  poets  do  not  injure 
each  other  in  the  very  least  by  comparison, 
different  as  they  are.  Milton  does  not 
"kill"  Wordsworth;  Spenser  does  not 
injure  Shelley ;  there  is  no  danger  in  read- 
ing Keats  immediately  after  Coleridge. 
But  read  Byron  in  close  juxtaposition  with 
any  of  these,  or  with  not  a  few  others, 
and  the  effect,  to  any  good  poetic  taste, 
must  surely  be  disastrous;  to  my  own, 
whether  good  or  bad,  it  is  perfectly  fatal. 
The  light  is  not  that  which  never  was  on 
land  or  sea ;  it  is  that  which  is  habitually 
just  in  front  of  the  stage :  the  roses  are 
rouged,  the  cries  of  passion  even  some- 
times (not  always)  ring  false.  I  have 
read  Byron  again  and  again;  I  have 
sometimes,  by  reading  Byron  only  and 
putting  a  strong  constraint  upon  myself, 
got  nearly  into  the  mood  to  enjoy  him. 
But  let  eye  or  ear  once  catch  sight  or 
sound  of  real  poetry,  and  the  enchantment 


GEORGE  GORDON  LORD  BYRON 


765 


vanish  .'vi.  ..'  intsbury,  George,  1896,  A 
Historii  'J  Nineteenth  Century  Litera- 
ture, p.  80. 

Byron  had  splendid  powers  of  humour, 
and  the  iv  ^  ^etic  satire  that  we  have 
example  of,  fusing  at  times  to  hard  irony. 
He  had  no  strong  comic  sense,  or  he  would 
not  have  taken  an  anti-social  position, 
which  is  directly  opposed  to  the  Comic ; 
and  in  his  philosophy,  judged  by  philoso- 
phers, he  is  a  comic  figure,  by  reason  of 
this  deficiency.  —Meredith, George,  1897, 
An  Essay  on  Comedy  and  the  Uses  of  the 
Comic  Spirit,  p.  76. 

Byron  has  always  been,  to  many  com- 
petent judges,  one  of  the  greatest  poets 
of  any  age  or  country.  To  say  that  you 
do  not  like  his  poetry  because  you  do  not 
like  the  life  he  led  is  the  same  as  saying 
you  dislike  a  house  because  you  do  not  like 
the  architect  who  planned  or  the  carpenter 
or  mason  who  built  it. — Abbey,  Henry, 
1897,  Byron — The  Man  and  His  Work, 
Literary  World,  vol.  28,  p.  126. 

To  acquire  a  right  feeling  for  Byron  and 
his  poetry  is  a  discipline  in  equity.  It  is 
easy  to  yield  to  a  sense  of  his  power,  to 
the  force  and  sweep  of  his  genius ;  it  is 
easy  to  be  repelled  by  his  superficial  insin- 
cerity, his  license,  his  cynicism,  his  poverty 
of  thought,  his  looseness  of  construction, 
his  carelessness  in  execution.  To  know 
aright  the  evil  and  the  good  is  difficult. 
It  is  difficult  to  feel  justly  towards  this 
dethroned  idol  (presently,  perhaps,  to  be 
re-enthroned),  an  idol  in  whose  composi- 
tion iron  and  clay  are  mingled  with  fine 
gold.  .  .  .  We  must  take  him  or  leave 
him  as  he  is, — the  immortal  spoilt  by  his 
age,  great  and  petty,  weak  and  strong, 
exalted  and  debased.  A  glorious  wave 
that  curls  upon  the  sea-beach,  though  it 
leave  sea-wrack  and  refuse  on  the  sands, 
is  more  stimulating,  more  health-giving, 
than  a  pitcher  of  such  salt  water  in  one's 
dressing-room,  even  if  it  be  free  from 
every  floating  weed.  ...  He  was  a 
democrat  among  aristocrats  and  an  aristo- 
crat among  democrats;  a  sceptic  among 
believers  and  a  believer  among  sceptics. 
And  yet  his  line  of  advance  was  not  a  via 
media,  nor  was  it  determined  by  a  spirit  of 
moderation  or  critical  balance. — Dowden, 
Edward,  1897,  The  French  Revolution 
and  English  Literature,  pp.  261,  262,  264. 

There  are  still  a  few  faithful,  like  the 
well-known  Greek  scholar  of  whom  it  was 


remarked  in  my  hearing  that  he  never 
Quoted  any  English  save  Byron  and  the 
Bible.  — More,  Paul  Elmer,  1898,  The 
Wholesome  Revival  of  Byron,  Atlantic 
Monthly,  vol.  82,  p.  801. 

His  poetry  had  no  repose ;  all  is  revolt. 
He  is  inspired  by  no  faith,  human  or  divine. 
There  is  passion,  but  little  love,  affection, 
or  tenderness.  No  large  views  of  human 
life  or  destiny  soften  the  hard  lines  of  his 
horizon ;  no  enthusiasms,  except  it  be  for 
liberty  or  for  inanimate  nature,  pierce  its 
darkness.  There  is  only  the  scorching 
light  of  the  volcano,  whose  eruptive  fire 
intensifies  the  blackness  of  the  surround- 
ing darkness,  which  in  part  is  itself  its 
own  product,  and  casts  a  lurid  glare  on  a 
narrow  circle  of  the  wilderness  it  has  itself 
bared  and  blasted. — Prothero,  Rowland 
Edmund,  1898,  Childhood  and  School  Days 
of  Byron,  The  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  43, 
p.  62. 

As  we  should  expect  in  a  man  "proud 
as  Lucifer  and  beautiful  as  Apollo,"  the 
personal  note  in  Byron  is  supreme.  It 
is  the  note  of  a  struggling  Titian's 
tempest-anger,  tempest-mirth  ;  and  yet  his 
best  work  reached  the  very  pinnacle  of 
poetic  glory.  He  has  the  distinction  of 
having  made  English  letters  appreciated 
in  Europe.— George,  Andrev/  J.,  1898, 
From  Chaucer  to  Arnold,  Types  of  Liter- 
ary Art,  p.  652. 

But  Byron  the  poet?  Emphatically,  he 
was  not  a  poet;  not  if  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  are  poets.  He  was  a  magnificent 
satirist;  the  ''Vision  of  Judgment," 
' '  Don  Juan,  "and ' ' Beppo"  are  very  glories 
of  wit,  indignation,  rhetoric  ;  accomplished 
to  the  uttermost,  marvellous  and  immortal ; 
filled  with  scathing  laughter,  rich  with  a 
prodigal  profusion  of  audacious  fancy  and 
riot  of  rhyme.  Here  the  man  is  himself, 
eloquent  and  vehement  of  speech,  alive 
and  afire.  No  coarseness,  cruelty,  inso- 
lence, can  blind  us  to  the  enduring  excel- 
lence of  these  writings,  to  their  virility 
and  strength.  This  Byron  is  deathless. 
But  the  Byron  of  love  lyrics  and  tragedies, 
and  romantic  tales,  is  a  poet  of  infinite 
tediousness  in  execrable  verse ;  in  the 
severely  courteous  French  phrase,  he 
''does  not  permit  himself  to  be  read." 
And  he  is  not  read;  no  one  now  reads 
' '  Lara, "  or  "  Par isina, "  or  "  The  Corsair, ' ' 
or  "The  Giaour,"  or  "The  Bride  of 
Abydos,"  or  "The  Siege  of  Corinth,"  or 


766 


BYRON— MATURIN 


''The  Island,*'  or  the  weary,  weary  plays. 
They  are  dead,  and  past  resurrection; 
their  passion  is  as  poor  and  tawdry  a  thing 
as  that  of  ''Frankenstein"  or  "The 
Mysteries  of  Udolpho;"  their  garish  the- 
atricality is  laughable,  and  we  can  scarce 
believe  that  these  things  of  nought  were 
once  preferred  to  the  noble  simplicities 
and  rough,  true  music  of  Scott. — John- 
son, Lionel,  1898,  ByroUy  The  Academy, 
vol.  53,  p.  489. 

Mr.  Swinburne  may  criticise  his  verbal 
workmanship,  but  Byron  will  still  remain 
a  great  artist,  inclining,  perhaps,  a  little 
too  much  to  rhetorical  force  at  the  ex- 
pense of  poetico-musical  form.  His 
affluence  must  be  held  to  compensate  for 
his  lack  of  finish.  Byron's  lack  of  philo- 
sophical insight  and  of  sane  judgment  is 
balanced  by  great  penetration  and  scope 
in  some  particular  directions.  His  attitude 
towards  nature  is  marked  by  sympathy 
with  all  that  is  lonely,  self-contained,  and 
vast. — Johnson,  Charles  F.,  1898,  Ele- 
ments of  Literary  Criticismy  p.  118. 

On  the  continent  of  Europe  there  can 
be  no  Byronic  revival,  for  the  reason  that 
there  has  never  been  a  decline.  English 


critics  might  do  what  they  would  to 
"bear"  the  market — our  readers  will  per- 
haps remember  Mr.  Saintsbury's  exploit  in 
this  line — Byron  stock  has  always  stood 
well  in  the  literary  and  academic  bourses 
of  Germany  and  France.  His  poetry  is 
very  seriously  studied  at  the  universities ; 
dissertations  on  Byron  and  Shakspere, 
treatsies  on  "Byron  der  Uebermensch," 
and  the  like,  have  abounded. — Kittredge, 
George  Lyman,  1898,  Two  New  Editions 
of  Byron,  The  Nation,  vol.  67,  p.  132. 

There  is  very  little  truth  in  Byron's 
work:  his  characters  are  nothing — mere 
photographs  of  his  own  postures ;  his  action 
is  largely  melodrama ;  his  workmanship  is 
often  hurried  and  slovenly  to  the  last 
degree ;  and  yet  Byron  impressed  himself 
upon  his  generation  as  no  oiie  else  could. 
The  sheer  force  of  his  personality,  per- 
verse, unhealthy,  but  intense,  burned  his 
work  into  men's  minds.  The  emotion 
was  for  the  most  part  not  sane  or  well- 
grounded,  and  his  work,  therefore,  has 
largely  lost  its  interest ;  but  for  a  time  it 
had  immense  power. — Winchester,  C.  T., 
1899,  Some  Principles  of  Literary  Criti- 
cism, p.  88. 


Charles  Robert  Maturin 

1782-1824 

Born,  in  Dublin,  1782.  To  Trin.  Coll.,  Dublin,  as  scholar,  1798;  B.  A.,  1800. 
Married  Henrietta  Kingsbury,  1802.  Ordained  Curate  of  Loughrea ;  afterwards  of  St. 
Peter's,  Dublin.  Kept  a  school,  and  also  engaged  in  literature.  Tragedy  "Bertram"  pro- 
duced at  DruryLane,  9  May  1816 ;  "Manuel,"  DruryLane,  8  March  1817 ; "Fredolfo," 
Covent  Garden,  12  May  1817.  Lived  for  some  time  in  London.  Died,  in  Dublin,  30 
Oct.  1824;  buried  in  St.  Peter's,  Dublin.  Works:  "The  Fatal  Revenge"  (under 
pseudonym:  "Dennis  Jasper  Murphy"),  1807;  "The  Wild  Irish  Boy"  (anon.),  1808; 
' ' The  Milesian  Chief '  (anon. ),  1812 ; " Bertram,  "1816  (7th  edn.  same  year) ; ' ' Manuel" 
(anon.),  1817;  "Women"  (anon.),  1818;  "Sermons,"  1819;  "Fredolfo,"  1819; 
"Melmoth  the  Wanderer"  (anon.),  1820;  "The  Universe"  (probably  written  by  J. 
Wills),  1821;  "Six  Sermons  on  the  Errors  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,"  1824; 
''The  Albigenses"  (anon.),  1824.  Life:  in  1892  edn.  of  "Melmoth."— Sharp,  R. 
Farquharson,  1897,  A  Dictionary  of  English  Authors,  p.  191. 


PERSONAL 

Walter  Scott,  however,  was  the^rs^  who 
mentioned  him,  which  he  did  to  me,  with 
great  commendation,  in  1815 ;  and  it  is  to 
this  casualty,  and  two  or  three  other 
accidents,  that  this  very  clever  fellow  owed 
his  first  and  well-merited  public  suc- 
cess.— Byron,  Lord,  1817,  Letter  to  Mr. 
Moore,  March  31 ;  Life  by  Moore. 

Unhappy  Maturin, — what  a  life  was  his ! 
Of  his  death  I  fear  to  ask.    What  makes 


me  more  particularly  think  of  him  just 
now  is  a  drawing  in  chalk  that  I  saw  of 
him  immediately  before  Mary's  illness.  A 
young  man  of  the  name  of  Bewick,  who  is, 
I  think,  from  Ireland,  came  to  town,  wishing 
to  take  portraits  of  people  here  who  were 
known  to  the  public.  The  great  Well- 
known,  the  Arch-Critic,  and  many  others 
sat  to  him ;  and  when  all  more  worthy  sub- 
jects were  exhausted,  he  wrote  to  ask  per- 
mission to  take  a  likeness  of  me,  and 


ILES  ROBERT  MATURIN 


767 


brought  all  the  portraits 
me.    Those  of  Maturin  ^ 
astonished  me, — they  wejr 
pictures  that  existed  in  iti 
those  worthies.    The  eat 
look  of  Maturin,  while  stjr 
genius,  is  like  that  of  c 
only  supped  full  of  horroi 
breakfasted  on  them :  1  h 
ter  more  strongly  port*; 
nance. — Grant,  Anne,  t 
23 ;  Memoir  and  Correspjp 
vol.  Ill,  p.  57. 

The  curate  of  St.  pil 
ingly  vain  both  of  his  p 
plishments ;  and  as  his 
allow  him  to  attract 
splendour  of  his  dress 
seldom  failed  to  do  so  hf 
Mr.  Maturin  was  tall,  f , 
proportioned,  and,  on  i 
figure,  which  he  took  C  ' 
well-made  black  coat, 
and  some  odd  light-col> 
pantaloons,  surmounts 
coat  of  prodigious  din 
thrown  on,  so  as  not  t 
metry  it  affected  to  j 
Gentleman  sang  and  i  ' 
himself  on  performing 
evolutions  of  the  quad  i 
to  any  other  divine 
Church,  if  not  to  an> 
man  of  the  three  k 
happened,  too,  that 
laboured  under  an  att 
with  some  accident,  v 
use  of  a  slipper  or  a  ) 
or  one  leg,  and,  by  ai 
gruity  of  mischances 
compelled  on  these  Of  • 
the  public  thoroughf j 
the  melancholy  spec 
limb  in  pain  never 
sighs  and  sympathies 
persons  who  passed 
their  curiosity  to  r 
or  inquiries  respect 
Ryan,  Richard,  18 
vol.  I,  p.  64. 

Could  not  endure 
him  during  his  houi 
tion.  At  such  tim< 
sensitive,  and  pastt 
head  as  a  token  t 
family  that  he  was 
He  said  if  he  lost 


.d  to  show 
ly  Morgan 
)ry  like  the 
rination  of 
nelancholy 
marked  by 
10  had  not 
fc  dined  and 
3aw  charac- 
n  a  counte- 
[jetter,  Mar. 
e,  ed.  Grant, 


vas  exceed- 
and  accom- 
3  would  not 
tion  by  the 
manners,  he 
singularity. 
.  r,  but  well- 
1-3  uhole,  a  good 
'    to  display  in  a 
.  3ly  buttoned, 
3tocking-web 
winter,  by  a 
IS,  gracefully 
jure  the  sym- 
.  .*ct.    The  Rev. 
'  ed,  and  prided 
movements  and 
certainly  equal 
.  le  Established 
ate  lay  gentle- 
ms.    It  often 
ilaturin  either 
f  gout,  or  met 
compelled  th; 
ge,  on  one  f*"  ■ 
^countable 
was  unifr  ■ 
•ns  to  ap    1  n 
fDubh"  ore 
of  a    ;  .  dful 
to        e  the 
I  t>  resting 
-J  prompt 
e  remarks 
^jossessor. — 
and  Poets y 

re  children  near 
iterary  composi- 
was  particularly 
afer  on  his  fore- 
members  of  his 
)  be  interrupted, 
read  of  his  ideas 


even  for  a  moment,  they  were  gone  from 
him  altogether.— Ballou,  Maturin  M., 
1886,  Genius  in  Sunshine  and  Shadow^ 
p.  110. 

BERTRAM 

18  h; 

It  is  grand  and  powerful ;  the  language 
most  animated  and  poetical;  and  the 
characters  sketched   with    a  masterly 
enthusiasm.— Scott,  Sir  Walter,  18L 
Letter  to  Daniel  Terry,  MemoirSy  ed.  Lo( 
hart,  ch.  xxxiv. 

I  want  words  to  describe  the  m'  A 
horror  and  disgust  with  which  I  w'  sed 
the  opening  of  the  fourth  act,  cr  -  ^ring 
it  as  a  melancholy  proof  of  t'  prava- 
tion  of  the  public  mind.  .nocking 
spirit  of  jacobinism  seemed  nger  con- 
fined to  politics.  The  '  larity  with 
atrocious  events  and  ch  jrs  appeared 
to  have  poisoned  the  ^  even  where  it 
had  not  directly  di^  .ized  the  moral 
principles,  and  left  -  jelings  callous  to 
all  the  mild  appe-  .d  craving  alone  for 
the  grossest  an''  .t  outrageous  stimu- 
lants.—Coler:  .  . : .  .Samuel  Taylor,  1817, 
Biographia  T  '■  ■fr-iria. 

Cruditip  absurdities  abound,  but 
there  ar^  arsts  of  wild  poetry  amidst 
the  V?  Joleridge's  critique  brings 
into  :  r-,aant  juxtaposition  the  subtle 
Rory  .;'  :ism  of  the  poets,  and  the  crude 
Rr  .an  premonitions  which  here  still 
y  .  dd.— Herford,  C.  H.,  1897,  The 
of  Wordsworth,  p.  97. 

MELMOTH  THE  WANDERER 

1820 

**Melmoth"  is  not  altogether  so  mad  as 
some  reviewers  pronounced  it,  yet  suf- 
ficiently so  to  excuse  thousands  for  closing 
their  eyes  against  the  poetic  invention  and 
buoyancy  of  fancy  everywhere  visible. — 
Cunningham,  Allan,  1833,  Biographical 
and  Critical  History  of  the  Literature  of 
the  Last  Fifty  Years. 

Although  far  too  long,  marvellously  in- 
volved with  tales  within  tales,  and  dis- 
figured in  parts  by  the  rant  and  the  gush 
of  its  class,  *'Melmoth"  is  really  a  power- 
ful book,  which  gave  something  more  than 
a  passing  shudder  to  its  own  generation 
(it  specially  influenced  Balzac),  and  which 
has  not  lost  its  force  even  now.  But  the 
usual  novel  of  this  kind,  which  was  written 
in  vast  numbers,  was  simply  beneath  con- 
tempt.—Saintsbury,  George,  1896,  A 


768 


CHARLES  ROBEi  MATl 


History  of  Nineteenth  Century  Literature, 
p.  126. 

The  work  of  renovation  began  with 
Charles  Robert  Maturin,  in  his  time  a  well- 
known  Irish  clergyman  and  litterateur. 
The  tale  in  which  he  displayed  his  finer 
imaginative  power  is  ''Melmoth  the 
.Wanderer"  (1820).  He  eliminated  from 
the  Radcliffe  romance  the  ''sentimental 
Miss  who  luxuriates  in  the  rich  and  weep- 
ing softness  of  a  watery  landscape,"  and 
depended  on  fear  as  his  sole  motive.  In 
many  scenes,  resembling  the  punishments 
in  the  lower  circles  of  Dante's  Inferno," 
he  reached,  if  not  terror,  the  borderland 
w^here  horror  becomes  terror.  Such  is  the 
incarceration  of  a  young  monk  among 
serpents, whose  ''cold  and  bloating"  forms 
crawl  over  him,  and  the  starvation  and 
madness  of  lovers  in  a  subterranean  prison. 
But  the  incoherency  and  extreme  length 
of  the  romance  have  long  since  over- 
whelmed it ;  one  of  the  last  references  to 
it  being  Thackeray's,  who  compared 
Goethe's  eye  to  Melmoth's.— Cross,  Wil- 
bur, L.,  1899,  The  Development  of  the  Eng- 
lish Novel,  p.  159. 

GENERAL 

It  ["Manuel"]  is  the  absurd  work  of  a 
clever  man. — Byron,  Lord,  1817,  Letter 
to  Mr.  Murray,  June  14. 

We  observe,  with  pleasure,  that  Mr. 
Maturin  has  put  his  genius  under  better 
regulation  [in  "Women"]  than  in  his 
former  publications,  and  retrenched  that 
luxuriance  of  language,  and  too  copious 
use  of  ornament,  which  distinguishes  the 
authors  and  orators  of  Ireland,  whose 
exuberance  of  imagination  sometimes 
places  them  in  the  predicament  of  their 
honest  countrymen  who  complained  of 
being  run  away  with  by  his  legs. — Scott, 
Sir  Walter,  1818,  Women;  or  Pour  et 
Contre,  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  80,  p.  256. 

The  author  of  "Montorio"  and  of  "Ber- 
tram" is  unquestionably  a  person  gifted 
with  no  ordinary  powers.  He  has  a  quick 
sensibility — a  penetrating  and  intuitive 
acuteness — and  an  unrivalled  vigour  and 
felicity  of  language,  which  enable  him  at 
one  time  to  attain  the  happiest  condensa- 
tion of  thought,  and  at  others  to  pour  forth 
a  stream  of  eloquence  rich,  flowing,  and 
deep,  chequered  with  images  of  delicate 
loveliness,  or  darkened  by  broad  shadows 
cast  from  objects  of  stern  and  adamantine 
majesty.    Yet,  in  common  with  many 


o;  li  I  potei  rits  of  the  present  time, 
he  fails  to  '^e  within  us  any  pure  and 
lasting  syn-;  . .  We  do  not,  on  reading 
his  works,  hat  we  have  entered  on  a 
precious  an  perishable  treasure.  They 
dazzle,  the  ight,  they  surprise,  and 
they  weary  ve  lay  them  down  with  a 
vague  admi  ni  for  the  author,  and  try 
to  shake  ofl  thair  influence  as  we  do  the 
?.  feverish  dream. — Tal- 
?  Noon,  1842,  Maturin, 
cdlaneous  Writings,  p.  43. 

indeed  a  man  of  ff'^nius. 
Thomas,  1854,  ^  'o 
y,  Oct. ;  Life  aru 
xviii. 


impressions  oi 

FOURD,    TH(i\'  ' 

Critical  and  Mi 

Was  verily 
-De  Quincl  , 
his  Daughter  E 
ings,  ed.  Pay., 

Above  all 
works  of  M 
enthralling,  ■ 
fictions,  whi» 
art,  and  tas  ^ 
pose,  lift  tl 
physical  ager  ' 
imaginative  g; 
Novalis.  Th 
with  its  mast 
people  and  i 
Revenge, ' '  wi 
convulsions  oi 
moth,"  with ii 
malignity,  ana 
Indian  seas — " 
ception  of  yo 
Bernard,  Ba^ 
uel  Lover,  p.  \- 

The  name  of  Iiaturin  has  almost  died 
altogether  froi  te  recollection  of  the 
reader,  and  it  ith  difficulty  that  the 
student  can  fin*  ..  y  of  the  many  works 
which  he  poure(  th,  and  which,  indeed, 
are  little  worth  *  'rouble  of  looking  for. 
His  high-flown  i  •  ictions  and  romantic 
theatrical  figur-  ght,  however,  have 
thrown  at  least  imusing  tragi-comic 
light  upon  his  s  ndings  had  any  rec- 
ord of  them  been  inable. — Oliphant, 
Margaret  0.  W.  '2,  Literary  History 
of  England,  X  V L  X  Century,  vol.  III. 

He  never  ove  i  his  tendency  to 
absurd  extravap  )f  expression  and 
wild  improbabilit;)  igh  we  can  under- 
stand why  it  was  he  great  critics  of 
the  time  continue  ope  that  he  would 
tone  down.— Mini  lliam,  1894,  The 
Literature  of  the  G  .  n  Era,  ed.  Knight, 
p.  286. 


^rever,  there  were  the 
i, — those  startling  and 
.'er  sombre  and  repellent 
ith  all  their  defects  of 
;:id  insufficiency  of  pur- 
ystery  and  terror  and 
:)f  Mrs.  Radcliffe  into  an 
'  5ur  worthy  of  Shelley  or 
'ere  "The  Albigenses," 
contrasts  of  the  hunted 
hunters',  "The  Fatal 
s  terrible  capacities  and 
human  soul ;  and ' '  Mel- 
aazing  pictures  of  guilt, 
ering,  and  its  girl  of  the 
nimalee,  loveliest  con- 
purity,  and  ardour. — 
.  1874,  The  Life  of  Sam- 


